Events

I spent part of this afternoon rooting around in my email correspondance from 1999 and 2000. Forgetting the wherefores and whatnots of the emails themselves, just getting into the Outlook files proved difficult. How many passwords does anyone remember from nine years ago? I actually remember a few, but not, unfortunately, the ones I needed. Sure, I found them eventually, but heavens. That's half an hour of my life I'll never get back, and it was my own fault.

Writer Neal Gabler says it's not about Goldwater, it's about McCarthy: McCarthy, Wisconsin's junior senator, was the man who first energized conservatism and made it a force to reckon with. When he burst on the national scene in 1950 waving his list of alleged communists who had supposedly infiltrated Harry Truman's State Department, conservatism was as bland, temperate and feckless as its primary congressional proponent, Ohio Sen. Robert Taft.... McCarthy was another thing entirely. What he lacked in...

Ah, Chicago in December: gray, sleet, snow, wind, rain. Builds character: The snow has begun falling in Chicago, and more is on the way. There are flurries downtown, though nothing is sticking. Matt Smith of the city's Department of Streets & Sanitation said in an e-mail that no trucks have been sent out, noting that "We have good air and ground temps and that could continue to be the case for quite some time." Snow has started to accumulate on the ground and roads in the south suburbs around the...

Via Talking Points Memo, President-Elect Obama will announce Hillary Clinton as his nominee for Secretary of State tomorrow in Chicago: Obama plans to announce the New York senator as part of his national security team at a press conference in Chicago, [Democratic officials] said Saturday. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly for the transition team. In unrelated news, today is the last day of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Why? Why? Why? The only thing that makes sense to me: someone wants to start a war. I hope to all humanity India and Pakistan keep their senses over the next few days. So do the Indians and Pakistanis, I expect.

Today (in North America; tomorrow worldwide) is the 17th Annual Buy Nothing Day, "sponsored" by Adbusters: Suddenly, we ran out of money and, to avoid collapse, we quickly pumped liquidity back into the system. But behind our financial crisis a much more ominous crisis looms: we are running out of nature… fish, forests, fresh water, minerals, soil. What are we going to do when supplies of these vital resources run low? There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet...

Most Daily Parker readers can skip this (long) post about software. But if you're interested in C# 3.0, LINQ, or FogBugz, read on. I use FogBugz's time tracking tool to provide tracability in my billing. If I bill a client 2.75 hours for work on a bug, I want the client to see the exact times and dates I worked on the bug along with all the other details. And because I track non-billable time as well, and I often work in coffee shops or places like the Duke of Perth, I wind up with lots of tiny time...

Calculated Risk hits the nail on the head: "[W]hat happens to U.S. interest rates if China slows their investment in dollar denominated assets?" Hint: nothing good...

I've just gotten from Amazon two of the best movies ever made, worth the extra few bucks for Blu-Ray: That said, I'm under my dad's orders to finish Deadwood before watching anything else...

I had to scrutinize my logbook to figure out when I last flew at night: 26 April 2006, in Nashua, N.H. So I took a flight instructor with me this past Sunday to get "recurrent." (Regulations require that pilots make three full-stop landings at night—further defined as 1 hour after sunset until 1 hour before sunrise—within 90 days in order to carry passengers at night.) I had a good flight, they can use the airplane again, the instructor enjoyed flying with someone who knew how to fly (as opposed to a...