I was not at that DevCon but remember that a lot of people got stranded in San Diego with U.S. airspace locked down for several days. (If you're going to be stranded, you may as well be stranded in San Diego). One of my favorite FoxGang stories is about Whil Hentzen and three other guys renting a van and driving back to the midwest. Steve Sawyer was one of them, I think Rick Schummer was another, and I forget who the fourth was. The cool part about the story was one of them (Steve?) had a router in his suitcase. They set up a "van LAN" and were emailing each other from within the van, LOL.

I went with register.com as the blog host. I don't expect the click rate to be very high so am not worried about performance. Now all I have to do is have something to say ;-) Expect lots of puppy photos.

You aren't by any chance going to be at That Conference in Wisconsin Dells next month, are you? They have a pretty strong speaker list. And the Dells is always fun in the summer. (Tacky, but fun).

>I was at Advisor DevCon in San Diego. At the time, it was still the big FoxPro con. I was slated to speak at the first session that morning. I didn't turn on the TV that morning, which is unusual. I normally turn on the morning news. Someone in the elevator told me. I grabbed a plate of breakfast and went back to my room to watch until time for the session. From the window, I could see the Pacific fleet leaving the naval base and heading to sea. I watched the second tower fall just before I went down to my session. We did the early morning session, then the rest were cancelled for the day as was our evening outing at SeaWorld. The hotel scrambled to get a dinner for us.
>
>The hotel was across the freeway from the airport. A couple of days later, as the airlines started moving planes around to handle the start of traffic, we were having a party at the pool. About every 15-30 minutes, a plane would take off and we all cheered.
>
>Blogging: Avoid blogger.com. Look at www.wordpress.com
>
>
>
>>it's strange how much power that day still has on us. Personally I thought it had receded, at least as much as it ever would. All it took was an episode of The West Wing to bring it back with full force.
>>
>>I was working in my basement office when my wife called from work. Turn on CNN, she said. Both towers had already been hit and CNN was showing the second plane turning the second tower into a fireball, over and over.
>>
>>Our younger daughter was going on a field trip to downtown Chicago that day. No one knew what kind of conspiracy this might be, and downtown Chicago is not exactly a backwater, so I got in the car and hightailed it over to school. They had already cancelled the field trip. The principal asked if I wanted to take Emily home with me. I said no, it's probably better this way. I found her and gave her a tight hug.
>>
>>The rest of that day and most of the next several days that followed I was either watching television or on the phone. It was a surreal time. We still didn't entirely know what was happening but we were out there talking with our neighbors. Lighting candles. There was a national moment of silence and it was observed everywhere around me.
>>
>>The most profound tribute I saw was led by an Austrian-American guy named Josef Keller. He basically brought youth soccer to the north side of Chicago. That Saturday he walked from field to field before as many games as he could make. He gathered all the players, parents, coaches, referees, and spectators in a circle near the center spot to hold hands in a moment of silence. Our country had been attacked and we were all together.
>>
>>PS -- My blog is on the way up. Once it's going I will post messages like this there. (Does anyone have blog tools to suggest?)