Mokka mit Schlag

Ring-billed Gull, Larus delawarensis
Chicago lakefront. 2007-07-25

Last night after the conference was over for the day, I went for a stroll along Lake Michigan from north of Soldier field to the 31st Street beach. It was not an especially birdy location, too little habitat, too many boats, cars, and lawns. It’s supposed to be better in winter and migration. Still I got 13 species, all new for me in the state:

• Canada Goose
• Mallard
• American Kestrel
• Ring-billed Gull
• Rock Pigeon
• Chimney Swift
• American Crow
• Barn Swallow
• European Starling
• Cedar Waxwing
• Common Grackle
• American Goldfinch
• House Sparrow

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Sachem Skipper, Atalopedes campestris
Ridgewood Reservoir, 2007-07-14
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Last night at the beginning of class, my TiBook couldn’t wake the screen up from sleep, though strangely the cursor was visible, and responded to the trackpad. However nothing else would. I had to force reboot with the power button.

When the computer came back up, all my preferences had reverted to their defaults. There was also a mysterious “Safe Preferences” folder in my ~/Library folder. However it only held a couple of Apple preferences. Deleting it did not restore my original prefs, and near as I can tell they weren’t saved anywhere when the TiBook reverted to defaults. Naturally this happened immediately before I’m leaving for a three-day trip when I still haven’t packed.
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Remember when you could cut the lines at the airport by using those new-fangled kiosks all the non-techies were afraid of? Then when you could check in at home and print your own boarding pass (and incidentally edit its PDF source code to bypass what little security the ID checks provided)?

I think those days are over. (Except for editing the boarding pass source code. That still works.) This morning at JFK the smart move would have been to wait till you got to the airport to check in. The line for offline checkin was nonexistent. The line for online baggage check was wrapped around three times and growing fast, and this was at 5:15 in the morning. Heck, you probably could have showed up at the airport with no reservation and oversized luggage, bought a one-way ticket using cash, and still gotten through the line faster.

The general public has finally discovered the wonders of online check-in, and in a completely predictable tragedy of the commons, it’s now just as slow as regular check-in used to be, except we’re doing more of the work. It’s like thirty years ago when everyone started using self-serve to save money, and soon self-serve prices had risen to where full-service used to be.

Long-horned Bee, Melissodes bimaculata
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2007-07-22

There are actually several species and genera of Long-horned Bees. They don’t have individual common names.
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