It's amazing how fast the holidays seem to creep up every year. Some people blamed it on the fact that Thanksgiving was a little later this year than usual. On my end, it had to do with a job change, and lots more to do and think about besides what gifts still need to be bought.

Back at my home away from home--the President's Club at SFO. The week started with a trip to Santa Barbara for the Green Hills Technology Summit. I saw some really cool technology there. It started with an "anti-hacking" wizard, and he told a few amazing stories. He gets hired by people who want to know if their network is secure. In just about every case, the speaker claimed he was able to crack the network.

The world stood still for three days and watched in desperation as the grand city of Mumbai was attacked. So many innocent lives were lost. A senseless act that most people in the world cannot comprehend and would never condone.

I know there's a recession going on. I see it at work; I see it on the TV; and I see it in the newspapers (yes, I still read the newspapers). But you'd never know it from what's going on at the malls and on the roads in my neighborhood. Parking spots this past weekend were not to be had--even at 8:00 in the morning! And there are thousands of spots.

I love design contests. In many cases, I'm not eligible to enter, but they're loads of fun regardless. Oftentimes, I'm asked to judge these contests, and that's the case with Microsoft's Sparks will Fly contest, which is aimed at the embedded hobbyist (that includes all of us, doesn't it?). The theme of the contest is “home of the future,” which conjures up images of futuristic connected devices.

Generally when the holidays roll around, things slow down a bit. But that doesn't seem to be the case this year, at least in this short Thanksgiving week. The phone has been ringing and e-mails flying around, same as any other week.

Boy, did I meet an interesting guy yesterday. Currently, Tom Paddock is the VP of audio systems at ARC International. If you're not familiar with ARC, they provide processor IP and are now going head-first into the audio space.

If they've gone to the extreme of assembling an advisory board, this group must be serious about their technology. The group that I'm referring to is the StackableUSB Standards Organization.

For the past few months, our Embedded group has been putting on conferences on a few different subjects, in many different countries throughout the world. It started in early September with the RFID World show in Las Vegas. The following week, it was off to San Jose for the Embedded Power Conference.

I call this Day 0, but others might call it Day 2. The workshops started yesterday (Sunday), but the Keynote Address is tomorrow (Tuesday). So in my view, yesterday would have been Day -1. Sunday was the first day of the Build Your Own Embedded Systems (BYOES) classes. We started with a full-day tutorial that showed the basics of the board. It was delivered to a class that was standing-room-only. The BYOES classes will continue throughout the week.