Good afternoon, 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 Monday, the 21st day of September and the 263rd 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 10th day of Tishri in the year 5787.
We are under a waxing crescent moon. At the time you accessed this page, its exact age was 10 days, 6 hours, and 29 minutes. We will be under a new moon again on Saturday, October 10th at 10:40 PM. The next full moon will occur on Saturday, September 26th at 4:17 AM. 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 Virgo.
For today, our sunrise and sunset times (at -96.852/32.847) are
7:07 AM
and
7:15 PM,
giving us 12 hours and 8 minutes of daylight.
There are 2 days until the end of summer, marked by the Autumnal Equinox. On the day of the Equinox, the sun can be observed to be directly above the equator, and the night and day are 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. This year, the exact crossing time will be 7:05 pm Central Daylight Time on Sunday, September 23rd.
Today we celebrate the birthdays of H.G. Wells (1866), Gustav Holst (1874), Larry Hagman (1931), Leonard Cohen (1934), Henry Gibson (1935), Bill Kurtis (1940), Jerry Bruckheimer (1945), Stephen King (1947), Bill Murray (1950), Dave Coulier (1959), David James Elliott (1960), Rob Morrow (1962), Darva Conger (1965), Faith Hill (1967), Ricki Lake (1968), Alfonso Ribeiro (1971), Liam Gallagher (1972), David Silveria (1972), Nicole Richie (1981), and Joseph Mazzello (1983).
On this day in 1937, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was published.
Today in History: "Yes, Virginia..."
On this day in 1897, the world's most famous, most reprinted newspaper editorial was published. Commonly known as the "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" column, the 416-word article replied to a letter from an eight-year-old New York City girl whose father deferred her question--"Is there a Santa Claus?"--by suggesting she ask the New York Sun. She did so, and on September 20 an editor at the paper handed it to reporter Francis Pharcellus Church with the request that he respond in the following day's paper.
Church was a veteran newspaperman, having served as a war correspondent for The New York Times during the Civil War, and the son of the founder of the New York Chronicle. He dashed off his answer to little Virginia O'Hanlon anonymously, saying, "He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist and you know that they abound and give your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS."
Today, a small private school is housed in the former home of the O'Hanlon family--with all our modern fears of technology and privacy, Virginia's address, 115 W. 95th Street, was printed in the paper with her letter. Virginia herself grew up to be a New York City schoolteacher, principal, and activist for children's rights. As for Francis Church, the author of the editorial that has been translated into 20 languages in hundreds of other papers, books, movies, even postage stamps, because traditions holds that editorials are the "official" voice of the newspaper as a whole and not one singular opinion, he never received any recognition, let along royalties, for his inspirational editorial. It was only after his death seven years later that Church was credited with its authorship. (Source: Writer's Almanac)
We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics--trying to play a serious part in the world--to a culture that's really entertainment-based.
Stephen King, born on this day 79 years ago
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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