Mitch Wagner's Blog

Visiting Santa Fe Plaza

We got off to a late start even for us today. Breakfast was leftovers from the Zia Diner. It was past noon by the time we headed out. We decided to go visit Santa Fe Plaza, a historic part of Santa Fe dating back to the Spanish colonization in the 1700s, with at least one building, San Miguel Church, dating back to 1600.

Tons of photos in this post, so I'm going to continue it after the jump to keep the load time down for the home page. Click to read on.

Photos: Vacation Day 1, outside Albuquerque

View the whole set.

Julie pointed out many of these photo opps.

A lighthearted start to our vacation journal, preceded by handwringing about the economy

This is not the first time we've gone on vacation during a national crisis -- we went to Britain in 2002, at around the same time that the U.S. was unilaterally demanding that North Korea end its nuclear development program, with the veiled threat of nuclear war in the background. Then as now, I had misgivings about going on vacation at that time, but then as now, I thought, "What the hell else are we going to do? What difference does it make if we go now?" Then as now, I approach the whole thing with a certain fin de siècle quality: If the crisis passes, then we'll just have gone on a nice vacation. If the crisis blows up, then, well, at least we'll have had a nice vacation -- maybe the last one for a while.

To paraphrase a character in a Robert A. Heinlein novel: If the economy stabilizes, we can afford the trip, and if it doesn't, well, the money we spend on this trip won't make much difference when we go broke.

Science-fiction writer Charles Stross writes pessimistically that we're probably living through an event as catastrophic as the breakup of the USSR, only this time it's America that's collapsing as a superpower. He gets his figures for the size of the American budget off by ten-fold, but, still, I can't say he's wrong.

Still, what the hell else are we going to do, except enjoy our planned New Mexico vacation? If we were bolder investors, maybe we could have cashed in our vacation tickets and bought stocks while the prices are devalued, or bought gold. But we are not bold investors, so we hang onto our stocks. I don't want to tell you how much money we lost today -- it's too personal -- but I will say that, when we looked at the numbers tonight, it made our earlier conversation seem ridiculous, about whether to buy light bulbs because the light bulbs in the room we're staying in are too dim. I mean, how much do two lightbulbs cost? Three dollars?

Enough doom and gloom. Onward to the more entertaining vacation journal -- which is going to be short, as it was a travel day today.

We packed up our vast array of suitcases (Packing light? We heard of it.) and took the car service to the airport, and had an uneventful flight. I waited at the curb with the luggage while Julie took the car rental shuttle bus to Avis to pick up the car. I waited a long time; as I learned later, the Avis clerk was very, very chatty.

The Albuquerque airport is very nice, possibly the nicest I've been in. Also, strange men standing at the urinal next to yours strike up conversations with you. Don't do that, men of New Mexico, it's creepy.

We were headed for Santa Fe, about an hour northeast of Albqq, and we wanted to drive about ten or twenty miles, and then have lunch. The Avis clerk had a perfect recommendation for us: El Pinto, a New Mexican restaurant.

New Mexican food is like Mexican food, only different in ways that I would probably be able to articulate if I was a foodie. Julie had a chicken enchilada platter, I had a calabacitas burrito. Calabacitas, the waitress explained, is a vegetable mixture made with zucchini. We also had tortilla chips with queso dip -- that's melted cheese with chiles -- and the restaurant served sopapillas with lunch. Sopapillas are also known as "fry bread," and that's what it is, fried bread.

The food was terrific. Going in, we were hungry enough to kneel down in the parking lot and eat gravel, and we left satisfied, and yet we managed to restrain ourselves enough that we weren't waddling too badly on the way to the car.

I've only knowingly had New Mexican food once before, at a restaurant in the Santee suburb of San Diego. Julie says she's had it a half-dozen times. It was familiar though; I think that most of the Mexican food you get in America, outside of states actually bordering on Mexico, is more like New Mexican.

After that, we were back in the car for the rest of the trip to Santa Fe.

We're staying in a casita, which is a characteristic kind of traveler housing here. It's a one-room house, sort of like a freestanding studio apartment, with its own kitchenette. I'm sure we've stayed at places with kitchenettes before, but this is the first time we've ever actually put it to use; we're storing dinner leftovers and we hit the supermarket for some fruit and stuff. Hopefully, this will diminish the amount of junk food we eat, as well as saving us some American lira (formerly known as "dollars").

Our casita, Casita Amore, is all right. In addition to the excess of darkness and insufficient light bulbage, Julie informs me the A/C filter hasn't been cleaned since the Herbert Hoover administration, which makes for terrible ventilation. She is scurrying around the room doing useful things while I write this post. I think she is washing the filter now.

Dinner was at a place called Zia Diner about a mile from the casita, on Guadalupe Road. Traditional diners furnishings, floors and fixtures, but spread out in a freestanding building so it's a little more comfortable and upscale. The menu was also diner fare, just a little more upscale -- I had a beet salad with goat cheese and organic meat loaf with slaw, Julie had a small Cobb salad and a plate of three sliders made with organic beef. Very good. Two for two on meals so far. We didn't finish half our dinners, we'll have the rest for breakfast tomorrow.

Speaking of breakfast: Knowing I was staying at a casita with a kitchenette, I brought my usual tea fixings, but I'm jonesing for Starbucks so I figure that'll be my caffeine dose tomorrow.

Then it was off to Albertson to stock up on supplies (including that cut-up fruit, and those light bulbs -- which we did decide to buy) and back here to catch up on the internets and get ready for bed.

Tomorrow we'll walk after breakfast to the Plaza and Old Town Santa Fe, and then, well, who knows?

Photos to come hopefully in a few minutes.

About the season premiere of "The Office"

The fat suit was the first time the Holly has seen Michael go over the edge. You could tell by her face that she was appalled -- but then she loved it when he gave Kelly a pep talk. So it remains to be seen how she will feel about him in the future.

Holly is such a different role, on such a different show, than her time on The Wire.

I hope the show isn't rehabilitating Michael. I hope he stays a jerk with occasional moments of gallantry.

Will Jim and Pam stay together? She's obviously found another Jim in New York. New York Jim. And I can't forget the way he was willing to abandon her at Michael's dinner party.

Is Ryan's redemption real and permanent? I'd love to see him turn into the office schlemiel, a well-meaning guy who keeps getting dumped on.

The show needs more Kelly. She is the cowbell of The Office.

The Economic Meltdown Drinking Game

1) Take a drink anytime a journalist or politician says "Wall Street" or "Main Street."

2) Drink your whole beer anytime a journalist or politician uses both phrases in the same sentence.

3) Use cheap, domestic beer -- you can't afford microbrews anymore, you're broke on account of the economic meltdown.

iPhone 2.1: After Two Weeks, It's Still A Work In Progress

My latest on InformationWeek:

The iPhone firmware Version 2.1 got a lot of applause when it first came out, from users who said it fixed major bugs. I've been living with the software for two weeks now. In my experience, the update fixes quite a lot, but there's still a lot of work to be done. And I encountered one big bug that could result in a spectacular loss of data.

The 2.1 software came out Sept. 12, and fixed problems with responsiveness and stability. It was designed to reduce the number of dropped calls, increase the accuracy of the 3G signal strength display, fix crashes caused by programs downloaded from the App Store, reduce time for backups, load contacts and searches faster, and speed up responsiveness of the virtual QWERTY keyboard.

That's what Apple says. What's really going on?

Let's start with the good.

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Photo: When pumpkins drink too much

When pumpkins drink too much.

Second Life Tries For A Second Act

My latest on InformationWeek:

The online virtual world has weathered a boom-and-bust cycle. Now it has a new CEO. Can this social networking phenom attract a new wave of consumers and enterprise users?

I first joined Second Life in January 2007, near the peak of the hype cycle. Second Life was supposedly the next technology megatrend. It would transform the face of the Internet and make present-day technology obsolete.

Research shows that Second Life users identify with their avatars, and are more willing to take risks.
(click for image gallery)

Then the hype cycle burst. Second Life didn't change the Internet much. Journalists quit the service en masse to follow the next big trend.

But I didn't leave Second Life. I stuck around. I cut back my professional involvement to an article or blog every few months. But I still spend a few hours a week in Second Life, just playing and keeping in touch with friends.

And Second Life stuck around too. It's profitable, and it's hanging on to a core of dedicated users. The internal economy of Second Life users exchanging virtual goods and services is growing. And, perhaps most important of all, the unquantifiable creative soup of Second Life continues at a rolling boil, with new businesses and activities and art popping up every day.

Linden Lab, the company that created and operates Second Life, is growing up. Founder Philip Rosedale stepped aside as CEO, while hanging on as chairman. Linden Lab replaced Rosedale with Mark Kingdon, an Internet marketing veteran.

Where Rosedale often speaks of Second Life in mystical terms, Kingdon has a Wharton MBA and a solid, practical business background. Organic, the Internet marketing company where he was previously CEO, was failing when he came on board; he turned it around. And he also has 12 years' experience with PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he was most recently a senior partner.

Kingdon must grapple with a number of problems: Making Second Life simple enough for most Internet users to get into it, improving stability of the very buggy service, streamlining the user interface, and dealing with a corporate culture that's often more interested in mystical vision than the hard job of running a business.

Perfect On Paper

On paper, Kingdon has the perfect resume for incoming Linden Lab CEO, as I wrote in April: "The Organic experience presumably makes him comfortable working with idiosyncratic, creative people. On the other hand, the experience at button-down PWC will hopefully help empower him to inject some starch and discipline into Linden Lab."

After starting at Linden Lab in May, Kingdon was mostly quiet his first few months, but he recently surfaced for an interview to talk about the company's future business, technology direction and the health of its economy and community.

Kingdon said the company's main focus is to improve uptime, stability, and retention of people who log in to the service and try it out -- converting newbies into active users.

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An incident outside the window last night

There was an incident outside the window last night. Sounded like two cats fighting. Or making love. Or it might have been a pipe organ, harmonica, calliope, and accordion arguing politics. Just as they were starting their disagreement about the Wall Street bailout, Julie went to the sliding glass door and banged on the screen and yelled to drive the critters off. They mostly ignored her. Eventually, the ruckus died down on its own. Sasha was spooked for a while afterward.

Riding a pedicab

I just came back from New York, and while I was there, I rode a pedicab. They have them here in San Diego too, and Julie and I rode one a couple of years ago. I wasn't comfortable with them before -- they have a Third World vibe to them that activates my liberal guilt -- but this time I just got over it and enjoyed the ride.

I was on my way from the Javits Center to Grand Central, really tired, with my massive amounts of luggage, and just could not find a (conventional) cab. So when a pedicab operator -- the traditional wiry little Asian kid -- flagged me down, I went for it. It was pretty expensive, $25 compared vs. probably $5 for a conventional taxi, but I was tired and had been trying to flag down a taxi for a long time, and I had a lot of luggage, and I'd never ridden a pedicab through New York before. So why not?

I really enjoyed the hell out of this ride. We chugged through Midtown Manhattan, side-by-side with big-ass trucks and cars and bicyclists and pedestrians and such. For a time, we pedaled alongside a pretty red-haired Russian girl, and the two drivers chatted in Russian. I tried to post to Twitter from the pedicab using my iPhone -- because that would have been just too cool -- but the cab rocked as it moved and I kept one hand on my luggage throughout and I was afraid I would drop the iPhone.

Afterward, I chatted a bit with the driver. He's from Kazakhstan, been in New York three weeks and spent a short time before that in Missouri. His English was broken, but understandable.