It’s a lovely Sunday morning in the high mountains. Today we’ve got a mixture of clouds and sun, but no rain. That’ll be good as it rained a lot yesterday. We went into Breckenridge just as it started to rain so we drove around near the ski area looking at homes. There’s a lot of money in those hills, let me tell you! A number of them are for sale. Condo’s for $975,000, homes for $2,500,000…. all of them gorgous homes in gorgous locations. We decided to wait to see if the market will improve.

When the sun came back out we walked through the downtown arts festival. There were a lot of very unique things on sale there. Sometimes I see these things and think, “I can do that.” Then I decide that while I could do that, I don’t want to. We spent the afternoon and evening at the camper watching foootball and just doing small things we’d brought with us. We spent an hour at the pool and hot tubs before crashing for the night. It was a very relaxing day.

The camper looks like we’ve settled in. Stuff is finding places to be, the computers are set up, towels are hanging on the window curtains…. We’ll be here two more nights and then it’ll be time to clean things up so we can go home and put the trailer away for the winter.

We’ve located the church on the map and will be leaving in about 20 minutes for Frisco, Colorado, and church. We worked for a while in the temple with a couple from Silverthorne and perhaps they are part of the Frisco Ward.

We’re ensconced in a campground north of Breckenridge, Colorado. With the long weekend available, I’ve taken Friday and Tuesday as vacation days so we can get a five-day stay in this ski-resort area. We left Colorado Springs just before 10 a.m. today and arrived at the campground about 12:30. We drove west out of Colorado Springs on US Route 24 to Hartsel and then took Colorado Route 9 northwest to the campground. It was a lovely drive through some beautiful territory. This was a much better drive than coming on the freeway.

To call this a campground is like calling a Boeing 747 just an airplane. This is a so-called "Resort Campground" — no tents, popup campers or junky-looking rigs allowed. It’s also fairly expensive compared to normal campgrounds, but then how many normal campgrounds have an indoor heated pool and two hot tubs? We were intrigued enough with the writeup to make reservations, take the time off from work, and drive up here (is is UP — Breckenridge is at 9,600 feet compared to 6,400 feet of altitude in Colorado Springs).

While I’m not sure what I was expecting, this place has turned out to be different. There are many, many sites. All of them are privately owned and the vast majority have small cottages on them. The camp office keeps some part of the camping fee and the lot owner gets the rest. Some of the cottages are also available for rent. Many of them are quite elegant! Lots of money in some of these sites. I think that these are used during the winter when folks come skiing as well as during the summer as summer cottages. Several have the owner’s name and city displayed. Many of those owners are in Florida! Perhaps they spend the summer here and the winter there?

We walked through a part of the business district in Breckenridge this afternoon. Many stores were closed or closing because the summer is over. Skiing doesn’t really start until around Thanksgiving so it looks like there aren’t many tourists between now and then. The area is very pretty. We’re in a valley in the middle of a bunch of very tall mountains, most around 14,000 feet. However, I don’t think I’m a good candidate for buying a lot in a place like this. I’m content to rent one from someone else once in a while.

I’ve spent yesterday and all of today at the CIO100 Symposium — an event sponsored by CIO Magazine. CIO stands for Chief Information Officer who is usually the person at the head of all the information technology and systems within a company. CIO goes along with the CEO (Chief Executive Officer), COO (Chief Operating Officer), CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and CTO (Chief Technology Officer). The several hundred attendees are all senior information technology people from across the company. Right now, I’m sitting at a table with the senior IT person from the CIA for instance. The symposium has been pretty interesting. I’m here sponsored by RedHat and am able to take the time because the symposium is in Colorado Springs at the Broadmoor, a 5-star hotel and resort on the southwest part of the city. The symposium has several objectives, including honoring the top 100 CIO’s as selected by the CIO Magazine, providing a forum for best practices to be discussed and presented by these honored CIO’s and by experts, and a forum for selected vendors who (at a significant price), have good access for hawking their wares to the senior IT executives in attendance.

I’ve found the symposium to be quite interesting. The speakers have been good and the topics quite pertinent. Even more interesting has been the opportunity to meet other people who are wrestling with the same kinds of problems I’m working with. There has been a lot of opportunity to meet the other attendees and visit with them. I’ve been thinking about trying to get something like this going in Colorado Springs with some kind of a monthly meeting of senior IT executives in the city. I think that’ll be part of my activity during the next couple of months.

I talked today at lunch with the group putting on this event: CXO Media. The ‘x’ in their name is kind of like the algebraic X — the variable in the name. They publish two magazines, CIO Magazine and CSO Magazine (Chief Security Office). Perhaps other X’s will become part of their publishing stable in the future. He said that while the Broadmoor is a wonderful facility, there are some serious issues. For instance:

• There aren’t many places from which someone can fly directly into Colorado Springs. So, the attendees have to make at least one plane change to get here and the last leg is usually on a little airplane and some folks aren’t all that happy about that.
• The hotel isn’t very well wired. High-speed access to the internet is limited and expensive to deploy for the conference. It’s impossible to provide wireless access for attendees. The hotel is right on the edge of Sprint’s digital network. People staying in the southwest half of the hotel are on a roaming cellular network.
• The hotel isn’t very close to anything else in Colorado Springs, easy public transportation from the hotel to other places of interest is difficult. So, spouses and significant others attending the symposium complain about what is available for them to do during the day while the conference is proceeding.

Sounds to me that the city and the hotel need to get this feedback as well, so I’m intending to pass it along. Meanwhile, we’ve just finished a session on the new Sarbannes-Oxley Act and our compliance responsibilities.

I was in the middle of writing this post a few minutes ago, needed to check something else, and accidentally closed my web browser. So all the absolutely wonderful prose, well written and succulent, is gone. I get to do it all over again!

I am headed home to Colorado Springs later this afternoon. It’s going to be good to be back home. I’ve been in California since August 3rd (11 days) which is way too long. Actually the real issues are where to eat and what to do at night and on the weekends. Last Saturday I slept in and then went to the Oakland Temple for the afternoon where I did two endowment sessions and a sealing session. On Sunday I went to church in the morning and then took a drive up into the hills on Sunday afternoon.

Church was interesting. I arrived at the building, which is quite near the hotel, a little before 9 a.m. to find that meetings didn’t start until 9:45 a.m. There are two English-speaking Wards, two Spanish-speaking Branches, and a Vietnamese-speaking Branch meeting in the building. The 9:45 meeting time is to accomodate the need for classrooms in the building. The Ward I attended met in the Cultural Hall for their Sacrament meeting while a Spanish-speaking branch was meeting in the Chapel. Must be an interesting Stake issue dealing with all the languages!

There aren’t many places to eat dinner, particularly when I’m by myself. The tendency is to go through McDonald’s drive through…. I’ve eaten at the Macaroni Grill, Matsuyamas, Fujisan Sushi, Hometown Buffet, and a couple of times at Applebies. That’s pretty much the available places, other than McDonald’s and Taco Bell. I’m right ready to get home for some of Nina’s home cooking.

It has been good to meet with my folks out here. Face-to-face is occasionally very valuable. This is the first trip here since February. I’ll probably make trips back out:

Sept 8-12

Sept 29-Oct 3

Oct 27-31

Nov 17-21

Dec 8-12

I’ll also be making a trip to Dell in Dallas, Texas in early October and may make a trip to Phoenix to visit a BlueStar Data Center. With all of these trips, I should get enough segments in to at least maintain Elite status for another year on United. I like the ability to get priority boarding and access to the seats near the front of the plane. So, it’s now time to shut everything down and head to the airport. I’m outta here!

I’ve been in San Francisco for the past several days attending the LinuxWorld conference. Other posts to this journal have talked about the conference itself. This time I’d like to log my impressions of the area in San Francisco where I’ve been staying. I’ve been at the Argent Hotel on 3rd Street, a block away from the Moscone Center where the conference was being held. The hotel is just a half block from Market Street, one of the main streets in downtown San Francisco. My room was on the 26th floor with a great view towards the northeast.

1. There are a lot of tall buildings in downtown San Francisco. They must do a very good job of shielding from the wind! The past couple of days the clouds have been blowing from west to east in the sky and clipping along at 30-40 miles per hour, yet down at street level there’s just a light and variable breeze. The flags on top of the tall buildings are standing straight out, stiff in the wind, and the flags on the shorter buildings are just occasionally flapping in the breeze. It was so interesting, I had to figure out how to make my digital camera take a movie so I could catch some of the cloud action (the resulting file is about 4 megabytes in size, so I won’t post it).

2. This morning there was some coastal fog — nothing downtown but clear skies, however it was quite humid outside. With the heavier air and no breeze, the air in San Francisco doesn’t smell very good. There’s a lot of diesel and automobile exhaust fumes in the air. I guess you get used to the smell, but I found it to be rather foul this morning. Further, the steam coming up from grates in the sidewalks smells terrible! Whatever is being exhausted has a bad odor to it and I’ve quickly learned to walk around these grates rather than over them. Each one smells different. I have wondered at how many ways "bad" can smell!

3. All of the taxis in San Francisco are American brand cars, mostly Fords. None of them are so-called foreign brands, such as Toyota. The brand actually has little to do with where the car is manufactured. Most of the Toyotas driven in the U.S. are built in Ohio, and Toyota even exports cars back to Japan from the U.S. While I was at dinner one evening, sitting out on the sidewalk part of the restaurant (eating some very delicious Italian food), I noticed an Oldsmobile parked across the street. It was the only American-brand car visible. Now, I didn’t count minivans or SUV’s, which are mostly American-brand vehicles. Nor did I count pickup trucks, where Ford and Chevrolet seem to dominate — except for very small pickups where Toyota seems to have the significant edge. So counting just regular two- and four-door sedans, over the course of a half-hour, around 90% of the vehicles were foreign-branded cars. Of those that were American-branded cars, they were overwhelmingly taxi cabs. Why do all the taxis drive Fords? It’s a mystery, since most of the drivers are not white Anglo-Saxon people!

4. Sony has quite a facility in the middle of the Moscone Convention Center called The Metreon. This building has several restaurants (none of them chains or franchises) along with sections dedicated to different classes of Sony products. All of the products are out and available for people to touch, play with, and try out. The sales people aren’t pushy and seem to know their products. Sony products are generally quality products as well as pricey products. While I’ve no idea how well this particular store is doing, it was always packed with people, particularly the PlayStation area. There must have been more than 50 PlayStations setup with different games. There was time limit set and at the end of the time, the user had to give up the controller to someone else. Incredibly popular place. I’ve known that the gaming industry is larger than the movie business but this PlayStation area was a graphic example.

5. A sign on the walkway alongside Sony’s Metreon Center says "Live in your world, Play in ours." That motto certainly applies to San Francisco! One evening I asked the Concierge about restaurants in the area. In response to his question about what kind of food I was interested in, I told him I was looking for something that was a reasonably priced, normal American food restaurant. He told me, "… there is nothing normal in San Francisco." I’m sure he knows how right he really is. There are a lot of people in San Francisco living in a different world than I’m living in! Some of them sit along the street with a cup held out for small change contributions. As I was walking down Market Street towards Nordstroms, a young fellow was dancing down the sidewalk towards me. As he got closer, I could hear that he was singing (and not too badly, either) as he danced along the sidewalk. My first impression was that he was spaced out on something and that may well be the case. At any rate, he was definitely living in a world different than the one I am living in. As darkness falls, all of the street vendors appear setting up their tables to hawk their wares. Many are selling "normal" stuff (remember, is anything normal in San Francisco?) but there are quite a few folks selling some very esoteric things. Near the cable-car station is a walkway underneath Market Street leading to the subway as well as the shopping center on the other side of the street. I watched a fellow set up a massage chair (the kind that you sit astraddle and has a pillow area for your head). He was a very strange looking fellow and I wondered how many people would stop and pay him for a massage. Very quickly a lady came along, talked with him, sat down on the chair and put her head down. The fellow reached out, with his hands over her head, but without touching her at all, began chanting. That went on for several minutes and he stood back. She got up, gave him some money, and walked away. Within a couple of minutes, someone else sat down. The same ritual was replayed. It was quite astounding to watch how many people were interested in this transcendental experience (see the picture and brief writeup in an earlier post)!

6. I’m sure there are lot of very pretty girls / women in San Francisco (and I’m sure there are many handsome fellows…). However, even in the early part of August, the temperature never got above 75 degrees (I believe it was Mark Twain who said that the coldest winter he ever spent was one summer in San Francisco), so everyone wears sweaters, shawls, and jackets! It’s quite unlike the south bay area! If you live in San Francisco, you have to own and have available a winter wardrobe year around. This morning walking down Market Street I was struck by how many people were talking on cell phones as they were walking. It was about 8 a.m., most of the folks walking were on their way to work somewhere, and a large percentage of them were talking to someone on their cell phone. Perhaps this is a morning phenomenon??? It didn’t stand out last night like it did this morning.

7. At least on the south side of Market Street, all of the interesting stores are on the numbered streets, that is, the streets going north and south. The named streets seem to be mostly places under construction. Building is happening all over the area. They don’t seem to be big buildings, but things in the ten to twenty story type buildings. With all of the variety and diversity in San Francisco, I expect to find interesting stores. My favorite store on this trip was the Rand McNally store on 2nd and Market. The store is full of maps, globes, software, travel books, and little travel things like locks and intrusion detection devices and such. I only bought a couple of small items as I’ve already bought too many books at LinuxWorld. I’ve got enough weight to take with me as it is.

8. Every time I visit a big city, I notice how many and how often sirens are blaring. The fire station was not far from my hotel and those guys get quite a workout on their shift. The hook and ladder truck seems to be rarely in it’s garaged space! There weren’t as many police sirens here as I hear in New York, but there are always fire engines going somewhere in the area where I spent my time. It is so common that people seem to know how to get out of the way at intersections where the traffic is piled up waiting for the light to change. I think some folks even relish having the fire engine coming so they have an excuse to run the light!

This has been an interesting trip. I didn’t get over the other side of the hill to any of the area around Fisherman’s Wharf, where all the tourists congregate. I didn’t ride the cable car, I didn’t do anything associated with chocolate. In short, this was pretty much a business trip and well worth the time. Outside of the conference, San Francisco itself was quite entertaining.

I’m tired. There’s so much to do and see here at the conference that I’ve worn myself out — and it’s only day 2! I’ve generally concentrated on the conference sessions and have been well rewarded. The amount of walking, however, is phenomenal. I can’t count how many times I’ve walked the passway underneath the street between Moscone Center North and Moscone Center South. Right now I’m in a key note speach by the Executive VP of IBM’s e-Business Division. His talk is very good with a lot of content and not necessarily hawking IBM’s products. Last night we ended with the CEO of RedHat giving his talk, which was really a challenge to the commmunity to step up the innovation and integration of products in the OpenSource arena. I’ve attended sessions on LDAP and Spam detection as well as discussions on various OpenSource projects. That combined with the show floor, where I haven’t spend nearly enough time, and I’m tired, but excited. I’d like to get home and do something with the things I’ve learned. It’ll just be a matter of getting enough time to do everything I want to do.

San Francisco is quite a town. I took a very long walk on Monday evening — down Market Street to the Embarcaderro, then up California Street (which is definitely UP) to China Town where I did a little shopping. I then walked down to Union Square, and then west to the Trolley station. That’s where this picture was taken. I arrived as a street vendors were starting to setup their stands and hawking their wares. This guy set up a massage chair, but wasn’t offering a massage, but rather some kind of a spiritual experience. The fellow in the bright baseball cap was hawking the services. Meanwhile, the bearded guy stands behind the customer, hands hovering over the customer’s head, chanting something in a different language. I took the picture up at street level (this setup was in the passway under Market Street going into the shopping center across the street). I wasn’t about to get any closer to the action! Certainly are some interested (and very strange) people in San Francisco!

Greetings from San Francisco. Rather than taking a Linux Cruise this year, I’ve decided to attend LinuxWorld for the first time. In past years, this conference was absolutely huge — today it is much more realistic in size and hype. The conference got underway this morning, but was preceeded by some labs and tutorials yesterday. So I took advantage of that opportunity to attend a Samba class in preparation for Samba 3.0 being released. It was very interesting. Jerry Carter, who has perhaps one of the better jobs in the world, lead the tutorial and instruction. He’s a fellow who really knows how to work in front of an audience and never needs to be reminded to repeat the question.

I’m sitting in the first keynote speach, featuring HP. He’s doing quite a job of touting HP’s capabilities. Several other folks will have the opportunity to do the same for their companies and products during the week. I’ll attend most of those just to see what they think is happening in the Linux world.

For my part, I’m interested in the ability to deploy some fabulous functionality at a very low cost. I really want to significantly upgrade my home capability (perhaps the connection as well as the wireless broadband has become more and more flakey) and put in a good Family History application (which I’ll also need to build). This will require some additional computers and building at least one rack to house the systems. Having the computers underneath the desk has worked, but heat is a problem. I’ve put a fan under the desk to move air around and keep the boxes cooler than they were before. Getting the systems out from under the desk and into the open air will help with the cooling significantly. I still may need a fan, however. It has been very hot in Colorado Springs the past several days and I’m sure the processors suffered as a result.

Finally, I’ve got to find the time to do all of this. I’ve just gotten a new Church calling which will take a huge amount of time. I don’t want to give up the Temple, but I may need to reduce my committment up there. Where does all the time go? Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the conference and not having to worry about time, at least for right now….