After a quick trip to Costco (it wasn’t too bad despite being this time of year) and Target, I headed to Best Buy. Parking was easy and then I went into the store to find the headset. It was a complete zoo, so I started looking for the headset. First I saw headsets in the PC area. They had some Logitech wireless headsets there, but not the h800. So I went to the mobile phone area and there were more headsets, but not the h800. Onto mp3 players to find more headsets, but not the h800.

So, I asked a sales person and he said to check over by the home stereo area as I had said “wireless headphones”. Nope, not there. Someone else suggested gaming. There were headsets, but not the h800. By this time, I was about to lose my mind. I tried to use Best Buy’s mobile website to verify that the store had it, but the Find in Store option kept spinning and didn’t show me results.

I went to one of the cash registers (they have them scattered throughout the store) and asked the guy behind the counter to look it up. He looked it up and the computer said they had 7 of them. He went into the back (I thought I’d never see him again) and when he came back maybe 10 minutes later, he said that they were unloading a truck and that they were probably in the shipment. However, he didn’t stop there and asked someone else who said that they wouldn’t have them listed in the computer unless they were already unloaded. The very helpful guy went with me looking for it. First was gaming to double check, then he said “let’s try wireless mice”. Presto, the headset was next to the wireless mice. I’m not sure I would have been able to find them without help. I profusely thanked the man and went on my way to pay.

So Best Buy has headsets in no less than 6 different locations in the store! I’m not sure that anyone there would have been able to find it on the first try. This was an exercise in frustration and a valuable lesson; shop online, it’s easier and faster!

With neighbors like these, who needs enemies? I did clean it up after I got back, but I find it very rude that some people don’t pick up after their dogs.

(My wife thinks it could be from a coyote, but I don’t think so. We live near a canyon, so it is a possibility.)

Right inside, I saw people loading up on ice, so I grabbed 2 bags, then decided to grab 2 more. The store ran their registers on a generator, so they were raking in the dough. I paid by credit card and was on my way; I wanted to preserve cash just in case.

When I got home, I started thinking if we were prepared. I dumped the ice in the fridge and managed to save most of the contents. My wife and son arrived home awhile later; it took them almost 2 hours to come home from SeaWorld; normally a 25 minute trip.

It was still quite warm outside and we made the decision that we were going to camp outside since the temperature in our house was too high to be tolerable. With flashlights and candles, we were pretty much set for the night. My wife slapped together a dinner using our supply of canned tuna and some salad fixings.

While the power was only off for about 10 hours (it came back on about 1:45 am), it really got me thinking about a real disaster. The news touted that San Diego was pretty well prepared; however, I think the gridlock shows that we still have a lot to do in order to be prepared. Personally, we weren’t too bad off; we have a gas grill ready for cooking, we have food, a can opener, batteries, flashlights, etc. The only things that I think we need to do better is get on a schedule of restocking supplies such as batteries, water, first aid supplies, and food. We have a pool and chlorine, so water wasn’t going to be an issue. I have bottles of water, but due to them being in plastic, I need to make sure we replenish them.

The one major thing I didn’t have was a portable radio. I used my car’s radio to listen as well as followed @KPBSNews. Cell coverage was spotty as cell sites were pretty much clogged.

So, what have I learned? I’ve ordered a solar powered, hand cranked radio (the reviews on them are so mixed, I just have to take a chance). I’m going to pick up additional bottles of water and have setup a calendar where I’ve started to put a schedule of when things need to be replaced.

Can San Diego survive a major earthquake? I’m not sure. It was kind of scary as I had no idea how long the power would be out; we’re so reliant on power and technology that without it, people kind of go crazy. Maybe this will serve as a wake up call for everyone, including me.

Why does weather in San Diego make news? People in other parts of the country laugh at us when we complain at the weather and the local news just make things worse by reporting ridiculous stories calling what we got a storm.

While I do complain about the weather, I do it jokingly and have used it to gently poke fun at my co-workers in other parts of the country.

OK, that’s fine, but leaving the glasses in the street to get crushed? I saw that there was a box for underground telephone lines, so I set the glasses on the box hoping that someone will come back and find them. At least by putting them there, the owner has half a chance of recovering non-broken glasses. Why the nurse didn’t pick up the glasses and do the same thing I did, I have no idea.

The application was quite basic; it counted down the number of seconds until I graduated from college. Yes, I was tired of school and ready to graduate! I guess I kind of got hooked on mobile development and that’s where I’ve spent a majority of my career; first Newton, then Palm OS, and now iOS. I’ve played with Windows CE/Mobile and WebOS, but never wrote anything for those devices.

I don’t think I could write Newton or Palm OS code these days, but some of the concepts are still the same, such as limited screen size and limited memory. However, iOS is so much more advanced, it’s unbelievable.

On the flip side, some may say that my experience is also a hinderance as I may be stuck in my ways. This may be true, but I’d like to think that it isn’t the case. Hopefully my long history of mobile development continues to serve me well.

I’m not sure what was the actual trigger for leaving my last job, but I’m quite lucky that everything has worked out.

Life is good.

In no particular order:

• Redeploy military personnel to patrol the airports with M-16 machine guns. The wars overseas are not winnable, so put the soldiers in our all volunteer military (not the national guard troops) to work at the airports. The machine guns and troops in fatigues is at a minimum an excellent deterrent. Having flown within the months after 9/11, it was almost comforting to see the military there. The TSA officers at the checkpoints are not very menacing and aren’t even armed.
• Bring in bomb sniffing dogs. They’ll likely be able to detect explosives more efficiently than the full body scanners or the random swap testing. In addition, if someone is nervous, dogs will make them even more nervous.
• Profile people. This seems obvious, but train personnel to be more observant and watch people that fit certain profiles.
• Watch behaviors. Train all the personnel to watch passengers’ behaviors.
• Get rid of the full body scanners. They’re a waste of time and money. Return them and get our taxpayer money back.
• Stop the 3-1-1 rule for liquids. Confiscating a bottle of hair spray is ridiculous.
• Do the full body pat downs on people that show signs of being uncomfortable or are acting in a way out of the ordinary; don’t do a full pat down on a child that doesn’t fit a profile.
• Stop confiscating nail clippers, nail files, etc. If you can get a knife inside of security like I had used for dinner last week, nail clippers aren’t going to hurt anyone. Also, look at maintenance workers that have all kinds of tools that could be used as weapons.
• Tighten up perimeter security. There was a story the other day about a castaway in a wheel well that got onto the tarmac.

There are a few things that I don’t mind that have been done:

• Reinforcing the cabin doors.
• Prohibiting lines from forming outside the cabin door.
• Taking off shoes; while a little inconvenient, I can handle it.

Let’s get real TSA and start being smarter about how the billions of dollars are being spent. The costs can be cut tremendously if we didn’t waste it on useless screening techniques.

The iPad 2 has pretty much sealed the deal that I don’t have to travel with a laptop on non-work trips. Now that I’m a salaried employee and actually get time off where people are bugging me, I don’t feel compelled to fix bugs, write code, tweak a server, etc. Also the power of the iPad to edit videos makes it an ideal device to take on a vacation where I can take pictures and shoot video, then assemble a movie while still on vacation (the catch here is that our digital camera has to store the video in a format that the iPad can read when I put the SD card in the camera connection kit; I’ll address this in another post).

The “limited” abilities of the iPad are a huge plus to me as there is no way that I can write code on it and I don’t feel guilty about it. There is no doubt in my mind that on my next vacation, my laptop will be left at home.