Update

I see it's been a while since my last post. I intend to remedy that. Writing a blog is as easy as writing a letter and I can add pictures. Although I could attach picture to a letter, each reader has to download not only the letter, but also the pictures, taking time and bandwidth.

My most recent adventure was San Diego, land of water and cool. The ocean is right next door, of course, but you can smell the salt air and if you're anywhere nearby, the businesses cater in some way to the Navy and watercraft. the cool part comes from the dramatically lower temperatures, at least lower than in Tucson, about 20 degrees. That's enough to be really noticeable!

My purpose was to attend CTIA at the convention center. This show is all about communications, cell phones, service providers and those associated with these businesses. As usual, my press pass gets me in free and gives me entree to special press events.

One press event, Showstoppers, was something of a disappointment. This is usually an exciting and big event for both press and the vendors, but this time there were few vendors and they weren't all that interesting. The food, though, was very good. Showstoppers is usually an evening event, but this one was at lunch, so the drinks were non-alcoholic.

The Virgin Mobile picture was taken at Showstoppers.

Another event for press was put on by HTC, a cell phone provider. Their Hero phone was interesting and I'm hoping to get one for review before long. I'm interested in trying out one or two of the touch-screen phones, like the iPhone. There a quite a number of them now. The Apple product has triggered many competitors.

And a third event was Mobile Focus, the most exciting and interesting. This was an evening event and had a theme of the 20's. There were two women dressed as flappers, the hall was decorated with prohibition posters and things. The drinks were pure 21st century, though!

There were many vendors, all of which were very cooperative. That means that they were willing to provide units of their product to review. While most products were related to communications and services, there were a couple of outliers - HP and Kingston. I got a lot of leads on stuff to review.

The drive from Tucson to SD goes over the desert in AZ to Yuma, the Colorado river, then the sand dunes (big!) in CA, then more desert, then the mountains east of SD, which rise from 1,000 to 4,000 feet, then down again to sea level at SD.

SD is as much a maze of freeways as is Los Angeles. Everyone is in a hurry, of course! And here I am, trying to figure out which interstate to take. I relied heavily on my GPS device to direct me to my destination, a cheap motel.

The return trip is as exciting as the trip over, but both were uneventful, the best kind!