Events

Now that I have a functioning monitor once again, I can post a few photos. Despite American's mess-up with my seat assignments, a lovely British Airways flight attendant found an empty upper-deck window seat, so I did, in fact, get to have a total aviation-nerd-heaven trip: P.O.V. shot: A couple of things: first, the text on the screen is in Arabic, which makes sense if you're flying to Dubai. Second, the screen shows the plane has just gone over Italy's big toe. We had great views of the Alps and the...

When they ask why I missed a guest speaker and an alumni panel discussion, I will tell them about the lovely donation I'm making on Sunday. What donation? Why, a brand-new 50 cm widescreen monitor I bought this afternoon at the Dubai Mall: And why did I buy this monitor for AED 449? Because the one built into my laptop looked like this: No, you're not going blind, and that distortion isn't a compression effect or camera artifcat. That's real. And that's why Duke will get the monitor when I'm done with...

My laptop monitor has horked. On the way over to Dubai, while hanging out at Logan, the monitor went from normal to slightly magenta and missing every fourth column of pixels. This did not make me happy. Finally today I had the opportunity to connect the laptop to an overhead projector, which showed it has a fully-functioning video chip. This means that the problem is either in the LCD monitor itself or its connection to the motherboard, neither of which I can fix. So, the Duke IT folks have gone after...

Via Crain's Chicago Business, Roland Burris releases a statement about the recent unpleasantness: "Impeachment is about whether our state's best interests are being served having the governor remain in office," the statement says. "Today's conviction speaks loud and clear that there are serious issues preventing him from fulfilling those reponsibilities." Of course, appointing Mr. Burris wasn't one of those "serious issues." At least in the opinion of Mr. Burris. ... "It is my hope that today will be...

The US Geological Survey just reported a 4.5-magnitude earthquake in downtown Seattle, where the time is about 6:15 am. That'll wake you up. No damage or injuries reported yet—it was a minor earthquake—but still, what a way to start the day.

Welcome to your new office, Governor Quinn. The Illinois Senate convicted our now-ex-governor unanimously, 59-0. I guess his speech today really helped. Good thing he flew home early.

Apparently, if the Illinois senate convicts the governor (possibly today), he gets to keep his pension: The state's constitution spells out that punishment after an impeachment trial can't go beyond removal and a ban from holding office again. Should Blagojevich end up convicted in federal court of felony corruption charges, however, state retirement officials could decide to take away his pension. It's unclear whether he'd receive his pension had he simply resigned. And, of course, he gets to keep his...

Via Calculated Risk, a report that the FBI knew about mortgage fraud but couldn't do anything because they were too busy with counter-terrorism: "It is clear that we had good intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, the corrupt attorneys, the corrupt appraisers, the insider schemes," said a recently retired, high FBI official. Another retired top FBI official confirmed that such intelligence went back to 2002. The problem, according to the two FBI retirees and several other current and former bureau...

The Chicago Tribune this morning reported that the President plans a visit home early next month. But as I mentioned earlier, it's not clear what effects this will have on area aviation: Aides declined to comment on Obama's February schedule, but a source close to him said he could make his first presidential visit to Chicago as early as Presidents' Day weekend, when his daughters have a three-day break from school. ... In Chicago, the best bet for an Air Force One landing is O'Hare International...

Yesterday was the 30th consecutive day below freezing in Chicago. The chart doesn't show that we've had only 10 hours above freezing all year. The last time we had 24 hours above freezing was December 27th. One little bit of good news: Today the sun sets after 5pm for the first time since October, as each day becomes noticably longer than the one before. Roll on April...