Events

In a happy coincidence with my activities yesterday, it turns out that today is the 150th anniversary of the first cross-country express train, which pulled into San Francisco on 4 June 1876 after a 4-day trip from New York City. Tickets cost $40 for third class (about $1,245 today) up to over $100 in first class ($3,112 today).

As promised, here are some photos of Big Boy 4014 from yesterday:

I had planned today to see the Big Boy locomotive, visit two new Brews & Choos locations on the same train line, and end up at Aba for their transcendent tamarind BBQ pork belly bites.

Stephan Pastis toots Tuesday to start the day as well. Elsewhere:

This is the MV , a 306-meter (1,004-foot) bulk carrier steaming south on Lake Michigan:

Despite fighting with Microsoft Azure Table Storage over whether the dev/test environment's tables support reading and writing (they haven't since 11:18 am today), I was able to release a new version of the Inner Drive Journal, the engine that The Daily Parker runs on.

As promised, Cassie got a long walk in the woods yesterday, then hundreds of pats from strangers when my friends met up with me at Sketchbook Brewing in Skokie. The weather cooperated magnificently, without getting either too hot or too cool, though my sunscreen appears to have lost some of its oompf later in the day. And I discovered that Sketchbook has two charge ports, so I was able to recharge my car for—not kidding—72c.