I spent this past week in California for some professional training. It would have been a pretty lonely trip if it hadn’t been for one of my dear friends who drove up from L.A. to keep me company. See the photos as I visit San Francisco with Ross.

Seth, our virtual landlord, started a lively thread on how to make good tea. We eventually hit on good techniques for both iced tea and hot tea, so if you’re interested in making this wonderful drink as wonderful as it can be, stop on by.

As many of you know, I bear the curse of the travel gods, and am incapable of going anywhere more than 200 miles from home without some mishap or another. Fortunately, they’re being gentle this trip: the only things that have gone wrong are the wildfire that was raging 2 miles from our house when I had to leave, the stopped traffic on the Interstate on the way to the airport, the lateness of the flight, the verbally abusive drunk in the seat behind me, the bachelor party in progress two rows back, and the inability to get the rental car because my license had expired. But I’ve made it to class, Kathy assures me that the house hasn’t burned down, and there’s a shuttle at the hotel, so I’m in pretty good shape.

This year’s Hugo Award Winners have been announced, and include such diverse pieces of work as Galaxy Quest and Vinge’s excellent A Deepness in the Sky. If you’re looking to add to your reading queue, you can’t go wrong here.

My boss and I went to see the musical production of Les Miserablés Wednesday night while in San Francisco. I was impressed all over again with what a magnificent story it is, and what a wonderful job the creators of the show did in bringing Hugo’s masterwork from prose to the stage. There are few more powerful workings-out of the conflict between justice and mercy, sin and salvation in world literature than this one, and it’s amazing to see it brought to life so vividly.

Looking for something to do at work? My employer’s parent company, Electronic Arts, has opened the doors to the beta version of their new on-line games service. If you’d like to play some of the best on-line games out there (in my completely unbiased opinion), come take a look. The game I’m most interested in, however, isn’t yet available, but is due in February 2001. I’m not sure how much I can say about it, but if you look at the delightfully twisty Michael Douglas movie The Game, you’ll have some inkling of what makes this game intriguing.

If you’ve read any of Wodehouse’s Jeeves & Wooster stories, you know exactly what to expect, and Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves delivers it in spades. If you haven’t read Wodehouse before, then start now, and then visit your local library to feed your newfound addiction.

I’m going to be out in San Fransisco (well, Redwood City, actually) a fair bit over the next couple of weeks. I know that the big tourist spots will be obvious, but I wanted to troll the collective mind of the Internet for anything more out-of-the-way that’s especially worth doing or seeing out that way. Any suggestions, folks?

In the midst of the brouhaha I’m still working through with ShopAudioVideo.com, I thought it would be nice to put in a plug for Outpost.com, one of my favorite web-based vendors. I’ve ordered from them many times, because they carry a ton of stuff, have good prices, provide free shipping, and have excellent customer service. Additionally, they have the best commercials ever.

This week’s listening in the car on the way to work was Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. His memoirs of his poverty-wracked childhood in Ireland are poignant and affecting, but still shine with his sense of humor and wry take on aspects of his family’s life together. The audio version is enhanced by McCourt’s still-strong Irish accent, which makes it a pleasure to listen to for the sound alone. Definitely worth a read if you’re interested in Ireland and its people or just enjoy a well-told story. I’ll be interested to see how the film version stacks up against the delightful prose. Postscript: Greg just pointed me to an interview with McCourt on one of the sites he maintains. Well worth reading.