Seen on the walk to Lake Murray with Minnie this morning.

We took a walk down the boulevard in La Mesa Village, which is going upscale, including this excellent shop: Re-Animated Records, Movies & More.

Ferengi rule of tech journalism #37: It’s a thousand times harder to START writing an article than it is to FINISH writing an article.

I had my first shower at home today since mid-April. It was fantastic. Our remodel is nearly done.

Julie: You’ve been sarcastic since you got back from your trip.

Me: ME???!!! SARCASTIC????!!! NOOOO!!!! NEVER!!!!

Julie:

Me: That wasn’t sarcasm. It was meta-sarcasm.

Julie:

Playlist for the warmup to every tech industry keynote ever: You Shook Me All Night Long, Uptown Funk, Party Like It’s 1999… ?

Momentary excitement when you see an Amazon package addressed to you, followed by disappointment when you remember you ordered batteries.

I’ve decided to start a political movement: When there is TV playing in a waiting room, ask for it to be shut off.

That’s the entirely of the movement: Ask once, politely and cheerfully. If they say no, don’t argue, just move on.

Bill Cosby wants to hold a series of town halls teaching men how to avoid sexual assault charges.

I’ve written a script for him to use, because I agree this is an important issue that deserves attention.

The script:

“Don’t commit sexual assault.”

We’re done now. Let’s break for coffee and danish.

Winning is the national religion now. A friend said that and it’s very true — and very wise.

Trump is the embodiment of winning-worship. He wins, and he gets nothing for it. Not money — he could have made more money doing other things, or even doing nothing and letting it all pile up in a hedge fund. He doesn’t get honor or respect. He doesn’t accomplish anything — he’s been a do-nothing President, and his entire business empire is built on throwaway buildings that will be torn down and forgotten within a generation. He just … wins. He gets his name on things that other people build. He lives in the White House and watches TV, and rants, and plays golf. But he’s a winner!

When I travel, I like to get into a city a day early and just spend few hours walking around.

I’m scheduled to get in to Las Vegas Sunday around noon, and given the expected temperatures — 110 degrees-plus! — I thought I might not be able to do that.

But many of the casinos have connections to each other, and Google Maps has maps of the interiors of the casinos. So I can do this!

Should be a fun game — see how far I can get without going outside.

I use multiple Apple Watch faces for different times of day, all of them based on the Modular face. Each of the faces has different complications for different needs.

• My sleep face includes the alarm complication, Drafts for those midnight ideas I never actually have, Wunderground, sunrise/sunset and phases of the moon because why not?

• Exercise, which includes Drafts, the Workouts app, Overcast, and Wunderground.

• The face I use most of the time has the day/date complication, Drafts, Wunderground, and the timer. I use the timer a surprising amount during the day. When I’m traveling for business I add the calendar complication to that face so I can see appointments.

If you’re an Apple Watch user, which Faces and complications do you use?

I walked Minnie first thing in the morning today because it was supposed to get wicked hot. I have mixed feelings about that. I like my routine but I also like varying it up. I like being done with exercise first thing in the morning, but I also like the break in my day later in the day. I like getting the blood moving first thing in the morning but I come back wicked hungry.

At about 10:30 am, just as I was getting settled in to work, the power went out. I had only had one cup of tea before it went out so I was in a panic. Fortunately I remembered Starbucks is a thing, and it had power too. So I got some coffee.

When the power went out I was just settling in for my morning news and email sweep, so I just did that on my phone until the power came back on an hour later.

What else happened today? Oh, yes, I forwarded an email to several women co-workers that turned out to have a reference to sodomy not once but TWICE. It was this one Honest to goodness, I’m so used to how potty-mouthed the Internet is that I don’t even notice that kind of thing anymore. Ironically, the essay — and it’s a good one, which is why I forwarded it it — is about women in the workplace who become one of the guys and undermine themselves and other women.

And how is your day?

According to my journal I have stayed at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara seven times since March 2014, with a couple of additional stays in hotels within walking distance. The reason has always been the same: Conference at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

I think I’ve eaten at the Bourbon Steak & Pub and Restaurant three times. It’s a good thing I like that place a lot because it is the only good restaurant near the Hyatt.

One of the executives I interviewed made it into a who’s on first joke: “Where are you eating?” “The good restaurant near the convention center.” “Which one?” “The good restaurant near the convention center.”

The hotel itself has two restaurants. Or three, depending on how you count them. They’re fine, but unremarkable. I miss a good diner in walking distance.

I eat healthy at home but when I’m traveling I’ve got a stick of butter in one hand and a popsicle made of sugar and lard in the other.

And you realize abruptly the flight isn’t BOARDING at 11:10. It’s LEAVING at 11:10.

Those of us who love cottage cheese will never explain ourselves to those who associate cottage cheese with self-denying weight-loss diets.

Cats are not excellent at getting the hell out of your way.

I skipped exercise today. I’ve been exercising for nine years now, and this is only the second time I’ve skipped a day when I was home and healthy. I was working late and didn’t wrap up until 5:30 pm and that would have meant I’d be back from walking 7:30 pm and THEN dinner, and that’s too late.

I felt — and feel — a little guilty. But I’m reminding myself this is how normal people do. Five days of exercise, two days off. That’s perfectly fine. Not that I plan to make this a regular thing!

The other day I skipped exercise? That was less than a month ago. A friend who I never get to see was in town on business and it looked like he wouldn’t be able to get away and then suddenly he was available. I got an email from him saying he had 90 minutes to spare and was I available for lunch? I just walked out the door and got in the car to see him. As a frequent business traveler myself I know you have to move heaven and Earth to get social time on a trip, and I was grateful for it. By the time I got back it was too late to exercise, and I was happy with the outcome.

A couple of days ago I decided to stop reading political news unless it is decisive. Unless somebody actually does something. If it is just analysis and opinion, or if the news is just that Trump said something stupid, I’d skip it.

I finally implemented that rule this morning and golly I feel great, much less stressed, and I’ve gotten a lot more done.

I didn’t stick to the rule 100%. I slipped and read half of two articles in the morning. I don’t even remember what they were about. Oh, yeah, one of them was something about how Trump’s NATO speech surprised his security advisors. This afternoon I read and shared one or two more.

I don’t mean to minimize the danger of Trump’s incompetence, evil and stupidity. It’s just that my reading the news obsessively, and flooding my social media feeds with it, isn’t going to fix the problem.

On the other hand, my reducing my stress, and freeing up my time helps me. And I hopefully will devote some of that newly freed time to political activism, which might help the world in a microscopic, incremental way.

The good news is we get a reprieve for today from bathroom renovation. Our construction firm doesn’t observe Memorial Day, and were supposed to be here working, but they are not

The bad news is the reason: Julie has contracted my cold, and it’s hitting her much harder than it hit me. And the cold did not hit me lightly; I was down for about three days. A week later I’m still only back to about 98%, not 100%. I still have a bit of a cough, and I need a little more sleep than usual.

The lesser bad news is that a day off work is a day’s delay of getting this rotten process finished, and a day longer without having a shower in the house. Possibly longer than a day — one of the key guys leaves tomorrow for 10 days(?) in Texas. There’s some work that possibly only he could do and that he was scheduled to do today.

Trump’s foreign policy doctrine: America stands shoulder to shoulder with dictatorships in Russia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, and turns its back on the free peoples of Europe.

This alone makes Trump despicable.