Via reporter Stephen Watson, the US Coast Guard attempted a daring rescue from a car stuck less than 100 meters from the American Falls in the Niagara River—which unfortunately became a daring recovery:
The harrowing effort by a Coast Guard diver to reach an occupied vehicle caught in the churning Niagara River just 50 yards from the brink of the American Falls drew international notice Wednesday.
The rescue attempt ended with the somber news that the woman in the vehicle was already dead before the diver was lowered by helicopter to the vehicle, opened the passenger door, pulled her out and lifted her to shore.
The vehicle drifted downriver until it became lodged in the riverbed, about 10 yards or so from the mainland shore and about 50 yards upstream from the precipice of the American Falls.
The vehicle, a black sedan, faced toward the bridges while its rear end was pointed toward the falls with its trunk open. The river currents washed up over the front windshield, while water rushing by the sides reached halfway up the doors.
The article has video. The USCG doesn't get nearly enough credit in general, but they earned this one.
The temperature bottomed out last night just under -10°C, colder than any night since I adopted Cassie. (We last got that cold on February 20th.) Even now the temperature has just gone above -6°C. Though she has two fur coats on all the time, I still think keeping her outside longer than about 20 minutes would cause her some discomfort.
Add that it's Messiah week and I barely have enough free time to give her a full hour of walks today.
Meanwhile, life goes on, even if I can only get the gist of it:
Finally, journalist Allison Robicelli missed a connection at O'Hare this past weekend, and spent the wee hours exploring the empty terminals. The last time I stared down a 12-hour stay at an airport, I hopped into the Tube and spent 8 of those hours exploring the city instead, but I'm not a professional journalist.
I'm looking ahead to two long rehearsals, three performances, and squeezing into my tuxedo, all while the temperature drops over the next six hours to a predicted -9°C. I conclude from these facts that it's the beginning of winter.
I also just spent the last hour trying to get Visual Studio to log into the correct Azure subscription. So instead of reading these things at lunch, I had to let them pile up:
And now, back to the mines.
Oh, hello. I think we've met:
That's why I try to sit on the right side of the plane coming into London. This morning, it worked out well.
After getting to my hotel I crashed for more than two hours, so by the time I got outside again it had gotten gloomy and a bit chilly. Perfect London weather! And really interesting light on St Mary Le Strand:
And just off to the right of the church, Somerset House has built a skating rink for the winter:
I'll re-edit the photos when I get home. Phones aren't the best platforms for photo editing.
American Airlines bought Trans World Airlines in April 2001, consummating the deal on December 1st of that year. Twenty years later, the TWA livery appears at O'Hare:
(I actually love this stuff. Moar retro livery!)
I'm troubled not only that it's already November but also that it's already 5pm. I've been heads-down coding all day and I've got a dress rehearsal tonight. I did, at least, flag these for later:
OK, 30 minutes more coding, then off to the Kehrein Center for our final rehearsal before Sunday's performance.
As the last workday in October draws to a close, in all its rainy gloominess, I have once again spent all day working on actually coding stuff and not reading these articles:
Finally, a 97-year-old billionaire has given $240 million to UC Santa Barbara on the condition they build a 4500-room dormitory so awful (think Geidi Prime) the school's consulting architect resigned.
Cassie and I both love these crystal-clear autumn days in Chicago, though as far as I know she spent her first two autumns in Tennessee. Does Nashville have crisp fall mornings? I don't know for sure, and Cassie won't say.
I meant to highlight these stories yesterday but got into the deep flow of refactoring:
I will now make Cassie drool buckets by using salmon skin as a training tool.
I was pretty busy today, with most of my brain trying to figure out how to re-architect something that I didn't realize needed it until recently. So a few things piled up in my inbox:
And finally, Whisky Advocate has four recipes that balance whisky and Luxardo Maraschino cherries. I plan to try them all, but not in one sitting.
Some of these will actually have to wait until tomorrow morning:
And now, I will feed the dog.