Events

Guys are installing new windows at IDTWHQ, completing the project begun in March 2009. (I split it into two phases to spread the cost over two years.) I ordered this set mid-August. We thought they'd be done in October, but no such luck. Here's the effect, according to the Inner Drive Technology International Data Center Monitor: The bottom axis shows local time, the vertical shows degrees Celsius. Also keep in mind that servers produce heat, so the server rack usually runs about 2°C warmer than the...

Remember that bit about our unusually warm autumn? Meteorological winter began yesterday, leaving no doubt of its arrival: Chicagoans shivered through the coldest December open in 27 years Wednesday. The day's biting 48 to 56 km/h gusts generated wind chills which ranged from single digits to the mid teens [Fahrenheit] as bursts of snowfall dusted the ground and produced the city's first measurable (3 mm) accumulations at Midway and O'Hare. The snowfall generated patches of black ice which led to a...

Just a quick break from the work, schoolwork, and make-work I've got to do to say: Happy Hanukkah.

My new employer requires that I get an appropriate Microsoft certification by February 2012. This requires that I take six certification tests. I've started preparing, after not having bothered in four years. And, as I was in 2006, and 1999, and 1996, and 1993, the last times I jumped into the MCP Pit of Despair, I am unhappy. Why, pray, have I not bothered to get certified? Why only one test in the last 10 years? Because I really, honestly, truly, hate these exams. The last time I took one, I literally...

Sean Wilentz at The New Republic has a better explanation of the nullification nonsense this morning than I had yesterday: Now, as in the 1860s and 1960s, nullification and interposition are pseudo-constitutional notions taken up in the face of national defeat in democratic politics. Unable to prevail as a minority and frustrated to the point of despair, its militant advocates abandon the usual tools of democratic politics and redress, take refuge in a psychodrama of "liberty" versus "tyranny," and...

He really should know better: Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert has signed two bills authorizing the state to use eminent domain to seize some of the federal government's most valuable land. Supporters hope the bills, which the Republican governor signed Saturday, will trigger a flood of similar legislation throughout the West and, eventually, a Supreme Court battle that they hope to win -- against long odds. Um...no. Starting with the Supremacy Clause, moving on to the Federal applicability of the 5th...

Yesterday I expressed more relief than dread after finishing my Term 3 finals. Dread just won: Subject: FedEx Shipment Notification [Redacted] of Duke Fuqua School of Business sent David Braverman 1 FedEx Express Saver package(s). This shipment is scheduled to be sent on 03/29/2010. Oh. Joy. The Term 4 books are coming. Sigh.

I've just finished my final exams for Duke CCMBA Term 3. Total time: 10.8 hours on statistics, 8.2 hours for marketing, 4.9 hours sobbing quietly at my desk about not having studied more. As the program has six terms, in a sane universe this would mean I'm half-way done with my MBA. Sadly, I'm not even done with Term 3 yet. And anyway the end of Term 3, officially April 7th, isn't really the half-way point. First, I have the Delhi Culture Dash video to produce. My team has succeeded mightily with a...

To hear the right wingers describe it, passing the Health-Care Reform Act ranked somewhere between breaking the second seal and sending Federal troops to Birmingham in atrocity. I cannot fathom the rage, not one bit. Nor can I fathom the hypocrisy. For example, as the New York Times reported this morning, a sizable chunk of the Tea Party movement have the luxury of banging on against the welfare state because—why else—they're supported by it: Tom Grimes, [who] lost his job as a financial consultant 15...

My dad has a new novel out. Right now it's available for the Amazon Kindle only; in a couple of weeks he'll have paperbacks as well. As soon as he does, expect to find them in random locations around the world. I've read about 20 different drafts of the book, and each was better than the last. It's a page-turner. And creepy. And funny. An excerpt: It all played out in less than three seconds. Like an errant missile, the two-and-a-half-ton stretch Cadillac slammed into the stunned crowd of mourners...