Napa Weekend

To celebrate our first Valentine's as a married couple, T and I ventured out to Napa Valley this past Saturday. One of the high points, both literally and figuratively, was our visit to the Sterling winery, situated almost entirely on the summit of a tall knoll, located halfway between St. Helena and Calistoga (link here). To get to the winery at the top, visitors must travel by aerial tram, much like the gondolas you find at ski resorts. Ours was a cozy two-seater and the views of the valley and the fountains below were picturesque. The ride back down was especially nice as the setting sun was bathing the entire panorama in a lush, deep orange hue. Almost as memorable as the garlic fries at Taylor's Refresher a few miles down the road.

Gizoogle

Ever wonder what would happen if you crossed Google with MTV's Pimp My Ride or Cribs? No? Well now you can... with Gizoogle (link here). Hilarious. The spinning rims on the header are too precious. Just for fun, I did a search of "John Ashcroft", former Attorney General and leading proponent of the U.S. Patriot Act. Gizoogle churned out: "Attorney General John Ashcroft . Boo-Yaa!. Call'n him a dawg of bootylicious integrity", "Jizzle Ashcroft crazy up in here. Much like tha Nazis in Casablizzles John Ashcroft enjoys a good song - as long as thugz rememba they place", and "Smizzay tha satire. Freak y'all, into the beat y'all. A picture of Jizzay Ashcroft's face, made entirely of shawty P-to-tha-izzorn people: J-to-tha-izzohn Ashcroft n sh-t. Yes, Jizzy Ashcroft is going pimp porn yeah yeah baby. All pizzy." Call it "Googlebonics" for the internet age.

Virtual Reality

Read in the San Francisco Chronicle about the following incident that happened this morning: "BART is experiencing a computer glitch and other technical difficulties this morning at a number of stations, causing lengthy delays throughout the Bay Area that have stymied the morning commute. A computer at the Embarcadero station saw a 'ghost train' at 7:30 a.m., requiring operators to drive their trains manually at no more than 25 mph, rather than the normal 70 mph, said Jim Allison, a spokesman for the transit agency. That created a backup in the Transbay Tube that saw as many as eight trains inside the tunnel at one time. That slowed the entire system to a crawl, and by 11 a.m. trains headed to the East Bay from San Francisco were still being delayed by 15 minutes." Say again? Did I read that right? "Ghost train"? This should be more than a little frightening to anyone who relies on public transportation systems (and this includes air traffic control systems). Phantom objects showing up on critical systems affecting the safety of hundreds of thousands... yikes. Eerily reminiscent of the closing scenes from the movie Wargames (link) in which the two protagonists (played by Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy), along with the entire war room at NORAD, watch in horror as the large screens display what everyone believes is a nuclear holocaust; but later turns out to have been a self-generated computer simulation involving phantom intercontinental ballistic missiles. Wonder if someone hacked into the BART system much like the Broderick character in Wargames. Or maybe the BART system simply runs on Microsoft XP... that would explain a lot.

"Housing Bubblette"

Interesting article (link here). And yet more evidence of the rising bubblette (link here). PMI Group, the leading mortgage insurer, recently published its 2005 Risk Index (Wall Street Journal link, subscription req'd). It listed the San Francisco Bay Area as one of the top three riskiest areas in the country for potential home price declines. PMI calculates the Bay Area as having a risk index of 479. In other words, there is a 47.9% chance of significant housing price declines within the next two years. That compares to a national risk index average of 161.

The Pen is Mightier than the (Horde)

... horde of marketing, public relations, and corporate communications staffs that is. This article in The Economist (link here) about the weblogging of Robert Scoble, who otherwise works at Microsoft and holds the revealing title of "Tech Evangelist", demonstrates the power and potential of blogs to influence others. In the case of a large, impersonal, and broadly disliked corporation like Microsoft, the ability to reach out to a small but highly influential group of outside software developers. If a blog can persuade and occasionally even convert erstwhile anti-Microsoft zealots, then anything is possible in the new digital world.