My Bags Are Packed

The car comes in half an hour and I'm off for Charleston WV and Fairfax VA. I sure hope Patrick feels well enough to do the show tonight! I've loaded up my new HP Jornada 565 Pocket PC with audio books (I download 'em from Audible). I bought a 128 MB compact flash card for the Jornada. That'll hold about 18 hours of audio books. I have a book called Bobos in Paradise, four or five This American Life episodes (my all time favorite radio show), and a couple of Robin Williams interviews with Whoopi Goldberg and Will Durst. I'll stick some music on the Rio 500 for the flight, too. My current favorite flying songs: Bruce Hornsby's Walking in Memphis, Everlast's What It's Like, Will Smith's Miami, and Shania Twain's That Don't Impress Me Much. I'll be flying again on Wednesday, but just for a day. I'm going to LA to interview Ted Danson for the show. Those frequent flyer miles are starting to pile up! I'm hoping people show up in Charleston and Fairfax. Everybody is so jumpy these days I wouldn't blame them if they didn't. My own producer begged off the trip yesterday. He just wasn't comfortable flying. For some reason it doesn't worry me much. I feel like it's probably the safest way to travel these days. On the other hand, I'm not so keen crossing the Golden Gate Bridge ever since Governer Davis announced that terrorists plan to blow it up this week. Gee thanks, Gov. See you in VA and WVA - or back on TV on Monday. -yawn-

Silicon Spin

Oops. I forgot to mention. I'm filling in for Dvorak on Silicon Spin Thursday and Friday. I did the first one today at 3p Eastern. It will rerun at 2:30a, 7a, and 10:30a Eastern. And I'll be back with the Friday roundtable at 3p Pacific tomorrow. Spin is fun - I'd been pitching a McLaughlin Group style roundtable since my days with c|net - but Dvorak's job is safe!

Live with Regis and Kelly

We pre-taped my segment with Regis and Kelly today but the show will air tommorrow, Wednesday, August 7. I did two segments. In the first segment I showed "Beach Tech," including:

• Sony, S2 Armband Radio. $49.95 Armband radio with TV tuner
• Creative Labs Muvo $129.95 USB memory with MP3 player
• Tanita, UV Smart $29.99. Handheld UV Monitor
• SolveIt Marketing, UB Kool $39.95 Personal Cooler
• Casio, EXILIM - EX-S1 $300 Tiny Digital Camera
• Pentax Corp, Digibino DB100 $350 Digital CCD Binoculars

In the second segment we connected Kelly with her husband, Mark, in Australia via netcam. A very touching moment - she hadn't seen him in two months. She even brought on the kids for him to see. Fortunately, the netcam picture was excellent and the segment went over gangbusters. Tonight Abby and I are going to see Oklahoma on Broadway, then it's home tomorrow in time for The Screen Savers.

Streaming Audio of Talk

I probably should have mentioned this earlier. There will be streaming audio of the entire Gnomedex conference at gnomedex.com. It costs $20 unfortunately, but if you sign up now you'll still be able to hear Linux Journal's Doc Searles (who is brilliant) and Blogger's Evan Williams (another amazing success story). I'm speaking at 3:30p Central time today.

On the air with Online Tonight tonight

David Lawrence is here at Gnomedex and he's convinced me to do his radio show tonight. I'm not sure when I'll be on but the show airs from 9-midnight Eastern all over the country. Check the Online Tonight website for a station near you.