In baseball, when a pitcher is relieved by another pitcher, the manager goes out to the mound and takes the ball from the pitcher already on the mound. You can usually tell when the manager isn't happy with the pitcher's performance when he doesn't give the pitcher a butt pat on his way out.

When I put a DVD or CD into my laptop's CD tray, I always start the disc spinning by hand and then close the tray. Gives me the illusion that I'm cutting down on some of the load time once the disc is in.

I took some photos of various 4th of July activities, you can see them here:

Photo Album: 4th of July 2008

The Lincoln movie theater monopoly was swallowed up by another movie theater monopoly. I haven't noticed any difference in service or price since the change, except that the poor saps at the ticket counter now have to wear tuxedo jackets.

What did change was their web page. The former website was easy to use. I haven't found the new one to be so great - it's not as easy to navigate just among the Lincoln theaters and find show times. And it's definitely not easy reading it on my cell phone.

So I wrote a script that grabs all of the show times from the four Lincoln theaters and puts them on a very simple web page. I've made it primarily so I can look this stuff up on my phone, but if you care to use it, it's here:

http://www.andyrut.com/marclnk.php

my boss is named marcus. he's english. he pronounces it mawwcus.

I went to Chicago this weekend.

Another thought on airline security (see "Paper Thin Security"). Chicago Midway has a number of restaurants that you can access only when you get through security. Don't restaurants have, you know, knives? To cut things, like food? I didn't go in any of the establishments this time around to see, but surely people in the kitchens use sharp and/or dangerous items...

Drank, Cubs, friends. The usual pleasant visit. The Cubs lost this time around, only the first time that my friend Zach has attended a Cubs game with me where this has happened... hmmm... It was still a fun game; Cubs left-fielder Alfonso Soriano went 5 for 5 with two home runs and we were treated to pitcher Carlos Zambrano breaking a bat over his knee.

Took some pictures, here you go:

Photo Album: Chicago 2008a
mmmm beer for breakfast

I'm flying to Chicago this weekend to see friends and watch a Cubs game. I fly fairly often, maybe three or four times a year, but of course that's not as often as some.

I usually print my plane tickets at home. Before I go through security at the airport, there's always someone there who looks at my ticket, looks at my ID, scribbles something in magic marker on the ticket, and lets me pass.

I assume the purpose is to make sure I am the rightful ticket holder. My question is, what good is comparing the name on an ID to the name on a piece of paper? Especially when the piece of paper can be produced easily?

Say you've got Joe Badguy, who's on some law enforcement agency's list and isn't allowed to fly. But he's got a friend, Bill Accomplice, who purchases a ticket, prints it out, and gives it to Joe Badguy. Joe Badguy scans this ticket into his computer, and replaces "Bill Accomplice" on the ticket with "Joe Badguy".

So now Joe Badguy has two tickets: one with his own name, and one with the legitimate purchaser of the ticket. When he approaches security, he can hand them his own ID and the bogus ticket that says "Joe Badguy" on it. The security person doesn't know that Joe Badguy isn't allowed to fly. But the names match, so they let him through.

When he boards the plane, he hands them the legit ticket (they don't check ID's at this point) and he gets on no problem. Then he does whatever malicious deed he's there for, like spraying silly string all over the passengers.

of course, you'd think security would be more suspicious of a dude with the last name of badguy, but that's profiling