On Monday, I’ll be flying with John Waters to Las Vegas for DevConnections 2007 which starts that day. Falafel Software is one of the exhibitors and we’ll be there to man the both after the keynote and check out the other exhibitors. Since I have a newborn I’ll be returning to Scotts Valley Tuesday morning so it will be a quick trip. Feel free to stop by the booth and say "hi".

Over the weekend we drove to Chico to visit with my wife's parents and with kids it's usually a four hour trip with a break half way between in Vacaville but something was different. I'd last driven through Vacaville many months ago and what I noticed was this sign (pictured) on the building right outside of Starbucks. The photo was taken on our return trip though this time the sign was posted outside of Baja Fresh across and down the street from Starbucks. What's interesting was there used to be an Old Navy in the same building as Starbucks, right around the corner but it's now vacant and there is a CompUSA store next door to Baja Fresh but there were no cars parked in the lot on a Sunday afternoon. I suppose it's possible CompUSA was closed on Sunday but I'm thinking that perhaps they've moved like Old Navy.

These buildings are the standard strip mall style you'll find in nearly every Central Valley town so there is nothing unusual about them except now they have these warning signs. At this point, I'm really curious to know why Old Navy moved (it's now located across the freeway I believe) and what was up with CompUSA? I'd guess the sign had something to do with it but I don't know. I asked the cashier at Baja Fresh about it and not only was she unaware of the sign she had to ask me twice about what it really said. The signs while clear, are rather unassuming, aren't brightly colored nor are they particularly large although they are spaced out along the front of the entire building. My wife hadn't noticed them and admittedly I walked right by one and only later did I think to actually go back and read it. This will probably have me rethinking our rest stop choice.

What about you, do you avoid places marked like this?

I'm headed out for a bit of desert camping in Red Rock Canyon State Park which I've never done before so I'm really looking forward to it. I'm going with a bunch of guys from Yahoo so I feel a little guilty about posting a Google Map link but I tried for several minutes to get a good link on maps.yahoo.com but one search on Google was all it took so there you go. See ya next week!

Last month I took a trip to LA, Santa Monica to be exact, to attend the first ever Yahoo Music Day. It was an all expense paid trip to visit with the people who work on LAUNCHcast, Yahoo's online music service. I started using "LAUNCH", before it was acquired by Yahoo and is when I first met "hitsman", otherwise known as Todd Beaupré, one of the LAUNCHcast founders. Todd is now Director of Personalization and works to improve Yahoo's online music experience for people just like me.

It's been an interesting journey following LAUNCH all these years. When it first started, like all Internet radio at the time the library was rather limited and algorithms used to deliver personalized music fluctuated, wildly at times and there were days when I couldn't recognize my own station. But thankfully those days are long gone and now I get the music I enjoy listening to streamed all day long.

I met Todd online via IM back in those days because I'd rated a fair amount of music and had 800+ people subscribed to my station. It was through my contact with Todd I learned the reasons why the quality of personalized music varied so greatly. Many times the issue(s) involved record labels more than source code though over the years there were plenty of algorithmic changes that would dramatically alter the music I'd hear.

Anyway, during the trip we got an inside peak into LAUNCHcast, meet the people behind the service and see the massive music library where all the CD's are stored and music encoded. I have to say that the folks I met at Yahoo were very appreciative of those of us who participated and really interested in our feedback madly took notes all day. They also gave us a chance to see some of the upcoming changes to Yahoo Music and gather feedback on that as well.

At the end of the day, we got to attend a the recording of a "live set" with Beck at Fox Studio's. A "live set" is an artist performance in front of a select audience of about 250 people which is filmed and turned into a webcast available online. You'll be able to see the show I attended on January 15th (see the bottom of the page).

Finally, I'd like to thank Todd for IM'ing me the invite and the rest of the folks at LAUNCHcast for making it such an interesting trip.

p.s. If you looked closely at the screenshot of my phone from this post you can see the 405 which was taken when I was in the cab in LA given that there is no 405 in the bay area.

Recently, I purchased a Motorola KRZR K1m from Verizon Wireless which has a tremendous array of features including GPS. Since I just got the phone I haven't had time to play with most of the new stuff though recently while on a trip to L.A., I was riding in a taxi from LAX to my destination and decided to fool around with it. On the menu under "Get it now" I selected "Tools on the go" then chose "Get New App" and was presented with several choices. I'd read a little bit about VZ Navigator and so I selected it and which point, a software download started. After about a minute the download was complete and a demo version of the navigator installed.

After installation I selected "Where am I?" and a few seconds of satelite synchronization the phone displayed a map of where we were. Next, I keyed in our destination and the phone switched over to a fully narrated navigation system with nice large display fonts and bright arrows indicating upcoming turns. "Turn left in 0.3 miles...".

All in all, it's safe to say that this far exceeded my expectations.