I spent the better part of the last few months looking for appropriate office space to hold a team of developers. We estimated we'd need about 325 m² for 18 people. For some reason we could not find appropriate space. I therefore found an Evanston city consultant's recent report fascinating:
Consultant Marty Stern of U.S. Equities Realty says, in a report to be presented to the city's Economic Development Committee Wednesday night, that nine different generally suitable Class B buildings have a total of 50,072 square feet of vacant space.... In addition, Stern says there is about 141,000 square feet of more expensive Class A space available downtown and 21,000 square feet of less expensive Class C space, most of it downtown.
That comes to 19,700 m²—almost five acres of office space. Slightly more than we needed, of course, but probably workable.
It seems text-message shorthand sorely vexes the French. Well, some of them, anyway:
"Look at what text-messaging is doing to the French language," lamented President Nicolas Sarkozy in February. "If we let things go, in a few years we will have trouble understanding each other." Most secondary-school pupils have their own mobile telephones, and they use an abbreviated phonetic language to communicate. A2M1, for instance, means à demain, or "see you tomorrow." JTM is je t'aime (I love you). Or try: Ta HT 1 KDO? (T'as acheté un cadeau?, or have you bought a present?).
On this day in 1960, the FDA approved Enovid-10, the first commercially-produced oral contraceptive, for general use. The pill, produced by Searle, was yet another earth-shakingly-cool thing to come out of Chicago in the last 50 years.
Apparently I haven't come very far in 20 years: I just bought John Lennon's Double Fantasy, which is about as classical as you can get without Neville Marriner.
Minor, little anniversary: twenty years ago today, I bought my first CD, a copy of Mozart's Mass in C-Major K317 performed by the Bavarian Radio Chorus under Eugen Jochum.
Kind of a silly thing to remember, I guess.
For those keeping score at home, here were the subsequent nine:
- Mozart, Requiem K626: Academy of Ancient Music, Hogwood
- Mozart, Mass in c-minor K427: Berlin Philharmonic, Karajan
- Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique: Chicago Symphony, Solti
- Fauré, Requiem: Atlanta Symphony, Shaw
- Händel, Messiah: Chicago Symphony, Solti
- The Beatles: Beatles for Sale
- The Beatles: Abbey Road
- Les Miserables, London cast
- Mozart, Symphonies #40 and #41: Vienna Philharmonic, Karajan
So, yes, 20 years ago I was a classical nerd. I still am, but I've expanded my tastes. A little. The last ten CDs I've bought were:
- Joan Osborne, Pretty Little Stranger
- Glen Hansard/Marketa Irglova, Once
- Glen Hansard, The Swell Season
- The Frames, The Cost
- Kate Rusby, Underneath the Stars
- Gemma Hayes, Night On My Side
- Badly Drawn Boy, The Hour of Bewilderbeast
- Joan Osborne, Breakfast in Bed
- Robert Plant/Alison Krause, Raising Sand
- The Corrs, Talk On Corners
OK, so my tastes are still a little unusual, and I tend to scoop up entire ouvres when I find someone I like.
Also, just when you thought I couldn't possibly provide more useless information about myself, I plan to put my CD catalog online at some point, as part of a larger project that would actually be a commercial R&D effort. The CD catalog will be an example, not the app itself. So, stay tuned.
Apparently, I've never posted an entry on May 6th. May 5th and 7th, yes, but not the 6th.
Alors, voilà.
Hat tip to reader TC for the story about last night's unexpected barbeque of 22.6 tonnes of beef ribs on I-80 outside Chicago:
The semi-trailer truck was headed east on I-80 about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday and was exiting onto southbound Interstate Highway 294 when a fire started in the braking system, igniting a blaze that consumed the entire trailer, said Master Sgt. David Bird of the Illinois State Police. The driver escaped without injury. The trailer was loaded with about 50,000 pounds of beef ribs, Bird said. He could not say what cut of ribs they were, but added, "There was no sauce."
Now, make them baby-back pork ribs and throw on some KC Masterpiece, and I'd still be eating.
I let two things slip past me this week:
1. The Chicago Cubs won their 10,000th game Thursday at Mile High Stadium in Denver. (They have since dropped two in a row against the last-place Nationals in Washington.)
2. Yesterday marked 10,000 days since John Lennon died.
Just got very bad news from my dad: Reggie died this morning of lung cancer. He was 13.
