Events

Pilot episode, Evanston Century Theater

Mainly, since I'm going there soon, I should have mentioned the 6.1 earthquake in Napa yesterday morning. Also, a few blocks from where I'm sitting, Chicago is building a new river walk for $100 million. Anyone else looking forward to Rick Perry's next political campaign? It should be fun. Oh, and I went with the REI duffel.

Someimes—rarely—I disconnect for a couple of days. This past weekend I basically just hung out, walked my dog, went shopping, and had a perfectly nice absence from the Web. Unfortunately that meant I had something like 200 RSS articles to plough through, and I just couldn't bring myself to stop dealing with (most) emails. And I have a few articles to read: Everything you know about the British burning Washington 100 years ago yesterday is wrong. Why are Web-special airfares so rare in the U.S.? There is...

The Sun-Times reported last night that the Cubs organization's desire to avoid paying heath-care benefits required by Obamacare led to the tarp-rolling error Tuesday night that, in turn, almost caused a forfeit: The staffing issues that hamstrung the grounds crew Tuesday during a mad dash with the tarp under a sudden rainstorm were created in part by a wide-ranging reorganization last winter of game-day personnel, job descriptions and work limits designed to keep the seasonal workers – including much of...

Crain's has the story this morning about how the airline is adapting to reduced travel expense accounts: Waning customer interest in the costliest tickets prompted American Airlines to drop first class as it adds seats to its 47 long-haul Boeing Co. 777-200s. The aircraft will get new lie-flat business seats — plusher than coach, but lacking first- class flourishes such as pajamas, slippers and an amuse bouche. “We're responding to what demand is,” Casey Norton, an American spokesman, said yesterday....

Philip Shorer on the Atlantic's CityLab blog argues for a 4-day work week: Beyond working more efficiently, a four-day workweek appears to improve morale and well-being. The president of the UK Faculty of Public Health told the Daily Mail that a four-day workweek could help lower blood pressure and increase mental health among employees. Jay Love of Slingshot SEO saw his employee-retention rate shoot up when he phased in three-day weekends. Following this line of thought, TreeHouse, an online education...

The Wall Street Journal explains why the Cubs can sell 38,000 seats and only get 19,000 asses in them: Since 2009, ticket sales are down almost 6,500 a game. Where have all the Cub fans gone? The answer may be that they've in effect awakened from a beer-soaked party. Over the first four years of Ricketts ownership, attendance sank 13.7%. It is flat so far this year versus 2013, but the figures don't include the legions of no-shows. "I have plenty of friends with tickets who can't get rid of them," said...

I'm waiting for Azure to provision a virtual machine for me, so I thought I'd solve a nagging annoyance. Even though I travel a lot, I don't have a good carry-on-sized bag. My medium-sized travel bag, which has been around about ten years, goes into the hold of the airplane and sometimes I don't see it again for an hour after landing at my destination. This is especially irksome when I go on a 3-day business trip. So I've been thinking about replacing my medium-sized bag with a smaller one. I've got it...

I had planned to write today about aviation weather radar, being an accidental landlord in Chicago, or the latest plan to replace a burned-down grocery in my old neighborhood. Instead, I'm going to gush a little about my new phone. I've used a Windows HTC-8 for almost two years now, and I've been frustrated with it nearly the whole time. Today, while waiting out a thunderstorm at the local T-Mobile store, I decided to pick up a Samsung S5. Instead of complaining about the HTC-8, I'll link to a...