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How much better it is to be patient, and visit Aquarius, than to give into the desire for a quick fix and waste time at Borders or some other soulless chain. I pulled my occasional largely-unplanned-trip-to-the-record-store trick on Thursday. Oh, it was good. A mediocre, rushed trip to Aquarius is enormously more satisfying than two hours ferreting through endless top-40 dreck at Borders, and this trip was neither mediocre nor rushed. ...

From the terms and restrictions of a package cruise on Expedia’s web site: “This cruise line requires that passengers younger than 255 years old be accompanied by an adult 25 years or older in the same cabin.”

Last night, sitting on the floor, attempting to convince Cian to put his pajamas on. He running circles around me and hooting with delight, me sharing an exasperated look with Shannon. Suddenly, an idea forms. “Know Cian, no peace,” I say to her. She cracks up. Cian looks delighted. “Know Cian! No peace!” he yells. “No Cian! Know peace!” we all chant. Exeunt.

I’ve decided that there’s no reason to wait until January to start obsessing about climbing again. For the past several months, I’ve become increasingly discouraged as my climbing ability has slowly slipped backwards. Last weekend, I went to Pinnacles with the usual suspects and didn’t feel like leading anything, not even a 5.9. This was finally enough to shake me out of my funk. Since the summer, I had dropped back to training at the gym only twice a week, for 2.5 hours at a time, and watched my endurance dwindle all the while. ...

In the coffee shop this morning: “I’ll have a latte and a scone, please.” “You’re Irish, right?” “I am.” “Yeah-all the Irish buy scones.”

We’ve been visiting Ireland for the past week and a bit, to see family, friends, and attend Siobhán and Jonathan’s wedding. My visits back here amount to annual impressionistic snapshots of how the country has changed. I am infinitely grateful for the government’s workplace smoking ban. It is now possible to go to a pub for the night and not have to burn your clothes before you go to bed to avoid polluting your entire house. Oh, and there’s the small graces of my asthma and eyes not being driven towards breaking point. ...

It’s 5am Irish time as I write this. I am tired, almost ready to finally go asleep. This is the first Ireland visit where I haven’t even tried to adjust, or more importantly to get the wee fella to adjust, to the 8-hour time difference. Frankly, this approach doesn’t work well. Either I get up at a semi-normal hour by Irish standards, and fall about the place like a hobbled zombie until 4am, or I get up at 2pm and miss most of daylight, along with opportunities for spending time with people and, well, doing things. I think this is an experiment I won’t be repeating. ...

[From a Reuters story about some new Dell hardware.] “Frankly, we shot ahead of the goose,” Golden said.

I stumbled out of bed at 4am this morning, and bleared my way onto a two-hop flight from San Francisco to Pittsburgh, to start getting ready for this year’s Supercomputing Conference. So far, my seven-hour experience of Pittsburgh has been mixed. On the one hand, the weather was beautiful today, and the Best Festerin’ that I’m staying in has free high-speed net connections in every room. On the other, said hotel is 4 miles from the conference centre, in a grotty little exurb with nothing nearby, and the conference centre is in a sort of urban desert, so my options for eating actual food (as opposed to Snickers and M&Ms, which can be found in abundance) are limited. ...

Or, a vignette into life with a precocious not-yet-three-year-old. The cast: Dad (30), child (2), Mom (young and beautiful). The setting: Mom and child are watching grizzly bears fishing on TV. Dad (to child): “Would you like to go to the grocery store?” Satanic cherub: “Go away. Stop annoying us. We need our privacy. We need to watch these scary animals.”