Big Bear

Last weekend Bonnie and I went up to Big Bear Lake and stayed at an amazing house in the mountains.

The house belongs to our friends Chris & Van; who are, by the way, the consummate host. The first night there we were treated to lovely dinner with several of their friends; (thanks goodness Van got the steak rub, it made the meal!).

The next day we took a boat out on the lake with several of the same folks, lots of sun and fun and swimming. Yes ladies and gentlemen, Bonnie actually got into the water and went swimming in a lake!

The next day, the four of us (me, Bonnie, Chris and Van) took a chair lift up one of the ski lifts (beautiful in the summertime), for a nice BBQ lunch on the top of the hill.

What a great weekend and just what the doctor ordered after a crazy few weeks at work for Bonnie and me!

Over The Line In San Diego

This past weekend I discovered a uniquely Californian pastime; a game called Over The Line (OTL).

OTL is so popular that the Old Mission Beach Athletic club (OMBAC) , host a major tournament every year.

The tournament takes place over two weekends and occurs in an area apply named Fiesta Island, and during the tourney more than 2,500 games will be played.

For those who are not familiar (I was not), OTL is played in the sand is a bit like softball, but there are a lot of differences:
- The field layout is completely different (see diagram)
- The pitcher and the batter are on the same team
- Each team only has three players

Here’s how it works, the pitcher kneels beside the batter and tosses a rubberized ball, just smaller than a softball up into the air for the batter to hit. The batter goal is to hit the ball over the line at the end of the diamond (about 55 feet). The ball must remain in bounds and must not be caught by the opposing team. Four successful hits over the line without being caught is a run. Two foul balls, or a ball that gets caught, are an out. 3 outs per side per inning, four innings in total.

There is of course no running, that would make it to much like a sport.......

NOW THE REST OF THE STORY:
The OTL tourney is simply a good excuse to get together in as little clothing as possible (it is warm on Fiesta Island) and drink beer and have a GIANT party. About 55,000 people attend the tourney every year, and there is lots of music, and fun. No one under 18 is allowed on the island during the tourney.

One of the objectives is to find the most outrageous names possible for your team so that it sounds funny when they announce your name over the PA to start your next game. Nothing gets banned!! The tourney was so popular that ESPN was going to televise it, but they insisted that the names of the teams had to be toned down. The folks at OMBAC said No Way (well actually had another two word response F*#K You!). So the tournament never did make it onto ESPN.

Here’s a photo of one of my favorite teams.

Needless to say, I am now a devoted fan, and I will be fielding my own team next year. Anybody got any good ideas for team names??

I've Been Everywhere Man, I've Been Everywhere...

Wow, what a ride!

On Friday night I came home from a three week road trip all across Europe. I started out in San Diego California and then went to Madrid Spain by way of Houston Texas. From there I hit: Athens Greece, Munich Germany and Berne Switzerland.

Luckily that was the end of the first week, so I got to go to Brussels Belgium to spend the weekend with my baby sister.

On Monday it was off to Bristol England by way of Frankfurt Germany. After England I headed for Dusseldorf Germany and then Budapest Hungary, and Sofia Bulgaria.

After four meetings in Vienna Austria, I spent the second weekend wandering around the town.

The next week took me to Copenhagen Denmark, Aalborg Denmark, Stockholm Sweden, Prague Czech Republic and finally Dublin Ireland.

I left Dublin to come back to San Diego by way of Newark New Jersey.

After three weeks abroad I can tell you Europe is nice but, I LOVE AMERICA!!!

National Alert System

Today, at long last, the FCC has announced a plan under which mobile telephone users will be able to receive emergency alerts via point to multi-point text message.

Any of you who know me well may know that emergency alerts, via the wireless mobile phone networks, are something I feel very strongly about.

The Emergency Alert System (EAS) in use today has remained virtually unchanged since 1963. That was 45 years ago; I know because it was the year I was born!

The fact that so many lives have been lost due to lack of adequate warning is simply shameful.

It will take another two years to get the whole system put together, but today was a big first step.

You can read the press release here.

Your can read the actual rule making here.

Ciao Bella!

This week (and next week) I find myself in Rome Italy. One of my workmates (Paul Rigatti) and I are here in town lining up a house (villa) to use for demonstrations of my company's in-building cellular coverage product. I hate being away from home without Bonnie, but I guess if I have to be out, Italy is not a bad spot.....

The idea is to find a nice looking house that has some serious cellular coverage issues, put our system in the house and then invite local wireless operators in to see what an amazing difference it makes on voice coverage and data throughput. We have done this before, you can read about our testing and demos in England in Ireland in previous post.

We have covered a lot of ground this trip. There are not may highways in the countryside north of Rome, so Paul an I, in our trusty rental car (a ford fiesta) have crossed fields, forded streams, slid up and down slopes and bounced along many dirt roads.

We did find one beautiful stone house in the country, the owner, who's name is Guido, was very inviting. Unfortunately, the house had NO cellular coverage and it is is hard to improve on nothing. The house it self was so nice that I would like to find a way to take advantage of it's seven bedrooms for personal use at some point in the future.

Eventually we found another house on the shores of a large lake that provides most of the fresh water to this section of the country. This is large, atrractive and has areas with OK wireless coverage and other areas with no service at all. Just perfect for us to demo our product.

Bonnie was not at all happy with me spending two weeks in Italy without her. When I told her about my upcoming trip, she lovingly told me "you suck!". She reminded me of this several times as I was preparing to travel. However as soon as I get home, we are going to sneak away for a three day weekend together!

One other woman in my life, is my trusted travel agent Muriel. This long suffering lady constanlty puts up with me calling at the last minute and asking for impossible international arrangements at the lowest possible rates. She was very vocal about me wandering all over Italy drinking excellent red wine. I told her I thought I would be working almost the all the time, but that I would try and find an opportunity to lift a glass in her honer. So Cheers to you Muriel and all the rest of my family and Friends!

On The Road Again

Willie Nelson has nothing on me (Ok, Ok, except that he can sing and play guitar much better than I can)

Once again I find myself on in a foreign country without Bonnie. This time it is in Spain, and I am here to attend the mother of all trade shows; “The 3GSM World Congress”. I am writing this update from a tiny little hotel in the historic district of Barcelona, which I consider myself lucky to find. Each about this time, the population of Spain takes a significant increase for the days of this show.

The show used to be in Cannes France, and since at that time Bonnie was a lady of leisure, she used to go with me. This year however, she is busy making arrangements for the 30 lucky students that have been chosen to receive scholarships for the 3 week summer conference on Conflict resolution that she now coordinates. How things change. If you are not familiar with the program, you can find out more here.

So being away from Bonnie is no fun, but what is fun I getting to run into folks that I have worked with over the years as we traveled the globe during telecom start ups. This year is also kind of fun because I get to go out an tell people all about the new products that we are building to improve indoor coverage for cellular systems. OK, maybe not that exciting unless you either;

• are involved in a startup that makes these products like I am;
• or you have terrible cell coverage in your house!

More as it happens!

A Little Piece of California

With each passing day, Bonnie and I settle a little more into our life as Californians. Today for instance, we closed on the purchase of a cute little house in University Heights.

It took us almost a year to get over the sticker shock and begin to look seriously at homes. We had thought that we would start looking in earnest somewhere around February, but we started visiting the open houses in our neighborhood of choice.

As luck would have it, we found a home we both loved a couple of months ago and we will move in tomorrow.

The house is what locals refer to as a craftsman style. It was built in somewhere around 1916 to 1920. The good news is that it was completely refurbished by a couple of guys with a real eye for details. We are very pleased.

The moving truck shows up at our old apartment at 8:00 in the morning. Time to get to work!

Catching Up

As usual, I am behind on my blogging, so I will attemtp to catch you up on a great load of things that have happened since my last update.

November was all about product testing an demonstrations for the company I work for. Interestingly enough, the testing and demos needed to take place in Europe since that is where our first product release is targeted. Planning for this has been going on for some time. As a matter of fact I enlisted the help of my friend Iain's sister (Jane) and his dad (Jim) to help scout for locations while I was at Iain and Ruth's wedding (see earlier post "Talkin Turkey").

With Jane and Jim's help, we did find three great locations, one in Ireland and two in Windsor (just outside of London).

I arrived in Ireland during the last week of October (delayed one week by the fires having closed our offices in San Diego). I was the advance team to make sure everything was set up and as you can see from the photo I worked hard! I worked in a quick trip to England to help make sure the locations were all ready for the customer demos.

After two weeks of testing I Ireland I headed back to Dan Diego for a week. It was great to see Bonnie (in passing). I got home on Friday and she left on Sunday morning to head for Atlanta to prep for Thanksgiving.

I did make it to Atlanta for a quick Thanksgiving; I took a red eye out of San Diego and arrived at Bonnie’s parents (Barbara and Jerry) in the wee hours of Thanksgiving morning. W had a great time and it was great to see everybody; Sharon and Doug, Sam, Isabella, Becky, Leslie as well as the clan from Madison Wisconsin – Uncle Michael, Allisanne, Mandy and Molly. The trip was short I headed back out the next morning for England.

I arrived in England to find a team from my office already hard at work. We did product demos in two locations: a house in old Windsor, and a flat in Windsor. The house was on the grounds of what used to be a mental hospital, and it was done up very nicely.

The flat was in a converted convent and was one of the most unique locations I have ever seen. Among its other features was a stone carving of Saints above the over sized fireplace.

I am pleased to report that not only did both locations show very well, but the product demos to date have also been quite a success.

It is the weekend now; on Friday my friends Iain and Ruth were in town so they came over to the convent where I was staying for a visit, it was great to see them again.

We also got to see his family for dinner on Friday evening.

Today is Sunday and one of my wok colleagues an I are headed into London to o touristy things, like brunch in China town and Christmas shopping at Harrods.

Now you are all caught up.

Look for news about my baby sister (Martye) visiting in December in my next update!

Fire Update 2

A quick update.

The fires are pretty much out of our immediate area now. Most of the mandatory evacuations have been lifted.

The friends we had staying with us were able to get back into their home last night, and luckily suffered no damage.

Life is settling back to normal.

Thanks for all the calls, texts and emails!

San Diego Wildfires

Greetings from smoky San Diego – 9:00 am Wednesday Oct 24

Thanks for all of the emails and calls folks checking to see if we are O.K.

Bonnie and I are just fine, they have closed the University where she works, and my office shut down for a couple of days. But luckily our apartment is not in an area that had to be evacuated.

We know many folks who were not so lucky; we have a couple staying with us at our apartment that still does not know if their home and car made it.

The fire continues to spread. I will post updates here when I can.

Top Up

Just a quick update.

Well, it finally happened; for the first time since I bought my new convertible several months ago, I had to put the top up when I drove it to work today.

It was misting, (East Coasters would not actually have called it rain), and so I stopped and put the top up.

This ends a steak of about 130 days, since I bought the car. To date every day that I drove to (and from) the office, I have done so with the top down.

In truth, until today, the only time I have ever really put the top up was to wash the car.

Ah well, it had to rain sooner or later.

Seems it never rains in southern California
Seems I often heard this kind of talk before
It never rains in California
But girls don't they warn ya
It pours, man it pours

Albert Hammond

Talkin Turkey

Bonnie and I recently traveled to Bodrum Turkey to attend the wedding of our friends Ruth and Iain, yes that is a kilt! You can find a link below to Ian's blog below.

We felt proud to be invited to the wedding, and even more special to be invited to join several family and friends that tagged along for the honeymoon on board a wooden sailing boat where we enjoyed four days crusing, eating, drinking, laughing and singing. Somebody found a guitar somewhere, so we had a lot of sing alongs - although it may be some time before I play American Pie again :-)

Martye (Morgan) popped over from Brussels and joined us for the week, it was a treat to see her.

While we were out of town, we closed on the sale of both our boat an the loft apartment in Atlanta. Then we came home to great news about Bonnie's sister Sharon who had a wonderful three month checkup with her doctor. This has been a really good Month for us!

I am making this posting via a hotspot in the airport in Washington D.C., I am on my way to Cannes France for the week to attend a trade show. Check back here oftern to see where we are this week.

CONGRATS IAN & RUTH

Bye Bye BlackSheep

It was a bittersweet day last week when we closed on the sail of our boat the BlackSheep. While we are happy to be rid of the expense and upkeep, I will certainly miss owning a boat.

What they say about the two best days of a boat owner's life being the day they buy and the day they sell is not at all true. An while I cannot say exactly which day was our best day as a boat owner, you can be sure it was a day on board with our friends!

Bye bye BlackSheep, you will be missed!

A Tennessee Squire

When I look back at my life, there will be milestones that I remember. Among them the day that I was invited to become a Tennessee Squire. I was invited into this exclusive organization by an existing squire and new friend Beth Herman.

I was serving drinks at our house one night and asked Beth what I could get her. She replied Jack Daniel's (and I knew would be fast friends right away). When I asked her if she preferred Black Jack or Gentlemen Jack she was impressed and then told me she was a Squire. She later offered to submit my name for membership consideration.

Several weeks later I got 'the package' in the mail. I have passed the review, I am in! I now have my own plot of land on the Jack Daniel distillery property.

Now as the squires before me have done, I am proud to toast....

May the sand in your joints turn to butter, May the ache in your back disappear, May your legs stay strong when the day grows long, May your shooting eye hold true and clear.

May you hunt every fall with your friends, And with Jack, drink a toast to your peers! May your game bag never be empty, And your season stay open for years.

Ramblin Man

Well it looks as if I will end up spending a lot of the rest of this year on the road.

I am writing this blog update from England. I will be here for the rest of the week (with a quick pop over to Ireland for a day).

Then I am home for 3 days before Bonnie an I had off to Bodrum (Turkey) for our friend's - Iain & Ruth - wedding. You can see more about the wedding and Turkey on their wedding page.

I will be back home from Turkey for one day before I leave to go to Cannes (France) for a trade show.

From there I am back home for a few before traveling to Virginia for another wedding -Bonnie's cousin Scott and his delightful fiance.

After that there are the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays, both of which I am afraid, are going to be overshadowed by work.

I will let you know more about those dates as they get closer.

Check back in a couple of weeks for photos from Turkey!

Lord I was born a ranblin Man

Just Trying to make a livin an doin the best I can

So when it's time for leaving, I hope you understand

That I was born a ramblin man

California Dreamin'

Hard to believe but Bonnie and I have been living in San Diego for almost 9 months now. We are settling in, but it has taken us a while to get used to the West Coast. Bonnie finally broke down and got a California driver’s license (she wanted to make sure she was registered to vote); I have had mine for while. We both have California tags on our cars, and we have local bank accounts.

We just signed up for another lease (10 months) on our apartment. We figured we would wait to sell the boat and our loft in Atlanta prior to getting into another mortgage, especially given the price of houses here. When I came to interview last December, someone casually mentioned that “A million dollars really isn’t that much to spend on a home here” to which I replied, “What are you *&%$%* kidding? A million bucks????” Now it is clear that we will easily end up spending three times as much for a home here as we did in Atlanta.

Bonnie and I spent the day, today, with our new friends Chris and Beth (Chris works in my office). Chris gave me my first surfing lesson. We were at a beach just south of Cardiff. How totally California dude!! Let me tell you that surfing is not as easy as it looks. I got beat up pretty good and swallowed a LOT of sea water, but I had fun, and as soon as my sunburned nose recovers, I plan to go again.
“If everybody had an ocean, across the USA, then everybody’d be surfin, like Califonr -i-a . Catch a wave and your sitting on top of the world.”

Anybody Know How To Turn On The Oven?

No I am not going to stick my head in it, but I am going to have to cook dinner for myself for the next few weeks. I am going to be living the bachelor’s life at home while Bonnie is working onsite for a work project during most of July.

Bonnie is a grant Administrator for the Hansen Summer Institute on Leadership and International Cooperation. (I think it would be easier just to say “World Peace”). Anyway, starting this year (and every year thereafter) the program brings kids from around the globe (they have to be under 25 and they can never have been in the USA before) to San Diego for 3 weeks of classes, lectures, team building and of course some fun stuff too.

Bon will be moving into the dorms (at San Diego State University) with her crew this weekend and will be there for 3 weeks. She says I get to visit. Visiting Bonnie in her college dorm room is what got me involved with her 30 years ago. Might be fun again…who knows.

By the way, although we are still in "stealth mode", the company I am working for launched a web site to help us attract new staff.

A New Toy

Well after six months of living in Southern California with only one car, Bonnie and I finally broke down this past weekend and bought a second car. The best part is that it was for me! I don't know what lucky start I was sleeping under, but I got to hit the Bose store two weeks ago and the Saturn dealer this past weekend.

We are now the proud owner of a 2007 Saturn Sky Redline. It is a Chili Pepper red, extremely fast two seater sports coupe. No storage at all, but that is why we have the Honda Accord.

So now Bonnie and I are both happy, she has a car to drive to work and run errands afterwords, and I have a sporty new convertible!

New Toys

Well I finally talked Bonnie into visiting the Bose store with me again. It was a shopping frenzy! This time I purchased the various bit and bobs required to bring Bose sound from the Main System into the master and guest bedrooms.

The master bedroom already had a WAVE Radio, so we just needed to connect it to the rest of the system; I did this with an AL8 System which means that I did not have to run wires.

In the guest bedroom/office, we added a RoomMate so we can have music in there while we work. I used an additional AR1 wireless receiver to make the connection to the new wireless link in the rest of the house. Once we move, the RoomMate will be migrated to the kitchen, and the guest room will be its own WAVE Radio.

Both the bedrooms got a new remote, which is truly amazing. It let’s you choose what you want to hear, be it an album, the radio or a themed collection of music stored in the Main System.

Now Bonnie can watch a movie in the living room and I can listen to Jimmy Buffet in the office. Of course, we can also set them all on the same stream and listen to Jimmy buffet in every room in the house!

So what’s next? Well I have to wait until we buy the house we are shopping for, but I already have big plans for speakers in the back yard and in our bathroom! Wohooo

May 5th On The Border

Since I now pretty much live on the Mexican border, events like Cinco De Mayo (May 5th) get a lot of attention. There will be several major parties in and around San Diego tomorrow. Lots of margaritas and cold Corona will be consumed. It is only a shame that a frost a few months ago did so much damage to the local lime crops. For the last few weeks it has been very difficult to find the large juicy limes I prefer to use when making my favorite adult beverages.

Meanwhile, allow me to use my blog to dispel one popular American myth. Cinco De Mayo is NOT Mexican Independence Day, that day is September 16th. Although the day does have historical reference; on May 5th, 1862 a small group of Mexican soldiers fought and defeated a much larger and better armed garrison of French army troops. The day is celebrated to commemorate the brave act of these soldiers, very much as we “Remember the Alamo”. Unfortunately as is often the case, the Mexicans won that battle but lost the war.

Now that we have that out of the way, I can happily provide a weather report for Cinco De Mayo in San Diego. The weather will be: Chili tonight, but hot tamale!