1 Terabyte

Here it is… our brand new Western Digital 1 TB external harddrive. We recently got a new laptop, and between that and our old desktop rapidly running out of harddrive space, I thought that it would be useful to have a little more backup and extra storage. 1 TB (1,000,000,000,000 bytes) should last us a read more »

weather update

summer has arrived, and it’s feeling sticky. it’s also usually more humid and stuffy whenever there are thunderstorms in the forecast. we haven’t been able to install our air-conditioning unit yet, and so in desperation i discovered a new way to help feel cool today; sucking on sore throat menthol lozenges.

chicago history museum

we’ve been meaning to visit the chicago history museum for awhile, and today finally had the time to go. there was a small section devoted to the city’s sports teams, including michael jordan, of course. we gained a better understanding of how the city survived the 1871 ‘great chicago fire’ and then rebuilt and shined read more »

mommy lam visits chicago

joe’s mom is visiting us for the week. we had some time over the memorial day weekend to bring her for a nice lunch in downtown and see a bit of the city.

close quarters

a recent skype with the chen’s in nyc with pammy. smile!

booby’s

we were looking for a place to eat lunch up north one day, and couldn’t help but notice this little restaurant. joe got an italian beef sandwich and i got a meatball sandwich. the side of onion rings was our serving of vegetable. mmmm….meat.

cognitive surplus

Today I came across this fascinating talk on the idea of our society’s “cognitive surplus” by a thinker named Clay Shirky. Here’s one of the many interesting tidbits from his presentation: So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every talk page, every line read more »

the dmv

after putting it off for more than a year, i finally went to get an illinois driver’s license. after an early start, we had to drive to the town of niles to find an office that was open on a saturday. it involved a lot of line-ups, sitting, and a written test, but two hours read more »

the 134th kentucky derby

we went to our first ever kentucky derby party, hosted by tom and anne (a born and bred kentuckian). to get into the horse racing spirit, we first watched ‘seabiscuit’ and then indulged in various delicious kentucky derby treats, including derby pie and a mint julep drink. then after an exciting two minutes, Big Brown read more »

conference city

the great thing about chicago is that everybody comes here for conferences…which means we get visitors trickling through once in awhile. thanks for visiting renata! goodbye mirko…et en francais?