Events

The ancient spreadsheet package Lotus 1-2-3 set "0 January 1900" as its day zero. Whenever you entered a date into a Lotus spreadsheet, the program actually stored the number of days before or since that mythical date. Microsoft Excel needed to maintain compatability with Lotus early on, so it set 30 December 1899 as its day zero, which worked very well except for dates between 30 December 1899 and 1 January 1900, and it added the other mythical date 29 February 1900 because Lotus had that bug as well....

(Note: The developer in question does not work for my company.) I'm looking at some code in one of the products I'm responsible for, and I just came across this. // ReSharper disable once RedundantAssignment Tuple<List<SomeChartData>, string> objReportdata = null; Let's review the WTFs: The developer didn't understand ReSharper's admonition that the "= null" is completely useless, so he disabled the warning. The Tuple is actually the return value of the method. It doesn't even need to be declared as a...

After almost two years, the trail opens June 6th: Built on a long-defunct railroad line, the trail runs through Bucktown, Wicker Park, Logan Square and Humboldt Park.  Work on the $95 million project began in fall 2013.  Take a look at the path under construction. When the trail opens, four of the access points will be through ground-level parks: Walsh Park, 1722 N. Ashland Ave.; Churchill Park, 1825 N. Damen Ave.; Julia de Burgos Park, 1805 N. Albany Ave.; and Park 567, 1805 N. Milwaukee Ave. When...

Parker didn't get picked up this morning by 8:15 so I had to cart him off to day care. Apparently the guy showed up around 8:20. But no matter, because at that point I was nearly an hour past the time I usually leave and nearly 90 minutes past his usual Monday pick-up time. So, survey: should I just trust that he'll get picked up and leave him home? Or should I continue to make sure he leaves the house before I do, just in case there's a problem and they can't pick him up?

New Republic's John Paul Rollert explains: That a flight on Spirit will occasionally cost you less than $40 highlights for its defenders the airline’s essential promise: bargain basement ticket prices. “Offering our low fares requires doing some things that some people complain about,” [Spirit’s CEO, Ben] Baldanza wrote in an email to the Dallas Morning News last April, after the paper ran a story about the egregious number of complaints his company receives. “[H]owever, these reduce costs which gives...

...and also preparing for a fundraiser at which I'm performing tomorrow: Microsoft has moved Azure Premium Storage to general availability... ...and also improved SQL backup and export services. Coincidentally, my favorite performance analysis tool just added a feature I need this week. Color me happy. The United Center, where the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks play, is getting beer robots. British photographer Marcus Lyon does not like sprawl. And his photos are kind of cool. There's also a...

I'm still trying to debug the performance of our principal application, which shouldn't be struggling the way it is. I did, however, take two minutes out of my life to watch this: