Say what nasty things you want about Fry's, and they'll probably be true, but nevertheless I must say that my visit today to the Sunnyvale location was like a kid in a candy store. I hadn't been to an electronics superstore like Fry's in a long time, and there was just so much stuff to enjoy.

My main reason for going was to pick up a cheap router. The old Netopia R9100 that Steve had given me long ago finally seems to have bit the dust and stopped serving DHCP clients. After spending a few days futzing [...]
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For the week we were in Ohio for my brother's wedding, we stayed at the Sheraton Suites in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. The hotel was memorable, both for its good experiences and bad.

The lobby is clean and nice, but not gaudy.

There's an indoor pool, which, while not spectacular, was plenty fine for Anthony to enjoy himself in. Towels were provided, which was a nice plus.

It's the most expensive hotel in the area, and has a reputation to match. When you mention to the local folk that you're staying at the Sheraton in Cuyahoga Falls, [...]

Today it's much cooler, only 79F (26C) in the shade at the moment. The last few had been very hot, surpassing 100F (38C) and causing the threat of rolling blackouts. (Some places did have blackouts because local transformers couldn't handle the load.)

When bought my new MacBook, I opted for the 80 gig drive, rather than the standard 60 gig, to give myself plenty of space. Thus, it is with great shock that I find it's already getting full.

Part of it could be the 20GB of videos for Anthony, the 21GB of images from my brother's [...]

It was HOT today, hitting 103°F (39.5°C) here in Silicon Valley, staying there much of the afternoon. Opening the door to the outside felt like what I'd imagine opening the door to a blast furnace might feel like. At least the humidity was low, and, as an added bonus, there were no rolling blackouts, as we had a few years ago.

Today's heat set a new record high temperature for the date. The previous high was a relatively chilly 96°F (35.5°C).

I've finally finished the writing and production of the Third Edition of my book, Mastering Regular Expressions (published by O'Reilly Media). I'd been working on it since the early fall, and finished the day before my travels started earlier this month.

This third edition is 58 pages longer than the second edition, and now reaches 542 pages in length. The main changes from the second edition are a new, 48-page chapter on PHP, and a rewritten/expanded Java chapter taking into account the many java.util.regex changes between Java 1.4 and Java 1.5/Java 1.6.

I've not yet updated the [...]