Events

The Trib expects noise complaints to take off: The Federal Aviation Administration is expected within the next four months to release a preliminary report based on thousands of computer-generated flight simulations involving what will become O'Hare's fifth east-west runway and a subsequent runway that the city plans to open in 2020. All this work, however, might not bring relief after a record year for O'Hare jet noise complaints. The simulations are aimed in part at finding the best way to squeeze in...

I mean, yes:

The New York Times has the story: Mrs. Clinton is expected to begin her campaign with a video message on social media, followed by a visit to important early-primary states next week, said two people briefed on her plans. But for all the attention paid to how Mrs. Clinton would reveal her 2016 candidacy, little has been said about her reasons for mounting another presidential bid. Her campaign rollout is expected to provide voters, particularly users of Twitter, Facebook and other social media, a...

The Inner Drive Extensible Architecture (IDEA) is now on NuGet.org. This means anyone, anywhere can download it and install it into their own .NET project. I'll publish the Inner Drive Azure Tools at some point after I figure out a cool acronym. This was actually forced on me by a new requirement to share the code with overseas partners. They would be unable to use the software I wrote for work if I hadn't done this.

Sometime Tuesday or Wednesday I hit 2 million steps since October 23rd. Unfortunately, a combination of weather and talkative sales people on Wednesday prevented me from getting my 10,000 steps that day. Otherwise I've hit that goal 64 times this year, averaging 11,750 steps per day since January 1st—going up to 13,400 steps per day in the last 30. I've also lost 3.7 kg this year, stabilizing right around my target weight three weeks ago. I realize this is old news, but I'm really jazzed how some simple...

My to-do list today only has 14 items on it, of which 6 are checked off already. The actual time it will take to accomplish the remaining eight items varies between 20 minutes (laundry, tonight, essentially a fire-and-forget activity) and four hours (Staging release of the Holden Adaptive Platform). So, once again, I'm going to shove a bunch of articles to my Kindle: Within a 10-minute walk from my house is a mausoleum built in 1858 that the city didn't move when it created Lincoln Park. Virgin America...

It looks like I went .500 yesterday in voting for mayor and alderman. Rahm Emanuel won his runoff against Chuy Garcia: With near-complete totals in, Emanuel had just under 56 percent of the vote, narrowly topping the 55.28 percent he received four years ago in first winning the office. He had 315,545 votes to 250,773 for Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who got enough in February to force Emanuel to a runoff. Emanuel's 55.72 percent of the vote may rise slightly in coming days as thousands...

In the reading queue: DUKE WON. Air Canada and Porter Air are squabbling over Toronto's Billy Bishop Airport. Hard to tell who's winning. A sad tale of how it really is possible to run out of integers in a badly-designed program. What is this new quick-fired pizza thing? My most culinary friend said it's pretty good. Guess I'll have to try it. James Fallows and The Atlantic have published online a story he wrote in 1982 about the dawning age of personal computing. Did I mention that DUKE WON?!

Today is the runoff election in Chicago between Rahm Emanuel and Chuy Garcia: "This is a big election, with clear choices," Emanuel told reporters at a Lakeview campaign office, with a backdrop of volunteers calling potential voters. "There's a lot at stake for the city of Chicago." Defending his Democratic credentials, Emanuel pointed to backing from some elements of organized labor, his support for raising the minimum wage and having real estate developers set aside money for affordable housing. "That...

Parker and I walked about 10½ km yesterday, resulting in plenty of sleep and (probably) sore paws for both of us. We also got caught in a pneumonia front, in which late-afternoon cooling stops driving a land breeze and allows denser, cooler air from the lake to spread outward over the shore. Temperatures dropped from 18°C to 9°C in twenty minutes—unfortunately, the 20 minutes coinciding from our farthest distance from home. This bothered Parker a lot less than it bothered me, owing to his two fur coats...