I spent the weekend in San Diego and I'm now writing this down on the return flight. I've been meaning to check that city out for a while now, and finally this weekend flights were offered at the right times, for the right price.

I was stuck in a phone screen late Friday afternoon (I asked the candidate if she had any questions for me, and yes, yes she did) but I had no problem making my 7:15 flight without resorting to a $30 taxi. While boarding the plane, the crew announced that due to possible fog in San Diego we may actually end up landing somewhere else like LAX or Palm Springs. Initially, I thought it was just the discount-airline crew joking around, but the announcement continued: If our flight did end up at some other southern California airport, meals/rooms/ground transportation to our actual destination would *not* be provided. So, if you couldn't cope with this contingency, you should get off the plane now! In the end nobody got off, and it was a foggy landing, but evidently not too foggy ... Still, what a policy, ALASKA AIRLINES!

Upon arrival, I decided to pass on the rental car that was included in my weekend package. My experience is that the car always ends up sitting in a lot the whole weekend even while you pay $40 a day in insurance and parking. Instead I took a cab to Ocean Beach and the Ocean Beach International Hostel where I paid $32 for two nights.

OBIH is located on Ocean Beach's 'strip' called Newport. Surf shops, greasy diners, bars, Mexican cantinas, T-shirt and tourist crap stores are all conveniently in the neighbourhood. At the end of the strip is a place where a lot of people who live in their cars park, and the beach! The beach is actually very nice and home to "California's Longest Pier" and "America's First Off-leash Dog Beach."

I only witnessed one real instance of hostel-drama. Details are sketchy but apparantly a large, loud, and angry hostel resident and self-described mental patient flipped out because ... well, as I said details are sketchy. There was some yelling and allegedly a chess piece from the board on front porch was thrown at a passer by. The cops were called and *six* of them arrived to ensure his ejection from the hostel went smoothly. Having the police show up really completed the socal experience as I know it from watching "COPS" -- it all seemed very authentic. ... 15 minutes after it was all over, the stoner-types emerged onto the porch to inquire "Dude, are the cops still here?"

There were really two highlights of the trip. First, sun. SD's reliably sunny weather a nice change from Seattle, but down there the sun provides not only lightbut heat! It was really nice to *feel* the sun in January.

Although Ocean beach was nice, the second real highlight were the 'cliffs' south of the beach, past the pier. The cliffs were not real cliffs, but the constantly eroding hard sandstone shore. The stone was strong enough to walk on but you could easily break off a ledge with your weight or make a mark in it with a rock. The fine was $250 for carving your name or anything else into the cliffs but that didn't seem to deter anybody. On Sunday morning, my counter-mate at the breakfast diner warned me that the cliffs were the den of the homeless and their drug dealers but ... they all seemed nice. The erosion was really cool. It produced mini-beaches surrounded on all sides by rock, and caves that the water had carved through the cliffs.

Final unrelated thought: Amazon has a funny looking hardware VPN device that "conveniently" velcros to the screen-back of the corporate-issue black HP laptop. Even when the VPN device is not in use, the vecro attachments remain. This makes fellow Amazonians easy to spot in airports and on planes. When this happens, like right now with this guy a few rows up from me, I think it's fun to just say "Amazon!" in their general direction and see what happens. Let's try ...