The intersection of my vacation next week and my group's usual work-from-home schedule means I won't come back to my office for two weeks. Other than saving a few bucks on Metra this month, I'm also getting just a bit more time with Cassie before I leave her for a week.
I've also just finished an invasive refactoring of our product's unit tests, so while those are running I either stare out my window or read all these things:
- Yes, Virginia (and Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina), you are much better off than you were four years ago.
- The Illinois Attorney General has filed an environmental suit against Trump Tower for refusing to fix its water-intake system.
- A New York City cop who fought against "courtesy cards" won a $175,000 settlement from the city.
- A developer plans to raze a 175-year-old house in Glencoe, Ill., designed by William Boyington, because we can't have nice things anymore.
- Speaking of not having nice things, after £175m spent and 12 years of construction, the Old Street roundabout in Islington, London, looks...about the same as before.
Finally, the New York Times ran a story in its Travel section Tuesday claiming Marseille has some of the best pizza in Europe. I will research this assertion and report back on the 24th.
Just a quick note while I've got my head down with an ugly commit and probably a few follow-up fixes.
After a lovely autumn-cool weekend, today we have some summer-like weather, just warm enough to make me wonder whether I should turn on the air conditioning. I'll decide around 6, I think.
On the other hand, I wonder why I'm sitting inside on one of the last days like this we'll have for six months?
I'm dog-sitting this weekend, so this is the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes just before 7am:
Telling Butters to go away had the opposite effect of what I'd intended:
Believe it or not, this pathetic look came after I fed them both:
They're now asleep on the couch together. At some point today, they're getting an hour-long walk—which won't actually go that far, because beagles are scent hounds. Every blade of grass must be sniffed.
I just finished a 75-minute open-level French test as part of a QA study that Duolingo invited me to participate in. What an eye-opener. And quelle épuisement!
The test started well enough but got a lot harder as it went on, for two principal reasons. First, the order of sections went precisely in the order of my abilities: reading, writing, listening, speaking. Turns out I read French a lot better than I write it, write it better than I understand it, and speak it like a reject from a Pink Panther film. Some poor evaluator will have to listen to me going on for nearly three minutes about how hard the job of cat-herder is. What's worse, I only just now learned the word berger. "Herder des chats" is, apparently, not a thing, but berger de chats potentially is. I hope whoever scores that response at least has a sense of humor.
The second reason it got harder is that "open level" bit I mentioned. Each section got progressively more difficult, such that by the end of the listening part I could barely pick out the topic let alone individual words. Senegalese fishermen, you may be surprised to learn, are harder to understand than recorded announcements at train stations.
Still, I'm glad I did it. I don't know if they'll share the results with me, because they only want the data to calibrate their language-learning product. I hope they do, particularly before I pop out of the Chunnel just over two weeks from now.
I'm dog-sitting again, so a nervous beagle wandered up to my office during the test to see why I hadn't fed her yet. I suppose they both could use an around-the-block and some kibble. I will try to speak French to them, if only for my own practice.
Oh, and if you haven't been able to get to Weather Now this afternoon, that's because I shut it down for a bit while I root out a connection-exhaustion problem. I believe there are too many bots hitting it the last few days, but it still shouldn't crash when they do. Until I can fix the problem, or get rid of the bots, I'm only going to have it up a little bit at a time. (Its data collection continues unaffected, however.)
I spent 56 minutes trying to get ADT to change a single setting at my house, and it turned out, they changed the wrong setting. I will try again Friday, when I have time.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world:
Finally, Slow Horses season 4 came out today, so at some point this evening I'll visit Slough House and get a dose of Jackson Lamb's sarcasm.
During this last full week of summer, I haven't had a lot of time at home because we had to work in the office every day. And what a week.
I got home from work (and got Cassie home from day camp) right before some pretty impressive storms hit on Tuesday:
After discussing with a friend how a lot of the humidity we've experienced this summer comes from corn and soybean transpiration to our west, he discussed it with Bing's DALL-E 3:
(Not sure what happened with the spine of the book...or the windmill in the cover photo...or the title...but I did laugh.)
Relief is coming, though. A line of thunderstorms went through just before sunrise, and the cold front driving them will drop the dewpoint from 21°C now to 15°C by this time tomorrow:
Then Wednesday night my doorbell camera picked something up that I didn't expect:
Turns out, I have a new houseguest, who has politely set up shop by my front door to help keep mosquitoes (and one unfortunate cicada!) out:
That is a furrow or foliate spider, as far as I can tell.
Wednesday evening she even got a visitor:
Sadly, as is typical of orb weaver romances, her gentleman caller probably did not survive the evening. I don't judge; she's caught a lot of mosquitoes, she's entitled to celebrate. And I think I saw some baby spiders last night, so maybe I'll invite a couple inside?
Today, I'm taking a PTO day to catch up on everything, and to clear a path for my 4-hour walk tomorrow.
A few weeks ago I planned a PTO day to take a 25 km walk tomorrow along the North Branch Trail with pizza at the end. (I'll do my annual marathon walk in October.) Sadly, the weather forecast bodes against it, with scattered thunderstorms and dewpoints over 22°C. But, since I've already got tomorrow off, and I have a solid PTO bank right now, I'll still take the day away from the office. And autumn begins Sunday.
Good thing, too, because the articles piled up this morning, and I haven't had time to finish yesterday's:
Finally, Washington Post reporter Christine Mi spent 80 hours crossing the US on Amtrak this summer. I am envious. Also sad, because the equivalent trip in Europe would have taken less than half the time on newer rolling stock, and not burned a quarter of the Diesel.
I had planned a longer post this evening, but I had about 2 hours of chorus work to do and I didn't have any energy for half an hour after getting home. We may have our hottest night of the year tonight, with a forecast low of 26°C, before having our hottest day of the year tomorrow. (We had 36°C on June 17th; tomorrow could be 37°C.)
So I'm going to drink another glass or two of ice water and pat Cassie for a bit, then gird myself for tomorrow's sticky walk to doggie day care.
Funny thing about visiting the West Coast: staying awake past 10pm is not fun, and I wake up at 5am. Plus, Hazel decided that I was her person last night, so at various points of the night I had a 20-kilo pittie in the crook of my knees or pushing me off the bed. (Note to Cassie: this is why you sleep on the couch.)
We have typical Seattle weather today, so we'll be dodging raindrops, and possible making a Brews & Choos visit. Updates as conditions warrant.
I'm flying out this evening for a couple of days in Seattle, where apparently we'll need SCUBA equipment on account of the rain. Today in Chicago, however, we have nearly-perfect weather, so I have no reason to complain yet.
Regular posting will return Sunday.