I flew into San Antonio, Texas tonight for the NAESP conference (National Association of Elementary School Principals).
I happen to be staying in the Emily Morgan Hotel, and am fortunate enough to look out right over top of the Alamo. I took a stroll around at about 11ish local time and snapped a couple of night-time […]

I never read newspapers. Well, almost never.
But right now I’m on a flight to Dallas, Texas, on my way to a convention in San Antonio. And I happened to pick up the complimentary newspaper while boarding the flight.
It’s a great paper, by most measures - the Globe & Mail. One of Canada’s two national newspapers. […]

How can someone this clueless get a job writing for tech magazines?
John Dvorak is talking about the Apple versus Apple lawsuit: the Beatles versus Apple computer. Here’s his solution:

In an effort to save the money, though, I would suggest that the company change its name for good. Offer a million dollars to the public-at-large in […]

Astute observers of sparkplug9.com will have noticed that Zoomclouds, announced with such frisson merely a week ago, is toast.

On our recent trip to San Diego, we toured the USS Midway. It’s the longest-serving aircraft carrier in US naval history.
Gabrielle was (very) pleasantly surprised to find parts of the ship painted - of all colors - pink. I think it’s purple, but who am I to say?

(Gabrielle is wearing headphones that you get, with […]

As I posted quite a while ago, I re-evaluted using Google AdWords on this site when the whole Google China thing came out.
I did eventually take AdWords off, for that reason as well as out of a desire to simplify this blog (see what I had on the site and also what I took […]

I just found out that the Washington mob is really, really big in San Diego. They’re even breaking into many previously legit industries, such as gas stations.

You may have noticed the snazzy new tag cloud adorning the right-hand side of this page.
(I’m trying to be trendy and web 2-ish, and possibly get acquired by Google or Yahoo for mad money.)
I noticed the Zoomclouds link at Guy Kawasaki’s blog - he just got a new tag cloud as well. I thought […]

OK, this is crazy. This kid is ridiculously photogenic - it’s hard to take a bad picture of him!
(Disclosure: this is our youngest son, Aidan, at Ocean Beach in San Diego.)

Ethan is madly into rock-climbing, or just plain climbing, these days. He’s always looking for something to climb.
Here he and I are climbing some rocks piled up into a breakwater at San Diego’s Ocean Beach. He’s an amazingly good climber already at age 6 - good enough to give me the occasional heart attack.

Doing groceries as a family, approaching the sea food area with live lobsters, crabs, oysters, and more …
Aidan pipes up: “Want to see the crabsters!”
Me, silently to myself: can I freeze this moment in time?

My son Ethan’s comment on seeing the building featured on the US penny: “looks like a jail or something.”

A bit of googling reveals it’s actually the Lincoln Memorial.
Those Doric columns really do give the wrong impression, don’t they? At least, I hope they do.

Sharks are endlessly fascinating, probably mostly because they’re so potentially deadly. But as I realized recently at Sea World San Diego, their mouths are just plain ugly.
Sharks grow their teeth in flat rows - there are always a few rows coming forward to replace lost or old teeth. The front row is the most upright, […]

A couple of days ago Teresa and I were at San Diego’s Museum of Art. James Hyde is showing his art/furniture there.
It’s a living presentation titled “Luminous platforms and relaxed seating” that, unlike most art, you can actually touch, sit on, and enjoy - as if it isn’t cool enough just to look at […]

Teresa and Aidan in one of the many classical viewscapes of San Diego’s amazing Balboa Park.

I continue to be amazed at the forethought and investment of San Diego’s leadership around the turn of the 19th century in creating this park. Thousands of acres. Dozens of major attractions, including museums, art galleries, cultural centres …

From Ethan’s mouth, today, to Teresa:

Mommy, if you split the word bumpy in two, you’d have two bad words.

Tonight we’re in Woodland, California - just outside of Sacramento. Two more nights and we’ll be home and sleeping in our own beds.

Ethan is usually up for anything that’ll draw a laugh. In the cactus garden at San Diego’s amazing Balboa Park.

I had to quickly snap this shot before this disabled sea gull took off, so unfortunately the photo is blurry. With a regrettable lack of sympathy for the poor bird, Gabrielle said “it can only swim in circles!”
On the pier at Santa Barbara, California.

A throw-away shot through a kaleidoscopic spyhole into a Sea World fish tank: