Events

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...

A couple of updates. First, Paul Vallas picked up a key endorsement, which may bring over some of Lori Lightfoot's voters: Newly-retired Jesse White, the first African-American elected as Illinois Secretary of State, is endorsing Paul Vallas, giving Vallas a leg up in his quest to claim the 20% share of the Black vote he needs to win the April 4 mayoral runoff against Brandon Johnson. White, 88, retired in January after a record six terms as secretary of state. In four of those elections, he was the...

Perhaps the first day of spring brings encourages some spring cleaning? Or at least, revisiting stories of the recent and more distant past: The Navy has revisited how it names ships, deciding that naming United States vessels after events or people from a failed rebellion doesn't quite work. As a consequence, the guided missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG-62, named after a Confederate victory) will become the USS Robert Smalls, named after the former slave who stole the CSS Planter right from...

For the first time since 1983, a sitting Chicago mayor failed to win re-election*, sadly keeping the total proportion of women not being re-elected at 100%. So the April 4th runoff will see the Chicago Public Schools candidate face off against the Chicago Teachers Union candidate: Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson are headed to an April 4 runoff for mayor of Chicago after Mayor Lori Lightfoot conceded defeat Tuesday night, sealing her fate as a one-term mayor. With 98 percent of precincts reporting...

At my day job, we just ended our 80th sprint on the project, with a lot of small but useful features that will make our side of the app easier to maintain. I like productive days like this. I even voted! And now I will rest on my laurels for a bit and read these stories: If you don't worry that the entire US Supreme Court has the technical expertise of your 99-year-old great uncle, perhaps you should? Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explains how giving economic aid to Ukraine benefits the West. In part...

The first female Speaker of the House of Commons died Sunday: She served as Speaker from 1992 to 2000, before going on to become a baroness in the House of Lords from 2001. The current Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle described her as "an inspirational woman" who was known for her "no-nonsense style". She was the Labour MP for West Bromwich West from 1973 to 2000. "To be the first woman Speaker was truly groundbreaking and Betty certainly broke that glass ceiling with panache," Sir Lindsay said. "Betty was one...

The rain has stopped, and might even abate long enough for me to collect Cassie from day camp without getting soaked on my way home. I've completed a couple of cool sub-features for our sprint review tomorrow, so I have a few minutes to read the day's stories: Matt Ford doesn't think US Representative Marjorie Taylor (R-GA) wants secession so much as uncontested Republican rule, which, you know, is on brand for her and her party. San Francisco native Michael Moritz worries that one-party rule by the...

After standing on the Ravenswood Metra platform for 10 minutes in 40 km/h winds and blowing rain, I hearby sentence former Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner to 100 days of standing on said platform without an umbrella or waterproof shoes for the offense cutting off funding to all Illinois transportation projects for 3 years in a fit of ideological pique and general lack of empathy for anyone else. Each instance of Rauner's prickishness causing suffering and inconvenience to the citizens of Illinois shall...

Welcome to stop #80 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Broken Tee Brewing Co., 406 Green Bay Rd., HighwoodTrain line: Metra UP-North, Highwood Time from Chicago (Ogilvie): 52 minutesDistance from station: Across the street Broken Tee, the newest brewery in Lake County, opened over Labor Day weekend—the weekend before Urban Brew Labs closed down. But while Broken Tee requires a longer train trip than UBL did, I found it worth the trip. I met an old friend for a beer and a bite last Friday. I only...

Newspapers around the country finally chucked "Dilbert" into the bin after the cartoon's creator, Scott Adams, gave them the excuse: Newspapers across the United States have pulled Scott Adams’s long-running “Dilbert” comic strip after the cartoonist called Black Americans a “hate group” and said White people should “get the hell away from” them. The Washington Post, the USA Today network of hundreds of newspapers, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Los Angeles Times and other publications announced they...