Events

Deny thy boardroom and refuse thy chiefs, Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn on-time, And let the Cactus purchase you! Sorry. For those joining our program in progress, "Cactus" is the callsign of US Airways, who are now in merger talks with the airline I fly all the time, American. Today American's pilots are trying to make that merger happen more quickly, but they have come to bury American, not to praise it. American's pilots, who spurned management's "last best" offer before the company went into...

Before I forget, and get lost in my work again today: Exelon Energy's power outage SMS notifications actually work. You should sign up. Loyola University ethics professor Al Gini wonders why college students cheat. WBEZ has yet another 'Chicago has Great Craft Breweries' article that I couldn't resist reading. Mitt Romney has the distinction of being the only presidential candidate since before 1988 with net unfavorable ratings in mid-September. Every other candidate, Democratic or Republican, who has...

Last night, around 11:30pm, the power went out in my apartment building and the ones on either side. I know this because the five UPS units around my place all started screaming immediately. There are enough of them to give me about 10 minutes to cleanly shut down the servers, which I did, but not before texting the local power company to report it. They had it on again at 1:15am, just after I'd fallen asleep. I finally got to bed around 2 after bringing all the servers back online, rebooting my desktop...

My latest 10th Magnitude blog post is up, in which I dig into Microsoft's changes to Azure Web Sites announced Monday. The biggest change is that you can now point your own domain names at Azure Web Sites, which solves a critical failing with the product that has dogged them from its June release. Since this Daily Parker post was embargoed for a day while my 10th Magnitude post got cleared with management, I've played with the new Shared tier some more. I've come to a couple of conclusions: It might...

Crain's Chicago Business yesterday ran the first part in a series about How Chicago became one of the nation's most digital cities. Did you know we have the largest datacenter in the world here? True: Inside the former R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. printing plant on East Cermak Road, next to McCormick Place, is the world's largest, most-connected Internet data center, according to industry website Data Center Knowledge. It's where more than 200 carriers connect their networks to the rest of the world, home...

It seems that the more I have to do, the more I'm able to do. In other words, when I haven't got a lot of assignments, I tend to veg out more. Right now I'm on a two-week development cycle, with an old client that predates my current job anxious for some bug fixes. Oddly, the old client tends to get his bug fixes when I have more to do at my regular gig. Of course, blogging might suffer a bit. In fact I just submitted a draft blog entry for the 10th Magnitude Developer Blog that should hit tomorrow...

Remember how I've spent the last three months moving stuff into the Cloud? And how, as of three weeks ago, I only had two more services to move? I saved the best for last, and I don't know for sure now whether I can move them both without some major changes. Let me explain the economics of this endeavor, and why it's now more urgent that I finish the migration. And then, as a bonus, I'll whinge a bit about why one of the services might have to go away completely. I currently have a DSL and a 20-amp...

I've banged away at the 30-Ballpark Geas for four seasons now, long enough for three new parks to spring up since I started. Next weekend I'm visiting Cincinnati, the 24th park, leaving eight to go. (Citi Field and New Yankee Stadium got added to the list because they replaced parks I visited before finishing the Geas. The third new park, New Marlin Ballpark, replaced one I hadn't ever visited before, and therefore wasn't already ticked off only to be un-ticked by new construction.) With the MLB 2013...

Everyone knows that San Diego has year-round perfect temperatures, lots of sun, and great pizza. Except today, only two out of three: The National Weather Service issued a hazardous weather outlook for Friday and Saturday, saying temperatures could reach up to 38°C near the beach. Extremely high temperatures are unusual for the coast, which is where people typically go to escape the heat. This weekend the beach could be as warm as the inland areas. At this writing, the temperature has hit 41°C at...

Via the Economist's Gulliver blog, Airbus Industrie has some ideas about the future: More flights, fewer emissions and quicker passenger journey times. Welcome to Smarter Skies, the latest installment in The Future by Airbus. For the first time, our vision of sustainable aviation in 2050 looks beyond aircraft design to how the aircraft is operated both on the ground and in the air in order to meet the expected growth in air travel in a sustainable way. Already today, if the Air Traffic Management (ATM)...