Even with Chicago's 1,642 judges on the ballot ("Shall NERDLY McSNOOD be retained as a circuit court judge in Cook County?"), I still got in and out of my polling place in about 15 minutes. It helped that the various bar associations only gave "not recommended" marks to two of them, which still left 1,640 little "yes" ovals to fill in.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...
Finally, Chicago gets a new brewery taproom on Thursday when Hop Butcher to the World opens in Half Acre's former Lincoln Avenue space, just over 2 km from my house. Cassie and I might find out on Saturday whether they let dogs in, assuming the forecast holds. (And there it is: a post that literally checks all the boxes for Daily Parker categories!)
I've spent the morning playing matchmaker between disparate time-streams of data, trying to see what relationships (if any) exist between them. They all seem pretty cool to each other at the moment, which is sub-optimal from my perspective. If I can get a couple to get together amicably, then I can get baby time streams to analyze, which I need desperately.
Speaking of sub-optimal:
OK, back to work. Does anyone have an aphrodisiac for data streams?
I'm starting to adapt my habits and patterns to the new place. I haven't figured out where to put everything yet, especially in my kitchen, but I'll live with the first draft for a few weeks before moving things around.
I'm also back at work in my new office loft, which is measurably quieter than the previous location—except when the Metra comes by, but that just takes a couple of seconds.
I actually have the mental space to resume my normal diet of reading. If only I had the time. Nevertheless:
Finally, does anyone want to go to New York with me to see a play about Robert Moses starring Ralph Fiennes? Apparently tickets are only $2,000 a pop...
Busy day today, but I finished a major task at work just now. As I'm waiting for the CI system to finish compiling and pushing out a test build, I'm going to read these:
Finally, we got our first official (trace) snow of the season this morning, even as forecasters predict temperatures over 21°C this weekend. While I'm packing. All day.
As far as I know, I'm moving in 2½ weeks, though the exact timing of both real-estate closings remain unknown. Last time I moved it took me about 38 hours to pack and 15 to unpack. This time I expect it to go faster, in part because I'm not spending as much time going "oh, I love this book!"
I'm taking a quick break and catching up on some reading:
Finally, a new survey says Chicagoans swear a lot less than most Americans, with people from Columbus, Ohio, swearing the most. Fuck that shit.
I've had a busy day. I finally solved the token-authentication problem I've been working on all week for my day job (only to discover another flavor of it after deploying to Azure), while dealing with a plumber ($1600 repair!), an HVAC inspector ($170 inspection!) and my buyer's mortgage appraiser (not my problem!). That left some reading to do tonight:
Finally, despite the crashing temperatures outside my window right now (down 5.5°C in the past 2 hours), Illinois had a pretty dry and mild start to autumn.
YouTuber Not Just Bikes shows how North American traffic engineers prioritize the convenience and speed of drivers in ways that make our streets the most dangerous in the developed world for pedestrians:
CNBC released a 35-minute documentary earlier this month that fairly discusses the value of cities relative to suburbs and exurbs:
A lot of this is old hat to people who follow Strong Towns or other urbanist sources. It's a good backgrounder for people though.
In related news, California just passed legislation mandating an end to local parking requirements within walking distance of transit stations. It's a start.
Wired examines the art and science of managing an 8-kilometer, 14-hour queue:
At its peak, the queue has snaked 5 miles across the capital, with an estimated 14-hour wait. When it reached capacity and closed on Friday, people defied government advice and formed a separate queue for the queue. Such scenes are remarkable—but they’re not unprecedented. When George VI—Queen Elizabeth II’s father—died in February 1952, 300,000 people filed past his coffin in St. George’s Chapel over the course of three days.
Up to 750,000 people are expected to see the queen over the course of her lying in state. At any one time, 30,000 to 40,000 people could be standing in line, according to crowd safety consultant Andy Hollinson, who worked on other aspects of the plan to honor the queen after her death, called Operation London Bridge, but who was not involved in the lying-in-state element. Such estimates are conservative and based on an orderly queue in which people are standing three abreast. The queue in London is more of an orderly blob than a line. “Nobody’s ever seen a queue as long as this before,” says Hollinson.
But despite the unprecedented nature of the queue, prep work has been ongoing for years. “I can see a lot of similarities with the plans I developed 10 years ago,” says Keith Still, visiting professor in crowd science at the University of Suffolk, who, in 2011, was among those asked by London’s Royal Parks to develop a queueing and security screening system for events like a royal funeral. “Wherever the bottleneck is, you work back from that,” says Still. That, in this instance, is the security screening area at the entry to Westminster Hall.
I cannot think of a single reason I would voluntarily stand in a 14-hour queue. But hey, I've never lost a beloved monarch.
I do love traveling Saturday mid-days, because it's the quietest time at O'Hare. There was no line at the Pre-Check security gate, and I only have a backpack, so it took less than 3 minutes to clear TSA. Wonderful.
Unfortunately, every single economy parking space has a car in it. (I would have taken public transit but I had a meeting run until 12:30, with a 3pm flight. Couldn't risk the 90 minutes or so.)
In any event, my plane is here, it appears to be on time, and the latest weather is VFR the whole way. Next report from North Carolina.