Events

Five years ago, on 6 January 2008, I opened a FogBugz case (#528) to "Create NOAA Downloader". The NOAA downloader goes out to the National Weather Service, retrieves raw weather data files, and stores the files and some metadata in Windows Azure storage. Marking this work item "resolved" Well, I just finished it, and therefore I have finished all of the pieces of the GetWeather application. And with that, I've finished the last significant piece of the Weather Now 4.0 rewrite. Total time to rewrite...

Via Fallows, a software designer explains how a simple feature isn't: This isn’t off the shelf, but that’s OK — we’ll just build it, it’s not rocket science. And it’s a feature that’s nice, not one that’s essential. Lot’s of people won’t use these tabs. So, what do we need to think about when adding a bar of tabs like this? The whole point is to have a view state that summarizes what you’re looking at and how it’s presented. You want to switch between view states. So we need a new object that...

Why? Because it's too cold for clouds. Actually, this is one of those correlation-causation issues: cold days like today (it's -15°C right now) are usually clear and sunny because both conditions result from a high-pressure system floating over the area. Still, it's pretty cold: A February hasn’t opened this cold here in the 17 years since 1996. The combination of bitterly cold temperatures, hovering at daybreak Friday near or below zero [Fahrenheit] in many corners of the metro area, plus the biting...

The Cranky Flier wants to know: Now the latest “news” of the day is that American CEO Tom Horton may end up being the Chairman of the combined entities. There is some good and some bad to this kind of thing. The good is pretty simple to explain. If Horton is willing to settle for a Tilton-esque agreement where he can just sit in a fancy office and collect a huge paycheck for a couple of years, then that finally removes the last real barrier to a merger – the fight being put up by management. On the...

With former governor George Ryan's release from prison this morning, Illinois has finally returned to the situation of having fewer former governors in prison than out of it. In an especially nice touch, former governor Jim Thompson is Ryan's attorney. I guess Dan Walker and Jim Edgar are both still alive, too, so the current count is: 1 incumbent, non-convicted governor; 2 former, non-convicted governors; 2 former, convicted governors; and 1 former governor still in jail. There's a nice symmetry there...

I have a new post up at my employer's developers blog. Hard-core Daily Parker enthusiasts may have seen it already. Still, click through to XM. We like blog visitors!

Chicago's normal high temperature for April 17th is 16°C, which by strange coincidence is the new record high for January 29th: The warm front associated with the strong low pressure system passed through the Chicago area between 2 and 3AM on it’s way north and at 6AM is oriented east-west along the Illinois-Wisconsin state line. South of the front south to southwest winds 24 to 45 km/h and temperatures in the upper 10s°C prevail – Wheeling actually reported 15.6°C at 6AM. North of the front through...

I'm sitting at my remote office working on a conundrum: how to balance human usability against good software design. The problem is: how can I create an Azure table partitioning scheme that uses Azure efficiently and still allows the user (me) efficiently to troubleshoot problems with the feature in question. This is a direct consequence of the issues I worked on this morning. The feature is the component of the Weather Now parsing system that stores raw weather data from NOAA temporarily. By...

Even though we've just gotten our first snowfall, and today has started giving us snow, freezing rain, sleet, and icy roads, there is good news. January 27th is when things officially start looking brighter in Chicago every year. Tonight, for the first time in almost two months, the sun sets at 5pm. Then things start to become noticeably brighter: a 7am sunrise next Monday, a 5:30pm sunset two weeks after that, then a 6:30am sunrise less than a week later. Yes, this is dorky, but trust me: you'll notice...

The Inner Drive Technology International Data Center continues to whir away (and use electricity), despite my best efforts to shut it down by moving everything to Microsoft Windows Azure. Most of the delay finishing the move has nothing to do with its technology. Simply, my real job has taken a lot of time this month as we've worked toward launching a new application tomorrow. Against the 145 hours spent on that project this month, not counting the 38 hours spent helping with other projects, squeezing...