The Daily Parker

I just started Sprint 52 in my day job, after working right up to the last possible minute yesterday to (unsuccessfully) finish one more story before ending Sprint 51. Then I went to a 3-hour movie that you absolutely must see.

Consequently a few things have backed up over at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters.

Before I get into that, take a look at this:

That 17.1°C reading at IDTWHQ comes in a shade lower than the official reading at O'Hare of 17.8°, which ties the record high maximum set in 1971. The forecast says it'll hang out here for a few hours before gale-force winds drive the temperature down to more seasonal levels overnight. I've even opened a few windows.

So what else is new?

• Carving out exceptions to filibusters in the US Senate? Not new.
• The intractability of the US Senate in general? Not new.
• The size of the US House of Representatives, which we could change at any time? Not new.
• Boris Johnson not believing rules apply to him? Not new.
• Disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's ethics problems? Not new.
• The "metaverse" idea? Not new (says the guy who first imagined it).
• Candidates to run Chicago's tourism board? Not just not new; not any.

So what really is new?

• The Log4j zero-day exploit is pretty new, and pretty serious.
• The rash of tornados, including an EF5 monster that spun for 300 kilometers in Kentucky in December is really new, and even more serious.
• Pittsburgh switching over to dark-sky streetlights over the next 5 years is new, and pretty cool.
• Most of the buildings around Orleans and Kinzie in the River North area of Chicago are new, but not pretty or cool.
• Getting whisky delivered to your house is new-ish in most places and will be new in others pretty soon.

But Sprint 52 at my office, that's incredibly new, and I must go back to it.

My outdoor thermometer has alerted me to an unusual temperature swing:

Yes, that's a 4°C rise in one hour. At least it's stopped raining. But there is a tornado warning about 100 km from here, so there's a lot of energy in the air right now.

Meanwhile, indoors, my fireplace caused a spike in CO₂:

Don't worry, 2,000 ppm won't hurt me. But I did get an alert about it.

We're all set to perform Handel's Messiah tomorrow and Sunday, which got noticed by both the local news service and local TV station. Otherwise, the week just keeps getting odder:

• Monkees singer-songwriter Michael Nesmith died today at 78.
• Consumer prices rose at an annualized rate of 6.8% in November, the highest rate in 39 years.
• Catherine Rampell wonders who would ever design a political system like ours.
• Kate Riga explains the dog-whistle Justice Amy Coney Barrett (R) used in last week's oral arguments on the Mississippi abortion ban.
• The UK has imposed an Ultra Low Emissions Zone in most of greater London, imposing an eye-watering £12.50-per-day toll on anyone who brings in a car that fails to meet their emissions standards.
• A jury convicted actor Jussie Smollett of faking his own hate crime for...reasons? Dave Chapelle has the best take on this (from 2019).
• The Writers Guild of America has released their updated list of the 101 best screenplays of the 21st Century (so far).
• The Federal Aviation Administration has issued an Airworthiness Directive on the reliability of radar altimeters near 5G mobile phone transmitters.

And to cap all that off, the National Weather Service has announced a Hazardous Weather Outlook for tonight that includes...tornados? I hope the weather gets better before our performance.

Just a few:

• What is Putin's real game with Ukraine right now? Julia Ioffe thinks it may just be R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
• After Bob Dole's death this week, Paul Krugman bemoans the disappearance of Republican grown-ups.
• A stupid-looking statute of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest finally came down.
• Germany's incoming government claims it wants to protect end-to-end encryption, a move Bruce Schneier likes.
• Bloomberg CityLab asks, why does US infrastructure cost so much?
• A rash of earthquakes shook the Pacific Ocean west of Oregon this morning.

And finally, atheist sci-fi author John Scalzi...bought a church?

The temperature bottomed out last night just under -10°C, colder than any night since I adopted Cassie. (We last got that cold on February 20th.) Even now the temperature has just gone above -6°C. Though she has two fur coats on all the time, I still think keeping her outside longer than about 20 minutes would cause her some discomfort.

Add that it's Messiah week and I barely have enough free time to give her a full hour of walks today.

Meanwhile, life goes on, even if I can only get the gist of it:

• Julia Ioffe points out that Russia itself turned NATO's attention back upon it, which doesn't really help Ukraine right now.
• Jeannie Suk Gersen sees Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health as a challenge to the Supreme Court's authority.
• The XPOTUS has set up a Special Purpose Acquisition Company that Josh Marshall calls "an open invitation to foreign bribes and payoffs."
• Chicago drivers spent more time stuck in traffic than in any other major US city this year. Yay us.

Finally, journalist Allison Robicelli missed a connection at O'Hare this past weekend, and spent the wee hours exploring the empty terminals. The last time I stared down a 12-hour stay at an airport, I hopped into the Tube and spent 8 of those hours exploring the city instead, but I'm not a professional journalist.

I'm looking ahead to two long rehearsals, three performances, and squeezing into my tuxedo, all while the temperature drops over the next six hours to a predicted -9°C. I conclude from these facts that it's the beginning of winter.

I also just spent the last hour trying to get Visual Studio to log into the correct Azure subscription. So instead of reading these things at lunch, I had to let them pile up:

• The UK High Court ruled yesterday that Uber's business model is unlawful, saying ride-hail services do fall under a 1998 law regulating car hires.
• Thieves in Canada have learned how to use Apple AirTags to target high-end cars.
• Michael Tomasky takes issue with Ron DeSantis' push to "freedom us to death."
• Pan-American Airlines ceased operations 30 years ago Saturday.
• Maybe teaching student pilots better safety habits overall would prevent the engine-out forced landings we simulate in training.

And now, back to the mines.

I've finally resumed progress on a major update to Weather Now. I finished everything except the user interface way back in April, but between summer, Cassie, and everything else, I paused.

At least, until last week, when something clicked in my head, and I started writing again. As my dad would say, I broke the code's back.

It turns out, the APIs really work well, and I'm getting used to .NET Blazor, so I'm actually getting things done. The only downside applies to Cassie, who will probably only get 90 minutes of walks today instead of the two hours or so she got on summer Saturdays.

Cassie and I took a walk by Montrose Harbor on Sunday afternoon at just the right time:

And yesterday, at my downtown office, I also got the timing right:

Winter begins tomorrow, but we can still enjoy the last few days of autumn.

A group of pub-goers in Yorkshire got trapped with an Oasis cover band after freak snowfall made the area impassible:

Dozens of people, mostly strangers, spent the weekend snowed in together at the remote pub after heavy snowfall blocked the exits.

The Tan Hill Inn, which calls itself the U.K.'s highest pub, was hosting the band Noasis when snowfall made leaving the area dangerous for staff, musicians and pub-goers.

So they stayed — and stayed and stayed — all weekend, waiting for the danger to pass.

The band was trapped at the pub as well, causing them to miss their next gig in Essex. "We're very sorry to announce that we are stranded in Yorkshire, snowed in at the venue after last night's gig at The Tan Hill Inn," the band wrote on Facebook.

I mean, I guess there are worse places to be trapped. At least they had food and beer.

...on Wednesday. And to remind us of this, yesterday didn't get above freezing at my house. It finally went above freezing at 3:04am, according to my thermometer. And at Chicago's official weather station at O'Hare, yesterday was the coldest day since February 21st.

Today won't get too much warmer. Still, in about 90 minutes, I'm taking the Brews & Choos Project out of Illinois for the first time. Kenosha, Wis., has two breweries within a couple of blocks of each other and the Union Pacific North Line's northern terminus. Cassie had a stomach issue on Thursday, which for reasons I won't explain but you can infer, turned out to be a hunk of one of her toys. So she will have a quiet day at home while I almost finish all the stops on the UP-N.