Good morning, and welcome. All the information on this site was current at the moment you arrived. The content updates continuously (per load) without the help of Internet monkeys. Absolutely everything you're seeing is generated by code developed TOTALLY inhouse. No commercial website software is in use. NOTE: You can click on the bright spot inside the lens flair to swat the fruitfly. If it doesn't annoy you, perhaps you're weird. [ more in the Technology section... ]
Today is Saturday, the 24th day of October and the 296th day of 2026. Most of the contiguous United States is observing Daylight Saving Time (DST) at the moment. It will end on November 1st at 2:00 AM when clocks "fall back" one hour. While many countries observe DST, the beginning and ending dates and times vary, so as to add another layer of confusion to the scheme. Dates and times on this site are for the Central Time Zone in the United States.
On the Jewish calendar, today is the 13th day of Heshvan in the year 5787.
We are under a full moon. At the time you accessed this page, its exact age was 13 days, 4 hours, and 21 minutes. We will be under a new moon again on Monday, November 9th at 10:24 AM. The next full moon will occur on Sunday, October 25th at . For now, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter are visible in the night sky. Mercury can be seen in the eastern sky just before dawn. Looking into the night sky, far beyond our Solar System neighbors, we see that we are under the sign of Scorpio
for today, our sunrise and sunset times (at -96.852/32.847) are
7:29 AM
and
6:35 PM,
giving us 11 hours and 6 minutes of daylight.
We are in the 31th day of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. Summer has ended, but not the hot weather. The autumnal equinox, which occurred on September 23rd, marked the end of summer. On the day of the equinox, the sun could be observed to be directly above the equator, and the night and day were the same length. The actual crossing of the sun over the equator takes approximately two and a half days. The equinox occurs halfway through the transit when the center of the sun is directly over the equator. Winter will begin on December 21st when our days begin to grow longer. It's weird, but longer periods of sunlight is when our weather becomes colder... more details as we get closer to the date.
Today we celebrate the birthdays of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632), Ernst Friedrich Richter (1808), Ferdinand Hiller (1811), Belva Bennett (1830), Moss Hart (1904), Y.A. Tittle (1926), J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson (1930), David Nelson (1936), F. Murray Abraham (1939), Kevin Kline (1947), B.D. Wong (1962), Scott Peterson (1972), Ben Gillies (1979), and Monica (1980).
On this day in 1947, Walt Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming Disney employees he believed to be communists. Yes, Virginia, it really happened. It's called McCarthyism.
Today in History
It was on this day in 1960 that singer Etta James finished recording "At Last." Born as Jamesetta Hawkins on September 23 in 1938 in Los Angeles, she was considered a "gospel prodigy" and was singing in church choir and on the radio when she was five years old. She was only twelve when she formed a trio and began working with bandleader James Otis.
Etta James had a clean, full voice, allowing her to effortlessly embrace several genres. Her 1960 trademark ballads, particularly "All I Could Do Was Cry" and "At Last" put her into sharp public focus. Within two years, she had begun to focus on gospel style music that flowed as naturally as when she was a child. Her eagerness to embrace an inclusive approach won her many fans and the approval of critics as she continued expanding her profile, eventually adding rock and funk sounds that were so well incorporated into her work that she further broadened her listener base, paving the way for many successful albums.
James was not the first recording artist to take to the stage. Her tremendous stage presence and knack for blending styles from a broad palate worked well with her recording career, and she remained at the top until shortly before her death in January of 2012, only two months after she had released her last album, The Dreamer. After her death, the public learned that she had been suffering from leukemia, Hepatitis C, and dementia. The tremendously energetic James had kept her medical condition a secret and had enthusiastically pursued her passion--singing in her own style.
Click above to download Etta James singing what has become one of the most familiar American pop recordings ever. Recorded on the Chess label in 1960, its character, defined largely by the fittingly stylized orchestration, not unlike that of Nat King Cole, is typical of the period, yet it has endured the test of time, still filling the niche for the emotion laden ballad. [The mp3 file is perhaps a little big without a broadband connection, but if so, the wait is worth it.]
Today's insight and wisdom:
Asian people are very practical and come from a conservative world. The parents want their kids to be doctors and lawyers. There are casting calls for Asian children, but once the parents find out the children might miss school, they're opposed to it.
B.D. Wong, born on this day 66 years ago in San Francisco.
Mr. Wong enjoys a very successful acting career. He appeared Dr. George Huang in 230 episodes of Law and Order.
Editor's note: Mr. Wong clearly understands the necessity of REAL education. Our educational system is failing. Education is not happening. Instead, those who are on the learning side of the equation are simply pawns in what has become a monstrous industry that is pathetically unproductive. The process of educating has become one of the most convincing acts of all time.
The Technology
This site is a working demonstration of on-demand PHP scripting. The code tightly integrates computed data with text, spewing forth natural-sounding narrative output with flawless grammar and syntax. The narrative sections--which all change daily--are from an in-house database. The real time data is derived [and rendered] primarily by PHP code at the time the output is generated at the Linux/Apache server.
About the fruitfly: Whether the fruitfly in the margin entertains or annoys, it serves a very real and useful purpose. The fly uses recently developed sentinelware. In short, the image is generated by the output of many, many active server monitoring processes. When abnormal server activity is detected by the "fly system," the fly's appearance deviates from the default, and a system exception raises a flag that is immediately addressed by the humans who monitor the server via the fruitfly's movements and morphology. Until fairly recently, server issues weren't always obvious, and if so, isolating and mending them was an arduous exercise. The fruitfly technology has made the plight of the server technician much more bearable. If the fruitfly annoys you, click in the center of the lens flare to swat it.
Contact Information
Email: tony@tonysartain.com
Cell: 903-360-0002
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