Magic Storm Light at SJSU

I had a great time at the Educause conference. There were very informative presentations at the conference. Folks were there from all over the western states. I met some really interesting people who were very smart and very passionate about their work. It was inspiring.

After the conference I went to SJSU to do some work. When I stepped out of the building I work in I looked up to see this swirling mass of storm clouds. Then, I looked over at Tower Hall and saw a great shaft of light illuminating the structure. It was magic storm light and I had a camera with me. I started shooting until the light went away. As I walked to my car the rain started. It was some of the best light I have seen in a long time.

Blogging from Educause WRC, Day 2, #2

I am on the BART

I am heading past the Oakland Coliseum heading for Fremont on BART. My presentation on Podcasting went very well. I will be repeating the same presentation for an Instructional Technology (IT) class tonight. I wish I could teach a class in Emerging Technology for the IT program, that would be great fun!

I took this photo of a cable car while I was walking to the BART station. It is amazing what you can do with technology. I uploaded the photo to my laptop, edited it in PhotoShop and will post it as soon as I get in range of a wireless network. That is a period of an hour or so.

I like the picture. It was taken right after a rain. The air was crisp clear and full of scents of rain, fresh air and the wares of the sidewalk vendors. It was a moment to savor.

Blogging from Educause WRC, Day 2

I am in the San Francisco ballroom of the Hyatt hotel in San Francisco attending conference sessions at the Educause Western Regional Conference. In about an hour I will be presenting on Podcasting. This should be fun! More details of this are on my Geek Blog.

Blogging from Educause WRC

I am at the Educause Western Regional Conference, tomorrow I am going to be presenting here on Podcasting and speaking about Tablet PC computing in education. The audience is Instructional Technologists from Colleges and Universities throughout the western United States. It is at the Hyatt in san Francisco. The opening session is at 12:45 this afternoon, but I got here early and got oriented and registered. Then I went to lunch at an Italian Restaurant on Powell Street. I ate Panini and watched the cable cars trundle by. I am reading The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida. This is an important book. In it he quotes Paul Romer who said, "the most important ideas are meta-ideas." Florida says these are, (again quoting Romer,) "ideas about how to support the production and transmission of other ideas."
This is why I think Emerging Technology and Podcasting (technologies based on RSS 2.0) is so important and disruptive of existing paradigms! That is exactly what it does!

Wine Stuff

I have been posting a lot of wine reviews! If you are interested in my opinion about some of the wines we have been drinking, they are here on my opinion blog!
We have discovered a great place to but very good wine. It is called The Wine Club and it is on Coleman in Santa Clara, behind the airport.

A tale of many Kenneths

There is Ken Compton, Ken Rattenne, Ken Blase, Ken Wong, all of which led to Ken Sloan. The choice of Ken's name was actually made by my sister Lura. Candy wanted to name him Nathan, I liked Kenneth. My reason was I felt there was never a Kenneth I met that I didn't like. Therefore I chose Kenneth. I thought it was a very likable name.

Had Kenneth been born a girl he would of been named Lura, so we let her break the deadlock. She chose Kenneth. She said, "If he were named Nathan people would have called him Nat. That always reminds me of a bug." So, Kenneth it was!

This last weekend I received a nice call from Ken Compton, and got a nice E-mail from Ken Rattenne and spent some good time with Ken Sloan. We went out to breakfast on Sunday. I love going out to breakfast. It was great hearing from the elder Ken's. We have kept in touch through the decades.

It was a good Kenneth weekend!

Firsts, lasts and always

I have been in a funk lately for a variety of reasons and I just needed to relax, be with people I love and get better grounded. So, that is what I did this weekend.

I have been thinking a lot about firsts and lasts.  I guess it was the passing of my sister and the recent anniversary of the car accident that got me thinking this way. It is also the new phases of my life, the birth of my grand-daughter, the entry of my last child into adulthood and all that means. I have been thinking about how our lives are defined by events that we may not note or notice at the time. We have first kisses and last kisses, first times we meet people and the last time we ever see them, we have events we take for granted, like having people around us all the time. Then, suddenly they are gone, either moved away or passed on; and there are holes left in our lives that never get filled quite the same.

Our lives are like a shelf of books, with each book being a phase of our life and at each end of the shelf is a bookend, our first breath and our last breath, and all the stories in between.

Shooting Bike Racing

Today is another rainy day, so I had to cancel the bicycle ride I was going to lead today for JC Henderson. Instead Sue and I went Shopping and Wine Tasting. Well, if I cannot ride a bike I can at least play with bike photography. Here is a photo we made at last weekend's Sea Otter. It was a great event!

LBJ is with child

The other day this was posted to my old blog:

Great shot! What type of lens did you use? Hey, I've started a new blog. It's at http://motormouth.myblogsite.com/ -- could you update your link to me with "motormouth" instead of Lynn Benson? Miss you. Brian and I had tacos with the La Victoria orange sauce tonight!
Lynn

If you follow the link to her blog, you find this:

No sooner had I finished reading the directions than the second stripe blazed through, clear as a Massachusetts day after the snow.

This is very exciting news. Sue and I are very happy for them!

BTW - I cannot fix the link in my old blog as I cannot post there for some reason. That is the reason I have given up on that blog provider! The picture Lynnster is referring to is this one, which was the last posting I was able to make to the old Radio blog.

Anniversaries Remembered

About April 21st
Yesterday was the anniversary of that horrible day in 1991 when Candy, my first wife, was killed after she lost control of the pickup she was driving and slammed into a telephone pole. The boys were also in the truck. They ended up on the side of the road flagging down vehicles for help while their mom was mortally wounded. Everybody was taken to the hospital, Kenneth and Jeff ended up in intensive care. Jeff had to have surgery.

My family and friends were there for me and us. My sister Lura and brother-in-law Floyd rushed out and were a huge help with the kids after the accident. Lura, of course, was also the person who filled in as both a wonderful friend and a great sister as she was the one who I sought so much advice from as our own parents had already passed away. My wonderful niece Mary came out to help with the kids. My cousins from Idaho came down to help. Anne and Don were there and such a huge help. Marie and Kirk came from Sacramento. Judy Lee came out to help. Janet drove out to San Francisco in the middle of the night when I was sleeping in a chair in the intensive care unit of a Modesto hospital with Jeff and Kenneth, the list goes on and on...

About the photo
This picture was taken in 1985, ten years after Candy and I eloped. This was our church wedding as we had been married by a judge in Concord, CA. In the photo from left to right,  Floyd and Lura, Mary, Candy, Me (quite heavier then), my sister Carol with Alex (top) and Sophie.  Carol and Sophie can also be seen in this picture from my old family blog.

It is hard to believe she turned fifty!

She hardly looks it!
It happened in the Seventh Street Parking Garage at SJSU! Yesterday I turned fifty thousand miles on Zippy, our 1999 Acura Integra LS. She has been a great car. This car has been through several fender benders, and thanks to the great work by the Honda-Acura Connection, she still looks and drives great. It runs fantastic, has lots of power if you need it and gets about 32 miles-per-gallon. It runs on any gas. It is reliable. It is so much fun to drive, she handles great. She almost seems to know what you are thinking and goes there. I have thought at times about getting a pickup, but really, this is a great car. It is like a little station wagon, I can easily fit my bike in the back of Zippy. I love this car! This picture of Sue with Zippy was made about a year ago.