I went last night to visit the 200+ acre farm a former boss of mine bought north of Baltimore City. He's taking the next year to completely remodel the houses and landscape the property. The first milestone was converting a barn into a 4 car garage and photo studio. Pictured is the second floor, along with all the new photo equipment he bought: Canon EOS-1 Mark II 16 megapixel digital camera, Canon 10D, bunch 'o lenses, large format printer and Mac G5 tower with a big cinema screen. And he wants me to come up anytime to use the stuff and teach him. OK!

- mike lee - baltimore, md

Someone just IM'd our offices here at 6th & E St., NW, about 5 blocks from the U.S. Capital Building, that the White House and Capital (and other buildings) have been evacuated. Apparently there is a Cessna plane breaching the no fly zone over D.C. F-16 jets are overhead, and not long ago, there was a stampede of people running to Union Station.

Now, 15 minutes later, the White House has issued an "all clear." The plane has been identified and re-directed. Co-worker Kumi was disappointed that there wasn't any ass-kicking aerial firepower displayed...

- mike lee - washington, dc

Cianna was throwing up or dry heaving every couple hours all last night. She ejected breakfast too. But with comforting from all of us (1), she was better by lunchtime. We're not sure of the cause--there were no other symptoms. Luckily, Cianna rarely throws up, and has only been sick once day with a fever in her 18 months with us.

My mom and I made a Mother's Day trip to see my 103-year-old grandmother, who amidst all the festive decorations in the nursing home, was going strong bossing everyone around. On the way home, I also showed my mom the charming 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath rambler (2) we are placing a contract on this week. It's conveniently within walking distance of the Wheaton subway station, a library, elementary school and a huge regional park.

After lunch, I dropped Cianna's mom off at the airport this afternoon--it was hard for her to leave a sick child for her four-day conference in Seattle--and stopped by the Baltimore house to pick up mail. I see the builders are making fast progress (3 & 4) on the new multi-purpose building with Barnes & Noble Bookstore at the corner of 33rd and St. Paul.

By the time I got home late in the afternoon, my mom had cradled Cianna through a three-hour nap, and baby woke up happy (5) as ever.

- mike lee - langley park, md

Notes later ...

Notes later ...

Notes later ...

I've spent the early morning mostly in motion down the beautiful 280 (4) between SF and Palo Alto. But before the ride, I met up with May Woo, a former hiptop Nation blogger, at Tartine Bakery (3) at Guerrero & 18th.

May and I were in line to grab coffee and I experienced a little rip in the space time continuum when I got a surprise tap on the shoulder from Victor Lombardi. Victor is in from New York City to meet with his business partner John (last photo of last night's post). I worked with Victor when I was AIG. Victor was with Brett Lider, who recently started working at Google. Victor and Brett go back to their days at Razorfish NY. I captured this moment of social network convergence for posterity (1). May also showed off the spiffy Sidekick II case she made (2).

The morning got sunny by the time I arrived at the Stanford Campus. Parking was easy because the Media X folks sent a pass in advance. I was early, so a walked around Hoover Tower and the Quad (5-7). I picked up today's San Jose Mercury News to read the somewhat depressing story on the housing price bubble (8).

Andrea Rice and Ellen Levy (9) of the Media X team took me to a talk by Dr. Duncan Moore, who gave an engaging talk on technology realities and possibilities to improve the lives of the elderly. Dr. Laura Carstensen, who just got approval to start the new Center for Longevity research, introduced Moore. Dr. Moore passed around the M2A wireless pill camera (9), which is swallowed whole to capture up to 50,000 digital images over 3-8 hours as it passes through the human subject's digestive system. He noted that this was a new, unused camera. We also played with a lighted borescope (10) that works on gradient optics technology. I could see into the bottom of 1/8" diameter core of a deisel fuel injector nozzle.

After lunch with Ellen and Andrea, I rolled back north to SFO, where I am about to board a flight back to D.C.

- mike lee - palo alto, ca

GBN's offices impressed me as a space for thinking full of tools for thought, and where at every turn, the output from group collaboration was hanging from the walls. Most stimulating were the large and colorful hand-drawn information tapestries (not pictured) that represent a facilitation technique called graphic recording.

Throughout the morning, Erik Smith jotted down most of the group's comments on to colored Post-It Notes and tacked them to a large paper sheet (1). Someone else typed up notes on a laptop, and audio was handily captured with an Olympus DM-10 Digital Voice Recorder.

After lunch, the invited guests dispersed, and I discussed the morning's ideas with Erik and Rebecca Wayland. Erik also helped me shoot a video tour of the offices for me to use as a trip report (2 & 3). We wrapped up at the end of the afternoon so that I could drive back across the bay (4 & 5) to leave my car at my hotel.

Dinner was with Erik and Rebecca (9) at Cafe Niebaum-Coppola in the historic "flat iron" Sentinel Building (6 & 8) in North Beach. The building not only houses this superb cafe and bar, but is also the home of Francis Ford Coppola's film production company, American Zoetrope (7).

To make this a completely full day of thought provoking conversations, I met up with John Zapolski (10) of the Management Innovation Group at Kells for a late night drink and mind meld.

- mike lee - san francisco ... and bah! we didn't bid high enough on the house on east hamilton street, so our home search begins again ...

I zipped across the Bridge this morning to start my day the GBN headquarters. The morning session is involving several GBN network members in a discussion on the future of the Internet. Some present are: Kevin Kelly--a founder of Hotwired*, Jaron Lanier--the father of VR*, Howard Reingold--of Smart Mobs fame*, Jamais Cascio, Katie Haffner--New York Times*, Kaliya Hamlin (all easily Googleable) and GBN staff. (*are sitting at my roundtable)

The first half of the morning was discussion on what the last 10 years has brought us with regard to the Internet. The rest of the morning is about the next 10 years.

- mike lee - emeryville, ca

The ride from the airport to hotel was super easy. There was virtually no traffic. I rolled up 101 to 280 to The Embarcadero where I stopped at Folsom at the huge golden bow and arrow sculpture to capture a nice framing of the Golden Gate. The hotel room is nicely furnished, but it doesn't realy feel like a Klimpton Boutique...

- mike lee - san francisco