The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Best bars to work in: Duke of Perth

I'm starting a new post series born out of frustration with existing restaurant and search tools. Simply put, most entertainment sites (e.g., Yelp) don't have easy ways of searching for good places to have a beer while working.

Anyone who's read The Daily Parker knows I usually have a "remote office." Often, after regular working hours, I relocate from my regular office to a quiet bar to do another hour or two of work. Right now my remote office is Duke of Perth, where I wrote much of the Inner Drive Extensible Architecture and good hunks of other projects.

Right now, the Duke of Perth is clearly my favorite place to work. What makes it so?

Location: Notwithstanding its objective characteristics, it's a favorite because it's only one click from my house. My other remote offices have been similarly proximate to my daytime offices or my homes.

No TVs: TVs distract me from reading, writing, and talking with people. Plus they're ugly. Duke of Perth doesn't have a single TV anywhere.

Beers: I like to sip a medium-hop, moderate-alcohol pale ale when working. Duke of Perth has Belhaven Twisted Thistle, a well-balanced British IPA that clocks in at 5.3% ABV and around 45 IBUs.

Food: The Duke has a good spread of Scottish pub food (including, yes, haggis) and for no apparent reason the best wings in Chicago. One of their servers finally gave me a hint as to why: they use fresh wings and fresh batter. And orphan's tears.

Staff: Mike has managed Duke of Perth since 1990, and Colin has owned it for a couple years longer than that. Server, cook, and bartender turnover is low. And the staff are uniformly smart and laid-back.

Dogs: No, Parker isn't allowed at the Duke. But that's OK. While I like dog-friendly bars, Parker can be a big distraction while I'm working. If I'm just hanging out with a book, though, he's less of a bother.

Even though Duke of Perth remains my favorite after-work work bar, I'm going to spend the next few weekends looking for other places like it as a public service. Look for more posts on this topic, or download the data, which I'll update from time to time.

Cubs barely hanging on to 4th

After dropping 12 of their last 15 games, the Cubs are now tied with the Brewers for 4th (last) place. There are 42 games left in the season; the Cubs have to win 10 of them to avoid a 100-loss season. It's not going well.

At least they can't lose today—but they can drop into 5th place if Milwaukee beats the Reds tonight. This, by the way, is unlikely, since the Reds are doing just fine, and are tied for the National League Wild Card with St. Louis.

I'm going to the Cubs-Cards game Sunday to watch the Cubs lose again.

Joke: The Mermaid

After a year at sea, a sailor returns to his home port and walks into his favorite bar, and everyone turns to stare at him because his head has shrunk to the size of a grapefruit. Finally, one of his oldest friends asks him what has happened. And the sailor tells this story:

"We were at sea, and it was fine weather with a fair wind, and there wasn't much to do that day, so I decided to do a little fishing. I felt this immense tug on the line, and when I reeled in my catch, what had I caught but the most beautiful mermaid in all the seven seas! "And she said to me, 'Mr. Sailor, sir, please, won't you let me go! I am a magical mermaid, and I can grant you your very fondest wish if only you'll release me.'

"And so I said to her, 'Well, Miss Mermaid, ever since I went to sea, I've had only one dream: to make love to a mermaid. So if we can go below...'

"But she interrupted me, and said, 'Alas, Mr. Sailor, I'm sorry, but that's the one wish I can't grant, because as you see, I'm a woman from the waist up, but I'm a fish from the waist down.'

"And so I said to her, 'Well, that's OK, Miss Mermaid. Why don't you just give me a little head?'"

Via Andrew Sullivan.

Two sports videos

Via Microsoft's Raymond Chen, a real-life example of how a batter can get three strikes on one pitch:

Chen explains:

During his plate appearance, Vinnie Catricala was not pleased with the strike call on the first pitch he received. He exchanged words with the umpire, then stepped out of the batter's box to adjust his equipment. He did this without requesting or receiving a time-out. The umpire repeatedly instructed Catricala to take his position in the batter's box, which he refused to do. The umpire then called a strike on Catricala, pursuant to rule 6.02(c). Catricala, failing to comprehend the seriousness of the situation, still did not take his position in the batter's box, upon which the umpire called a third strike, thereby rendering him out.

But before I could watch that video, YouTube served up this one, which made me laugh out loud:

I'll poll some of my friends to find out if it's as funny to people in the UK as it is to us Americans.

Yes, automation is key

Earlier I surmised that automating the process of extracting my old jokes from the ancient braverman.org site would take less time than hand-copying them. Well, duh. It only took two hours to write the script, lint the very few entries that needed it, and push the lot up to The Daily Parker.

So, for those of you who have missed all the jokes—there are just under 200 of them, all published from May 1998 to November 2004—start here, then skip to here, and then keep clicking the calendar control.

I'll call out my favorites once I re-acquaint myself with them. This one goes at the top of the list.

Now, programming trance ended, I am off to bed.

Almost 15 years ago...

...braverman.org published six proto-blog entries.

This brings the total ancient blog entries restored to 63, leaving around 140 still to be dug out. It takes about 5 minutes per entry to convert right now, so I may automate the process. Since writing some automation will probably take less than 11 hours, I may just do that over the next couple of days.