Barack Obama and Joe Biden are scheduled to appear in Greensboro, NC this Saturday. Surprisingly, given that Mr. Obama was in Charlotte last week (and I missed him). Greensboro is only an hour from Durham, so it would be great if I could attend that meeting.

The big question is, will Mr. Obama continue campaigning now Mr. McCain has halted his campaign? Mr. Obama is still saying he wants to debate Mr. McCain, but he has said to stop all campaigning because of the dire economic situation and the slow progress of the bail-out plan through Congress.

This weekend I upgraded to Paint Shop Pro X2.

I've been using Paint Shop for a long time. It's a lot more affordable than Adobe Photo Shop but very powerful.

I've been working with version 10 since September 2006, and they've done a lot of work in the last two years. I'm not sure if I really like the new color of the application though -- it's very dark.

So I thought it would be interesting to see Barack Obama, the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, give a speech in Charlotte, NC.

I didn't realize how many other people had that idea, and how slow the lines would move... I arrived in Charlotte at 11.15 am. While I did see Mr. Obama in his car when he arrived, at 1.15 pm when the speech started I was about half way the line to the entrance gate. That was unfortunate, since Charlotte is 2,5 hours away from Durham. At the other hand, I had time for some good phone calls, now I've finally recharged my international calling card.

I'm leaving to Charlotte in a little while.

Barack Obama is holding a public rally there today, and I thought it would be interesting to attend.

The rally is downtown. "For security reasons, do not bring bags and please limit personal items. No signs or banners permitted."

We arrived in San Diego on Thursday, August 14th, and we stayed there for four nights. We stayed in The Sofia Hotel in downtown, a few minutes from the Gaslamp Quarter.

Here is a selection of pictures we took in San Diego over those four days.

Arrived in California!

For a walk along the water.

The San Diego skyline.

San Diego harbor.

Sunset at the harbor.

Our hotel, the Sofia Hotel.

A street near the Convention Center.

Bicycle cabs.

Strange trees.

More trees.

Bridge across the bay.

Old town San Diego.

Old town San Diego.

Old town San Diego.

We spent a lot of time in Balboa park, a large cultural park in downtown San Diego.

It's a great place to go for a walk, and there are a lot of museums and attractions in the park.

The first thing we saw, right near the entrance, was a beautiful rose garden and an even better cactus garden.

That looks familiar!

Promenade in the park.

Balboa park.

Pond.

We had a good time in the San Diego Museum of Art, and then had lunch outdoors in the garden. We were just saying to ourselves how great it is to look at these paintings, when Sasha found another museum in a brochure we had taken, 5 minutes away. It was a small private museum, but with a very nice surprise: a real Haarlempje! One of the famous "views of Haarlem" by Jacob van Ruisdael.

Balboa park.

Why everybody loves automated builds... note the commit message.

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Revision 55282 committed by a developer on 2008-09-10 19:38:54 upgrading to rails 2.1.1. (only a couple minor changes)

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I've always found the emphasis on 'attack ads', political commercials that portray a political opponent in a bad light, a bit silly. How would any serious voter be influenced by a 30 second TV commercial?

I don't know much about North Carolina's politicians, but I've heard about Elizabeth Dole before; she's a senator for North Carolina and has a long history in national politics as well. Now, the first associations that I have with her name are "very ineffective" and "43 years in Washington DC". It may be completely unfair, but the first thoughts I have about Mrs. Dole are pretty negative -- a direct result of this TV ad that has been airing very frequently lately (there are on-line ads against her as well). I like to think I'm rational enough to ignore these associations and thoughts, but who knows?

On my way home from work I listened to the last 15 minutes of a debate between the two major candidates for Governor of North Carolina, Bev Perdue and Pat McCrory. Bev Perdue I know, but again the main thing I "know" about Pat McCrory is that he will "favor Charlotte over the other areas in North Carolina", because of an ad I heard on the radio once. Would it influence my vote? It's hard to tell, but I'm not so certain anymore that attack ads don't work.

On a related topic, Monday night at the Jaycees in Chapel Hill BJ Lawson spoke about why he his running for Congress. I don't think I've ever met an American politician before, and it was an interesting evening.

On Sunday August 17 we got up at 4.30 am to prepare for our race in San Diego, America's Finest City 2008. It was a beautiful course, the nicest I've ran so far, and Sasha and I were quite successful with personal records for both of us.

On Friday night we walked the last few miles of the half marathon course, pretty much all of it uphill in the beautiful but hilly downtown area. It was good I knew that this was coming at the end of the race; I was mentally prepared and in my calculations I allowed for some extra walk breaks near the end. The over-all result was 2:18, a couple of minutes faster than my previous two races.

A lot of people asked: "isn't it terribly hot in San Diego?" but the weather was great for running. It was sunny, but not humid at all and very bearable. When we returned back in North Carolina 10 days later it took us a while to get used to the warm and humid weather again.

Buses took us from Balboa park to the start of the half marathon. Early in the morning, watching the sunrise at the Cabrillo National Monument

There were more than 7,500 participants.

I dropped my bag with warm clothes at the start and they were at the finish when I arrived. I was glad I had some warm clothes with me; it was windy at the start, although not really cold.

After the national anthem, the race started. At the start there was music: "California Dreaming". I really liked running a race in California.

The first mile or so was downhill, through the military area around the Cabrillo monument.

After that, it was about 8 miles flat, along the Embarcadero with a great view of the San Diego skyline. We took this picture when we went to pick up our bib's on Saturday.

Downtown was uphill, and the finish was in Balbao Park where we had taken the bus early in the morning. The picture above doesn't show it well, but that's where the incline began (it would get a lot worse a mile in). We took this picture earlier in the week.

Our shoes together. Instead of chips the race used disposable RFID tags.

After our races!

Inspired by a surprise discovery in San Diego during our vacation we visited the North Carolina Museum of Art today.

The museum's collection is wide in scope, and it's a pretty large museum. We visited the European Collection, which includes a nice selection of Dutch and Flemish art from the 16th and 17th century. We couldn't find the painting of the Grote Markt in Haarlem by Berckheyde, but there were a couple of empty places on the walls so it may be on loan.

One of the highlights for me was a painting by Ruisdael, Wooded Landscape with Waterfall. There was also a smaller painting with a traditional Dutch winter landscape that I liked, with people skating on a frozen river.