Events

Anne and I had company last night: my colleague Cameron Beatley, his wife Sarah, and their two-year-old son Jamie. Parker had never gotten the opportunity to play with a small person before. Cameron apparently got in the way:

Both of my blogs are now up: the Inner Drive Software blog, in which I will write about matters of professional interest (i.e., software, computers, security, and business); and The Daily Parker, in which I talk about nearly everything else. All of this required upgrading dasBlog on my servers, figuring out which theme to use, customizing the themes, and configuring the blogs. Despite my initial experience with dasBlog when I first started using it, I think the current version (1.9) is really quite...

I'm David Braverman, and this is my blog. This blog has actually been around for nearly a year, giving me time to figure out what I wanted to do with it. Initially, I called it "The WASP Blog," the acronym meaning "Weather, Anne, Software, and Politics." It turns out that I have more than four interests, and I post to the blog a lot, so those four categories got kind of large. I also got kind of tired of the old colors. And, today, I finally had the time to upgrade to das Blog 1.9, which came out just a...

The Saudis and French seem to think so: Osama bin Laden is dead. At least according to Saudi intelligence sources cited by a French newspaper, which in turn claims to have obtained a document leaked to them by French counter-intelligence services. The news of the death of al-Qaida's chief was reported in the Saturday edition of l'Est Republicain, a respected regional daily. The French paper cites a memo they claim was obtained from the French counter-espionage agency, the Direction Générale des Services...

Pagans and others who celebrate astronomical events have a lot to celebrate today: Happy autumn; L'shanah tovah; and Ramadan mubarak. It seems, however, there is some controversy about that last one.

Yesterday afternoon, thunderstorms blew through the area, lowering funnel clouds along the way. Evanston tripped their tornado sirens around 6pm as dark roiling wall clouds converged on the city. I felt like Jeff Goldblum in the jeep for a moment, but none of the funnels grew into tornados and the storms left the area by 8pm. The Tribune reports: "A National Weather Service certified weather spotter saw a [funnel cloud]," said Kevin Smith, spokesman for the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and...

Parker loves the camera, and wants to kiss it:

The United States Senate having a debate about the merits of torture should, in any but the most insane world, have the same result as the Vatican debating the merits of Satanism. Why are we even discussing this? No! No torture! Bad Alberto! Bad! The Administration (851 days, 3 hours) apparently things the Gestapo had some good ideas, as Molly Ivins points out: The White House has already specified "water boarding," making some guy think he's drowning for long periods, as a perfectly good interrogation...

I believe strongly that slowing climate change and providing broad-based economic opportunity must include substantial improvements in public transportation. I also belive that Chicago's public transit system ranks second in the country for its reach and convenience, after New York's but ahead of San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, which are also pretty good. That said, the CTA still frustrates the ever-lovin' out of me. This week provides a crystal-clear example. On Tuesday and again on Thursday, I...

Anne just emailed me: "Parker is in the bedroom again." This means our little ball of fur and teeth has probably killed another shoe, or has, in some way, prevented her from working. So far the casualties include an ancient Ikea sofa we were planning to replace anyway, a Dell power cord (fortunately on the DC side of the brick), several throw pillows, and nearly an entire bottle of odor-eating spray-on enzymes. He's the most adorable little thing about 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time he makes...