We’ve crossed over Malad Pass and are driving past the village of Malad. On
the far side of the valley a long thin line of fog lies against the
foothills. Inversions are the general rule in the valleys when high
pressure sets in holding the cold air down in the valleys. The snow on the
ground keeps the air cold and reflects back what sunlight gets through
without warming the air so that it rises. The result is a cold fog laced
with smoke from wood-burning stoves and car exhaust. Foul smelling,
unhealthy stuff. I dont remember having inversions when I was growing up
out here, so they may be a product of our much more polluted air and
environment.

We’re headed to the airport to send Helen on an airplane back to Denver
where her son will meet her and take her back home. Helen has been a very
pleasant guest and we’ve enjoyed having her visit. This should have given
her a good break from her daily life in Castle Rock. The week has passed by
quite rapidly.

After her plane leaves, we’ll drive into Salt Lake and meet my brother
Perry and his wife for lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in Trolley Square. That
may be followed by a quick visit to Best Buy and then we’ll head back home.

As we drop down into the Salt Lake valley, the haze and fog is increasing.
The inversion still reigns supreme in this valley. When we lived in
Pleasant View (near North Ogden), our house was up on the bench (a flat
area on the hilllside where Lake Bonneville once has it’s shoreline) and
was usually above the inversion. The valley below us was a sea of white and
often quite picturesque. Being down in it was much less pleasant!

The inversion gets broken up when the high pressure ridge breaks down
resulting in big canyon winds. The winds blow away all of the smog and
haze. That is usually followed by snow or rain, either of which are
welcome. We do have some snow forecast in Pocatello for Sunday.

So, it’s another driving Saturday. We’re having a pleasant day and all
seems well with our world.

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The Lotusphere Conference is ending, my trip to Orlando is ending, the stay
at the luxury hotel is ending — lots of endings! I do know, of course,
that as long as I’m still vertical, there are as many beginnings as there
are endings.

The conference has been very interesting. It may also turn out to be
useful! Lotus Notes is one of those capabilities that either become
foundation piece of a company’s infrastructure or you just struggle with it
forever. We’ve been struggling….

Orlando’s Disney facilities are first class. The price isn’t cheap, but
neither is the service. In the hotel and on the grounds, all the employees
greet you and smile at you. The customer experience is excellent and helps
make this a very comfortable place. There are also lessons to be learned
from that.

We’ll come back here sometime in the future (Nina assures me of that). I’m
looking forward to spending a real vacation time here. I think we should do
that in April or May before all the families with kids descend on the
place. People say this place is wall to wall people during the summer.
Vacation here would be a lot of fun, me thinks. So, this is only one ending
in Orlando!

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I’m in a session being lead by Richard Schwartz and Declan Lynch titled
“Improving Collaboration With Blogs And Wiki’s in Domino”. It is actually a
very good overview of how and why blogs can be good for an organization.. He
has also touched on the ethical issues associated with employee blogging.

I’ve not thought very much about Wiki’s before. The idea actually sounds
useful but would certainly require some serious selling and education in
the company I work for. I’ll have to give this some thinking as it may be a
good way to author policies, procedures, and user documentation.

Finally, the number of live demo’s that don’t work is interesting, always
accompanied by the comment, “It worked Yesterday…!” Then they show a
previously created document or email or web page. All the presenters so far
have been prepared for the live demo to fail! They’ve been here before and
just know that even the most simple of demonstrations will fail at the most
inopportune time. I’m impressed.

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The best part about weather in this part of the world is that when the
weather is bad, it won’t stay that way very long! The Law of Averages
simply won’t allow longer-term deviations. Today the weather here will be
almost back to normal. Airplane travel across the northeast US should get
back to normal today. The Law of Averages is taking hold again.

A number of years ago when I was learning to fly, making consistently good
landings was very difficult. One landing would be pretty good — close to
the centerline of the runway, no significant bounce, and without serious
float down the runway — and the next would be a near wreck. After a flying
lesson one day, Jim Young, my instructor and all around great guy, sat me
down to explain the Law of Averages. “The goal,” he said, “is to improve
the average and to narrow the variability.” My landings were going to vary
from one to the next. He was first working on reducing the variability in
my landings. Once that was under control, he would sart working on
consistent improvement in the overall average of my landings.

It worked. After a couple of lessons that included several dozen landings,
none of them were near wrecks. I was much more consistent with where I was
relative to the centerline upon landing. Finally, the airspeed I was
carrying as I flared for landing became much more consistent. Then the
tasked changed so that I would learn to land on the center rather than
always on the far right side of the runway.

I learned from Jim Young a very valuable lesson about the Law of Averages.
I’ve been teaching this law to my staff for several years. It’s another one
of those invaluable concepts and rather immutable. And I’m quite satisfied
that the weather in Florida conforms to the law. Tomorrow should be an
Average Day!

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Last night was well below freezing, but the forecast is for mid-70’s by
Thursday. That is worth looking forward to! The conference is quite
interesting. Right now I’m in a session on Mobile Connections — how to do
that with IBM’s WebSphere “Everyplace” products. It’d be great if it really
worked as well as hyped in this presentation.

The damage from last summer’s hurricanes is still quite visible —
particularly homes and businesses with blue tarps on their roofs waiting
for insurance and qualified roofers to become available. There is still
some considerable damage visible on roofs and sidings of the buildings on
the Disney grounds.

The resort covers an area the size of Boston. Some 37,000 full time
employees and another 20,000 seasonal and part time workers make up the
workforce. The grounds are immaculate and very pleasant. The theme parks
are quite a way from the hotels, but regular bus (and watertaxi) service
runs through the entire complex. It’s quite the impressive place — with
lots and lots of kids! This is the slow season, so I can only imagine what
the busy season might look like.

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today I’m off to Orlando and IBM’s Lotusphere conference. I’m sitting on an
airplane in Salt Lake City while the passengers are boarding. The flight is
overbooked and will be completely full. All this with an airline that
posted the worst quarter ever in the history of airlines in Q4 2004. It
isn’t because of the lack of passengers!

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The day is about half over and that’s a good thing. All I have to do is
somehow stay awake until about 10 pm before bed. That should get the body
clock mostly reset. It’s always been interesting to me that traveling
westbound is easier to adjust to than traveling eastbound. I’m sure there
have been studies and theories about this and will look them up someday..

I’m only here a couple of days before I’m off to Orlando, Florida for IBM’s
Lotusphere convention. I leave very early Sunday morning and fly back on
Friday morning. After that I think I’ll be here for a while before the next
trip.

There is a lot of snow on the ground here in Pocatello. The storms that
came through shortly after I departed for Belgium left behind a goodly
amount of snow. The days afterwards were very cold so most of that snow
still remains. There is still opportunity for more snow and we need it. The
snowpack in the mountains is still below normal.

Nina bought a “student desk” at OfficeMax to put in the sitting room by the
front window. She wanted a place to read and study. I put it together last
night. It was a much bigger job than either of us expected. Assembly took
more than three hours. The desk looks nice and will be a good addition. It
certainly helped keep me awake and moving around until after 10 pm last
night.

The Apprentice was on TV while I was building the desk. I’ve not
watched the program much before and was quite amused to see the
advertisement on the top of taxi that drove the “fired” guy away.
“Hotjobs.com” was the advertisement on the top of the taxi. It used to be
“monster.com” sponsoring the taxi.

Sponsorship for projects on the The Apprentice has become a hot
commodity. Last night BurgerKing was prominent in the show and a couple of
BK senior execs were on the show. Great advertising for the company. I
wonder how much they paid for the opportunity? Are other “reality” shows
doing the same thing? I would not be very surprised!

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