It’s crunch time at work this week. Deadline to meet and I’m pretty much swamped. If I’m slow to get back to you now you know why 
Thanks,
The Management
Salmon roasting on the grill, great beer in hand and a beautiful day. Life is good today.
Posted in General, Life
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Prom 55: Jamie Cullum
*AWESOME* concert! Jamie Cullum is just fantastic.
Update: This concert got me thinking how odd it was that I was listening to a Prom that wasn’t classical music. Not sure how often that happens but none of the ones I’ve listened to in the past have been anything but classical or contemporary orchestral works. Cool stuff.
Duran Duran – Astronaut – (Reach Up for The) Sunrise
Duran Duran – Astronaut – Want You More
Duran Duran – Astronaut – Nice
Duran Duran – Big – I Don’t Want Your Love
Duran Duran – Rio – Rio
Chicago – XXXII: Stone Of Sisyphus – All The Years
Robert Lamm – Subtlety & Passion – I Could Tell You Secrets
Robert Lamm – Subtlety & Passion – Another Sunday
Robert Lamm – Subtlety & Passion – It’s a Groove, This Life
Shania Twain – Come on Over – Don’t Be Stupid (You Know I Love You)
Shania Twain -Up1 – Up!
Kelly Clarkson – Breakaway – Since U Been Gone
The Corrs – In Blue – Breathless
Styx – Kilroy Was Here – Mr. Roboto
Don Henley – The End Of The Innocence- The End Of The Innocence
Don Henley – The End Of The Innocence- New York Minute
Palais Schaumburg – - Easy Go
Phil Colins – Face Value – In The Air Tonight
Posted in General, Music
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I really loathe knobs like this woman:
“Here we have an openly gay federal judge, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, substituting his views for those of the American people and of our Founding Fathers who, I promise you, would be shocked by courts that imagine they have the right to put gay marriage in our Constitution,” said Maggie Gallagher, chairwoman of The National Organization for Marriage, a group that helped fund Proposition 8
Really sick of these folks who think they’re the ones speaking for the American people. Hate to break this to you Maggie but I’m one of the sub-groups of the American people who don’t really give a damn about gay marriage. In my mind gay people have every right to be married. It won’t affect my marriage at all and if they love each other who are you to say whether they should be married?
I’m sure however you really aren’t too concerned with what the Founding Fathers would think of this. I say that because you obviously haven’t read (or don’t remember) your history: many of the Founding Fathers were slave owners. Not only that but some of them (cough, Jefferson, cough) had extra-marital relations with their slaves. Do you think the Founding Fathers should be shocked that we outlawed slavery? Do you think a proper marriage includes having sex with other people you “own”?
Not only do you not understand our history you don’t even understand how our government works. The judicial branch can’t “put gay marriage in our Constitution”…only the Congress could do that. Stop waving the Founding Fathers and the Constitution around like you really understand what they, and the document you’re waving, really stands for.
I’ve been trying to branch out a bit recently and listen to composers that I haven’t listened to before. I’ve heard a lot about Anton Bruckner and the music sounded interesting so I checked out copies of his 5th and 8th symphonies from the local library (live recordings from the Munich Philharmonic conducted by Sergiu Celibidache).
The 5th Symphony did absolutely nothing for me. It was long and tedious. According to the Wikipedia article “Many consider this symphony to be Bruckner’s lifetime masterpiece in the area of counterpoint.” That might very well be but this was just not an interesting work for me. My bias is toward the Baroque era while also liking bits and pieces of various other periods. I have not yet found a composer any further out in the symphonic music spectrum than Beethoven that I really enjoy. Bruckner’s 5th did not change my mind.
Bruckner’s 8th Symphony was a lot more enjoyable. Bruckner apparently had a love of reworking pieces (much to the consternation of musicologists) and this was no exception when it was trashed by a conductor that had made his 7th Symphony quite a success. This piece surprised me in many spots because of similarity in sound to several contemporary 20th century composers I have listened to such as Alan Hovhaness. There are sections where the orchestration reminded me of the opening passages of Hovhaness’ “Loon Lake” symphony (No. 63), which is incredible given that “Loon Lake” was written the year I graduated from high school (1988)…almost 100 years after Brucker had revised his 8th symphony. All that being said my opinion of Bruckner wasn’t changed by the 8th Symphony either.
To someone who really studies music I suspect Bruckner’s works are a fantastic source of material. To me there just isn’t enough going on there to keep me interested. When I listen to Beethoven’s works I quite literally am overcome with emotion. When I listen to Mozart, or Bach, or Handel they also move me emotionally in a way that works of Bruckner that I listened to just did not. I know others feel differently but I’m not so sure I’ll be listening to more Bruckner anytime soon. I have so much Bach and Handel to enjoy 
My corn stalks have been invaded by squirrels. Went out today after the storms were over to find many of the best cobs eaten already. Time to get out the Bobbex-R and hope it works.
MG Siegler gives his take on the HTC Evo 4G Android-based smart phone and the Android fanboys come out in droves. Read the comments. Disturbing stuff to say the least.
Posted in Technology
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Tagged android, evo_4g
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The last week or so has been very interesting across the many technology blogs that I follow. Ever since the Google IO conference and the announcement of Android 2.2 the amount of hand-wringing going on over on the iPhone side of things is getting ridiculous. Just as ridiculous are the people on the Android side finger pointing and strutting around like Android 2.2 has just killed the iPhone dead. Both sides are being silly.
For the people on the iPhone side: relax. Apple knows what they’re doing. They still own the smartphone market and likely will for the foreseeable future (Android people don’t tell me about the numbers. I know the sales numbers. They aren’t even half the story). Why? Because they care about the little things that normal people care about. Google has on it’s side creepy commercials for the Droid that certainly don’t appeal to the mass market and a UI, which while getting much better, still isn’t an iPhone. All that being said its good that the iPhone finally has real competition. Apple needs a kick in the pants and Android 2.2 and the new HTC phones are that kick in the pants.
For the people on the Android side: stop being jealous and enjoy your damned phones already. Your behavior over the last week has been nothing short of pathetic and childish. Apple isn’t going to sit down and roll over because Android 2.2 is finally making Android a good platform. Normal people don’t give a crap about the Java VM in Android 2.2 (just like they don’t give a damn about Objective-C on the iPhone). Like I said to the Apple people: competition is good. Both sides will benefit. Your OS is getting there and has some features that the iPhone should think about but its still a geek phone. The phones don’t have Apple design flair nor does the user interface. Accessories? iPhone again. The platform is growing up and thats good but Apple will still be around for a long time.
I really don’t understand how technology people can always think there will be an iPhone killer that comes from outside of Apple. The only thing that will be an iPhone killer is Apple itself and I’m going to bet that won’t happen. Android isn’t going to kill the iPhone. If anything Android will make the iPhone a better platform than it is now. So lets all enjoy our platform of choice and get on with life. Honestly life is too short to argue about crap like this. Lets get out there and make some cool apps for *both* platforms.
Posted in Apple, Java, iPhone
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Tagged android, iPhone
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I’m kind of a weather geek so every morning I read the “scientific forecaster discussion” that is made available by wunderground.com as part of their local forecasts. Just had to share this one after reading it this morning (full quote below the selections):
Primary forecast challenges this morning revolve around thunderstorm chances the next few days…followed by finding just the right word to describe how gorgeous the weather is going to be Friday into the weekend.
…so have adjusted pop grids accordingly. With the weaker cap do have a haunting feeling in the back of my mind that the lake breeze may try to fire off a shower or two given the much weaker cap today…?
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is about the only word that can describe how great the forecast looks by Friday into the weekend!
Thanks Izzi….you gave me a smile this morning.
Full text:
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Area forecast discussion
National Weather Service Chicago/Romeoville Illinois
642 am CDT Tuesday may 25 2010
Discussion…
335 am CDT
Primary forecast challenges this morning revolve around thunderstorm
chances the next few days…followed by finding just the right word
to describe how gorgeous the weather is going to be Friday into the
weekend.
The “butterfly effect” thunderstorms that affected the area Monday
evening into the overnight hours have finally diminished this
morning. The “butterfly” responsible for these storms appears to be
a compact vorticity that moved southwest around the northwest periphery
of the upper low over the Carolinas. This vorticity fired convection over
western Tennessee and Kentucky Monday morning. Northward surging
outflow from those storms fired a series of additional storms
progressively farther north across Illinois with the composite
outflow from all of those storms moving into our southern County Warning Area late
Monday evening. By that time…weak cold advection in the middle levels
had finally eaten away enough at the cap to allow the outflow to
push parcels to their level of free convection. Nocturnal cooling/stabilizing has finally
killed off the storms and expect US to remain dry through the rest
of the morning.
Deep easterly flow seen on the Wolcott in profiler is actually
advecting in drier air from the east into Illinois this morning.
GOES sounder derived precipitable water imagery shows this drier
airmass steadily marching westward into Illinois with precipitable
water values dropping a half to three quarters of an inch. This
drier and less unstable airmass will result in a east-west gradient
in tstorm chances this afternoon…with eastern areas likely to
remain dry while western County Warning Area stands a decent shot at seeing scattered
diurnal pulse thunderstorms fire up. WRF-arw run by weather forecast office lsx depicts
this scenario nicely with very little quantitative precipitation forecast over eastern 2/3rds of
County Warning Area…so have adjusted pop grids accordingly. With the weaker cap do
have a haunting feeling in the back of my mind that the lake breeze
may try to fire off a shower or two given the much weaker cap
today…but given the drier/more stable airmass it will be
penetrating suspect the chances of that occurring are low enough to
keep out of the forecast.
By Wednesday the front currently out in the plains will push east
toward the region…but also be washing out at the same time as it
runs into the upper ridge. While the front will be washing out…it
should encounter the lingering moist/unstable airmass over the upper
MS valley ahead of it…so that even the weak convergence with what
is left of the front likely to kick a fairly decent coverage of
convection. Deep layer shear is weak…so expect that convection
will be fairly disorganized but with a rather high coverage so have
bumped probability of precipitation up a bit over western County Warning Area. Convection should be largely
diurnal in nature Wednesday and should diminish Wednesday evening before
re-firing again along whatever is left of the front Thursday
afternoon. Given how ill-defined the front is forecast to be by then
its hard to draw a line of where there is a chance and no chance of
tstorm development. Given that uncertainty have maintained slight
chance probability of precipitation up to the WI border Thursday but have a hunch that later
forecasts will be able to remove these probability of precipitation leaving areas north of
I-80 with a pretty nice day Thursday.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is about the only word that can
describe how great the forecast looks by Friday into the weekend!
Upper ridge should remain anchored over the upper Mississippi Valley
providing for subsidence and cloudless or nearly cloudless skies. In
addition…Canadian high pressure will nose down into the upper
Great Lakes providing for light northerly flow which should send the
current humid airmass well southward and knocking our dewpoints back
down into the 40s. That sets the stage for large diurnal swings with
clear and rather crisp mornings followed by sunny and very mild to
warm afternoons. Each day will feature some lake cooling…though it
should be most prevalent on Friday when background synoptic gradient
is northerly providing for a bit more umph in the inland push of the
marine airmass. Lighter gradient Saturday and Sunday will mean less
of a lake push…though still cooler conditions Lakeside.
Izzi
&&
Climate…
Not only did rockford’s 93 degree high temperature break a daily
record but it also Marks the earliest it has gotten this warm during
the year since back in 1975 when the high temperature om may 19th
got up to 95 degrees. The average first date for a high of at least
93 degrees in Rockford is June 28th. Interestingly…it was only a
couple years ago back in 2008 that Rockford didnt see their first 90
until September 2nd…what a difference a couple years can make!!
While shy of a record…in Chicago the 91 degree high tempeature
Monday Marks the earliest in the year it has gotten this warm
since 1998 when the high temperature also got up to 91 degrees.
The average first date for a high temperature above 90 degrees in
Chicago is June 14th.
Izzi
Posted in Weather
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Tagged Weather, wordsmith
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