Events

As usual, I signed up for the hiking excursion at this year's conference. It did not disappoint (unlike my dying Surface and the hotel's WiFi):

As much as I'm enjoying this conference, including the History of Cyber Warfare talk a colleague just presented, the rest of the world continues to smolder:

For the third second day of the conference: breakfast at Parlor Donuts, just off the Huntington Beach Pier. No photos of the sugar and fat bomb that I ate an hour ago, and will still be digesting this time next week. But the pier itself looks good just after sunrise:

As hoped, I got out of my hotel room and walked up to the Huntington Beach Pier:

Despite all my travel issues, I managed to get to the right hotel and to all the panels I signed up for today. And I have to say, our conference planners did a great job on the location:

My flight to Boston has left the gate and I'm not on it.

Three related stories grabbed my attention while waiting for a plane to take me to Boston, which turns out to be the opposite direction from California. First, five Chicago-area breweries have closed in the last six weeks as economics asserts itself:

How it started:

Remember how, earlier today, I posted a smug little note about missing all the horrible weather coming through Chicago tomorrow, because I would be in southern California?

Yesterday's performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion was absolutely amazing. I know it's long, and with our 90-minute dinner break it actually lasted over 4½ hours, but I'm sad people left after part 1. I've been posting on social media that they should have stayed to see the twist ending (He escaped!).