Last night at 5:45, Margaret and I boarded the El train to take to the suburban rail Metra train, which we took to Chicago’s Union Station, where we were scheduled to catch the 7:45 Lake Shore Express to Rochester, where we anticipated meeting Liz Lawley for a cup of coffee, then spending the weekend with Nate. “Careful,” we warned Liz, “Amtrak has been known to arrive as many as four hours late, and then we’d have to connect directly with Nate.”
That’ll teach us to underestimate Amtrak. We were roughly three hours late when we boarded the train, and we quickly fell another hour behind schedule just trying to get out of the Chicago city limits. Then a drunken and unruly passenger had to be arrested and removed outside Toledo (at one point there were five police cars and an ambulance outside our car), and that evidently required questioning the rail staff at some length. So we were six hours behind schedule just after entering Ohio.
As I type, we are six and a half hours late, and we haven’t reached Rochester yet (it’s 2:20 Saturday afternoon). We’ slowing down in the middle of some snowy fields, presumably to prevent us from spending too much time this weekend in the company of our college son.
I truly believe in a national rail system, subsidized by the federal government, as an attractive, affordable alternative to fuel-intensive modes of travel such as cars and planes. It’s a shame we have Amtrak instead.
On the positive side, the seats and furnishings, which have been grotesquely uncomfortable for the past 14 hours, are in very nice condition. If my back and butt and head and eyes didn’t ache, I’d be very impressed with the decor.
And thanks to Amtrak, I did have time to watch A.I. and rough out a poster to announce Ben & Mena Trott’s visit to the Seabury campus to promote weblogging, content management, and (of course) Movable Type.
Posted by AKMA at March 1, 2003 10:09 PM | TrackBackKeep us informed about the Trott's visit. There are many local webloggers who owe them a debt of gratitude.
Posted by: paul at March 3, 2003 03:47 PMYes. Please let me know dates as soon as possible - if you and they are down I'd like to organize some sort of DGI-funded party or reception in ORD itself, so they could meet the fruits of their labor or whatever.
Posted by: Alex at March 3, 2003 08:33 PMThis code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Evan at January 13, 2004 10:11 AMThis will allow us to use a few functions we didn't have access to before. These lines are still a mystery for now, but we'll explain them soon. Now we'll start working within the main function, where favoriteNumber is declared and used. The first thing we need to do is change how we declare the variable. Instead of
Posted by: Newton at January 13, 2004 10:12 AMThis variable is then used in various lines of code, holding values given it by variable assignments along the way. In the course of its life, a variable can hold any number of variables and be used in any number of different ways. This flexibility is built on the precept we just learned: a variable is really just a block of bits, and those bits can hold whatever data the program needs to remember. They can hold enough data to remember an integer from as low as -2,147,483,647 up to 2,147,483,647 (one less than plus or minus 2^31). They can remember one character of writing. They can keep a decimal number with a huge amount of precision and a giant range. They can hold a time accurate to the second in a range of centuries. A few bits is not to be scoffed at.
Posted by: Annabella at January 13, 2004 10:12 AM