My parents have a vacation scheduled at Disney World. Unfortunately, the vacation started today. They flew out of O’Hare at 7am this morning. Appearently, with the Hurricane Charley coming their flight still flew this morning. They also deceided to still go on it.

They called my brother a little bit ago saying they made it to Florida safely. They also report that they are at Disney and have been put into a shelter there. They said they’d call tomorrow to let us know all is good.

Thanks to Mike Maggio for the post title.

Update 7/15: My parents called my brother this morning. All is good. They didn’t call yesterday because they didn’t have any cell signal yesterday. They said 7/14 was really enjoyable at EPCOT, if only because they were the only people there. No word on what the shelter was like. I guess we’ll know more next week.

When you’re a sale person, and you’re making a sales call, never insult the potential customer by saying “Well, we didn’t test with foo because you’re the only person in the world who uses it!”

In this case foo was Firefox after a vendor’s webapp’s magic javascript didn’t work with it. Yes, IE has the marketshare and is the most important to get working. However, have a better response then “you’re a freaking weirdo,” which is about what he said.

As with many people in the US, Sarah and I are getting into poker. We’re not into it as much as some of our friends, but we’re working on being better. Two of the things that feed our addiction are the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel and Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo. We end up watching the celebrities more, if only because I have a heterosexual man-crush on Phil Gordon.

Anyway, in my morning reading of the paper, I came across the article `Poker’ a good bet for Bravo. It talks about how Celebrity Poker Showdown was renewed for a third seasons (hooray!) but mentioned a change in sponsorship.

Until last week, wireless phone company Cingular was the sponsor of the $250,000 charity pot, but it pulled its sponsorship after expressing dismay at the fact that the players drink on camera and occasionally curse.

They did know they were sponsoring a poker tournament, right? I have no idea why they’d be shocked by drinking and swearing. Also, no one EVER drinks while on a cell phone nor do they ever swear while on one. Maybe the 1950s started again and no one told me. In any case, a new sponsor wasn’t mentioned in the article, but I’m sure they’ll find a new sponsor quickly.

Reading the paper this morning, I also learned a new word (for me): exurb.

Exurbs are rural communities that, due to proximity, are becoming suburbs of a major urban area. Exurbs tend to be populated by people that work in the city and bring their capital home to spend on local services. Exurbs are commonly viewed as the only rural communities which are benefiting from the rural exodus. These communities tend to be highly competitive.

I wonder if Huntly, IL falls in this definition.

Today the Chicago Tribune had a special section on Millennium Park. Millennium Park officially opens Friday after many years of budget overruns and delays. (Where’s Daniel Burnham when we need him?)

On the front page was the article Chicago finds `bean’ meets taste test. This article was about the new sculpture named “Cloud Gate” that was unvieled for the opening of the park this week. I have to agree the concept and the actual execution of the sculpture is awesome, at least from the pictures in the paper. Unfortunately, the only image I could find online is the artist’s concept that you see on the left. As I’ve got my camera with me today, I’ll have to try to get a real picture.

In any case, the thing that really bothered me about the article was a comment that the journalist got from a man on the street. What’s worse is that the Tribune deceided to make it a highlight burb. I will do the same, although probably not for the same reason. I’m doing it to show how stupid it is.

“Look at how vivid it is. It looks like a high-definition TV. It’s very cool.” — John Horan of Chicago

I’m a big fan of technology, I own many toys and an HDTV and stuff like that. I also will admit to watching more TV than I probably should. However, I think its really sad that the only thing he could compare the mirrored sculpture to was the sharp image displayed on a TV. We have such a wide vocabulary available to us. Thanks to science we’ve seen the birth and death of stars, the destructive and awesome power of splitting the atom. And all he could find to say about a beautiful work of art was “Its cool, its like my TV.”

I don’t know what it should be compared to, but I think this comment, and the Tribune’s highlighting of it really says something.

[ Update 7/16: On the radio this morning, they said the park is 4 years late and 3 times over budget. Fun! ]

I’ve updated my Quotes Page, with the mocking of Brian White.

Yesterday, while searching for information about Batman Begins filming in Chicago, I came across a blog called chicagoist. After just two days of reading, this is an excellent source of information on all things Chicago.

Appearently, this site started six months ago, after them having a successful run with their New York focused gothamist blog.

For those with RSS readers, you might want to use chicagoist’s RDF feed.