Come and See

Sunday afternoon, Kyle, Lisa, Pooteewheet, and I went to the Trylon to see the movie Come and See.  It's a pleasant romp through the Belarus countryside in 1943 by a playful tween boy, Florian.  At least until the stacks of dead bodies.  And burning people alive.  And gang rape.  And...and...and....holy ^^^^ did that ever live up to the Bleak Week: Series of Despair category.  Anti-war, anti-German...it didn't pull any punches.  2.5 hours that flew by as it threw atrocity after atrocity at you.  By the time you get to the end, there's a German who knows he's going to die, maybe burnt alive, still saying, "Some nations just shouldn't exist."  At which point the ending is German war footage and footage of Hitler rolling in reverse, almost Wizards-esque, until we get to Hitler as a child, highlighting both the allegation by that same German that "it starts with the children" [he told the adults they could leave the building before they burned it with them in it if they left the children behind] and that some nations shouldn't exist.  

I like the part on Wikipedia that says, "Roger Ebert posted a review of Come and See as part of his "Great Movies" series, describing it as "one of the most devastating films ever about anything, and in it, the survivors must envy the dead."  That's damn accurate.

Pooteewheet didn't get to see it because her ulcers kicked in so she went home in case they got worse, but came back to pick me up later at Arbeiter Brewing.  I took an hour to slough off the despair by picking up my four pack on my Arbeiter beer sub and a buy one get one free Stonewall beer. [wheat, fruited]. A very good beer.  They're having their release party for it tomorrow.    I gave away 3/4 of my four pack to my brother, who showed up because he was just down the street at Venn, my neighbor, and the host of the yard parties we go to, and it was still a really good subscription deal just for me.  I recommend Arbeiter highly.

Here's a nice phot of a bird that seemed to want my beer, or something I had, and a cyclist to wash away the despair.  If you ever get a chance to see Come and See, maybe don't.  Or do like we did and watch it with a large group so you have some ambient social support.

Fair Maps 2.0

It looks like my magical mojo of going to Falls Liquors specifically in search of Minocqua Brewing drinking options may have propitiated the deities of fair maps.  That, and maybe some of the money I've directly injected into their state races.  This is good news for democracy for our cheesy neighbors.  I have this desire to bike to Minocqua at some point this summer.  It's a bit of a haul but I think I can visit Sank on the way if I do a three or four day trip and have my wife fetch me once her knees work well enough to drive that far.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/13/wisconsin-senate-new-voter-maps-gerrymandering

Krampus at Arbeiter Brewing

Wow....I have a lot of things to blog over the last two months that I really didn't get around to....the sheer number of photos that I scraped off my phone is daunting.  I'm going to backtrack so I have some of it here on the blog.  Expect things as far back as Christmas, and maybe a bit before.  I've had a BUSY two months, not even including my wife's double knee replacement [not nearly as sexy as it sounds].

This is one of my favorite recent photos.  From Arbeiter Brewing.  I'm often there, but I went up there specifically to get my photo take with Krampus  That's Kevin the bartender under that mask.  I was amused at how many parents showed up with their 3-4 year old kids for a photo.  That dog in the background...I'm pretty sure that's the same Ikea dog Aeryn bought as their first stuffed animal purchase when they had their own money.  So it's a nice photo in that Krampus appears to be threatening me with intimate knowledge of my kid.

Drag Shows - Lupulin Brewing

Last weekend some friends went with my wife and I to a drag show in Big Lake, Minnesota, at Lupulin Brewing.  Based on some of the Facebook comments, we were wondering if we'd see some local, conservative push back at the brewery even though they serve their own beer, not Bud Light [PS F AB and their turn to 'patriotism' in their commercials at the pressure of noise from conservatives. It's the case that the loudest screams are often coming from those on the wrong side of history. They're the death gasps of people drowning when they could learn to swim and eventually do water ballet.]  My home town is nearby, and that hood isn't known for their progressive politics.

I was amused to read someone commenting about how in their 44 years in Big Lake, they'd never seen something like that [and seemed to be implying there was a moral slide]. Drag Shows are good clean fun.  There's no morality issue to consider.  I grew up on a bit of burlesque and drag.  One of my early memories is my parents being super excited about a tassel twirler on television when we were in California.  I didn't develop a [more than average] breast fixation.  I didn't develop a need to go twirl. If burlesque doesn't push you to be burlesque, drag doesn't push you to do drag.  That's a super simplification, but likely valid.

And if I was to weigh the morality and danger of drag against the prevalence of alcohol in our society, even though I love the brewery boom [note my new Books, Brews, and Bicycling series], alcohol shatters the impact of pretty much everything else in the history of our society, even if it isn't responsible for putting K9s oUt Of WoRk LiKe MaRiJuAnA. [< sarcasm, I learned that very late in my web career]. As an aside, good on the Minnesota legislature and Governor Walz for finally getting that shit legalized even more than the THC in our seltzers.  As someone who studied dystopias, I always worry a little bit about the expansion of options to keep people's attention diverted from the man [alcohol, drugs...but worse, streaming and the uninformative parts of the web like doom scrolling], but the benefits of not putting people in jail for nonsense and giving them alternatives to drinking away pain is monumental in my opinion. 

Anyway, if you're looking for moral slide in Big Lake, there's never been too far to slide when it comes to drugs and crime and heavy drinking.  If you feel sex is a moral issue, any of the "corner bars" are far sketchier than a drag show at a brewery and have been since I was a teenager, and presumably long before I could drink at them [transparency, I have been to Big Lake bars when I was considerably younger, and even have stories from my time at them and at least looking at them externally, they don't seem to have changed at all].

Or, maybe you could be more concerned about bad practices in your local law enforcement rather than a bunch of folks dancing.  https://www.hometownsource.com/monticello_times/community/big_lake/police-chief-resigns-after-city-federal-investigations-into-gun-purchase/article_f1c2b48c-7a01-11ec-ad9b-3b4b546eaee6.html 

</bit_of_a_rant>

So a few photos of the event at Lupulin.  Enjoy my wife's hair color.  I believe they discontinued it, so after a few more rounds of horded hair dye, she's going to have to change it up.  It was an interesting venue.  We were there early and could have found better seats, like up above, but weren't sure where folks would be performing.  For the most part, they moved through the audience, but a high table would have given us a better view.  Not that it's always difficult to see the performers when they're in high heeled boots like the MC. 

This photo may give the impression that it was mostly women at Lupulin, but far from it.  I met a fellow - male - Ingress player at the event because I could see him playing on the portals and he'd left his phone face up on a table.  And behind and to the left are plenty of guys there with their friends and others. The bottom photo is more representative.

I posit that between Lupulin - which has a startling variety of beer - and Willy's on the Lake [which used to be Russell's, where I once got a volleyball through my car window from the beach while at a fancy dinner at age...18....with my post senior summer g/f] my friend and I probably drank too much.  I had a power nap in the car on the way home, and apparently my friend's s/o sent my wife a photo of him passed out almost as soon as he got home.  Part of it was the infectious nature of the crowd.  It was a happy, celebratory bunch.

This photo is for my sister.  She's a big fan of the little mermaid, currently the focus of its own culture war as she's changed skin color which seems to be as far as some folks can get.  This would probably destroy them.  BTW, love that Lupulin mural.  I think it captures the logos from a number of their beers.

The post event applause.  I didn't enjoy the show as much as the one at Hell's Kitchen, but it was still a great time and it was great to go to a show with friends.  And it was uplifting to be at an event in my old hood that belies the news that it's the southern tip of the crazy part of Minnesota with the politicians who worry about demonology and beard discrimination [travel due north from Big Lake toward Mille Lacs and it's like a mini trip to the American south].

Gamehole Con 2021 - Day 4

Day four was our semi-relaxed day.  The plan was for us to finish up ramen and the rest of the group to finish up Indian food and meet up at the Air BnB for some outside-of-GHC gaming.

E and I started the day by doing a long stint at True Dungeon "Weird Magic".  I think I've mentioned it in the past, but True Dungeon is a bit like a fantasy themed distributed escape room with a running story and experience and equipment.  Equipment is random depending on the tokens you get.  As a n00b this can be tough because if you land on an experienced team they'll want to try fighting at a higher difficulty to pull more treasure.  On the flip side, they can loan you equipment that levels you up, gets you more treasure, etc.  That was the kind of team we were on this time.  They did a great job of explaining it better than any team we've ever been with before. They even explained the "ghost" to us that no one explained last year as a friend who was ill and couldn't attend, but they could run him through on his pre-purchased ticket and use his tokens so he'd collect treasure.  

One of the guys amusingly explained to us that there were limits to ghosts as some obsessives had taken to running a dungeon with themselves and nine ghosts for a while to maximize their treasure [at an expense].  No photos because I don't want to ruin it for anyone.  The surprise of the story and the rooms is most of the fun.  This year's theme was sort of a cyberpunk witch  thing.  We did fail at one room where we had to align colored blocks by changing their colors in a machine with glowing lights on top....boom.  Damage.  But at least it doesn't eliminate you from the game.  E loves playing the thief...each class does something slightly different.  Pushes hockey pucks for damage, traces shapes to find clues or treasure, identifies symbols [oof, memorization] to cast spells, throws two hockey pucks, and more.

We played Space Invaders with Kane.  It's a branded version of Flip Ships, so it wasn't new for me or for E.  Also, a very fast game so we finished up early and found some lunch.  This is a GREAT game if you're looking for something party friendly.  Ms Klenko was there as well - just out of frame.

Some vendor hall photos.  E threatening me with a LARP-ing weapon. 

Kitsune, for sale.  A game E, and Klund, and I hate above almost all others.  We had a HORRIBLE time playing it several years ago and I made it worse by knowingly forcing an extra hour of play when it could have been over just to troll E and Klund.

I had to ask Apong if this was racist.

I own a Xeno game - an expansion for Axis and Allies - but this is downright weird.

Eryn came away with some loot.  Breast cancer suppotive Ticket to Ride trains, as well as Ticket to Ride Europe and Ticket to Ride India from the scratch and dent which was a holiday ask, so it was like Christmas early.  A cool pin, dice [including some not shown here that bend light like fiber optic cables - enough so that I initially thought they glowed], and a few bonus cards from Kane for Fuse.

 

Celtica was our last on-site game of the day.  Very old Ravensburger game with an ironic puzzle component where you build amulets.  Get a handful of colored wizard cards.  Move the wizards on the board any spaces that are all or part of your cards.  Some spaces good.  Some bad. Some draw another card.  We played two games and play was much better on the second game once players started taking some chances to score an extra card in a color to get past a bad space. It won a 2007 children's game award, so that'll give you an idea of the complexity.

 

Beer, local, spotted cow. I think Commuter was the other option in the gaming hall.  It might have been cheaper to keep a whole six pack in the car, but I saved most of my drinking for the AirBnB.  I don't like feeling tired while gaming with new players.  The little spider dude was already at our table.  I think that might be Eryn's third smoothie in three days.  The coffee/ice cream/smoothie stand is probably the best sustenance at Gamehole Con.

 

Back side of the beholder.  I sent it to my wife and channeled Michael Scott's "That's what she said."  Childish, but I felt it was a particularly fun use of the meme.

We had dinner at Morris Ramen.  Apong went a few times after we gave him the name/location.  Maybe my favorite place in Madison.  Young crowd and absolutely wonderful food.  We had the spicy ramen.  Can't recommend it enough.

Back at the house, we sat down for a five person game of Power Grid.  That might be the best number.  Boardgamegeek does say 4-5.  Apong added that red wall across the bottom to make sure we didn't stray into unusable German territory.

Klund won this one with some spirited bidding on ecologically responsible power.

We played minimal hands of The Crew, but enough to understand the basics.  The goal is to have different players take different tricks, in specific orders, etc, cooperatively.  I'm not sure I can play with just my wife, but if we have the neighbors over I'll get it out as it gets incrementally [hand to hand] more difficult over fifty round and the general idea is easy enough to pick up in a few minutes.

And we finished off the night with a game of Cosmic Factory as E now has their own.  We reserved a few minutes for packing and cleaning so that 8:00 a.m. games didn't mean getting up at 6:30 to check out. I think I took home about 80 percent of the food I brought with me.  Definitely overkill.

Hot Summer Nights

 My new neighbor trades beer with me.  Between him and Kyle and myself, I may never have to drink the same beer more than twice unless I really want to.  I've taken to buying warm beer and storing it under the steps and I'm developing quite the esoteric collection.

This was one of the incoming trades.  I had it while playing D&D on Sunday.  I'm generally against fruity beer, but this had a seriously light taste (and light alcohol at 4.4%).  The lower alcohol level was a bonus because anything above 6% tends to make me a bit fuzzy for playing my character.

Speaking of Warbear the Invincible, Warlock, here's his character sheet.  https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/Dexter_Scootarus_I/characters/27038034.  E, Kyle, Chris, his son, and I have been playing for about two months on most weekends with a few skips.  Last time I played consistently was in the Richfield house maybe 25 years ago.  We're having a good time, although I have a theme.  Fire my biggest spell, Scorching Ray.  Take a hit, and "blow up" with Hellish Rebuke.  Either go down, or get in an Eldritch Blast and then go down.  It's not 100%, but I think it's at least a 60% go to strategy.  Mostly I'm waiting for my patron (a fiend, in this case Demogorgon) to decide he's going to chew on my brain and spit it back into my skull.  I hear that's how he makes friends.

Korean Craft Beer

Excellent article on the (South) Korean Craft Beer scene: https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/the-rise-of-south-koreas-craft-brewing-scene

Florida Beer

Orlando was very confusing because they don't sell beer in the liquor store. At least not beer worth drinking. I tried three different stores and came up empty, which led me to my iPad where I verified that there were breweries in the area, which was my recollection. A search revealed that the Whole Foods, about 2/3 of a mile from the hotel, had beer. I walked over there, figuring I'd get some sort of gluten-free nonsense, but lo and behold...beer! Lots of beer. They even had Oskar Blues, which I didn't think was sold outside Colorado. And Whole Foods sold by the can, so I could sit next to the pool and enjoy a variety of yeasty goodness.  Here's a picture of my Whole Foods purchase.  You can imagine my excitement.

Software Links V (and other articles of interest)

• 5 Books to help you become a better software engineer - I disagree about The Pragmatic Programmer, but I did enjoy the others.
• Beer Archaeologist from Long Reads - Dogfish is so freaking cool. "But will the za’atar—a potent Middle Eastern spice mixture redolent of oregano—clobber the soft, floral flavor of the chamomile? And what about the dried doum-palm fruit, which has been giving off a worrisome fungusy scent ever since it was dropped in a brandy snifter of hot water and sampled as a tea?...The truest alcohol enthusiasts will try almost anything to conjure the libations of old. They’ll slaughter goats to fashion fresh wineskins, so the vintage takes on an authentically gamey taste. They’ll brew beer in dung-tempered pottery or boil it by dropping in hot rocks. The Anchor Steam Brewery, in San Francisco, once cribbed ingredients from a 4,000-year-old hymn to Ninkasi, the Sumerian beer goddess."
• Nailing down non-functional requirements (Infoq) such as "General 'ilities' of the system such as scalability, interoperability, maintainability, portability, performance and security".  I fully agree about the trickiness of making this work as well as getting it in the backlog and in front of the business unit.  I'm particularly sensitive to the issue, because lately I've been tasked with handling our Open Source tracking for the department, including porting the scripting of the process from AntHillPro back to Powershell scripts (AHP keeps failing on us), considering the OWASP scanning schedule, including writing up a standard "bundle" for partners interested in our security stack, and determining the best way to automate some of our testing within the constraints of two development FTEs for half a dozen products.
• Why Most IT Departments Are Modeled After a DMV (Even Yours!) -  How to codify saying "no".  "Campaign rhetoric aside, governments have a bit of a vested interest in slowing down change in the way government works. Governments are meant to be stable, reliable and predictable -- and change opposes those goals...My problem is that ITIL pretty much abhors change. No, not on paper -- on paper, ITIL manages and controls change. In practice, IT organizations use ITIL as a blunt instrument to halt change."
• It's getting real...in the Whole Foods parking lot.   Thanks to Betsy Burton (@betsyphd). I wonder if I should form a competing gang over at Kowalski's.

Great Divide - Denver

I cajoled my family into going to two breweries while we were in Denver. The second day we went downtown to Great Divide. If a cop asks, I'll say it's just a story, but I was angling to eliminate three generations of my family downtown that day. Five people in the car, four of them talking while I was driving in a circle trying to zero in on the brewery. I sort of forgot there were things like stoplights. A few other drivers were keen to remind me they existed.

You'd think it would have been easier to find with a big beer bottle hanging off the corner of the building.


And an amusing beer truck out front.


My grandma and mother were enjoying the sun.  Keep in mind we were in the mile high city, and it was relatively toasty out, even with the snowy mountains nearby.  Compare that to a few days later when it snowed 7" in Sidney, or when it was 30 degrees for the Ironman here in Minnesota.  Grandma looks great for 95.


The bottling room.  Can you tell I spent some time in the taproom prior to the tour?  I was enjoying some of their casked beer which was running closer to the 10% alcohol range.  A few of those on top of the tasting glasses, and it was definitely having an effect.  Eryn LOVED the bottling machine.  They were loading a palate of bottles into it while we were there.  It just picks them off one row at a time and feeds them into the line.  Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!  John from work told me there's a name for it - something like "the paletizer."  For obvious reasons.  There were also kegs - whiskey kegs - in the brewery for making the casked beer (delicious).  I asked the tour guide about them, and she said they were a local brewery, Stranahans.  Kyle said he though Stranahans and Great Divide traded in kind - casks for mash to distill.  They have a tour as well, so when I go back, that's a definite destination.  Apparently they do limited bottlings (140) of whiskeys with names like "SCW Triplewood Snowflake".  If it tastes as good as the name, I bet it's wonderful.

Reexamining this picture, I really do look soused.  It doesn't help that my pants don't actually fit and I look like I need a rope belt with them sort of sticking out the top of my leather belt.


Eryn wasn't so sure she wanted me to take this picture, although she thought it was pretty funny.


She drank so much she was dancing on street poles afterwards.  I like this picture because she's smiling and cute, and there's a hidden brewery in the background as well as a bike.  Beer, bike, Eryn...definitely things that make vacation enjoyable.

Denver - Oskar Blues IV, The Brewery

After dinner at the Oskar Blues restaurant, we headed over to the Tasty Weasel, which is their brewery/onsite bar.  The guy we'd met earlier had told us tours were still on, despite Easter Sunday, but when we got there we were told it was closed, and one of the guys in charge was in his bike clothes, fat tired bike in the back of his running pick up.  He stopped what he was doing and took us inside so I could buy some beer.  I love it when you can buy beer at the brewery. There's something seriously wrong in Minnesota.  This is in their work place.


I don't think you can see one from this view, but they have a few Surly cans on the wall.  They were very complementary of Surly.  Note the live music that happens at the brewery.  Their beer is in cans, but it's delicious.


He couldn't get into the beer cabinet, and had to go find me some from the back.  But this had a nice display of their cans.  Next time I buy a beer fridge, I'm getting a glass door.


This is what happens to all the leftover cans.  Those blocks are hard to move.


I don't know what to make of this.  I didn't want to hold him up, so I didn't ask.


These were brand new.  They like to keep the kids busy while the parents are on the beer tour.  And I imagine they're fun to play if you're there drinking, or if you're an employee.  We need these in the basement at my workplace where the developers have shared workspace.


It looked like this at Schell's when they bought Grain Belt and all the leftover can stock.  But the black cans are much stealthier looking.


Second picture of Eryn and I near the equipment, the outer wall of the in-brewery tap room in the background.  Great brewery!  I want to go back some day when they're running the tour or just having happy hour.

Denver - Oskar Blues III

Very cool - Oskar Blues has people who just meet up to play blue grass and drink beer.  Eryn liked it that there were so many guitars.


This doesn't look comfortable at all.  But my wife would probably prefer it to my kitchen drawer that achieves the same historical perspective on my drinking history.  Maybe all those nubbins are deceptively comfortable, like a full body massage.


More fountains made out of kegs...I have a keg.  I should try this.


See...purdy.  I wonder if my neighbors would approve.


The Oskar Blues tower.  A giant can of beer.


Finally, a picture of the front of the restaurant.  Eryn loved the ribs.  And the pulled pork. And the wings.  Reminded me quite a bit of the food and ambiance at Dinosaur Barbecue in Rochester, NY.

Denver - Oskar Blues II

The women's bathroom had Flash Dance on the door.  The men's bathroom was a plethora of old album covers.  I listened to the soundtrack from 2001 repeatedly as a kid.


And the soundtrack from Close Encounters!  Someone at Oskar Blue's is a serious nerd.


Quite the collection to look at while you're taking a whiz.


But there's more.  Art...beautiful, wonderful art.  This is fuzzy, so I suspect you can't tell it's Sheryl Crow.


Alison Kraus is a bit closer to real life.


And the point here isn't Amanda Bynes half dressed, although she was very good in Easy A with Emma Stone as the Bible banger.  The point is the Ten Fidy, which was delicious, though very thick, and that Fat Squirrel, from just over the border in Wisconsin, was another placer in the top 25 new beers.