I'm Flying!

I'm flying tomorrow for the first time since 9/11. It's a little nerve wracking, I admit. The effects of the attacks are so widespread and long lasting, even among people who weren't directly affected. I hold my breath every day when I drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. I guess we're all suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. It's a 7am flight to Seattle for our appearance at EMP on Saturday. I'll have to get up at 3am to get to the airport in time to get through security. Ugh. But I guess it's worth it. I'll be flying a lot in the next three months. I'm tentatively booked to do Regis in NYC October 25, then an appearance in VA November 3/4. I'm MCing a cable dinner in Raleigh, NC November 25, then flying to St Louis for a December 15 appearance. Pant pant! That's almost 30,000 air miles. Yikes! I'm not all that nervous about it, but I might be when I get there. I'm actually looking forward to going to New York in a week. I was born there and have always loved the City. I feel a need to go pay my respects.

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-

Big Screen in the Big Apple

I'm back East in New Haven spending the Thanksgiving weekend with my wife's sister and her family. We had a lovely snowfall on Wednesday and the kids have been having a blast with their cousins. Tomorrow we'll take the train to New York City so that I can tape my World News Now segments on Sunday night and do Live! with Regis and Kelly on Wednesday. We're going to see The Lion King and we'll go ice skating at Rockefeller Center and do all the usual touristy Christmas in New York things. I'll try to do some video blogging while we're there. I've brought the Piano Avanti DLP projection TV with me. It's a dictionary sized projector that can handle DVI, RGB, HDTV, S-Video, and Component signals in native 780p. It's not the brightest projector in the world at 400 lumens, but with a 700:1 contrast ratio it looks darn good in a relatively dark room. I was able to get a good looking movie screen sized picture projected on white walls and sheets. We've screened Lord of the Rings, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Zoolander, and had a great time. I'll be showing it on WNN and Regis, but I wish I could keep it. At $3200 it's pricey, but I prefer it to a similarly expensive big screen TV, especially since you can pop it in a drawer when you're through. Wouldn't be very good for daytime TV viewing, though. Last week's pilot went very well. Thanks to those of you who called, emailed, and faxed. It was great to have all that material for the show. Morgan and Kevin were stars, and Steve Gibson was his usual fun and informative self. We put about 90 minutes on tape which Ken Marquis is now editing into a 12 minute highlight reel. I think everyone involved felt pretty good about what we got - even Paul Block liked it. It's a good representation of what I'd like to do, anyway. I forwarded a number of messages of support from you all to our new VP Programming. That should help. Now we'll just have to wait and see. I'd love to get started in early January. The Screen Savers officially goes back to an hour December 30, so that would be a good time to put another show into production, at least for me. We fly home Thursday and I'll be back on The Screen Savers Thursday evening. I'll be taking more time off for Christmas, December 16 through January 1. Maybe when I come back I'll have two shows to do. Wouldn't that be nice?

San Francisco Here I Come

It's vacation time. The kids' last day of school is today and Sunday we're flying to San Francisco, just north of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a week at Costa Azul. We haven't been there before but we know two families that have and they say it's great. A little rustic, but great. Rustic is fine by me. As long as it's not touristy. Henry and I will be taking surfing lessons. Jennifer and Abby plan to go on a hike through the rain forest. We'll all be spending a lot of time at the beach. I don't think I'll be able to get online while I'm there, but I am bringing a laptop. That's because right after I get back Patrick and I will be flying to Washington D.C. to speak with the US Secret Service electronic crimes task force, ECSAP on Monday, June 23. I've been downloading material on Microsoft's Palladium and Intel's Trusted Computing Platform and I'll be using Keynote on my old G3 Powerbook to create a presentation for the Secret Service. TSS meets The SS. I had to send back the Nikon D100, but I've got an Olympus E-20N and 512 MB of compact flash I'll be bringing with me to Mexico. It's a high-end prosumer camera, no interchangable lenses, but the CCD is five megapixels and the built-in optics are quite nice - f2-2.4, 35-140mm - so the pictures look great. I'll post some when I get back on the 24th. Meanwhile Brett Larson will fill in for me on Call for Help. Kevin Rose and Jessica Corbin will co-host on The Screen Savers with Patrick. See you on Tuesday, June 24!