Events

After 448 days, the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago have lifted all capacity limits and most other intrusive Covid-19 mitigation factors. We haven't gone completely back to normal, but it feels a lot more so than it did even a month ago. The Tribune has a round-up of what rules remain in place and what has lifted. Mainly we still need masks on public transit and in places where owners or managers require them, and some "Covid theater" will continue where people demand it. But restaurants...

Many of the top contenders for the bottom position on the US House of Representative's intellectual achievement league table have only recently joined the august body. First-term representatives Lauren Boebert (R-CO), a high-school dropout, and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), have backed up their sterling educational credentials with solid records of stupidity. Of course, US Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) would win by two lengths if he served in the House instead of the Senate. Fortunately, the House...

Work continues on the Ravenswood Metra station, letting us commuters believe that finally! we might not have to stand in the rain waiting for an inbound train sometime this autumn. Until then, we still have to wait on a rickety wooden platform that now extends four meters from the original rickety wooden platform, meaning we have a worse station experience than our great-grandparents would have when the station opened in the 1890s. Of course, once we board the trains, our overall travel experience on...

I spent the morning unsuccessfully trying to get a .NET 5 Blazor WebAssembly app to behave with an Azure App Registration, and part of the afternoon doing a friend's taxes. Yes, I preferred doing the taxes, because I got my friend a pile of good news without having to read sixty contradictory pages of documentation. I also became aware of the following: The FBI and Australian police completely pwned hundreds of criminals through a black-market "encrypted" cell phone app that they wrote and monitored, in...

As much fun as Cassie and I have had over the last few days, the news around the world didn't stop: After 448 days, Illinois will finally reopen fully on Friday. Security expert Tarah Wheeler, writing on Schneier.com, warns that our weapons systems have frightening security vulnerabilities. Fastly's content-delivery network (CDN) collapsed this morning, taking down The New York Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg News, and other major properties; no word yet on the cause, but we can guess. About 12,000...

Just look at this beauty: This dog had way too much fun on Sunday. Towards the end of her time at the beach, she chased this dude all over: I have almost as much fun as she does, watching her open up to full speed. Wow, she is fast.

I didn't have as much time to edit photos yesterday as I expected, so I only have two more for today: And I want to give a big shout out to this little guy, named Bear, who forded the 5-meter-wide tidal pool all by himself:

I took 540 photos at Montrose Dog Beach today. I expect to post a bunch this afternoon and tomorrow evening. For now, though, here's a quick taste: Did she have fun? Oh, my yes.

Cassie and I went to the Montrose Dog-Friendly Area (aka Montrose Dog Beach) this afternoon for the first time. I don't recall ever seeing her have more fun, which says a lot. Tomorrow I'll bring my real camera and a long lens to get some action shots.

SDCA Senior Judge Roger Benitez, a George W Bush appointee, has ruled that California's assault-weapons ban violates the 2nd Amendment: The state’s definition of illegal military-style rifles unlawfully deprives law-abiding Californians of weapons commonly allowed in most other states and by the U.S. Supreme Court, the judge wrote. Judge Roger T. Benitez, who has favored pro-gun groups in past rulings, described the AR-15 rifle, used in many of the nation's deadliest mass shootings, as an ideal weapon....