Amy and Cici boarded a United flight here at BWI bound for Monterey via LA a few minutes ago and sent me a photo from the cabin when they got seated. I have another hour to kill before my flight, which connects through SFO.

We're making a family outing out of my participation on a panel Monday morning at Diamond Exchange at Pebble Beach. The Exchange is an annual conference put on by Diamond Management & Technology Consultants.

This year's theme is behavioral economics to coincide with the release of MIT Media Lab buddy Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational. B.E. is a new (15-years-old) branch of economics that applies psychology to understanding how people make good or bad choices with their finances or anything else in life. I'm on a panel with execs from Allstate and McDonalds to talk about the challenges of implementing B.E. in business. It'll be exciting to hang out with the likes of Alan Kay, father of object-oriented programming and the laptop, and Dan Bricklin, co-inventor of the spreadsheet.

I left my 17" MacBook at the office in favor of going small and simple with the ASUS Eee PC and the OLPC XO on this trip. I have a Tekkeon 3300 battery charged up to power either during the 7 1/2 hours flight time today.

- mike lee - bwi airport, baltimore