I got two rolls of slides back today from the Florida trip. There are some quite interesting shots, a lot of duds, and a few that are near greatness, but not great. I'm going to get some prints made of the most interesting ones, and put them up on my photography site.

These are primarily night photos and daylight beach photos, with a sunset or two thrown in for giggles. I have to tell you that I have learned two things, one of which you might have to be an experienced photographer to get.

The first thing I learned is that having a circular polarizer rocks. The color saturation from the sky, the contrast in the clouds, the shades of water, etc., are all rendered so richly with this nifty filter.

The second thing I learned is that I should start rating Fuji Velvia ASA 50 slide film to 40 or lower, because when I take a bracketed series of shots, the best exposure is pretty consistantly the one with the slowest shutter speed.

I have to tell you that Katherine is getting really good at sitting up. She can sit, move from side to side, grab objects, move forward and back. It's really something. Another thing she's gotten quite good at is rotating in her johnny jumper to whatever angle gives her the most interesting view. So if a cat walks by, for example, she'll spin around and follow the cat with her head and eyes. Remarkable.

She's quite smitten with the cats. We've held her up to them, and let them pet her, and she really gets a kick of it, laughing and such.

I took her to work today. Yes, I went into the office because we have a lot of people working on an upcoming software release, and I wanted to put some time in. It didn't work that well, because I had Katherine with me. For awhile things were fine. She was actually sleeping when I got there. But soon, she woke up. And soon after that, she really required attention. And then, as I was typing a letter to my boss, the CEO, she started, um, helping me type. Not good. In trying to juggle her away from the keyboard, she knocked over a soda onto the floor. Time to go. I couldn't stay that long anyway, because my dad was coming over to take a walk with her, and Kara's been really sick, and was due home from work. Oh well, I tried.

I think I've just discovered a supporting argument for Bill Gate's assertion (and Microsoft's), that Internet Explorer is an "integral" part of the operating system. My computer suddenly became very unreliable. It would boot, but when I logged in, most of the time it would freeze. I've basically been down since before I went to San Francisco. So today, I managed to get on, and I uninstalled all the crap I've toyed around with over the last year, but haven't acutally used. That didn't help. So I reinstalled IE6, even though there is no update more current than the one I had. Funny, that seems to have fixed it. Arg.

I biffed it. I really should have brought my camera. Weather.com said it would be cloudy, and this is "Fog City" you know, but this evening there was the most perfect twilight for photography. Deep blue above, progressing through light blue, then orange red. Arg. Perfect. Anyway, I won't make that mistake again, although I still am not sure where I would have gone. The view across the bay was really nice too. The bay is all gray and muddy, and it's very hazy, but you can still see the mountains across the way shrouded in mist.

For those of you who have never been to the bay area, you are missing out if you don't come out here at least once. Besides San Francisco and Silicon Valley, there's the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, Marin county, and even Monterrey. It's a truly spectacular place. People used to say, and maybe still do, that San Francisco and Boston have a lot in common. The more I come here, the more I realize that this is only partially true. There are some elements that are similar - they are both coastal towns, both have wierd street layouts, both are world class cities, and the climates, while very different, have some ironic similarities. San Francisco has two seasons, Boston has four, but as a traveler from Boston, I tend to feel right at home, whether there is a raw ocean chill in the air, or it's a nice sunny day.

I had one minor mishap on this trip - a bottle of shampoo in my carry-on opened up, and got goo all over the inside of my bag. Incredibly, it managed to miss my clothes, so I don't have a minor crisis for tomorrow. I have just one morning meeting, and then I'm back to the airport for the long flight back. I'm flying through Chicago (Midway), so the flight is broken up into a 4 hour leg and a two hour leg. I am flying ATA, which I've never flown before, but I had a pretty good experience. They were on time, security was tight, I watched a movie, and generally did OK.

Tonight, I ran out to find a Barnes and Noble, because I'm going to finish my book mid-flight tomorrow, and I didn't want to be stuck with nothing to do or read. Sometimes I'll work on the plane with my laptop, but I generally don't if there's someone sitting right next to me because, well, you never know. Once, when I was flying frequently, I overhead a conversation from someone working with the same client I was working with, and it really opened my eyes to how insecure it is to leave information lying around. I know the Chicago to Boston leg is full, so I'll probably just read.

This is going to have to be a quickie, because I am going on a rare business trip to San Francisco tomorrow morning real early. I'm taking a 6AM flight through Chicago to San Francisco, and then returning Friday afternoon. I'll be there for about 26 hours. I used to do this so often, and I haven't in quite some time. Still, it's nice to shake things up every once and awhile.

There is a bit of a perc in it for me, too. In addition to a sales call and a customer visit, I've got lunch scheduled with none other than Evan Williams, president and founder of Pyra, inventor of blogger, and Jason Shellen, the Pyra business development director. Trellix and Pyra did a deal last year, and I get to be the one, since I'm in town, to catch up.

On the Katherine front, I fed her real food this evening - it was only the second time I've done that. Stacey, I promise I will take pictures. It's pretty hysterical, because most of the food winds up on her bib, her hands, the high chair, my hands, her forehead, and just about everywhere else. But it's pretty darn cute too. But that will have to wait until I get back to town.

I thought long and hard about bringing my camera, and decided to skip it. I would love to find a nice spot to take natural and low light pictures of SF, the Golden Gate, etc., but it just puts so much pressure on such a short trip. I'd basically have to know exactly where to go, and run from my meeting, skipping dinner, lug the tripod on the airplane, etc., and I just don't have it in me this time. Instead, I'll go back to the hotel and work, which is my usual regimen on this kind of business trip. It's actually unlikely that I'll set foot downtown, because I'm staying near the airport in South SF, and my meetings are between the airport and San Jose.

But I might have some quality time to blog, so stay tuned.

Kara and I are going to "Ferberize" Katherine soon to help her with some minor sleep problems. She sleeps quite well, all things considered, but still needs help falling to sleep each evening, and she sometimes can't put herself back to sleep when she wakes up in the middle of the night. First, we have to ramp back the use of the pacifier, since that's a crutch for her during the day and overnight. We may start this weekend. Most people have strong opinions of Ferber, either good or bad, but it makes sense to us, and we're going to try it.

One of the reasons some people dislike Ferber is that in order to Ferberize your baby, you need to train your baby to fall asleep without your help, and that usually translates to the baby crying like hell for a long time, which is very hard on the parents. Katherine typically has a much better day after a night when she's had a good cry, but it's still hard to take.

Things I brought to Florida, and just didn't need:

1) White T-shirts (you know, undershirts)
2) Long sleeved shirts
3) Blue jeans
4) The baby back-pack

We had this vision of taking nice walks along the beach, Kara and I, with the baby in the backpack. We do this at home pretty regularly. We throw Katherine in the 'pack, and walk down to West Medford Square, or something. But we never got to it in Florida for a few reasons. Mostly, the rush of getting back from the pool, showering, getting out to dinner, running errands, getting back to the hotel room and settled took up our whole evening. Katherine and Kara were going to bed early most night, probably because both weren't sleeping well.

A word about sleep. I'm pretty used to functioning without a lot of sleep, but that tends to be the one thing about vacations that we always overlook. The resort beds were really hard, and as a result, none of us slept well. So whereas Katherine's bed time was getting to be about 10:30 here at home, it was more like 10 or even 9:30 on some nights on vacation.

So Kara, Katherine and I just got back from a weeks vacation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I must say, we had a brilliant time. The weather was really nice, but very, very hot. Most days were 90° to 95° at very high humidity. But we spent almost all of our time just sitting by the pool. We did venture down to the ocean one day, but the sand turned out to be problematic for the little one. The ocean water was the warmest of all, though, at just over 80°. It was like bath water. Very, very nice.

So staying in the shade turned out to be the job of the moment. We did admirably, but had to invest some effort. More on that later.

We stayed at The Lago Mar, which is a low key resort just off the strip on Ft. Lauderdale beach. It was right next to Port Everglades, which is notable because many, many cruise ships start and end there, so there was a constant stream of huge ships sailing right towards the beach, then hanging a quick left turn, and popping by the causeway to load or unload passangers.

We ate, most nights, on Las Olas Boulevard, and found the food to be very good, indeed.

I also found the time to take some pretty serious night and low light photographs, which are out being developed right now. I don't think they'll be up before the weekend, because I may have to run out to San Francisco later this week, and that will kind of put a kink in my web productivity.

In the meantime, though, I will start with this tale of Florida.

This is the third resort we've stayed at, and we've had a similar problem at all of them. We generally can't, or don't want, to be in the sun for extended periods of time. The sun is brighter in Florida, or Anguilla, or Hawaii because you are closer to the equator, and you can get very nasty burns very quickly. Even putting high rating sunblock on won't protect you, as swimming gradually wears the stuff off.

So you have to get under an umbrella, or tiki, or something. We're not about to haul that stuff down with us, so we depend on the resort to have it. It wasn't too bad on former trips, but in all cases it helps that we usually travel to these locations during shoulder season, or off-season. Memorial day weekend in Florida was pretty big, because it was the end of the season. But we did OK until the second or third day.

The resort doesn't have patio umbrellas by the pool, but they do have four thatched roof tikis. Needless to say, with several hundred rooms available, these are prime real estate. Luckily, I managed to get one most days, but in many cases it was due to luck, or getting up really early.

On several occassions, I asked the pool-people if we could reserve or tip them to get one, but they insisted it was first-come, first-served. Imagine my surprise, then, when one day I woke up sick with a hacking cough, and ran out to Walgreens for some meds. When I got back around 7AM, I saw the pool boy laying out towels and magazines for his regulars. This really flew in the face of the "first-come, first-served" principle. I asked another pool person about it later in the day, and she flat out lied to me, saying it doesn't happen.

This is the kind of frustrating, because if she had just told the truth, I'd have eaten it. She could have said, look, these are club members, or condo owners or other long-time regulars, and they treat us well, and we take care of them, and I'd be OK with it. But she insisted it was first-come, first-served, and I knew she was lying. When I pressed her about it, she told me I'd have to talk to the other guy, who I affectionately nicknamed, "pool boy", who was really kind of an ass. I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere with him, because I'd already tried.

The next day, I set the alarm for 7, intending to beat pool boy to the punch, but I couldn't get my butt out of bed. The hotel beds were not good, and neither Kara or I were sleeping well. So I went back to sleep, and Kara woke me about 9. I threw on a swimsuit, and went down to the pool, and miracle of miracles, there was one tiki left. So I plopped my butt on it, opened a book, and pool boy shows up five minutes later with towels and stuff for, "Mr. Haas", who had also shown up in this time, and was apparently a rich French regular. He looks at me under the only tiki, then says, "Good morning, Mr. Hass," and then proceeds to dejectedly lay out mattresses and towels on unshaded lounge chairs.

I WIN!!!!!