WBEZ reporter Michael Gerstein went out to the IKEA in Schaumburg, Ill., to test our transit system and its navigation apps. It went fine, but Gerstein had an unusual experience:
Major construction projects have snarled the Kennedy Expressway and the Blue Line’s weekend service, so my editor sent me on a 29-mile odyssey to Schaumburg. The idea was to test how Chicago’s regional transit agencies (CTA, PACE, Metra) work with each other and how many apps, trackers and planning devices I’d need to use to get there.
We were trying to see firsthand how accurate the region’s tracking technology is and why apps often promise buses and trains that don’t show up when they’re supposed to. All this comes at a time when public officials are encouraging more drivers to take public transit to and from downtown.
My two-hour sojourn to IKEA was unremarkable and pretty much on time (barring some initial inaccurate estimates from every app I tried except the city’s Ventra app). Still, other riders have experienced inaccuracies with trackers, and it’s hard to get to the bottom of why. In a recent WBEZ survey of nearly 2,000 CTA riders, about 9 in 10 survey takers said they’d experienced a delay taking a bus or train in the past 30 days.
Chicago, which used to be a leader in transit technology, now has some catching up to do with the broader tech world. “Our train and bus tracker were among the first tools of its time among any U.S. transit agency,” Brian Steele, CTA’s chief spokesman, said in an interview. But predictive algorithms have evolved, Steele acknowledged, and Chicago needs an upgrade that would give it the ability to automatically update the position of a bus that goes off a route or a train that falls behind.
Real-time information is only available after a train or bus leaves the terminal – and only if that bus or train is on its scheduled route, Steele said.
I also learned that I really don’t like being in IKEA. Some people prefer navigating a maze-like furniture store where you can’t find anything, that’s about 5 degrees too warm, and where every aisle and bathroom stall is packed.
I do like living 400 meters from the Metra station that takes me to downtown Chicago in 14 minutes, though. From dropping Cassie at doggy day care to sitting at my desk, my commute usually takes about 30-35 minutes. I would not take any job that had me drive out to the suburbs again, unless they paid me for travel time.
The clouds have moved off to the east, so it's a bit warmer and a lot sunnier than yesterday. I still have to wait for an automated build to run. For some reason (which I will have to track down after lunch), our CI builds have gone from 22 minutes to 37. Somewhere in the 90 kB of logs I'll find out why.
Meanwhile, happy Fox News On Trial Day:
Finally, I've started reading The Odyssey, so I applaud National Geographic's article this month on the history of the ancient world in which Homer set the poem.
As happens about every other year, we woke up this morning to barely-above-freezing temperatures and this crap on the ground:
After record warmth last week, April decided to balance the scales yesterday:
All of the snow will melt in the next 24 hours as tomorrow's forecast calls for 11°C and sun, going up to 22°C by Thursday, but not before we get "scattered rain and snow showers" all day with winds up to 45 km/h. But then it goes back down to 2°C by Saturday...because April.
The next 48 hours will take Chicago from a 28°C summer afternoon to a 1°C winter morning:
We had a good run of four days over 26°C, and now spring returns. Tant pis.
On this day in 1998, I registered braverman.org, and just a few weeks later built the first draft of what became this blog. When I registered it, only about a million domain names existed, though 1998 turned out to be the year the Internet exploded worldwide. Just seven years earlier, only 100 .org names existed, so braverman.org may be one of the oldest .orgs out there. (For comparison, there are just about 350 million registered domain names today.)
Of course, the 25th anniversary of braverman.org hasn't yet become a global holiday, so a few other things happened in the last 24 hours:
- The Democratic Party really wants US Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) to retire, as it has become painfully clear she can no longer perform her duties in the Senate, preventing us from confirming new judges. Seriously, ma'am, go.
- We also want Justice Clarence Thomas (R) to go, especially after a new revelation that he sold property to the billionaire "friend" who has taken him on half-million-dollar vacations. Seriously, sir, go.
- At least his colleagues on the Supreme Court all seem unimpressed with the "independent state legislature" bullshit espoused by some right-wing Republican state legislators.
- New Republic's Timothy Noah thinks "remote work sucks," but (our hero writes from his open and airy home office just steps from his dog and refrigerator) not all of us do.
- Paul Krugman explains how immigrants are saving America's economy.
- The New York Times has a lot of good things to say about Chicago hosting next year's Democratic National Convention.
- Your local, urban apiary might actually be hurting your neighborhood.
Finally, we have another gorgeous day in Chicago, a bit cooler than yesterday where I live thanks to delightful lake breeze, but still more like July than April.
Chicago hit 28.3°C yesterday afternoon, breaking the record of 27.7°C set in 1887 and tied in 1941:
The new high mark lasted for at least three hours Thursday and towered above typical temperatures for mid-April, weather service data showed.
Standard April 13 high marks average 15°C, with lows usually [just above freezing].
But despite summer warmth waiting in the wings, the beach-worthy weather is poised to soon go away, if only temporarily, as another system brings cooler weather to Chicago.
Despite the chilly change, warmth-loving Chicagoans have little to complain about this year. Temperatures were 2.1°C above normal throughout the winter months, another National Weather Service meteorologist told the Tribune last week.
I can't remember turning on the air conditioning this early before, at least not in Chicago. (I've spent time in Richmond, Va., and Houston, Texas before.)
It all goes away tomorrow night, though. Pity.
But for me, it was Tuesday:
- The Democratic National Committee has selected Chicago to host its convention next August, when (I assume) our party will nominate President Biden for a second term. We last hosted the DNC in 1996, when the party nominated President Clinton for his second term.
- Just a few minutes ago, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed suit in the Southern District of New York to enjoin US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) from interfering in the prosecution of the XPOTUS.
- Speaking of the House Moron Caucus, Jonah Goldberg worries that the kids following people like Jordan and the XPOTUS have never learned how to behave in public, with predictable and dire consequences for public discourse in the future.
- And speaking of, uh, discourse, New York Magazine features Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) on its cover this week, in which the actor describes her meeting in 2006 with a "pop-culture curiosity" years before destroying American democracy even entered into his dementia-addled brain. It...isn't pretty.
- Jennifer Rubin thinks the Religious Right's "victory" in politicizing the Federal judiciary will cripple the Republican Party. (I believe she's right.)
- Today I learned that Guthrie's Tavern did not die during the pandemic, and in fact will offer free hot dogs during Cubs home games to all paying customers (while supplies last).
- Rishi Shah and Shradha Agarwal, the CEO and president of Chicago tech company Outcome Health, were convicted on 32 counts of fraud and other crimes for their roles in stealing investors' money.
- The Hubble Space Telescope has detected a runaway black hole moving close to 1,000 km/s with a 200,000-light-year tail of baby stars following it. (Those baby stars happened because at that speed, it wasn't able to pull out in time...)
- MAD Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee, inventor of the Fold-In, died Monday at 102.
Finally, Tupperware has warned its creditors and shareholders that it may go out of business in what I have to call...an uncontained failure of the company.
Yesterday's temperature at O'Hare got up to 17°C, with a forecast of 17°C again today. Just perfect for a 4 km walk (in each direction) to Horner Park DFA, where Cassie met tons of new friends and stole dozens of their toys (she gave them back):
Today's plan calls for a Ride in the Car! (I need groceries) and another 10 km or so of walkies.
We get about 30 days a year this perfect, so we use them. Pity I have to go into my downtown office tomorrow...
Life is skittles and life is beer!
Seriously, just check out this forecast:
Today
Sunny, with a high near 7. East northeast wind 15 to 20 km/h.
Tonight
Mostly clear, with a low around 3. Northeast wind 10 to 15 km/h becoming southeast after midnight.
Saturday
Sunny, with a high near 12. South southeast wind 15 to 20 km/h becoming east northeast in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 30 km/h.
Saturday Night
Mostly clear, with a low around 4. East wind 10 to 15 km/h.
Sunday
Sunny, with a high near 13. Southeast wind 10 to 15 km/h, with gusts as high as 25 km/h.
Sunday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 7.
Monday
Partly sunny, with a high near 18.
Monday Night
Mostly clear, with a low around 9.
Tuesday
Sunny, with a high near 21.
Tuesday Night
Mostly clear, with a low around 12.
Wednesday
Sunny, with a high near 23.
Wednesday Night
Clear, with a low around 12.
Thursday
Sunny, with a high near 24.
That's about as perfect an April week as we can get.
Oh, and check out this girl, who lost 3.6 kg since her last vet visit. That means she only has 800 grams to go before hitting her ideal weight:
She's fitting into her harness again. Now, if I could just lose 5 kg, that would be great.
I spent all day updating my real job's software to .NET 7, and to predominantly asynchronous operation throughout. Now I have four stubbornly failing unit tests that lead me to suspect I got something wrong in the async timing somewhere. It's four out of 507, so most of today's work went fine.
Meanwhile, the following stories have backed up:
Finally, a very rich person is very annoyed after his or her private jet got stuck in the mud at Aspen's airport. It seems the guy sent to pull it out of the mud maybe needed another lesson on how planes work, because he managed to snap the nose gear right off the $3.5 million airplane. Oopsi. (There's video!)