Thanks to an incompetent IBM business partner, I’m in Chicago this week. Actually, some might consider his bumbling a stroke of blind luck. A few weeks ago, I thought I was going to be spending this week on the University of Miami campus. Mid-September on a Florida campus has to be even better than it is in Lexington. But since my travel plans were dependent on somebody else doing his job, I ended up in “The Windy City” instead. The weather here has really been pleasant (except that it’s raining right now), and rumor has it Miami and the surrounding area have recently had a better claim to being windy than Chicago.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I’m still not sure where I’d rather be right now. Last week, as Ivan started his run through the Caribbean, it looked like this would really be a good week to not be in Miami. Then he made that wide swing to the west, leaving south Florida alone. On the other hand, a lot of Miami might still be recovering from earlier storms. I’m not sure whether it would even be possible to get a hotel room anywhere in the vicinity. But shucks, if there’s not another storm coming in, it might have been fun to camp on the beach.<\/p>\n
\nAh well, no point in spending much more time whining about what should have been. I’m here now. It has probably been twenty years or more since my last trip to Chicago. From the outside, One IBM Plaza<\/a> looked about like I remembered it. But inside, I found one disappointing difference. The large cafeteria which I remembered so fondly was gone. What, you ask, would make anyone yearn nostalgically for a corporate cafeteria? Well, the old geezer who cooked breakfast was a classic, but he would probably be retired or dead by now. But the real outstanding feature of the cafeteria, the epitome of IBM-ness, was the segregated dining room.<\/p>\n \nNo, not segregated that way; IBM actually has a history of being ahead of the curve on civil-rights issues. It was segregated between customers and employees. Why couldn’t IBM customers and employees mingle over lunch? Because the beer taps on the customer side, being avidly enjoyed by the shaggy denim-clad customers, were off-limits to the pin-striped crew-cut IBMers. <\/p>\n \nBut alas, some wonderful traditions come to an unfortunate end. The cafeteria has been replaced by a much smaller deli, with no beer taps. And a careful perusal of the drink coolers found absolutely no bottled or canned beer amid the choice of soft drinks. Ah well, the weather has been nice this week; it’s good to have an incentive to get out of the building at lunch and get some fresh air and exercise.<\/p>\n \nThere hasn’t been much opportunity for recreational activities. But the evenings (until tonight) have been nice for walking, and I discovered Navy Pier<\/a> is a comfortable walk from the hotel. And, when I got there, I spotted the tall ship Windy<\/a>, and couldn’t resist going for a sunset cruise. That may have been a mistake. Every time I get on a sailboat, I start fantasizing about abandoning my current lifestyle and living on a boat. And a slight career change might even make it possible. The kind of technical support I do now involves a lot of hands-on work with the machines. But a lot of software development could be done on a laptop with an occasional satellite connection. With a boat to amuse me, I could probably live without the horses. But my dogs probably wouldn’t like the cramped quarters; and I’m not sure I could live without them, or with the kind of rat dog that would be happy confined on a boat. Ah well, back to the rat race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thanks to an incompetent IBM business partner, I’m in Chicago this week. Actually, some might consider his bumbling a stroke of blind luck. A few weeks ago, I thought I was going to be spending this week on the University of Miami campus. Mid-September on a Florida campus has to be even better than it… Continue reading A Week in the Windy City<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-3b","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}