After ten days of being (over)fed by relatives and others, I'm now on the salad and soup routine for a while. While I did my best to ignore the news, particularly politics and technology, a couple of items did soak through:

Once Ahnuld announced, all I had to do was mention being from California to be immediately asked "what's going on out there", and spend 10-15 minutes explaining budget and energy crises, Davis, and so forth. Score a high level of interest, but apparently little confidence that the media are delivering useful information. Since this is the 'silly season' of August writ large, that's likely correct. Also interesting to get back here, and find that in ten days the chance of Davis losing his office have gone from about even to 2:1 against him in the polls. Unless I missed some other significant events, it seems driven by the Ahnuld annoucement. Not sure if that's good or bad, but it's remarkable.

On a completely different topic, my brother in the auto parts business talked about the impending conversion of automobile electrical systems from 12 volts to 42 volts. This is apparently motivated in part by the wattage being consumed by all the microprocessors that are now embedded in cars. Higher voltage = fewer amps for the same watts = smaller wires. We're driving rolling server farms. There goes a whole generation of automotive test equipment, not that amateurs can work on them anymore. And a whole generational turnover of batteries and other power control equipment.
3:58:28 PM