Traveling With an “Entourage” You’d think an avowed bargain-hunter such as myself would be a natural for Priceline.com (and other online shopping services). In fact, I’ve never been able to pull the trigger (including while traveling last week). My hesitation? Actually, a couple things, starting with the non-changeable, non-refundable nature of the commitment required by...Read More
Collective Plane Cheers — and Groans As a lifelong Minnesotan (with some interruptions living on the East and West Coast), I can report returning to the Twin Cities when the local temperature was minus 20° (Jan., 1977); during a blizzard (Feb., 1995); and many, many other occasions when boarding the plane to come home required a...Read More
Reading yesterday’s New York Times piece on the Minnesota government shutdown, I didn’t learn anything new about the stand-off between state Republicans and Democrats. But I picked up a couple tidbits about Minnesota prisons: The state Department of Corrections said it was ending family and volunteers’ visits and yoga classes for prisoners and ” if...Read More
Preventing Runaway’s The first thing any Minnesota driver learns — at least in the winter — is to pump the brakes when conditions are icy (make that “learned,” now that anti-lock brakes are standard equipment on most cars). In San Francisco, the equivalent is to always angle the tires towards the curb when you park...Read More
Vanity License Plates, CA Style Need a little context? The license plate in the headline (“THX YAHOO”) was attached to a $100k ($150k?) Mercedes convertible in the parking lot of a Portola Valley eatery, just a stone’s throw from the Stanford campus and Silicon Valley. The obvious inference: the owner cashed in when Yahoo! went public, way...Read More
These days, “posting rules” automatically refer to blogs, tweets, etc. So, it was nice to see these old-fashioned posting rules for the bulletin board (analog version) in front of a Stinson Beach (CA) cafe this afternoon: No Staples No Tape No Politics No Whining No Stradamus Not bad rules to live by, either . . .Read More
