Events

The smoke that went away yesterday has returned:

She doesn't look like a middle-aged lady, does she?

The air quality in Chicago has cleared up to near-normal levels—or, at least, levels that would have been normal in the 1980s:

The AQI has dropped to 204 at Mayfair, Chicago reporting station, just barely in the "very unhealthy" category and almost down to "unhealthy." For the first time in two days, I can see the beach 1,300 meters away:

It looks like the Canadian Smoke Monster will move off to the east in a couple of hours:

The miserable air quality I mentioned earlier has somehow gotten worse. At 3pm, the AQI hit 817 in the northern suburb of Northbrook, Ill.:

Manitoba and Minnesota have massive wildfires right now, the smoke from which has covered much of the northeastern US including Chicago:

I spent the morning on a bit of contracting I was glad to do, as it involved maintaining an application I wrote that I'm glad to see is still running and being used by actual users. This, after taking Cassie on a 4.9 km (3.1 mi) walk before 7 am during which the heat index got up to 36.2°C. We have a light lake breeze, but the heat index is still 36.4°C, so Cassie only got a 12-minute walk after lunch with absolutely no need to rush.

Cue the House of Representatives singing "Oops, I did it again!" (you're welcome). As they do every few years, the House today voted 308-117 to move the country to year-round daylight saving time:

I rearranged my desk this morning, which involved four monitors, a mini desktop box, and a laptop, so it was a non-trivial exercise that took about 90 minutes. That time doesn't include the trip to MicroCenter to get the Mini-DP to HDMI cable I am pretty sure I have in storage, plus a medium-sized USB memory stick.