We're having lunch at Shaw's Crab House, where they fly the seafood in fresh everyday.

- mike lee - chicago

Han, I love your photos of life in Asia. Your phonecam views of the misty hills of Guilin are breathtaking. I hope to see them in person one day. Keep up the good work!

- mike lee -

Photo for previous.

"Morming daddy" was the e-mail message my wife just sent from Baltimore using her Nokia 6600 phone. Attached was this photo of our baby girl.

:-D *sniff*

- mike lee - chicago

Last night, about 20 of our project team went to Fogo de Chao, a Brazillian steakhouse. For a fixed price, the restaurant offers continuous tableside service of a choice of any or all of the fifteen finest selections of beef, lamb, pork and chicken. You flip a round red paper disc over to green and waiters swarm with skewers of meat which they present for carving cuts onto your plate. The service is so quick that you have to deliberately flip the disc over to stop the rain of meat. Great ghost of Atkins!

- mike lee - chicago

Congratulations to NASA for successfully orbiting the Cassini spacecraft around Saturn. First close-up photos of the rings are due in a few hours on Thursday around 8am eastern.

- mike lee - chicago

I realized there's a flagship Apple store a few blocks from where I'm working in Chicago, so I took a quick walk to get a new Incase sling bag for my PowerBook. The contoured case has a handy little pocket in the strap for a cellphone or iPod. It replaces the shoulder strap Incase that's falling apart after a year and a half of hard knocks.

- mike lee - chicago

I'm here in the focus group facility behind a giant one way mirror watching the first session. My hosts have graciously provided a network connection, phone, snacks and a comfy chair where I'll be sitting for another 12 hours over the next three days. With the net connection, I can jack in my PowerBook to get some other work done as I take notes on the test events.

- mike lee - chicago

I only had a couple hours to look around the museum, and most of the big artifacts were ones I've seen in other museums. What I spent some time on was the Pioneer Zephyr train of 1934. It was the first streamlined diesel/electric locomotive. After breaking a speed record, the train went on exhibit at the world's fair that year. Then it went into regular service until 1960. While the engineering was a breakthrough, the industrial design is what I admire because the unique look of the train, and along with its popularity, inspired a wave of art deco consumer products.

I was really hoping the full-scale model of the Cassini Saturn probe would be on display, but all they had was a dinky little kiosk. I'm not sure why.

- mike lee - chicago