Events

Scroll down and you'll see that I did not achieve my goal of 25,000 steps on Saturday because (most likely) I ate contaminated kefta kebab on Friday night. My Fitbit did provide some interesting data, however, that underscores how disappointing the trip turned out to be. Sleep: I average 7 hours a night, generally. Friday night, more because I had absolutely no responsibilities than anything else, I slept in, getting 9:34 total. But then the sleep chart goes almost full-circle as the Fitbit recorded all...

It's great that I spent 21 of 44 hours in Bend asleep. Yeah, that's just special. It's a beautiful day both in Oregon and in Chicago today, which is why I'm even happier to be inside the PDX terminal. Still, the extra-special-fun symptoms I've experienced over the last two days seem to have subsided. I may attempt to eat solid food in a few minutes, which I haven't done since 9am yesterday. Can I get a do-over, please?

The good news is, I've gotten almost 12 hours of sleep in the last 18. The bad news is, of course, I'd rather be exploring Bend, not passed out in my hotel room clutching my stomach. It's not alcohol; I had precisely one beer with dinner and one glass of local wine after. And I went to sleep at my usual time (11pm CT/9pm PT). But when I woke up this morning, I felt a general malaise that became, after a bagel and coffee plus a one-hour walk around town, light-headedness, nausea, and unbelievable...

I'm in Bend, Ore., today, doing nothing of value (except blogging and photographing). I'll have a few photos tomorrow or Monday. My goal for the next several hours is to get 25,000 steps in this perfect weather. (I have sunscreen.)

I went to my first Cubs game tonight after not entering the park for an entire season. As I write this, they're up 8-0 over the Reds going into the 9th. But I'm not there, because I didn't dress appropriately. By the end of the 4th inning my teeth were shivering. It's April; 8°C is not that unusual. I'll be back, when it's warmer. Possibly by then the Cubs won't be in first place anymore. I think it's going to be a weird season.

Pilot Patrick Smith wishes Boeing would update the 40-year-old aircraft instead of pushing the 737 into ungainly configurations: What I think about the 737 is that Boeing took what essentially was a regional jet — the original 737-100 first flew in 1967, and was intended to carry fewer than a hundred passengers — and has pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed, and pushed the thing to the edge of its envelope, through a long series of derivatives, from the -200 through the -900, and now onward to the 737 “MAX.”...

Because no one has actually cleaned up a database of IP address geocodes, a Kansas farmer is getting blamed for all manner of bad behavior on the Internet: As any geography nerd knows, the precise center of the United States is in northern Kansas, near the Nebraska border. Technically, the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of the center spot are 39°50′N 98°35′W. In digital maps, that number is an ugly one: 39.8333333,-98.585522. So back in 2002, when MaxMind was first choosing the default point...

This is wonderful:

Here we go: Sam the Dog is missing after being launched into the stratosphere; an English primary school is sad. You really can have too much grit. Chicagoist is trying to find the best beer brewed in Chicago. The American Public Transportation Association has decided that public transit agencies can be friends with Lyft and Uber. Via Bruce Schneier, what does the game Werewolf tell us about security? The Ricketts family bought Brixen Ivy last month, so they now own 10 of 16 Wrigley rooftops. Bastards....

Friday went long, so yesterday was pretty quiet. The Apollo Chorus had its annual fund-raiser on Friday. As one of the volunteers, I tagged along to the official after-party, which turned into two subsequent unofficial after-parties, and a completely lazy day yesterday. We should get preliminary results on the total fundraising take by tomorrow's rehearsal. We did get a pretty good haul at the door, and during our "Money Song," which included a challenge grant that got completely used. So, in all, great...