IA Summit 2006  The summit is a lot of fun this year, both personally and professionally. Actually, it's probably more fun professionally—I'm not feeling 100%, so I'm laying low. For example, tonight was the Adaptive Path free drink night...and I bagged off it. Instead, I ate sushi by myself and came back to the room to crash. Fell asleep watching Lawrence of Arabia, one of my favorite movies.

But Vancouver is a neat city. Liking it a lot.

When is a Blog Not a Blog  I just stumbled onto Clooneygate.

Halliburton Redux  Sheesh. Things like this come out, yet almost none of the MSM cover it...much less the screed-head propaganda arms of the right wing (AKA Fox, Limbaugh, Beck, and so on): Seems that the administration-imposed no-bid company failed to purify water for troops in the field:

Halliburton Co. failed to protect the water supply it is paid to purify for U.S. soldiers throughout Iraq, in one instance missing contamination that could have caused “mass sickness or death,” an internal company report concluded.

Read more.

Deep Down in Florida  Every time I think about Florida, I think about that Muddy Waters song.
Anyway, I'm recovering from the vacation. It really was a fun time, though. We had a great two-day drive to get to St. Petersburg, where the folks are renting a condo.
We took in a Braves-Pirates game in Bradenton, which was great. We also spent some time in Ybor City, but really during the day; we didn't participate in its infamous night life. We also went to Sun City, to visit my father's cousin by marriage, Eve. What a hoot! "Preserve our lifestyle; slow-moving vehicles" is the community's mantra. How cute, really. Then we went to a restaurant by a marina, and afterwards visited a manatee-viewing site at a power plant.
As a side trip, I went to New Smyrna Beach—all the way across the state—to visit Bill Blue. Yup, the ol' denizen of Hard Times and my one-time boss lives there now. He surfs almost daily in season, and he has a recording studio.
He makes guitars, and he still performs. Looking good, too. In fact, he took me out on the beach at NSB. For me it was cool driving on the hard-packed, flat beach. I could see Daytona in the hazy distance north.

Anyway, I'm still working on uploading pictures.

On Vaca...  No entries lately, because we've been on vacation. Right now I'm blogging from a motel in Dilon, SC, on the way home.

Blog Timeline  Heiko links to the New York Magazine's timeline of blogging. Nice to see my old acquaintance Peter Merholz gets his props.