As Far As You Know

Drove down the road this morning and checked into the Anaheim Marriott, adjacent to the convention center hosting the 37th Annual Conference of High School Athletic Directors. I am about to head into a four-hour workshop (the first of four I'll attend over the next three days) in preparation for a certification exam I'll take Tuesday morning.

Augusto Pinochet, 1915-2006, mass murderer, enemy of human rights. He will not be missed. In observance of his death, I played Sting's "They Dance Alone (Gueca Solo)," a mournful meditation about the women whose husbands, father, brothers, and sons went missing in Pinochet's Chile. "Someday we'll dance on his grave."

Apple ran a series of advertisements about a decade ago with the tagline "What's On Your PowerBook?" The ads featured both celebrities and regular Joes and Janes. (Click here to see a bigger version of the ad above and here to see more ads like this one.)

Now that laptops are much more ubiquitous, I thought'd I'd provide a smattering of what I am carrying with me on my iBook during my two-week California/Florida trip:

recent “In Our Time” podcasts from BBC
schedule for the upcoming Intercollegiate Tennis Association convention
Skype
case statement for artificial turf fields
Dashboard widgets
faculty lectures downloaded from iTunes.Berkeley.edu
faculty lectures downloaded from iTunes.Stanford.edu
Safari and Firefox browsers
syllabi for HI411: Constitutional Law and HI432: Modern Japan
Delicious Library containing catalogue of my books, CDs, and DVDs
iChat
RealVideo file of U2's Vertigo '05 concert from Sao Paolo
DVArchive to transfer recorded shows from my ReplayTV to my Mac
Solitaire Til Dawn
birthday list for Memorial House residents
episodes of season 3 of “Drawn Together” in QuickTime format
Google Earth
photos from recent cross country season to post on Facebook
Macromedia Studio 8
draft of handbook for the New England Interscholastic Squash Association
iWork ’06 with Keynote presentation for NEPSAC Annual Meeting
the complete Promethea by Alan Moore in pdf format
Circus Ponies Notebook with collections of text and image clippings
college recommendations for the Class of 2007
FileMakerPro 8 to access interscholastic athletic schedule data
notes on The Brothers Karamazov
iLife ’06 with Garage Band podcasts from Choate Tennis trip to China
Microsoft Office 2004 For Mac
raw digital video from South African safari in need of editing in iMovie
evaluations of coaches
downloaded audiobook file with Tom Friedman lecture on the flat world
VPN Client
my Great American Novel in progress

It's been a while since I had to sit for an exam. I took a test for the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, which will theoretically make me a "Certified Athletic Administrator," should I pass. I found the 100 multiple choice questions ridiculously easy. There was an unlimited amount of time for people to finish the test, and they expected most to finish within two hours. I completed the "bubble sheet" in less than 45 minutes (and got a few dirty looks as I left the room)!

If Battlestar Galactica were produced by the makers of The Simpsons, this is what you might see. More here.

Looks like I won't get to see the Nip/Tuck season 4 finale tonight as planned. The Anaheim Marriott doesn't get the F/X cable network. What th-?

Hope my ReplayTV records the show as scheduled.

Up and at 'em today to get the early jump on Disneyland, my first visit to the park since 1970!

Does anything say California more than lunch at In-N-Out Burger? Just enjoyed a "double double" in Orange County while en route to San Diego.