Events

I forgot at the time that my post yesterday afternoon was the 9,000th since The Daily Parker began in May 1998. I generally care more about the "modern era" since I began posting in a true blog format in November 2005. This is the 8,806th post since then. At the current rate, you should see the 10,000th post in early August 2025 (all-time) or at the end of December 2025 (modern era), depending on how you count.

I had one of those "why am I working inside today?" moments when I got my lunch a few minutes ago. The obvious answer—Cassie needs dog food—doesn't always work when it's 27°C and sunny. It did get me to re-evaluate my dinner plans, however. Cooking pasta just doesn't appeal when my favorite sushi place has an outdoor patio that allows dogs. Meanwhile, I'm adding a feature that might take the remainder of this sprint as it completely changes how we store and present 3rd-party calculation results to the...

It's Tuesday afternoon, and I think I'm caught up with everything in the way of me ploughing through some coding at work the remainder of the week. At some point, I might even read all of these through: January 6th Committee Special Counsel Jack Smith has informed the XPOTUS that he is the subject of a federal investigation, a clear indication that an indictment could soon follow. Abi Breland reports that far-right trolls haven't figured out how to cause misery on Meta's Threads app yet, but don't...

She's not quite middle-aged, but she does look like a confident, mature dog:

Just a few items for my reading list: The Supreme Court's Republican majority have invented a new doctrine that they claim gives them override any action by a Democratic administration or Congress. John Ganz thinks all Americans are insane, at least when it comes to conspiracy theories. Chicago's Deep Tunnel may have spared us from total disaster with last week's rains, but even it can't cope with more than about 65 mm of rain in an hour. Oregon's Rose Quarter extension of Interstate 5 will cost an...

On Friday I posted about Amtrak's $75 billion windfall from the Biden Infrastructure Bill, and I wondered whether the new Siemens Venture rolling stock would make it to Chicago. Well, I took the Wolverine to and from New Buffalo, Mich., over the weekend, and rode in them. My contact at Amtrak said the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan own them. Photos and more details tomorrow.

When I moved to my current house, I planned to hook up my ancient cassette player to a stereo system in my library. So I got my ancient cassettes out of storage and brought them to the new place. It took a couple of stages (ordering bookshelves, getting the bookshelves, waiting for them to fix the adjustable shelf in the center bookshelf) over a few months. In that last phase it looked like this: You're reading that right. I packed that box of cassettes on 3 January 2005, and put a sticker on it when I...

The Federal Infrastructure Bill that President Biden signed into law in 2021 allocated $66 billion to Amtrak, which they plan to use to bring US rail service up to European standards (albeit in the mid-2000s): Amtrak’s expansion plan, dubbed Amtrak Connects US, proposes service improvements to 25 existing routes and the addition of 39 entirely new routes. If the vision were to be fully realized, it would bring passenger rail to almost every major city in the US in 15 years. (Right now, only 27 out of...

Cassie did not understand why she could not try my Indian food last night: And somehow, with the rudimentary editing controls on my phone, I accidentally turned her into an Andrew Wyeth painting. Huh.

The Screen Actors Guild/AFTRA voted to strike today, halting most TV and film production worldwide (and even ending the Oppenheimer red carpet). The Times explains: About 160,000 television and movie actors are going on strike at midnight, joining screenwriters who walked off the job in May and setting off Hollywood’s first industrywide shutdown in 63 years. The leaders of the union, SAG-AFTRA, approved a strike on Thursday, hours after contract talks with a group of studios broke down. Actors will be...