Maps? Check. Dogs? Check. New York? Check. I give you, Dogs of NYC:

If you own a dog in New York City, odds are it’s a mutt named Max.

The city’s dog licensing records show that out of almost 100,000 registered dogs, this is the most common breed and name in town. WNYC obtained the complete list from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which runs the dog licensing program.

The first thing you notice is the names. The most popular ones in the city hew pretty close to the most popular names across all English-speaking countries: Max, Bella, Lucky, etc. But this is New York, so there have to be some named Jeter (40 dogs) and Carmelo (7). In a town also known for its fashion, that explains the prevalence of dogs named Chanel (44), and Dolce (39). There are 83 dogs named Gucci. We've come a long way from Rover.

And if I want, I can get a custom T-Shirt that tells everyone "Parker is a mixed-breed dog, like the 23,185 registered in New York City."

Last night I continued reducing local computing costs by turning off my home desktop PC. The old PC has a ton of space and a lot of applications that my laptop doesn't have, plus a nifty dual-DVI video card. But a couple of things have changed since 2008.

First, my current laptop, a Dell Latitude E6420, has a faster processor, the same amount of RAM, and a solid-state drive, making it about twice as fast as the desktop. Second, Dell has a new, upgraded docking station that will drive two big monitors easily. (Sadly, though the docking station can drive two DVIs, my laptop's video chip can only do one DVI and one VGA.) Third, the laptop uses buttloads less power than the desktop. Fourth, portable terabyte drives are a lot less expensive today than in 2008—and a lot smaller. And finally, I take my laptop to and from work, meaning I have a minor hassle keeping it synchronized with my desktop.

Here's my office about three years ago (January 2010):

A few months later I got a second 24-inch monitor (November 2010 photo):

Notice the printer has moved to make room for the second monitor, but otherwise the setup remains the same. The monitors connect to the desktop under the desk to the left, while the laptop has its own cradle to the right.

Now this afternoon:

The printer has landed on the floor directly under where it used to sit (I print about 3 pages per month, so this isn't the inconvenience it seems), the laptop has moved over to the printer's old spot (and has connected to the monitors), and the old desktop machine sits quietly consuming 225 fewer Watts per hour. I also replaced the 10-year-old, no-longer-functioning 2+1 speaker set with a more compact set. The round thing between the keyboard and the laptop near the center of the photo is a speakerphone that I use with Skype.

I think everyone knows the dog under the desk by now, too. He's not happy that I rearranged his favorite sleeping cave, so I might get a couple of weeks without mounds of dog hair under my desk until he decides the printer is harmless.

So far today I have been unusually productive, whether because of the novelty or because I have a fire-under-the-ass deadline at work. So back to it.

We probably won't hit the record November 22 temperature (21°C, set in 1913), but we'll get awfully close. It's already 15°C at O'Hare, with a forecast of 18°C—followed by a cold front and 0°C by morning.

Parker and I will therefore now go for a long walk.

So far this month, I've worked about 110 hours (no exaggeration), in part preparing for a pair of software demos on Monday. Normal blogging will likely return tomorrow or Monday.

Meanwhile, here's a picture of Parker:

That's from six years ago this week. Everyone together, now: "Awwwwwwww."

Parker came home with me six years ago today. Here he is a few minutes ago, wondering why we were outside but not walking anywhere:

And, of course, here he his six years ago:

This weekend's weather forecast in Chicago predicts the coolest weekend since May 12, 14 weeks ago. Through Sunday temperatures should be 3°C below normal (days in the low 20s, lows in the low teens), with sunny skies and cool northeast breezes. September, in other words.

The Tribune points out:

Only 6 of past 142 years have produced Aug. 18 overnight lows cooler than those expected by Saturday morning.

Not only will daytime readings be cooler than typical for mid August, nighttime lows will be cooler than normal as well, particularly in areas farthest from the city and Lake Michigan---both of which temper early season cool spells by adding heat.

Friday night/Saturday morning's predicted 12°C low would become Chicago's chilliest minimum temperature in over two months and would qualify as one of the six coolest early season readings for the date since 1871.

It will warm up mid-week, though not to the temperatures we suffered through in the warmest July in history last month. I've got the windows open, and I'll probably be able to keep them open until Wednesday.

Parker likes having the windows open as well, but he's not used to hearing the neighbors—in particular, the neighbors' dogs. I hope he figures it out, because the random, single woofs at 2am are really aggravating.

A couple of days ago I discovered a new behavior in Parker. While listening to Martha Berner's song "A Town Called Happiness," which has an extensive harmonica part, Parker started to howl. Not in pain, though: he stayed in the room, and even got closer to the noise, tail wagging.

Apparently this is common dog behavior, and it really does mean he's just singing along.

So I dug out my dad's old harmonica and, yes, he sang along with that, too. In the upper ranges he really put his heart into it, too.

I know the behavior came out of those ancient days when wolves roamed free and men cowered at their howls...but this is Parker, and it's freaking adorable.

Yes, I just said I was taking Parker out for a walk, but I cut it short after five minutes. Here's why:

Just as we got back home the gust front hit. Trees are now moving in ways that trees probably shouldn't. This should be a lot of fun to watch.

...but Parker is sulking. Tant pis, mon bête noir.

Update, 1:25 pm: Huh. The storm just missed us, though reports have come in of 145 km/h gusts in Elmhust and Lombard, which "looks like a war zone" according to the Tribune.

To readers who couldn't care less about my Exchange migration post, here is Parker reacting to the cleaning service's vacuums:

They're about to vacuum under my desk, which will make him a very unhappy dog for a few minutes. He'll survive.

As promised, Parker's birthday photo from yesterday:

1/250 at f/5.6, ISO-3200, 116mm

Parker turns six today:

That was then (September 2006, when he was about 11 weeks old). The "now" picture will come tomorrow.

Parker never really likes the walk up to Ribfest. It's about 5 km, and yesterday the temperature hit 33°C, making him a very hot dog. He did, however, get a few bits of ribs, and when we stopped in the Urban Pooch booth, two entire elk jerky sticks he stole from the display case.

This year's results:

• Mrs. Murphy's Irish Bistro, again my favorite;
• Itinerant Chicago BBQ, again my second-favorite;
• Corner 41, who had a good, hot vinegar sauce and fall-off-the-bone ribs (with a little too much fat, though); and
• Perennial Chicago fixture Smoke Daddy ("Ribs so good you'll slap your pappy!"), whose ribs had the smokiest flavor and also the most fat.

Smoke Daddy gave Parker a free pig's ear, so they get points for that.

All of the ribs this year fell off the bone, with no tug, which disappointed me a little. I might have to go back this evening to find some tug-off-the-bone ribs, maybe with a nice, thick tomato-based tangy sauce...yeah...

Because they improved downtown L.A. immensely:

In 1999, Los Angeles passed its Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, making it easier and cheaper for real estate developers to convert old offices to new housing. While the ordinance arguably jump-started the revitalization of downtown L.A., a key (though overlooked) element was pet-friendly policies in these newly converted lofts.

Walking dogs drove residents out of their homes and into the street at least twice each day. Elsewhere in Los Angeles, where single-family homes predominate, dog owners often have the luxury of sending Fido out to the yard to do his business. But downtown, dogs and their owners have become a crucial component of the rebounding neighborhood's culture.

Of course, if the office dog poops on the CEO's carpet, he'll still get fired.

As feared, Chicago is experiencing a weekend of perfect weather. As a consequence, Parker and I just finished an hour-and-three-quarters walk that had to include time at Noethling Park (aka "Wiggly Field"). We're recovering for a moment before heading outside again for another one.

Regular updates will resume when the crisis concludes.

(Note: Ordinarily I would have linked to the Chicago Park District's official page on one of its parks, but apparently they forgot to pay the Internet bill, so at this writing their site dead-ends at Network Solutions. Nice work, guys.)

And the office dog is doing what he does best:

Even if Parker hadn't gotten fired two weeks ago, it looks like the building would have stopped him coming in anyway. We got this email earlier today, forwarded by the landlord:

We received a complaint about one of your tenants having a dog in the building. This was discovered by persons on the 5th floor hearing barking on the 4th floor. Hopefully I'm not confusing your unit with another but per the building rules and regulations policy that's attached to the Easement and Operating Agreement, only seeing eye dogs are permitted in the building.

Some people just don't like dogs. Their lives must be so sad.

He lasted less than four weeks as office dog.

Workplace tip: when you greet the boss first thing in the morning, do not immediately thereafter poop on his carpet.

I'd say he's performing about as expected:

My company, 10th Magnitude, finally moved into its new office today. One of the criteria we had for selecting the new office was that they allow dogs. Everyone wins! (Hat tip MW.)

It's hard to tell who likes the Office Dog concept more, Parker or my co-workers:

If Parker could have read this, he'd have been looking forward to this all day:

Yes, I know, I've posted remarkably similar videos before. Who cares? It's a dog having fun in the snow, which I think has universal appeal.

My team are all working from home today because we have the technology to do so, and we saw this:

A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM THIS MORNING TO MIDNIGHT CST TONIGHT.

* TIMING...SNOW WILL DEVELOP DURING THE MID TO LATE MORNING HOURS AND CONTINUE THROUGH THIS AFTERNOON...ENDING TONIGHT. THE HEAVIEST SNOWFALL WILL OCCUR THIS AFTERNOON.

* ACCUMULATIONS...SNOWFALL TOTALS OF 5 TO 8 INCHES CAN BE EXPECTED.

* HAZARDS...SNOW WILL FALL HEAVILY AT TIMES RESULTING IN REDUCED VISIBILITIES AND SNOWFALL RATES OF AROUND ONE INCH PER HOUR AT TIMES.

* IMPACTS...ACCUMULATING SNOW WILL CAUSE SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED TRAVEL TIMES...RESULTING IN A PARTICULARLY TREACHEROUS COMMUTE THIS AFTERNOON. IN ADDITION...VERY COLD TEMPERATURES IN THE TEENS WILL MAKE SALT LESS EFFECTIVE AND COMBINE WITH HEAVY SNOWFALL RATES TO MAKE IT HARDER FOR ROAD CREWS TO KEEP ROADS CLEAR OF SNOW AND ICE. THE SNOW WILL ALSO RESULT IN SIGNIFICANT DISRUPTIONS TO AIR TRAVEL AS WELL.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE FORECAST THAT WILL MAKE TRAVEL DANGEROUS. ONLY TRAVEL IN AN EMERGENCY. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL...KEEP AN EXTRA FLASHLIGHT... FOOD...AND WATER IN YOUR VEHICLE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

Parker is also working from home. If he could read, his attitude toward the weather warning might differ slightly from mine. On the other hand, we're both in the same room, which I think makes him happy anyway.

Updates and photos as events warrant.

In 2011, I:

• took 8,198 photos, including 4,352 in Chicago, 881 in Japan, 588 in Portugal, and 337 in the U.K. (and only 71 of Parker). This is almost as many as I took in 2009 and 2010 combined (9,140), and more than I took in the first 8 years I owned a camera (1983-1991, 7,671).
• flew 115,845 km but drove less than 4,500 km
• visited 5 countries (the UK, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Japan) and 8 states (California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Indiana, North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) in 35 trips. Sadly, this meant Parker boarded for more than 100 days
• spent more than 186 hours walking Parker, which partially made up for all those days being boarded
• wrote 539 blog entries, with the most consistency in the blog's 6-year history (averaging 1.48 per day with a standard deviation of only 0.11)
• got 2.3 million hits (object views) on the Daily Parker, and 1.7 million on Weather Now, including 47,956 and 181,285 page views, respectively. According to Google Analytics, the blog had 28,613 unique visitors, and Weather Now had 26,539.
• read only 34 books, but as these included the first four of the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, it should count as 46
• started and ended the year in the same place (Duke of Perth, Chicago)
• went to only 8 movies, 3 plays, 3 concerts, and 3 baseball games, which is terribly sad

Oh, and I also got a master's degree. (Almost forgot.)

First photo of the year, in fact:

A client visit up in Manitowoc, Wis., ended a little earlier than planned today, so I was able to:

1. Avoid rush-hour traffic in both Milwaukee and Chicago;
2. Pick Parker up tonight instead of tomorrow; and
3. Snap this photo from the roof of the Lincoln Park Whole Foods:

Apparently they came from China:

While the descent of dogs from wolves through domestication is non-controversial in genetics, determining the region in the world where this occurred has been more of a question. Earlier studies had suggested a Middle Eastern origin for dogs.

A new study focusing on the lineage of the Y-chromosome indicates that dogs originated somewhere in eastern Asia, south of the Yangtze River.

It's crystal-clear and 22°C, so I've spent the day walking Parker.

Regular updates will resume once the weather deteriorates.

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 5-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in February, but some things have changed. In the interest of enlightened laziness I'm starting with the most powerful keystroke combination in the universe: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.

Twice. Thus, the "point one" in the title.

The Daily Parker is about:

• Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006.
• Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States.
• Photography. I took tens of thousands of photos as a kid, then drifted away from making art until a few months ago when I got the first digital camera I've ever had that rivals a film camera. That got me reading more, practicing more, and throwing more photos on the blog. In my initial burst of enthusiasm I posted a photo every day. I've pulled back from that a bit—it takes about 30 minutes to prep and post one of those puppies—but I'm still shooting and still learning.
• The weather. I've operated a weather website for more than ten years. That site deals with raw data and objective observations. Many weather posts also touch politics, given the political implications of addressing climate change, though happily we no longer have to do so under a president beholden to the oil industry.
• Chicago, the greatest city in North America, and the other ones I visit whenever I can.

I've deprecated the Software category, but only because I don't post much about it here. That said, I write a lot of software. I work for 10th Magnitude, a startup software consultancy in Chicago, I've got about 20 years experience writing the stuff, and I continue to own a micro-sized software company. (I have an online resume, if you're curious.) I see a lot of code, and since I often get called in to projects in crisis, I see a lot of bad code, some of which may appear here.

I strive to write about these and other things with fluency and concision. "Fast, good, cheap: pick two" applies to writing as much as to any other creative process (cf: software). I hope to find an appropriate balance between the three, as streams of consciousness and literacy have always struggled against each other since the first blog twenty years ago.

If you like what you see here, you'll probably also like Andrew Sullivan, James Fallows, Josh Marshall, and Bruce Schneier. Even if you don't like my politics, you probably agree that everyone ought to read Strunk and White, and you probably have an opinion about the Oxford comma—punctuation de rigeur in my opinion.

Another, non-trivial point. Facebook reads the blog's RSS feed, so many people reading this may think I'm just posting notes on Facebook. Facebook's lawyers would like you to believe this, too. Now, I've reconnected with tons of old friends and classmates through Facebook, I play Scrabble on Facebook, and I eagerly read every advertisement that appears next to its relevant content. But Facebook's terms of use assert ownership of everything that appears on their site, regardless of prior claims, which contravenes four centuries of law.

Everything that shows up on my Facebook profile gets published on The Daily Paker first, and I own the copyrights to all of it (unless otherwise disclosed). I publish the blog's text under a Creative Commons attribution-nonderivative-noncommercial license; republication is usually OK for non-commercial purposes, as long as you don't change what I write and you attribute it to me. My photos, however, are published under strict copyright, with no republication license, even if I upload them to other public websites. If you want to republish one of my photos, just let me know and we'll work something out.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy The Daily Parker.

Despite spending an extra night in San Antonio, and despite an hour-long delay (including a got-to-the-runway-but-have-to-turn-back head fake) this morning, it's still Parker Day. I adopted my bête noir five years ago today, when he looked like this:

Or, from another angle:

In a move that brings progressives and libertarians together better than a runaway defense budget, Gotham has banned dogs from bars:

Since the health department adopted a letter grade system for bars and restaurants last year, bar owners say, health inspectors are allowing no wiggle room for four-legged patrons.

The stricter enforcement is apparently bringing to an end a rich tradition of dog-friendly bars in New York.

The health department issued 469 violations for live animals in food-service sites from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, though the agency did not provide a breakdown of the different kinds of offending animals.

During inspections, many owners said they were surprised to learn that dogs were not allowed even in outdoor seating areas. Neither does a bar’s dearth of actual food products provide any cover. “Beer, wine and spirits have always been classified as food,” a department spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail. Only service dogs are permitted in spaces that serve food or drink of any kind.

Chicago allows dogs on outdoor patios when the owners pay a modest fee, but officially prohibits dogs in bars as well. However, I can't imagine the Chicago health department cracking down. There'd be outrage—not just from the dog owners, but also from the pub owners, who might get mad enough to stop paying bribes other license fees.

Oh, the humanity.

Parker just after sunset:

10 July 2007, Canon 20D at ISO-1600, 1/8 at f/11 with fill flash, 18mm, near here.

Parker, New Year's Day 2008:

Canon 20D at ISO-400, 1/250 at f/8, 18mm. Edited from the first published version.

In honor of Parker's birthday:

1 October 2006, ISO-400, 1/200 at f/5.6, 18mm, Evanston, Ill.

The fuzzy dude turns 5 today:

Parker's Petfinder mugshot, at 8 weeks old.

I love the first weekend of June in Chicago, because I love ribs. Once again, Parker and I walked up to Lincoln and Irving Park. And once again, we got some ribs.

I only got four samplers this year. It's too bad I don't have time to go back today, because I'd love to try a few others. Of the ones I did try:

• Mrs. Murphy's Irish Bistro, at 3925 N. Lincoln Ave., once again topped my list. The sauce has some tang, some heat, and something else (I think it's Guinness). The ribs were fall-off-the-bone but not mushy, grilled to perfection. They won "best of show" last year. For four years now I've said I need to go there for a full slab. So, once again, I need to go there for a full slab.
• The Piggery, 1625 W. Irving Park Rd., had tender fall-off-the-bone lean ribs with a sweet-tangy sauce. They weren't my favorites, but they were worth having. I'll check them out at some point, too.
• Pitchfork, which apparently won "best of show" in 2009, had the least meat and sauce of any I tried. They had a good smoked flavor, with a little tug off the bone, and a thin vinegar-based sauce over a spicy dry rub. At the time I didn't think they were that good, but I think the lack of meat made the difference. The bones are wider at one end of the rib cage than the other, you see.
• The itinerant Chicago BBQ Co. had pretty good smoked ribs, with a spicy sauce over a decent dry rub. Their ribs were also kind of bony, but tasty. These guys go from ribfest to ribfest all over the midwest, so I expect I'll have another opportunity to try them in July.

Parker didn't have the best time, though. I didn't give him much meat because I'm already stressing his digestive system by introducing a new dog food. (It turns out, Whole Foods turkey and rice formula is about half the cost of the Canine ID he's been eating, and apparently his cranky stomach can deal with it just fine.) This, after working more than 5 km there (plus almost 6 km to get back—but he wasn't thinking about that). To add insult, much of Parker's experience of Ribfest looked like this:

At least only one person stepped on him, but in my defense the woman, who wasn't watching where she was going, bumped into me first.

Another repeat, because I'm lazy, but still one of my favorite shots of Parker:

27 February 2010, Mars Hill, N.C. ISO-800, 1/1250 at f/6.3, 125mm

This won't actually show off my work or entice you to buy a magnificent image for your commercial advertising campaign at a surprisingly reasonable price. No, this merely shows a place Parker and I both enjoy for precisely the same reasons (sitting outside with popcorn and good beer). Four Farthings has their patio set up, and after I get back from a short bike ride, the dog and I are heading over:

I'm continuing to play with Adobe Lightroom, and it turns out I've been doing a lot wrong for five years (i.e., since I first started shooting with a digital SLR). It looks like I'm going to shoot a lot more raw photos, because they allow modern software (like Lightbox and Photoshop) a lot more control over the final image.

And, of course, I discovered this using Parker as a subject. The results don't completely suck:

50mm, 1/60 at f/2.0, ISO 3200.

50mm, 1/15 at f/1.8, ISO 3200.

I'm wrapping up in Fairfield County, Conn., today, then I get five nights at home before popping off to Boston for an indefinite series of 4-day weeks there. At least it's Boston, a city I enjoy, and one with easy access to the airport. (I expect my commute will be two hours shorter than it is to Connecticut.) Parker won't like it, though: he'll likely board from Sunday night to Thursday afternoon every week for the duration of the project.

No word yet on Internet connectivity. The client with whom I'm wrapping up this morning trades good-sized portfolios, so they have strict security. The Boston client manages securities as well, so I may not have much contact with the outside world there, either.

I'll survive, and so will Parker, if for no other reason than the regular, magical increases in my bank account twice each month....

Last night around 3:30, Parker whined at me and nosed me. Given the hour, this meant something important. I found pants, shoes, a sweatshirt, a coat, then got my keys from their usual spot.

Parker took about 5 minutes to sniff out the best patch of mud on which to make his after-hours deposit. After cleaning it up, I took him back to my building, reached into my jacket, and pulled out the keys to my other apartment.

At this point I said a bad word. Then I calmly told Parker this was his fault. He licked my nose.

Maybe a New Yorker would have handled this differently, but I figured, there are a few early risers in the building, how long could I have to wait?

Two hours. I must have nodded off because it seemed like only 90 minutes. In the cold. On the floor.

At least I was inside.

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 4½-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page almost two years ago, so it's time for a quick update. In the interest of enlightened laziness I'm starting with the most powerful keystroke combination in the universe: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.

The Daily Parker is about:

• Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006.
• Politics. I'm a moderate-leftie by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States.
• Software. I work for Avanade (a company that has no editorial control over this blog and which wants me to make it clear I'm not speaking for them), and I continue to own a micro-sized software company in Chicago. I have some experience writing software, which explains why Avanade continue to tolerate me. I see a lot of code, and since I often get called in to projects in crisis, I see a lot of bad code, some of which may appear here.
• The weather. I've operated a weather website for more than ten years. That site deals with raw data and objective observations. Many weather posts also touch politics, given the political implications of addressing climate change, though happily we no longer have to do so under a president beholden to the oil industry.
• Chicago, the greatest city in North America, and the other ones I visit whenever I can.

I strive to write about these and other things with fluency and concision. "Fast, good, cheap: pick two" applies to writing as much as to any other creative process (cf: software). I hope to find an appropriate balance between the three, as streams of consciousness and literacy have always struggled against each other since the first blog twenty years ago.

If you like what you see here, you'll probably also like Andrew Sullivan, James Fallows, Josh Marshall, and Bruce Schneier. Even if you don't like my politics, you probably agree that everyone ought to read Strunk and White, and you probably have an opinion about the Oxford comma (de rigeur in my opinion).

Another, non-trivial point. Facebook reads the blog's RSS feed, so many people reading this may think I'm just posting notes on Facebook. They would like you to believe this, too. Now, I've reconnected with tons of old friends and classmates through Facebook, I play Scrabble on Facebook, and I eagerly read every advertisement that appears next to its relevant content. But Facebook's terms of use assert ownership of everything that appears on their site, regardless of prior assertions, and despite nearly three centuries of legal precedents. They want you to believe that, too.

Everything that shows up on my Facebook profile gets published on The Daily Paker first, and I own the copyrights to all of it. All the photos I post are completely protected: send me an email if you want to republish one. I publish the blog's text under a Creative Commons attribution-nonderivative-noncommercial license; republication is usually OK for non-commercial purposes, as long as you don't change what I write and you attribute it to me. With apologies to King James and Yaishua ben Miriam, render to Facebook the things that are Facebook's; and to the original authors what is not.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy The Daily Parker.

Chicago weather conditions at 4pm: -6°C, winds northeast at 48 km/h gusting to 63 km/h, visibility 400 m in heavy, blowing snow.

Here's the corner of Belden and Clark in Lincoln Park around then:

And a little north of that, looking north:

One dog + snow – leash = one happy dog:

Full-size photo at The Daily Parker.

The last couple of days have reminded us we live in Chicago, severely limiting Parker's walk time. I don't want to keep him outside more than 15 minutes when it's below -15°C. He doesn't understand hypothermia, and he's got a double coat, so to him it seems like I'm being completely arbitrary. He probably doesn't remember the day it got down to -27°C and he fell over, whimpering, because his paws were too cold to walk after less than five minutes outside.

So he's at day camp today, and I'm working on an interesting coding problem.

I hope he comes home really, really tired.

At least the sun is out:

We had days last year close to -17°C, but it was last this cold on 5 February 2009. Parker is bored, but even he didn't seem to want to stay outside this morning.

As an aside, because of the radiator in my living room the Inner Drive Technology Worldwide Data Center that I can't turn off, I have two windows open right now and it's still 24°C—3°C above normal—over by the server rack.

Parker got to come home from boarding today even though he's going right back there tonight, a canine prisoner furlough for good behavior. Immediately upon returning home he sat in the kitchen and whined as I parceled out his food for his next prison sentence. Poor dude.

The Duke Dividend, a result of not having 20 hours of schoolwork every week, has started to pay off in books. I'm halfway through Ender's Game, after blasting through The Hunger Games trilogy in three days and re-reading Howl again—a new copy I picked up Saturday at City Lights, which I thought appropriate.

I can imagine that my friends in the Northeast aren't too happy today:

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY
1240 PM EST SUN DEC 26 2010

...DANGEROUS WINTER STORM IMMINENT...

...BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM EST MONDAY...

More details and a view of today's classic Nor'easter weather pattern at The Daily Parker.

Just let him off leash in a blizzard:

As I mentioned on Parker Day (September 1st, the day I adopted him), I've had a little too much going on to get a good portrait of the dude. It's beautiful in Chicago this morning, so I made the time today:

Full-size photo at The Daily Parker.