Its official folks, I'm ready to head home.  The ITiCSE conference is over.  The paper has been presented, I've been to a dozen or more sessions.  I'm tired.  I'd like to get something to eat, but all the restaurants in the area are not even open for dinner yet, and …

Well, I'm through security.  Sitting in  Segafredo Zanetti, enjoying a very nice Israeli Chardonnay.  Everyone told me to get to Ben Gurion at least 3 hours before my flight so that I could get through the security process.  Now I understand why.  These people are serious about their security.

When …

Sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Safari this morning.  We've checked out and are just hanging here until about 11:00 before we head to the airport.  It seems like a lifetime ago that we checked in here, exhausted, and grubby after 39 hours of travel from the USA …

Well, here we are on the B2 not 55km from Windhoek and the Safari Hotel.  Suddenly our coach makes a very bad noise and we begin to coast down the road.  Joey looks rather concerned.  We coast to a stop and pull over to the side of the road.  One …

It really does remind you of a scene out of Dune, and at times its like you are on another world.  The sand is so fine, but yet its not dusty, its clean.  This is the Namib Desert, the oldest desert in the world and home to the worlds largest …

Dear Pastor Chad,

I'm writing today to let you know that I won't be in church for a while, probably about a year.  Believe me when I say that it is not your fault or the fault of anyone at First Lutheran.  Its just that I attended an ordination service …

In the latest installation of our extreme sports fetish while traveling we really enjoyed the three hour ATV excursion into the sand dunes.  This was our first opportunity to use our newly acquired helmet cam.  enjoy! I'll give a more detailed report on this excursion in a separate post.

video …

Aaaah relief!   After 3 days with absolutely no internet access we made a stop at an internet cafe this morning, where we all took to the internet like people who'd been deprived of water for three days.  Amazingly there was very little of importance in my inbox, so I guess …

Well, its really hard to pick out the photo highlights from this trip, but I decided to take a quick stab at it during my hour at the internet cafe today.  So, here's a link to the flickr photoset.  Hope you like it.

The first adventure of the day was the Living Desert tour with Tommy.  Tommy is a fabulous guide, we laughed our way through the tour as this guy is just one great one-liner after another.   We saw lots of interesting desert wildlife, all of which lives in the sand.  The …