The Daily Parker

I admit that on occasion I've bought bottled water, for example on long road-trips. But I've also found it amusing that Evian backwards spells...well, you can figure it out. The Economist this week explains why, exactly, buying bottled water shows consumers are daft:

The success of bottled water is in many ways one of capitalism’s greatest mysteries. Studies show consistently that tap water is purer than many bottled waters—not including those that contain only tap water, which by some estimates is 40% of the total by volume. The health benefits that are claimed for some bottled waters are unproven, at best. By volume, bottled water often costs 1,000 times the price of tap water. Indeed, even with oil prices sky high, a litre of bottled water can cost more than a litre of petrol. And on top of that, there are the environmental costs of transporting bottled water and of manufacturing and disposing of the bottles.

Yet sales of bottled water have been booming. In 2006 Americans spent nearly $11 billion buying 31.2 billion liters of the stuff, an increase in volume of 9.5% on a year earlier. The average American drank 104.5 L of bottled water last year, up from 63.2 L in 2000.

All of which shows the problems of the average IQ being 100.

It's time for the semi-annual update of the Evanston/Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.)

You can get sunrise information for your location at wx-now.com.

• Tonight's sunset in Chicago (8:31 pm) is the latest of the year.
• The United Nations reported this week that, for the first time, more than half of all people live in cities.

The June Solstice happens in 15 minutes, at 1:06pm CDT. Happy Summer! (Or, you know, winter, for the one-third of the world who live in the Southern Hemisphere.)

The Atlantic hurricane season began last night at midnight UTC (7pm CT), and already we have our first named storm: Tropical Storm Barry, about 100km off Key West in the Gulf of Mexico:

AT 5 PM EDT...2100 UTC... A TROPICAL STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR THE WEST COAST OF FLORIDA FROM BONITA BEACH NORTHWARD TO KEATON BEACH...AND A TROPICAL STORM WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM NORTH OF KEATON BEACH TO ST. MARKS. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS AND A TROPICAL STORM WATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS.

The NHC expects Barry to trundle up the Gulf Coast of Florida, cross over near Jacksonville, and then rumble over all the Atlantic beaches from there to the Outer Banks before going away. Have fun!

All right, today I feel really bad for Parker. It's a beautiful day in Chicago, so I left the window open just above his crate. Instead of spending the day sleeping, the poor guy been staring out the window all day. I wish I could take him for a very long walk today but, alas, my client requires my presence 40 km away.

Notice the second image is three hours later:

The good part of this is, he'll probably sleep like a, well, like a dog tonight.

Update, 1:20pm: I believe the caption is, "I want my @%^!! WALK already!":

Update, 1:25pm: Oh, shit.

Final update, 2:25pm: Finally! But Parker feels bad, I feel bad, the dog walker feels bad, and there's a turd on my bedroom floor:

And I'm out here in West Bumble because...well, I'll be thinking about that on the hour-long drive home today.

All right, I admit, sometimes I really hate Chicago's weather. Parker, who has never experienced a really hot Chicago summer (though he probably experienced some serious heat on the farm near his birthplace in Carbondale, Ill.), seems to enjoy it:

Yes, folks, it's snowing in April. And because it's just above freezing, the snow is heavy, wet, and slushy. Parker took one look out the door this morning and bounded into the yard like...well, like a puppy.

Bad news, P-dogg: no play group tonight. It will be challenge enough to get the mud off you after your evening walk.

People who live outside Chicago may not believe this: Yesterday's high temperature was 21°C; right now, it's -1°C. Who knows what tomorrow will look like.

I believe I figured out why the conference disappointed me. I last went to VSLive in 2003, when I had just started to get really good at my craft. The sessions at that conference hat a lot of information that I hadn't encountered before, and taught me a lot about where I should look to keep fresh and informed.

Four years of keeping fresh and informed, however, has pushed me well past where I was in 2003. So this year's sessions, despite being just as informative as the 2003 offerings, turned out not to be as useful to me.

There are a couple of other factors, some of which I previously identified:

• The conference is in San Francisco, one of my favorite cities on earth;
• Except for Monday, the city has had perfect spring weather;
• I haven't slept especially well, which colors my perceptions and moods.

The last point bears emphasis. I truly love the Hotel California, and I will stay there again the next time I'm in San Francisco; however, I will endeavor not to stay on the Geary Street side. It's too damn loud. Maybe because it's only a block away from the theater district, every night we had some new musical performance:

• The symphonic "March of the Garbage Trucks" started each day at 5:30am.
• Last night around 3am, we got the recitative and aria "O Too-Quiet Street / I am the very model of a modern crazy homeless man," followed by "Officer! Officer!" featuring the SFPD Men's Chorus.
• And who could forget Saturday night's rousing operetta in three acts, Happy Birthday, Fratboy, that also included a guest appearance from the SFPDMC?

Meanwhile, people on the courtyard—or even on the Jones Street side—swear they heard none of this. So much for Room 404.

I'm now going to the post-conference workshop. At least that's my plan; coming out of a miserable Chicago winter, today's sunny, 20°C weather sounds a lot more appealing than a windowless room and "Windows Workflow: a Gentle Introduction."

I'm sitting in the Hotel California lobby watching rain-soaked buses trundle down Geary Street. I'm in the lobby because the hotel's WiFi doesn't actually reach the fourth floor. This, and the unfortunate confluence of a room overlooking the street and a 23-year-old's birthday party Saturday night that spilled out of the lobby and down the block until the cops broke it up around 4 am, is my only complaint about the place. Old hotels have old windows, so it got a little noisy during the melée

The hotel is truly a gem. From the little perk at check-in—a frozen tequila shot—to the wine and cheese spread they put out every night, to the understated décor, to the lobby it shares with Millenium (a wonderful vegetarian restaurant with a tasty wine list), I love staying here. The bill adds to my pleasure: only about $100 a night, half of what hotels closer to the Moscone Center wanted. Since it's also only about 500 m from there—a 10-minute walk through Union Square—it was a no-brainer.

Of course, I'm in my third-favorite city on the planet (after Chicago and London), sitting in a hotel lobby. The one day that the conference sessions are truly uninteresting to me is the one day that it's pouring down with rain. It's supposed to let up a bit later, so I may have dinner at the Ferry Building or even, if the spirit (and Muni bus) moves me, Sausalito. And they put out the wine and cheese in an hour.