Events

It's the end of May, and the weather matches. I pushed some software into production this morning, which is already more productivity than necessary on a day like this. Forget it. I'm going outside. See you in June.

Since the Cubs' 8-4 win over the Giants on Monday, they haven't gotten a run in 20 innings. That may have something to do with them being the worst team in the MLB today. Yes, at 19-32, they're behind Arizona (23-33), Houston (23-32), and Tampa Bay (23-31), and 26 other teams. Hully gee. Only 105 games left to play this year...

Crain's reported this morning that the Divvy bike-share program lost $150k on $2.2 million in revenue last year: Though the operating loss is not unexpected, and the amount is relatively small, it comes at a time when Mr. Emanuel is under intense pressure to cut costs and avoid tax increases. The bicycle-sharing program has not yet reached many neighborhoods, reinforcing a view that Divvy is merely a toy for yuppies and tourists. With the program expected to ramp up this year, achieving profitability is...

I appreciate my friends getting 5th-row seats at AT&T park tonight. And yet, the Cubs still lost. So, voilà: To clarify: I was legitimately surprised that my friends got such awesome seats. I was not surprised that, having won yesterday, the Cubs lost tonight.

I enjoy a healthy dose of randomness when traveling, because it means sometimes you get a hotel room with this view: It's hard to see, but I'm looking directly at AT&T Park, where the Cubs are playing in about two hours. Since they won last night, I fully expect they've used up their allotted runs for the rest of May, but it will still be fun to see a baseball game.

A couple weeks ago I read a Snopes article about how Atari may have buried millions of E.T. game cartridges in New Mexico. After reading it, I found a copy of Zap! The rise and fall of Atari, on which much of the article was based. The book was fascinating. Author Scott Cohen describes the meteoric rise of the company from Nolan Bushnell's Pong game until the company's self-inflicted and fatal shot to the head on 7 December 1982. Since Cohen wrote it in late 1983, the story ends a few months before the...

Another gratuitous ocean photo:

One of the best parts about visiting my folks:

One of the most dangerous parts of the Republican Party's strategy over the last thirty years has been its hostility towards institutions of government. The strategy seems to be that by de-funding or otherwise de-ligitimating the government, the government performs badly, causing people to lose faith in government and demand it be de-funded further. With no institutional options, people seek services from private companies instead, enriching the owners of those companies. Take schools, for example....

When I go anywhere for only a couple of days, I try not to shift my body clock. It prevents jet lag, mostly. This weekend I'm at my folks' house outside San Francisco, which has a two-hour time difference from Chicago. That is why I woke up at 5am and walked to the local Peet's Coffee, as I usually do. This trip I may allow my clock to drift westward, though. I'm going to Tuesday night's Cubs game at AT&T Park at 7:05pm—9:05pm Central time—and would like to see the whole game. The Cubs might even win. I...