Good morning. This is a real time and self-maintaining website. All of the content updates automatically and was current at the time you arrived here. The server and Greenwich Mean Times at the bottom of the page are precise and sync with the server, updating continuously while this page is loaded. If you're here for the content, keep reading. If you're looking for information on the technology, it's at the bottom of the page. Otherwise... Today is Tuesday, the 21st day of May and the 141st day of the year. This is not a leap year, so there are 225 days remaining in 2013. On the Jewish calendar today is the 12th day of Sivan in the year 5773.
Today in History: A Commedian-Politician is Born
It was on this day in 1951 that comedian and politician Al Franken was born in New York City.
He grew up in Minneapolis, went to Harvard, and a couple of years later got hired for the first season of Saturday Night Live. He went on to write books, start a political talk show, and then run for office.
Franken is the junior United States Senator from Minnesota. He is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which affiliates with the national Democratic Party. In 2008, Franken narrowly defeated incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman, by 312 votes, after a mandatory statewide manual recount. Coleman contested the outcome in court, but the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously upheld Franken's victory on June 30, 2009. Franken was sworn in to the Senate on July 7, 2009. (Source: Writers Almanac)
Today's Birthday Boys and Girls
Today is the birthday of Alexander Pope (1688), Henri Rousseau (1844), John Peale Bishop (1892), Armand Hammer (1898), Robert Montgomery (1904), Fats Waller (1904), Guy de Rothschild (1909), Harold Robbins (1916), Raymond Burr (1917), Dennis Day (1917), Peggy Cass (1924), Carol Potter (1948), Al Franken (1951), Mr. T (1952), Notorious B.I.G. (1972), Fairuza Balk (1974), and Ashlie Brillaut (1987).
On Wall Street
The process of retrieving stock info involves many links between the sources and what you're reading on the screen. At the moment, there's a technical issue up the line with the DJ average. Occasionally, the data appears as random characters. If there's numerical data on the screen, it's accurate. The other indicies are working and accurate. The New York Stock Exchange is open and trading. Currently, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up by /A to 0.00. The S&P500 index is at 1670.13, up by 3.84. The NASDAQ is up by 33.722 to 3498.965. Note: During trading hours all data is in real time. The data is preserved at the end of the trading day. It remains until the next opening bell.
Earth and All Spheres
The overall weather conditions at Love Field were reported as overcast at 10:53 AM CDT. The temperature was 82.0 F° (27.8 C°), and the relative humidity was 63%, pushing the heat index up to 85 F° (29 C°). More [...]. For the seven-day forecast [click here]. We are under a waxing crescent moon. At the time you accessed this page, its exact age was 11 days, 14 hours, and 33 minutes. We will be under a new moon again on Saturday, June 8th at 9:31 AM CDT.
We are under the sign of Gemini in the 63rd day of spring which arrived on March 20th at 6:02 AM CDT with the occurrence of the Spring Equinox. On the day of the Equinox, the sun rose at 7:31 AM CDT and will set at 7:39 PM CDT. For today, our sunrise and sunset times (at -96.852/32.847) are 6:18 AM and 8:12 PM, giving us 13 hours and 54 minutes of daylight. The Spring Equinox occurs the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator from south to north. This happens either on March 19, 20 or 21 every year. On any other day of the year, the Earth's axis tilts a little away from or towards the Sun. Generally speaking, the Equinox marks the point at which the day is equally divided between light and dark hours, but the reality is that the phenomenon is observed a few days later than the actual Solstice date except for points far enough from the equator, as is the case in most of the US. We are currently in Daylight Saving Time, which always begins on the second Sunday of March at 2:00 AM when we start recording time as 3:00 AM. Daylight Saving Time ends at 2:00 AM local time on the first Sunday of November.
The Technology
This site is a working demonstration of on-demand scripting with server-resident PHP code. The code tightly integrates computed data with text, spewing forth natural-sounding narrative output with flawless grammar and syntax. The birthdays, history section and the text below--which all change daily--are from databases created in-house. The financial and weather data are imported on-demand at page generation time. All the other information, including calendar, sun, moon and star stuff, is rendered by several hundred lines of custom code at the time the page request reaches the server. THIS SITE IS SELF-MAINTAINING. The daily content updates at midnight CDT. The weather target is -96.852/32.847.
When you encounter seemingly good advice that contradicts other seemingly good advice,
ignore them both.
Al Franken
Email: tony@tonysartain.com
214.778.5014
