Dateline: In the Shire, Indy, 15 February 2006

Good to be home with no biz travel for a bit.

Yesterday I gave a good show at the SID conference. Big room, very packed. Projector pretty old and it clipped the left side of my screen pretty badly. But I went a solid 45 and did about 20 of Q&A. My host Asif Shaikh, president of International Resources Group, was very happy afterwards. Just provocative enough to piss off plenty of old-timers and just daring enough to thrill a lot of young people. I signed books for about 45 minutes afterwards--all PNM, which was kind of nostalgic. Oh, and one BFA for a young man who ran downstairs to the book store and picked it up.

Nice talk with old USAID bud Tony Pryor, who is now a big player at IRG.

Then off to Reagan via the subway to catch my plane home, buying some roses at GW University on my way into the Metro. Pretty open flight back on USAIR.

Last night focused on the Missus, and then the baby teething and maybe with an ear infection coming on.

Today was an interview with some Austrian equivalent of Der Spiegel. I would look up the name but I tend to forget these things and then the piece comes out and I get some emails from the country and I'm like, "Huh?"

Then a bunch of crappy paperwork of the type you face when you travel so much. Actually, most of the day lost to the maddening slow-down of our PC, crippled as it is by XP and five people who use it.

Afternoon saw spouse and I tour the new house. Wood flooring going in very fast now upstairs (no carpeting whatsoever), and the rest of the house should be done by middle of next week, leaving only some ceramic work in the basement and the coating of the garage floor. Trim, including all the built-ins done next week too. Sinks and final plumbing going in now. Home theater room looking sweet, awaiting the gear. We're talking deck and patio and sidewalks and playsets more and more, as the construction will move outside next month to start on all that stuff. Getting pretty thrilling to walk the place, and I feel the need to stop by almost every day now, just to escape this f--king apartment (frankly, all six of us want to divorce all of the other five about now--we even sent kitty away to Nona's for a while to preserve her feline sanity).

Tonight was helping son #1 on science project. Got the good news on him today regarding some medical stuff coming up: all covered by insurance. So I take my hat off to Steve DeAngelis again for getting us the top-line nationwide BC/BS, something you get when you work remotely like I do. Makes a big difference, cause we were looking at a pretty big price tag if the insurance said no.

Tonight was sadly taken up by witnessing the death of our four-year-old HP all-in-one. Grindy noises as of late predicted its demise. Bit much to watch, but the old beast put in a lot of effort for us over the years, and its demise pushed me over the edge on our aging Gateway as well, so unhappy have I become with PCs and Microsoft on PCs in general. Time to go all Mac.

Buoyed by a couple of new talks lined up today by my speaking agent Jenn (Special Ops Command--Pacific and the Joint IED group now headed up by the famous Monty Meigs), I bravely pulled out my Visa and ordered one of the new Intel-chip IMacs (the 17"). I added some RAM, made the mouse and keyboard wireless, and was rewarded by my former Marine salesperson with an academic discount (I revealed my new affiliation with the Howard Baker Center at U Tennessee), which basically killed the tax. Oh, and I got a free HP all-in-one for my trouble as part of the deal, which was nice.

Only bitch? Good week until it arrives. So we go sans printer for a while, and endure the horrifically slow pace of our XP-infected Gateway. Boy, I won't miss it whatsoever: all the extra crap you had to do to keep that thing running, free of disease, etc. It just got to be a part-time job to the point where I never used the damn thing except for Quicken, and my new laptop carries that, so ...

Plus, this way, the iTunes kids can work it all out within the Mac universe, which will save me some effort. All in all, a brave new world I can't wait to enter--cootie free.