…And This is Why I Live In Los Angeles

the temperature in Chicago versus Los Angeles in Winter
Screenshots via weather.com
 

It only feels about 104 degrees warmer in Los Angeles than in Chicago when you factor in the wind chill. Yes I feel like an asshole pointing this out but at least I’m not being as blunt about it as my buddy Adam Rose, who posted a sun-drenched photo essay titled, “28 Things to do in Los Angeles in the Dead of Winter” this afternoon.

So to all of you back in the Chi, once you spend a “winter” in Los Angeles, you’ll never understand how or why many people withstand the endless bitter chill by choice. I always say there are 3 seasons here and 3 in chicago. LA has no winter, only a loooong fall. Chicago’s winter tends to skip spring.

I feel for you all — I remember what it’s like. but I am boiling right now in my office with the A/C on and the fan on high with the setting sun beating on my face. Apparently we topped out at 86 today, but hey — I’ve been in the office all day. You know those 75 and sunny with no humidity days that are so rare in Chicago? Yeah, that happens about 300 days a year here.

OK you can punch me now.

American Airlines Mobile Boarding Pass

Tested out American Airlines’ new mobile boarding pass option on my flight from LAX to ORD for Thanksgiving. It worked out, but I was glad that the airport wasn’t busy. I recommend carrying a printed boarding pass for backup while they work out the kinks.

At the checkpoint, it was scanned no problem — in fact the guy tried to spread-zoom my screen iPhone style. Heh. He gave me a laminated green slip of paper with a number on it. Mine was “59” My first green card! After passing through the scanner, the TSA woman (who was obviously new on the job) didn’t know what to do and called for a supervisor who in turn snapped at her for turning her back on the human walk-through scanner. “I’ve seen people run through these before,” he warned.

At the gate, American’s scanners didn’t quite pick up the code, but they were able to check me thru by matching the info on the image on my phone with that in the database.

And then the obvious “joke” about someday soon we’ll all just have barcodes embedded into our foreheads. Maybe we already do.

How Did Blagojevich Manage to Stay in Power so Long?

Guilty Rod BlagojevichWhat the whole world now knows about Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich comes as no surprise to Illinoisians and other observers. a quick search reveals that one of my earliest blog entries here, in Sept. 2005, mentions him as a criminal. Unbelievable?!? Hardly — Blagojevich is the fifth Illinois governor of the last nine to be indicted.

Of course, he got reelected, as Daley always does, because the machine wins — or else. And fortunately Obama made his run this year instead of waiting until the rest of the world got wind of the stench of corruption perennially consuming Springfield / Chicago politics. It always seemed Obama was careful to skirt the machine, with relationships that were chilly — at best — with Blago and Daley.

The real crime here may be at the hands of the Chicago Tribune. How long were they sitting on the story of Blagojevich’s jockeying to dump Tribune editorial board members who slammed him in exchange for working a sweet deal for the sale of the Cubs? Gotta love these quotes though:

“Unless I get something real good [for Senate candidate 1], shit, I’ll just send myself, you know what I’m saying,” Blagojevich was taped saying on November 3rd, the day before Election Day.

“[The Senate seat] is a fucking valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.”

Justice at last. Full coverage at Chicago Public Radio.

Click here for the full 76-page indictment (PDF).

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PHOTOS: Obama Family Slideshow – Election Night

This has received considerable attention in the MSM and among geeks like me. I’d just like to say that it registers with much pride that the Obama administration is so progressive as to embrace such web 2.0 tools (that I’ve tried to convince and train friends and family to similarly use for years) as Flickr, UStream, and now YouTube with the Change.gov channel. And not only that, but to take the extra step and switch the all rights reserved license to a Creative Commons license, which effectively abolishes any copyright / licensing issues anyone would have with republishing these photos non-commercially.


Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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