Events

First, I'm starting this at 11:11 on 11-10-10, which is 943 in binary (except in Europe where it's 10-11-10 11:11, or 751 decimal). This bit of randomness was brought to you by the letter "geek" and the number "nerd." Now, my real post. Just last night I finished, after two and a half years, the 38 novels in Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, with I Shall Wear Midnight. Sir Terry is still alive and writing, but sadly he has a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's called posterior cortical atrophy...

Anyone catch this Daily Show bit last week? The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c Look Who's Stalking www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorRally to Restore Sanity Well, the dude got fired today: A hearing that was supposed to be held Tuesday was moved up to this afternoon. Philip Thomas, Shirvell's attorney, said he showed up for the meeting and was read one sentence. “They said essentially that as a result of Andrew’s conduct, it’s become impossible for him to...

I want to be rich enough someday to afford to live in a mews, like this one by the Brompton Oratory: That one is even conveniently located near Hyde Park, which looks great this time of year: Later in the day, I got to the Chelsea Embankment around sunset. This is the Battersea Power Station, which I imagine made Chelsea (and Kensington and much of south-central London) uninhabitable when it was operational:

Bought 2010-09-30; Started AA47 LHR-ORD

It's getting on toward 7:30 in Chicago, and the sun still hasn't risen yet. We return to standard time tonight, meaning the sun will rise at 6:30 tomorrow. Today, however, will be the latest sunrise in Chicago (and in the rest of those parts of the U.S. that observe daylight saving time) until 2021. What's wrong with the last weekend in October? Or, as they do in parts of Europe, the last weekend in September? The "extra" hour of daylight in the evening has to come from somewhere. I, for one, prefer...

Kindle

For no reason I can describe, on Monday night I absently browsed through aa.com thinking about being somewhere else. I didn't really have any specific destination in mind, other than one that didn't require changing planes (which, living in Chicago, and flying American Airlines, encompasses a lot of them). It turned out, there were frequent-flier miles seats available for this weekend to my second-favorite city in the world. Amazing. So, I have now arrived, a little fuzzy on the date and time, but quite...