• Realizing that I’ve been so busy this week it’s been hard to update my mini blog here. All is well, heading home for Halloween today #
• Flew back to San Diego for Halloween #
• Thought of the day: San Diego and Vegas airports have free Wifi. How come Seattle doesn’t? You have to pay to use it there. #

I headed off to Las Vegas for the SEMA Show this past Monday morning (4am!) and it has been a busy week. I flew home the afternoon on Halloween to spend time with my family, and currently I am doing some blogging at Truckblog to get some of the news and photos out from the past few days. I’ll be flying back to Vegas in the morning to finish up the show Thursday & Friday, then heading back home for good on Saturday. What a week!

Above is a photo of my Truckblog Crew on Monday. From left to right is me, Jason, Mike, Jason (Frozie), Brian and Tami.

I’m staying at the Las Vegas Hilton this week for the SEMA Show, and down by the elevators they have the most amazing vending machine for Apple fanboys… BOOM! It’s an Apple vending machine. Chock full of iPods, cameras, headphones, cables, adapters… everything you might need in a pinch. They even have the latest toys, such as the iPod Nano, iPod Video, and iPod Touch. Check this out. Got any spare change?

• Showed Tek all around San Diego today; now packing up and getting ready for SEMA trip tomorrow (Vegas) #
• 4am; yawn… didn’t really sleep last night. The Jasons get here soon to pick us up to go to The Vegas for The SEMA. Yawn. #
• 89 mi outside Vegas #
• At the California / Nevada state line. Hi Whiskey Pete! #
• We have arrived in The Vegas #

• Leopard installed; went smoothly; changes are slight & nice but nothing earth shattering #
• Tek and Frozie are playing Wii #

• Talked with FedEx, they used the fire excuse for not delivering. Said it might come tomorrow, might not. Downloading Torrent in the meantime #
• Installed twitbin on Mac, works just the same as on the PC. I dig it. #
• I now have Windows XP running through VMWare Fusion on my Mac. Seems to be running just fine. Think I’ll do Vista too at some point. #
• Installing XP SP2 on VMWare/Mac. I love the integration it has with OS X. Unity mode makes Win apps show alongside Mac apps on Mac desktop #
• They now have reverse 911 for cell phones. Signing up! http://www.sandiego.gov/ohs/reverse911/ #
• If you’re on a Mac, this is a MUST HAVE screen saver. Everyone loves this: LotsaWater http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19934 #
• Mac peeps: http://www.macupdate.com/ has a lot of stuff — wow! #
• As expected, my CS50 Plantronics USB headset works fine on the Mac. Did not have much luck with my MS LifeCamVX3000, however. #
• Leopard w00t: FedEx says it’s on vehicle for delivery TODAY (Saturday). Thanks for working O.T. FedEx peeps! #
• My friend Tek arrives today from NY to hang out here in Diego for the weekend, then go to Vegas with me for the week (SEMA Show) #
• Leopard has finally arrived, too bad now my big week starts so I won’t be able to play with it a whole lot! #
• Just washed ash off the driveway and front yard, and washed all the ash off the truck. I’m sure I’ll have to do it again in a week. #
• On the way to get Tek from the airport #
• Installing Leopard; Ripping "Knocked Up" to iPhone; Tek is watching Islanders game on his Slingbox #

I got this (finally) late this evening from Apple:

To Our Valued Apple Customer:

Dear Apple Customer,

Thank you for your recent order with Apple.

Due to local emergency conditions in your delivery area, our carriers are unable to deliver to the address listed on your order. As a result, your Apple shipment is currently being held at your local FedEx facility.

Understanding that you may need your order sooner than it can be delivered, Apple has teamed with FedEx to allow you to pick up your order at your local FedEx facility. To claim your package, you must have:

– The tracking number
– A valid photo ID with name and address that match the delivery name and address

Regular delivery service will resume once conditions allow.

Thank you for your business.
Apple, Inc.

That explains it, however there aren’t any fires at the airport, or downtown, or anywhere on the way to my house. In fact, all of the fires are nowhere close to San Diego proper. So what’s with the delays, really? If I had to guess, it’s because Apple dumped thousands of overnight packages on FedEx yesterday (Thurs) and overwhelmed their drivers. Nice going!

• Made some minor updates to my blog after the WP 2.3 upgrade busted some plug-ins. Had to remove the Flickr sidebar, but Twitter is dialed in #
• Thincloud’s Twitter app for iPhone is pretty cool. Check it out http://twitter.thincloud.com/ #
• Guitar Hero finally makes it to the Wii on 10/28 http://www.gamespot.com/wii/puzzle/guitarhero/index.html #
• Currently Browsing: http://wii.nintendo.com/site/dkbb/ I loves me some Donkey Kong! #
• Currently Browsing: http://www.gamespot.com/wii/adventure/tombraider10thanniversaryedition/index.html Lara Croft finally on the Wii! #
• Currently Browsing: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21477273/ I guess Vista’s not doing as bad as everyone says (according to this report) #
• LOL @UPS — they just arrived at 8:30PM to deliver packages they couldn’t before due to the fires #
• Good weather news! Humidity is up, the Santa Ana winds are gone (for now), now hopefully that will help the firefighters! #
• Who DOESN’T love Mallomars, Stephen Colbert? http://tinyurl.com/2abkn7/&BrandId=73&PageNo=1 #
• Had a late night doing WORK work. Ugh. TGIF and I have all next week off! Leopard arrives in ~60 mins #
• I love FF… needed a desktop shortcut option like IE and behold: http://tinyurl.com/ywazxh #
• This is hilarious "The Landlord" with Will Ferrell http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/74 #
• And here are the Out Takes from "The Landlord" http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/4152 #
• Installed Lightroom, Office, VMWare Fusion on Mac. Still waiting for Leopard… was supposed to arrive by 10:30am? FedEx is having delays! #
• Apple is not off to a good start to impress me. Ordered Leopard a week ago for delivery today. FedEx won’t deliver it until Monday now. Boo! #

I finally (yes, I have been extremely busy!) got the chance to go outside today to check on the pool. Here’s what I found:

I cleaned it off, and the edges where the ash had built up on the tile wall. Hopefully the cleaner will do its job so we don’t have to drain the pool and get it acid-washed again like we did after the Cedar Fire 4 years ago!

Now that the Santa Ana winds have stopped, there’s a real good chance all the ash that has blown out to the West will come back East and land around here.  So, I’m holding off on doing any major ash cleanup around our yard (plants, concrete, etc.) for another week at least.

• San Diego fire update: 1,500 homes burned, 560,000 people evacuated, 350,000 acres burned. Worst in history! #
• w00t! Just got a Shipment Notification from Apple. Leopard has shipped! I’ll have it in my hot hands tomorrow. "MAC OS X 10.5 RETAIL" #
• Leopard shipped FedEx Priority Overnight from Schaumburg, IL at 8:34AM, set to arrive by 10:30AM tomorrow morning. I love the free shipping! #
• My brother’s recommendation of VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ was a hit. I have it installed on my XP box and on my Mac is my main player #

I just realized that I never showed my first major vehicle graphics project… probably because it took so long to do, and then I just got busy with a Ford trip to Michigan and the fires here in San Diego. Plus, I was scrambling last minute to get the plotter and the software to work so I could cut all of the vinyl for this monster truck.

Well, here it is, in all its glory. Took about 3 full days (over the period of a week) to apply the graphics. Thanks to Frozone and Brian for their help (and beer!) It goes to Las Vegas this weekend (Saturday, I believe) for the week-long SEMA Show event. The owner of the truck (a Ford Super Duty F-250 diesel) is Brian Olhausen, and he named it “Project Bank Shot” since his family is in the billiards business. On a related note, his house in Poway was spared from the fires, but the homes right next to him were destroyed.

I took these photos last Saturday. My goal was to grab some sunset shots near the coast, however the marine layer moved in too fast and spoiled that for us. The fires started the next day, ruining any possibility of getting more photos. I’ll take some more in Vegas or after we get back from the SEMA Show.

Hand-drawn sketch and measurements:

Computer mock-up:

Finished work:

There are a bunch more photos at Truckblog, and that gallery will be updated along the way.

My sister got me hooked on watching the The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central when I was up in Seattle and while I hate politics in general, I found the show amusing because it does nothing but poke fun at politics. What follows Stewart’s show is the Colbert Report. I got hooked on that show too. Recently Colbert announced he is running for President (with his goal to lose). Last weekend he was on “Meet The Press”. Here’s his appearance, part 1 & 2. It’s quite funny, if you have a few minutes to blow:

• Back in Ash Diego #
• "THE PACKAGE IS DELAYED DUE TO EMERGENCY CONDITIONS BEYOND UPS’ CONTROL / DELIVERY RESCHEDULED" Fires suck! #
• Very cool SoCal fire map http://tinyurl.com/yrpqke #
• My brother is recommending I check out VLC media player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ #
• $1 billion cost and rising in California fires http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21449247/ NICE! #
• Got my plates for the new truck today… wow that was fast. Was hoping to leave my Truckblog blanks on there a lot longer #

OMG what a crazy few days. First, the fire started Sunday in East County and we kept a close watch on it, knowing that I had a Monday morning flight with Frozone to go to Michigan for a two-day Ford truck media event. We made the decision early Monday morning to go ahead with my trip, as it looked like the fire was going to avoid our neighborhood. Unfortunately soon after I arrived in Michigan, Krissy called to let me know that mandatory evacuations were announced. Since we just went through this exercise 4 years ago during the Cedar fire, she knew exactly what to pack into the truck and took off to her Aunt’s house with the girls and the dogs.

About 24 hours later (Tuesday afternoon), my family was allowed back to our house. No damage in the immediate area, and surprisingly there wasn’t much more ash here than before I left. The fires are still burning all around San Diego County, but thankfully, none that are close by. Everyone that I know in San Diego is safe, including friends in Poway and Romona; two areas that were hit hard.  All San Diego schools are closed this week for obvious reasons, mainly because of the poor air quality.

On the way to Michigan (Monday morning, 8:30am) I took a few photos from my window seat on the plane (see below). On the way home tonight we could see fires still burning from the air, but nothing impressive enough for a photo.

Click photos to enlarge: