Events

FOr a variety of reasons, I've set aside tomorrow to take a hike in Chicago, from home north along one of our Metra lines as far as I can go before saying "to hell with this." My guess is I'll get pretty far. Unfortunately, the weather forecast along the route looks iffy, so I might postpone it until Thursday. My goal is to go on one walk that exceeds my personal record for distance/steps in one day, 27.08 km in 32,315 steps. I figure that will get me from my house to one of my childhood favorite...

Canadian writers Pat Kelly, Peter Oldring, and Chris Kelly nail it:

Oy. OK, I am completely ribbed out. Yesterday I had 14 bones, today 12, which I think exceeds a full slab by a few. Five of those bones (two yesterday, three today) were from The Piggery, because they were my favorites yesterday. Today they had a tiny bit less magic. Still 3½ stars, but not the 4 from before. They're still my favorites from this year, though. I also sampled: Austin's Texas Lightning, who had a meaty tug-off-the-bone sample with some nice char. 3 stars. BBQ King Smokehouse gave me a...

Yesterday I inadvertently swapped the names of two rib vendors. I remembered the ribs correctly, just mixed up where they came from. Tonight when I go for Round 2 I'll (a) bring note paper and (b) get another sampler from Piggery.

Last year, as in five of the six years before, I only went to Ribfest once, owing to the 11 km round trip distance. This year I only live 1.8 km away, so dammit, I'm going all three days. Here's the report from this evening. I went with a friend so we could split samplers, and try more of them. Mrs. Murphy's Irish Bistro. Like last year, excellent sauce. Unlike last year, they kind of gooped it on mediocre bones. So they only get 3 stars for 2016. Mr. B's BBQ. You'd think that, because they're right on...

Startup founder Tim Romeo decided to kill his startup right before they would have gotten a check for $500,000. Sounds crazy? No; he did the right thing: [S]omething was wrong. It seemed trivial at first, but it bothered me. Despite glowing praise, our users were only using ContractBeast to create a small percentage of their total new contracts. I spent the next two weeks visiting our beta users, looking over their shoulders as they worked, and listening to them explain how they planned on using the...

After yesterday's epic walk (from which Parker recovered in just a couple of hours) I realized it wouldn't be that difficult to get another 10,000 steps. So I did: That's a new PR. It was also 27.08 km—another PR. So the top 5 (as I mentioned back in March) are now: 2016 Jun 8 32,315 2015 Apr 26 30,496 2016 Mar 8 29,775 2015 Jun 15 28,455 2015 May 2 26,054 I'm not moving as quickly today as I did yesterday, but I'm pretty happy about blowing past my previous PR. Now I have plans for some day in the next...

The weather today is the kind that we only get about 15 or 20 days of the year in Chicago. It's 19°C and totally sunny with a light breeze from the east. And I'm actually able to take advantage of it today. That's why Parker and I just got back from a 2½ hour, 14.5 km walk. Yes. We walked that far. He's now out cold, and I'm having a spot of lunch. And shortly a shower. The total damage was 14.51 km in 2:24:57 (not including two stops at Starbucks along the way), for a pace of 9' 59" per kilometer—just...

The Cranky Flier blog noted American Airlines' changes to its frequent-flier program (which I also noted yesterday) but thinks they dropped the ball on it: Are you as unimpressed as I am? I get that there’s something to be said for conformity. It makes it easier for travelers to compare what they’ll get from each airline, but it also means that nobody’s program stands out. (Well, nobody except for Alaska Airlines, which is keeping its old style of program and will probably win even more fans.) The...

Senior Microsoft programmer Raymond Chen describes a feature in Windows 10 that is unusually useful: Windows 10 brings the Xbox Game DVR feature to the PC. The Game DVR feature lets you record yourself playing a video game, so you can share the recording with your friends. Suppose you have some program that you want to record, say for a bug report or for an instructional video. Just pretend it's a game: Put focus on the program you want to record. Press Win+G to open the Game Bar. If it asks whether you...