This conference always seems to go by so quickly. Check out my Twitter feed for all the sessions I’ve been attending. Very interesting stuff here this year. I wish I had more time to learn iPhone programming–there is a lot of money to made there. The shirts this year at the fake Company Store were awesome, so I picked up a couple.

In the food arena, I had lunch yesterday at an Irish pub called The Chieftain located right around the corner from Moscone. Had fish and chips that had a strong ale flavor - yum. Dinner was at Lori’s Diner, where I had a real cherry Coke with an open faced hot turkey sandwich. Food is definitely part of the reason I love San Francisco.

I ran five miles this morning before the sessions started, running from the hotel to Fisherman’s Wharf and back. They now have an In-N-Out Burger at the Wharf, along with all the other wonderful places. I really need to bring the kids here soon.

More good sessions today, with Dr. Paranoid from Pixar presenting again at lunch. I finished several lingering work projects yesterday during breaks and after dinner, so I might be able to go to the Design Awards and Stump the Experts tonight. Nerd fun.

What a week. After the Tapemark, I headed home, mowed the front lawn, grabbed a quick dinner, then drove to the airport to catch a flight to San Francisco for WWDC week.

The flight on Sun Country had some nice surprises. The flight was pretty crowded (130 people), but my row had about four inches of additional leg room–just as good as sitting in an exit row. Arrived right on time and the notoriously slow SFO luggage system had my bag out on the carousel right away.

A quick ride in a Toyota hybrid cab brought me to a new hotel–the Orchard Gardens Hotel on Bush Street. It’s a green hotel and the room is really nice: flat-screen HD TV, in-room wireless, Thymes toiletries and a really comfortable bed.

Today’s keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference was OK, but a little thin on substance. The new price point is nice, and I like the 3G and the GPS, but none of it is available yet and I was hoping for “one more thing.” There was some new stuff in the later sessions, but that is under NDA.

Walked down to Belden Place to have dinner tonight at Sam’s Grill and Seafood Restaurant. I ordered Alaskan Halibut and was a little disappointed. The cheese cake I had for desert was a little better, but I really hate places that charge $3 for a 10-ounce mini bottle of Coke with no refills. Always fun to sit outside in San Francisco, though.

Last weekend I planned an executive retreat for my company at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel in Prior Lake. This was actually my second choice for venue (none of the Cabins at Deacon’s Lodge were available), but it turned out to be very nice.

I picked up the HSRA LA program director from the airport on Friday morning and took her to Al’s in Dinkytown for breakfast. Afterwards, I dropped her off at The Marsh spa in Minnetonka for a massage.

The actual retreat started with a dinner meeting Friday night at the buffet, which ended up lasting more than three hours. Everyone had their own rooms Friday and Saturday nights and we had a lovely meeting room from 8-5 Saturday and Sunday (the Winuna Room).

We used up all nine hours both days for meetings (with a few delays here and there), but I did manage to get in some fun things too. On Friday, I played a twilight round of golf on the Meadows course with a neighborhood friend. Also played a little video poker both days and lost $45–almost as expensive as the golf.

The family came out and stayed both days, taking advantage of the extra bed and the swimming pool. I didn’t get to see them much, but we did have dinner at the Meadows Grille on Saturday night (it was family BBQ night). Kid one went to a friend’s birthday party sleep-over Saturday night, but they all got to go to Canterbury Park before that to watch the Preakness (and see the live horses too).

In hindsight, I probably could’ve used a massage before this retreat as well. It was a little tense at times and was mentally draining. Our organization is small and has a loose, unstructured culture that is very different from my past corporate experience. That’s not a bad thing, but it does drive me crazy sometimes.

We’ve scheduled a follow-up meeting in California for the end of June. I think the next few months will be a very interesting time for Studio 4. More details coming soon…

Congratulations to my wife Colleen for (almost) completing her master of arts degree in health journalism at the University of Minnesota. We are so proud of her!

She took part in today’s 2008 spring commencement at Northrup Auditorium (despite an emergency tooth extraction yesterday), along with 707 other masters and doctorate candidates. She still has to defend her capstone project next month, but this was the closest available grad ceremony.

Despite my arguing with the catering manager afterwards (don’t get me started on that story), the day was a wonderful celebration of her achievement. The weather was perfect and we stopped at Annie’s Parlour afterwards for a late lunch/early dinner. I think the cheddar cheese on my burger might be the best cheese I’ve ever had on a burger (no kidding).

Pictures from the day are available in the private section of the photo gallery.

This was a busy family activity weekend - wedding on Saturday in Plainview, Minnesota, and a community theater presentation of Cats on Sunday in Maplewood.

Congratulations to Justin and Mindy Tentis on their marriage. How often to you get to see a bride and groom drive away in something like that? It probably cost more than I paid for my house too…

The Heritage Theater Company production of Cats at the Maplewood Community Center included two Smiths - my uncle Jeff playing Bustopher Jones and my cousin Peter playing Mungojerrie. They both had solos and were awesome. The three hours worth of makeup was impressive too. The show runs through May 18 if you want to catch some good community theater (40+ people in the cast and orchestra).

Just wrapped up another week trip to HSRA Los Angeles. Same old, same old - troubleshoot tech issues, upgrade workstations, install more security cameras, dis-infect Windows machines, etc. School goes until late June, so I may be out one more time before then. If not, there is a lot of upgrade work to be done this summer (Leopard, Office 2008).

I didn’t stray far from the South Bay this time, visiting some of the same restaurants (In-N-Out Burger, Mickie Finnz, Uncle Bill’s Pancake House, El Pollo Loco) and trying some new places (El Torito on the Redondo Pier, Ruby’s Diner, Buona Sera, Noah’s Bagels). There are a bunch of places I want to try farther north, but the freeway headache is just too much for me right now. My red Prius rental car with the video rear-view monitor was nice, though.

Can’t believe I haven’t gone to Disneyland yet while working with the school. My brother is running the Disneyland Half Marathon in August, so maybe I can time a school visit for that. That would be worth fighting traffic for…

Last weekend my wife and I went to see our favorite comedic group make a triumphant return to Minneapolis. The Kids in the Hall 2008 Tour stopped Saturday night at the Orpheum Theater (after previously appearing at the State last time they were here). Watching the gang in person - Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson - is like hanging out with old friends.

The show was fairly short (maybe 90 minutes), but included one very funny NSFW video, chicken lady phone sex, Cathy tweeking, a Gavin sketch, The Salesmen, a Buddy Cole rant (”Twin Cities men - nothing mini or saintly about them!”) and an encore with the headcrusher. Those guys are such a funny and talented group - Canadian entertainment at it’s finest!

Before the show, we stopped at Ristorante Luci in St. Paul for dinner. Their food is as good as the Kids are funny. We both started out with the Insalata Cesare, followed by a shared order of housemade fettuccine with peas, chicken and prosciutto. That pasta was awesome - the first outside of Alfredo’s I’ve had that is worthy of the name. For the final course, my wife had the pork chop, while I had “American Kobe” beef with mashed potatoes. We had early reservations, but had to leave for the show before we could try the pretty mini-bundt cake desert.

Oh yeah, one last note on the show. I read about the tour on one of my newsfeeds and went to Ticketmaster to search for more info. I saw the Minnesota date listed, but general public sales hadn’t started yet. There was a link for a presale, but I didn’t know the code (or who was sponsoring the presale). On a whim, I tried “KITH” and damn if it didn’t let me in. As you can see from the ticket above, row N on the main floor was a pretty good reward for this old hacker…