Interesting things to read:
Before reading all of those I need to get a production deployment ready for this weekend. It would help if I were completely certain what's in production right now...
If you're a frequent flier in the U.S., test your knowledge of terminal layouts. I got 10.
Tuesday:
Friday:
This morning:
Home in just a couple of hours.
One more quick note: despite the cold and rain (and traffic), three of us had dinner last night at The Oval Room in the District. Fantastic. We all would recommend it.
After dinner we walked two blocks to my friend Barry's house:
We didn't knock on the door, but one of my colleagues swears someone waved to her from the North Portico.
I had nothing to do with this:
It was a commuter’s worst nightmare: a Metro train abruptly stops, goes dark and fills with smoke in a tunnel in downtown Washington. Before it was over, one woman was killed and more than 80 passengers were suffering from respiratory problems and other health issues.
[A]uthorities now believe they know why the train, which had just left the L’Enfant Plaza station, came to a halt about 800 feet into the tunnel. The National Transportation Safety Board said “an electrical arcing event” occurred about 1,100 feet in front of the train. The event filled the tunnel with smoke, the NTSB said.
The agency said the arcing involved cables that power the third rail. Arcing is often connected with short circuits and may generate smoke. There did not appear to have been a fire.
Train service has been mostly restored, except for Yellow and Blue line service to L'Enfant Plaza.
Yesterday I only logged 4,447 steps for 22.4 kg, my least-active day ever since getting a Fitbit on October 23rd. It's galling, too, because at this writing I have 994,008 lifetime steps—which would have gone over 1 million yesterday had circumstances been different.
Today I should hit that mark, if only because I'll have to navigate to and from the DC Metro, around Reagan and O'Hare, and...huh. No, it's not a sure thing.
At least it's not raining in either DC or Chicago today. That will help.
But wow, less than 4,500 steps? This is why I don't like the suburbs.
Even if it weren't rainy and getting dark outside, this isn't the most appealing view I've ever had from a hotel window:
At least I've managed to convince some of my team to head into the District for dinner tonight.
Back in July, I turned off the motion sensor on a hotel thermostat so that it would cease cycling the A/C and waking me up whenever I stopped moving (which one does when one falls asleep).
Now I'm at a Hilton Garden Inn outside Washington and the thermostat may have a motion sensor, but it's not clear. It has an all-or-nothing understanding of how to heat or cool a room, and it's paired with a very loud HVAC unit.
Fitbit says I got more than 6 hours of sleep last night because the Fitbit device doesn't sense when something wakes you up and you lie still, silently curse mechanical engineers everywhere, without actually moving your arm. (It did log 15 "restless" incidents spaced at regular intervals, however.)
Must...get...caffeine...
One of the consequences of being willing to jump on an airplane to take care of a client matter is, of course, one gets sent places to take care of client matters. And this is how I find myself, not yet a full week into my new job, in Northern Virginia.
At least it's above freezing here, so I got my Fitbit goals for the day. Plus, it looks like I'll hit 1 million lifetime steps either tomorrow or Tuesday—"lifetime" counted from when I joined Fitbit in October. So that's kind of cool.
Also, I once again have to say how much I like flying in American's new 737-800 planes.
Therefore, another link round-up:
There are a couple of other articles on my Kindle too, I just haven't got time to link them.