Events

Welcome to stop #68 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Goldfinger Brewing, 513 Rogers St., Downers GroveTrain line: BNSF, Fairview AveTime from Chicago: 43 minutes (Zone E)Distance from station: 500 m Goldfinger Brewing opened in July 2020, which really sucked for them. But because they focused on making nothing but high-quality, traditional, Central-European lagers, they attracted an immediate following that kept them going. Fun fact: Lagers take about three times longer to brew than ales, which...

Welcome to stop #67 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Imperial Oak Brewing, 9526 Ogden Ave., BrookfieldTrain line: BNSF, Congress ParkTime from Chicago: 24 minutes (Zone C)Distance from station: 200 m The ugly stepchild of the original Imperial Oak in Willow Springs opened in March after the owners acquired a failing local bar in December 2019. The pandemic didn't hurt them since it took about 15 months to build out the new brewing facility. They have some of the same beers as the original, but...

So, 18 hours later, my third Pfizer dose made my arm sore and disrupted my sleep a little. Otherwise, no side effects. Updates as conditions warrant. Update: OK, there's quite a bit of fatigue. And a bit of headache. No fever, though; I'm at 36.9°C, which is the high end of normal for me at this time of day. CDC says it's OK to take an ibuprofen after the shot, so I will now do so.

Today is the second anniversary of the first reported Covid-19 case, a fact I had forgotten when I booked my booster shot two weeks ago. Since 2019, about 5.8 million people have died of it, 822,000 of them here in the US. And it has also befuddled peoples' senses of time. NBC has a quiz to see if you remember when things happened in the last two years. I got 28, which embarrasses me. I really did forget all about Kanye West's divorce and Alex Trebek's death. Let's hope that next year is 2,022, and not...

We almost made it to December 31st without measurable snowfall, which would have broken the record of 290 days. Alas, at day #288... I snapped that photo with the wind at my back and quarter-sized flakes melting on my coat. It was 1.7°C then, but by the time I sloshed home with the wind in my face and rain soaking through my coat, it was getting just enough warmer to really make the weather really suck dingo balls. At least I now have my Covid booster. Hurrah. And I now want to take a nap...

Redu, Belgium, has more books than people, but people don't buy many books these days: [I]n the mid-1980s, a band of booksellers moved into the empty barns and transformed the place into a literary lodestone. The village of about 400 became home to more than two dozen bookstores — more shops than cows, its boosters liked to say — and thousands of tourists thronged the winsome streets. Now, though, more than half the bookstores have closed. Some of the storekeepers died, others left when they could no...

Even though Cassie really wants to go outside right now, I'm going to make her wait another 10 minutes while I push some code and wait for the continuous integration build to run. She doesn't understand that I need to run with productivity when I have it. The closest she gets to understanding that is running with balls when she has them. OK, pushing 10 commits. Run, you clever CI, and remember...

Last week I posted a bug report on an app I'm developing. I couldn't figure out why a nav bar only appeared for logged-in users. Almost 7½ hours of debugging  over a 10-day stretch later, and I figured it out. It turns out that the default AddAuthorization service provider options blocked a request somewhere, so removing it allowed all the page components to load, even while keeping the authentication-required bits hidden. builder.Services.AddAuthorization(options => { // By default, all incoming...

The James Webb Space Telescope took off from French Guiana this morning at 6:20 CST: Ground teams began receiving telemetry data from Webb about five minutes after launch. The Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket performed as expected, separating from the observatory 27 minutes into the flight. The observatory was released at an altitude of approximately 75 miles (120 kilometers). Approximately 30 minutes after launch, Webb unfolded its solar array, and mission managers confirmed that the solar array was...

The Times reported last night that the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index had its highest rate of increase since 1982 in November, and yet they (and most other news outlets) completely missed the bigger story: The data came as a rising number of Omicron infections makes the inflation and economic outlook hazier. On one hand, the virus could slow the growth of the economy and of prices if it prompts furloughs at a time when the government is no longer stepping in to fill the void...