CUE 2006

Sandy and I are headed out this Weds night to Palm Springs for a few days for the CUE conference (www.cue.org). I always look forward to this conference each year, partially because of the new things I learn, but partially because of the people I meet. I get to meet some new contacts as well as catch up with old friends.

This year I'll be presenting a short session on geocaching in education. Sandy and I will be hiding some "conference specific" caches for teachers to find. My hope is to introduce teacher to the concept of geocaching and discuss the potential applications in education.

Sandy and I will be bringing our bikes this time in hopes of doing a some bike-seeing on our time off. We may get a chance to visit Moorten Gardens a VERY small, but pretty cool private cactus garden in PS.

Speaking of friends, I just got more emails and pictures from one of my good friends (Pancho) from his vacation. He an his wife just got back from a trip to the UK. There are times that the wonders of technology are just pretty darned cool. Panch' had a PocketPC and someway (I'm assuming wireless) of connecting to the Internet while out on the road and writing email. He would write me from various places including a train. One memorable point was when Panch' was riding on a train and watching the snowy landscape fly by. He described that he was listening to "Bohemian Rhaspsody" (they had just seen a Broadway play called "We Will Rock You"). On my side of the world I went over to the office iMac and started playing the same song. I wrote him back that after over 20 years of time from High School so long ago, there was still a connection. Cool.

I took Saldy out for his birthday dinner the other night. We went to a place called Rodo Viva in Temecula. It's a Brazilian barbecue restaurant. The unique feature of this place is that the waiters will bring you these "swords" (skewers) with barbecued (nicely seasoned) meat. There is also a small cylindrical object (wood) about the size of a salt shaker that is painted with red on one end, green on the other, and yellow in the middle. They tell you to turn the thing with green on to if you want more meat, red on top if you want to stop, and set it on it's side if you're done. Dinner is one price ($25) and all you can eat. The meat is SO good, but after awhile you feel like you're going to pop. Whooo! I got a chance to chat with Saldy for a bit (unfortunately not something I'm able to do often anymore) and found out what was going on with him.