Events

Lincoln Park, Chicago, this morning:

Via Sullivan, a collection of data and infographics about "the battlefield of love:" There are many opportunities for failure with 3 million first dates every day worldwide. It turns out that sex is pretty important as 56% of adults claim to be unhappy with their sex life and 22% of married people worldwide have had an extramarital affair. Turkey has the highest rate of affairs with 58% of married people, and Israel the lowest with 7%. Cheating is one of the most popular reasons for breaking up with 25%...

Parker hasn't gotten to play in this yet because I had an 8am class, but as soon as that's over we'll hit the park. Welcome to winter:

As in, the window guys are back today actually to put trim on the windows. Not that the pink fiberglass isn't the height of chic: I forgot from the first set that I'll have to paint the trim once they get it in there. I have no idea when I'll get around to this. Time to call my guy... Parker doesn't care about the windows, but he's no fan of the process. When he got home yesterday, he didn't check out the new windows because this scene made him very, very nervous: I mentioned yesterday that not having...

I've always thought Iowans were generally sensible and tolerant. Apparently not all of them: Wow. (Hat tip TPM.)

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...