Greetings from the inferno that is southern California! It’s hot, hot, hot here – but at least in Long Beach we aren’t choking on smoke and ash. Here are some awesome NASA pics of the fires from space, to give you some idea of the magnitude of the conflagration. It’s extra strange to be experiencing this after just having spent a week in Pennsylvania in double digit humidity and rainstorms. Ah, the joys of global warming!

I am finally feeling settled as I no sooner got off the plane from Pittsburgh than had to get on another plane to fly to San Jose for work. Which reminds me: I need to bitch about my so-called first class flight home from Pittsburgh. Nothing personal, United, but I was pretty disappointed with my whole first class experience. The flight attendants were great and the free booze certainly flowed, well, freely. The plane I flew home on was an Airbus A 319 and the first class compartment was a joke. The food was – well, I’ll just say that Southwest’s snack pack would have been tastier. I would have been really frosted if I had paid first class ticket prices – I did it on frequent flier miles so only paid $10 (the going first class rate for that same flight is, get this!, $1,450). Heigh ho. One good thing: we arrived 45 minutes early!

All’s well that ends well, though. I’m back home and geeking out with new tech joy: we got our family 5-pack copy of Snow Leopard and upgraded all of our Macs yesterday. They are all very happy and feeling quite perky now that they are 10.6’d. And my Garmin 310XT arrived and I have been happily testing out all its bright and shiny features (and attempting to whup the ass of my virtual training partner who unfortunately is whupping MY ass instead). I got the heart rate monitor too, and have confirmed that my heart is in fact still beating (awesome news!).

Oh, and The Beatles: Rock Band will be available Sep 9!! Life is indeed good!