Events

This morning I posted about some frustrations in getting our CRM system to import donations from our fundraising events so that we can then match donations with addresses to send out end-of-year tax letters. The frustrations have grown to the point where naming names seems appropriate, if only because Neon One, the CRM company, has a web-based ticketing system that doesn't really handle the level of detail their developers will need to (a) understand the problem, (b) understand the frustration, and (c)...

I'm president of the Apollo Chorus of Chicago. One of my jobs is to send out letters to all of our donors acknowledging their donations for the previous calendar year. These letters should have gone out by January 31st, but...well...OK, I'm a little delinquent. And for no other reason than I really, really did not want to merge all the data by hand. You see, we use a smallish CRM system for all of our institutional data, which works pretty well, especially with our membership and tech-savvy donors. Many...

Facebook reminded me this morning that 10 years ago today I got the first digital camera I've ever owned whose photo quality approached that of the film cameras I had growing up. My new Canon 7D replaced my 5-year-old Canon 20D, and between the two I took over 32,700 photos in just over nine years. In May 2015 I upgraded to the Canon 7D mark II, the first digital camera I've owned whose capabilities exceeded my 1980s and 1990s film cameras. I've updated the chart showing all the photo-capable devices...

The Guardian has apparently just discovered a parliamentary procedure in use for the past, oh, 300 years, and...well, that's about it. In the UK, the House of Commons routinely shares proposed legislation with the Queen or the Prince of Wales when the matter under consideration directly affects the Royal Family. The Queen has no power to change the legislation, and indeed has never withheld her consent as doing so would cause a Constitutional crisis. Still, it seems, as we say in the US, a bit hinky....

I'm once again not going to get to 10,000 steps today, and that bothers me irrationally. I just need to accept that when it's -10°C and snowing, and I've got a full day of work and chorus business to do that will take me until 10pm, it's OK not to take an hour-long walk to get the steps I need. I'll still manage over 5,000, and I'm certain I'll hit 280,000 for the month. (The worst month I have on record was January 2015, when I got 310,514 steps—just barely 10,000 a day.) OK, I'm now going to bundle...

One year ago today, I started the Brews and Choos project at Macushla Brewing in Glenview, Ill. I chose that brewery because it was easy to get to from my downtown Chicago office; it was farther from the Glenview Metra station than the other brewery in town (Ten Ninety); and I could swing by a third brewery (Old Irving) on my way home. I visited 25 places by March 7th, which gave me enough runway to keep posting reviews until March 26th. Then the project entirely derailed as the country slammed on the...

Yesterday I predicted that I would not get 10,000 steps for the first time in 2021. I was right: I got 7,092. Respectable, but not a goal. Right now I'm at 4,753, so I could get to 10,000 just by going for a 30-minute walk and then doing normal things the rest of the day. Of course, it's -15°C outside, an improvement over this morning's -22°C but still so cold that only obscenities suffice to describe how cold. OK, I can do this...I just don't want to.

At least, I don't think so. I'm about to go to a very small wedding where somehow we'll all stay two meters apart, meaning I'll be in my car or indoors all day. Outdoors, meanwhile, it's -13°C. It got down to -16°C overnight, so this qualifies as an improvement. I was hoping to make 10k steps every day this year, but living in Chicago and having some ability to balance "would like to" against "have to" goals, I say no to today. I will get 5,000 though. I haven't missed that number in six years.

These are just some of the things I read at lunch today: Ezra Klein looks at how a $1.9 trillion proposal got through the US Senate and concludes the body has become "a Dadaist nightmare." Several groups of ice fishermen, 66 in total, found themselves drifting into Green Bay (the bay, not the city) yesterday, when the ice floe they were fishing on broke away from the shore ice. Given that Lake Michigan has one of the smallest ice covers in years right now, this seems predictable and tragic. Writing in...

Chicago's temperature hung out right around freezing from 11am Wednesday until 8pm last night. Then the cold front passed. This morning we woke up to -12°C with "warming" predicted to take that up to -9°C this afternoon. Then...it gets serious: Below zero [Fahrenheit] wind chills Friday through Sunday drop to -20s Sunday morning. We're looking at 10 days of overnight lows below -18°C and daily highs around -10°C. But then, this being Chicago, it will warm up like magic the week of the 22nd, and we'll...