Events

We had several options for group activities today. I did not choose the golf or spring training options. I chose this: I should have photos of this and other bits (including two extra Brews & Choos stops!) over the weekend.

I'm in Phoenix for my company's Tech Forum, where all the technology professionals come together for a few days of panel discussions and heavy drinking networking events. This morning's lineup, including the keynote speaker, emphasized to me the dangers in the United States' declining ability to teach kids English and history. I will have more details later, but for now I'll mention these three things. First, if you show the ubiquitous graph of the growing gap between productivity and wages that the US...

Why set an alarm when your hotel room looks east? And hey: Arizona has topography! Also not something we really get back home.

I'm in the desert southwest for a company event. They gave me this (East) view: Since I last visited Phoenix in 2015, they've added a light rail system. It got me from the baggage retrieval carousel at the airport to the hotel (which is by the convention center, pictured above) in 32 minutes, which I appreciate. The first airplane they had us on to get here broke, so I got to Phoenix two hours later than planned, which I did not appreciate. I've got nothing scheduled for the next two hours so I'm going...

The unfunny cartoonist answered a few questions from the Post: “I shook the box intentionally. I did not realize how hard I shook it,” he told The Washington Post via text. Adams tells The Post that his remarks that day were intended to be hyperbole, while also contending that he was responding to a larger sociopolitical narrative. He does not apologize for what he said in the episode — viewed more than 360,000 times — though he asserts that he disavows racism. Meanwhile, on a follow-up “Real Coffee”...

Welcome to stop #82 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Art History Brewing, 649 W. State St., GenevaTrain line: Union Pacific West, GenevaTime from Chicago: 72 minutes (Zone H)Distance from station: 1.0 km Art History Brewing opened in the summer of 2020, a few months after their planned March 15th opening (oops). They got through the pandemic in part by brewing for Hopleaf, the excellent Belgian-inspired restaurant less than a kilometer from my house. But for whatever reason, none of their beers...

The Atlantic's Ross Andersen recaps a mass murder at the Rock Creek Park Zoo in Washington, D.C.: Tales of fox cunning are as old as culture. Aesop’s foxes were constantly involved in deceptions. In Apache lore, a thieving fox stands in for Prometheus, stealing fire for humans. I imagine that at the zoo, the fox walked back and forth along the flamingo fence, sussing out its vulnerabilities. Tunneling underneath wasn’t practical: A concrete dig barrier extends underground, too deep for a single night’s...

Welcome to stop #81 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Obscurity Brewing, 113 W. North St., ElburnTrain line: Union Pacific West, ElburnTime from Chicago: 85 minutes (Zone I)Distance from station: 1.2 km Elburn, Ill., is the end of the line for the Union Pacific West line. The station opened in 2006, extending the line past Geneva for the first time since the Chicago & North Western ceased intercity train service in 1971. In fact, when the last C&NW train pulled into Elburn 51 years ago, it...

The storm predicted to drop 100 mm of snow on Chicago yesterday missed us completely. That made my Brews & Choos research a lot more pleasant, though I did tromp all over the place in heavy boots that I apparently didn't need. Of course, had I not worn them, I would now be writing about my cold, wet socks. So while I'm getting two reviews together for later this week, go ahead and read this: Illinois had the 18th warmest and 17th wettest winter on record, including the state's 6th warmest January, with...

My company distributes each employee's paid time off (PTO) by distributing a certain number of hours of per half-month pay period. The hours accumulate in a bank that the employee can tap into at any time. Salaried employees can spend it in half-day increments, making it a straightforward arithmetic problem to see how much time off one has available. There is, of course, a catch: At some point, you hit your maximum number of PTO hours, and it stops accruing. I will be at that point on the 31st of this...