I'm just a day from losing my mind (or "loosing," to all you Facebookers out there), a day from my workload returning to normal levels, and a day from deploying Weather Now to a test instance in Azure. Then, maybe, I'll have time to take all these in:
Watch this space for a sneak preview of Weather Now 4.0, possibly tomorrow. The GetWeather utility has run with only minor hitches for a week, and with two more (quick) bug fixes it's ready for production. That just leaves about 6 hours of work to move the ASP.NET application up to Azure...and then, you get to beta test it. If all goes well I'll cut over to Azure on the 9th or 10th, and finally—finally!—retire my last two servers.
For the first time in about 5 years—since 2008, I believe—I have no travel scheduled. It's an odd feeling, but one I'll soon rectify. Just not sure where or when to go yet.
Meanwhile, Chuck Thompson, author of Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern manifesto for Southern secession, bemoans the homogeneity of every small city and its brewpub:
Whenever some self-appointed hometown convention and visitors’ bureau rep (and sometimes it’s an actual CVB rep) takes you to that cool little place in the downtown renaissance district where they actually make their own beer—So cool! Nobody does that, right?—you know you’re in trouble. Or, more precisely, you know you’re in that bastion of municipal mediocrity: the newly anointed “It” City.
Artisanal ice cream, gluten-free pizza, burrito trucks run by real Mexicans, jalapeño-infused margaritas, celebrity graffiti sprayers, and First Thursday art walks in revitalized industrial zones promoted by farsighted civic planners armed with government tax schemes—these are the totems of It City. I’m certain Nashville has plenty of them to brag about. But, then again, so do Asheville, Austin, Baltimore, Boulder, Burlington, Las Vegas, Madison, Portland, Raleigh-Durham, San Diego, Santa Monica, Savannah, Seattle, Taos, Tucson, the Twin Cities, and a klatch of other cities that have ascended the heights of those “most livable,” “coolest,” and “best” lists.
Yes. We had brewpubs in Chicago before it was cool. Now Poughkeepsie is getting into the act. Awesome.
I always prefer heading west for business trips and east for fun trips because the time shifts work better that way. Sometimes I go to London for a long weekend and stay on Chicago time, meaning I go to sleep at 4am (10pm in Chicago) and sleep until noon (6am). (On any trip longer than 3 days I shift to local time.) Similarly, coming to the West Coast—I'm in Vancouver at the moment—lets me sleep in a bit (5:30 here is 7:30 at home) and get adequate caffeine before starting my business meetings.
Today I've encountered two complications. First, British Columbia and a few other provinces have declared today a provincial holiday, so nothing opened before 7am. Nothing, as in "coffee shops." Second, this early in February and this far west, the sun doesn't rise until 7:28.
Oh, and it's raining. Not a lot. Just enough.
Of course, here in Canada, everything is clean, efficient, and polite. It's not the Canadians' faults that it's cold, dark, and decaffeinated.
This is alarming:
A new and worrisome benchmark has been reached with the announcement Tuesday by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that Lakes Michigan and Huron have dipped to new record lows. It’s been a 14 year journey. That’s how long water levels have been below historic averages--the most extended run of below normal water levels in the 95 year record of Great Lakes dating back to 1918.
The numbers are as stunning as they are disturbing with serious implications to shipping interests, all manner of creatures which populate the lakes, plus the millions who enjoy these natural treasures recreationally and depend on them as a source of water.
Water levels have fallen 1.9 m from the record highs established in October 1986 and currently sit at levels 735 mm below the long term average. Lake Michigan's water level is 430 mm lower than a year ago
We're getting more precipitation than we have in a while, but it hasn't been enough to end the drought. And because of dredging near Detroit, the lakes are emptying faster than ever right now.
More things I gotta read later:
Now, back to rewriting an authentication provider...
I'll be a lot less busy in March, they tell me. Meanwhile, here are some things I want to read:
I will get to them...soon...
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."
Yes, more links:
Later today I'll also have a new post on the 10th Magnitude blog.
Monday's SSD crash took an annoying, but reasonable, amount of time to fix. Otherwise I would have posted this photo of Great American Ball Park yesterday:
And, of course, an obligatory photo of Cincinnati's most recognized landmark:
I'll have a couple more in days to come.
The area of Chicago approximately bounded by the river, North Ave., Clybourn St., and Division St. used to house factories, warehouses, loud Goth clubs, and—who could forget?—the Cabrini-Green towers. Here's the area in 1999:
Since the Whole Foods Market moved in and Cabrini-Green came down in the last few years, the area has changed. And over the next year or so, it will become unrecognizable to my dad's generation:
Target Corp. is readying a big box at Division and Larrabee streets that would extend the corridor by more than a half-mile from its heart at North and Clybourn avenues, where Apple Inc. has a store. Also imminent: Nordstrom Rack, Dick's Sporting Goods, Mariano's Fresh Market, Williams-Sonoma, Anthropologie and Sephora as well as a 14-screen movie theater.
The first of the new stores are set to open later this year. Deerfield-based CRM Properties Group Ltd. has leases with kitchen accessories seller Williams-Sonoma Inc. and Anthropologie, a women's apparel chain owned by Urban Outfitters Inc., for its site on Fremont Street, near Whole Foods' flagship store it completed in 2009 on Kingsbury Street.
To those of us who grew up in Chicago, this boggles the mind. The Target mentioned above will occupy the vacant Cabrini lots, for example. And Kingsbury St. no longer resembles a post-apocalyptic horror movie.
I can't wait to see the traffic, too...