Events

I seem to have a new addition to my family: The jumping-into-the-front-seat thing will not happen again, however. We're getting a car harness tomorrow. Updates as conditions warrant.

Well, if you're a climatologist, it's a calculated value based on a 30-year period, updated every 10 years. And the 19991-2020 climate normals for the US will come out this May. Meanwhile, the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has released some teaser images: NOAA senior science writer Rebecca Lindsey explains: These images are a sneak peak at how the new normals for winter temperature (top) and precipitation (bottom) are different from the current normals, which cover 1981-2010....

I'm shaking my head at email service provider Postmark, who four weeks ago announced they would be phasing out support for TLS 1.0 (a network security protocol). I understood this when they announced it in February, 60 days ahead of their cutover to TLS 1.2, but didn't think it applied to anything of mine. This morning they sent a more focused email saying, "you're getting this email because we can see that this applies to you." Panic ensues. Why panic? Because almost everything I've developed in the...

There is a non-zero chance that my household will expand by 100% this week. Stay tuned.

Welcome to stop #43 on the Brews and Choos project. Closed as of February 2023, according to their Instagram account. Brewery: Flesk Brewing Co., 200 Applebee St., BarringtonTrain line: Union Pacific Northwest, BarringtonTime from Chicago: 65 minutes (Zone G)Distance from station: 700 m Before talking about the brewery, let me talk for a moment about freight-train interference. This satellite photo shows Flesk Brewing adjacent to the Union Pacific Northwest line: The yellow line shows the direction from...

Most parts of the US and Canada entered daylight saving time overnight, spurring the annual calls for changing the practice: The so-called "Sunshine Protection Act of 2021" was reintroduced Tuesday by U.S. Senators Marco Rubio, R-Florida; James Lankford, R-Oklahoma; Roy Blunt, R-Missouri; Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island; Ron Wyden, D-Oregon; Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Mississippi; Rick Scott, R-Florida; and Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts.   In 2018, Florida passed legislation to keep DST, but a federal statue...

This photo came up in my Facebook memories this morning: This struck me for a few reasons. First, as I noted when I posted it on Facebook the morning of 13 March 2017, we hadn't gotten any snow for almost three months that winter. No snow in January; no snow in February; no snow the first 12 days of March; then this crap. Second, four years later, Metra still hasn't finished constructing the new inbound platform at the Ravenswood station. Construction began in 2014. Then it stopped, partially because...

Welcome to stop #42 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Crystal Lake Brewing Co., 150 N. Main St., Crystal LakeTrain line: Union Pacific Northwest, Crystal LakeTime from Chicago: 81 minutes (Zone I)Distance from station: 200 m A bit more than half of the scheduled Metra UP-NW trains end their runs at Crystal Lake on weekends, so you probably won't miss the stop. The brewery is just one block north of the station. And as you can see, on a gorgeous early-spring day like last Sunday, they have a...

Sky Candy Studios in Minneapolis shot this amazing drone video to promote a local bowling alley in one take with no CGI: Minneapolis TV station KARE-11 does the "making of:"

Has this really been a full year? March 11th and 12th seem to be the days when everyone realized this was not a drill. John Scalzi: I was on the JoCo Cruise at the time and had intentionally avoided news up to that point, but then two things happened. One, people came up to me wanting to tell me about Tom Hanks contracting the COVID virus (people knew that I know him personally), and two, my editor Patrick sent me a cryptic email telling me that I should call him immediately. After reminding him I was...