Behold, the power of Fark!
So far, my personal favorite: Traaaiiinnn!
Close runner up: Here
And if they can’t fulfill their duties, the crown will be worn by: This

YES! I’ll be speaking and signing at Comic-Con!! News here.
We packed and shipped a TON of books today, bringing the total number of orders shipped to about 450. The rest will be shipped by the end of the week.
Monolith is a three man operation (with occasional help from my stepkids) and I really appreciate everyone’s patience while we try to deal with the totally unexpected demand for Dancing Barefoot. Once we get caught up on the pre- and backed-up orders, new orders will be processed much more quickly than they are right now.
Also, you can now buy your very own autographed copy from Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego! Mysterious Galaxy is the very first “Brick-and-mortar” store to carry my book, and I’m thrilled!
I’ll be heading over to Vroman’s in Pasadena tomorrow with a press kit and review copy. Cross your virtual fingers for me . . . I buy almost all of my books there, and I’d simply die to do a signing there, and have them stock my book.
I’m still finishing the final Cruise updates, but I have to finish an introduction to a very exciting and SUPER SECRET book before midnight tonight. I should be able to post it, and upload most of the pictures, tomorrow after I take the next big old batch of books to the post office.
Finally, there is an iPod in my future, thanks to a mysterious stranger, who hooked me up with his / hers / its 25% employee discount! 30GB, man!! WOO!!!

I am home.
Happy, rested, and staring at over 900 e-mails.
50 of them are actually not spam!
The boat continues to rock, the dogs are thrilled to see us, and I had a wonderful time.
I’ll update about the last few days of the cruise tomorrow or the next day.
Couple of interesting things:
1. Randal Schwartz is a svengali when it comes to perl. I wrote my first five perl scripts today, while making my way through the Learning Perl book on the plane. And they worked. So there.
2. I am madly in love with my iBook after this trip, and I think I’m going to be getting myself an Ipod and Powerbook before Summer is over.
3. My class went really well. I was terrified that I was going to suck, but I didn’t. That was cool.
4. The past 10 days have confirmed that my wife is the coolest person on the planet. I hope that everyone who reads this page finds someone to spend their life with who is as cool as Anne is. I can’t wait to do the massive road trip to Tulsa with her in 2 weeks.
I’m going to have a beer, eat some good food (the cruise food redefined “sucks”), and go to bed.

The ship’s internet chokes when I try to upload lots of big jpegs to the gallery,so I used iPhoto’s cool “export image” feature to scale down some pictures from today.
Here they are: Note: Changed to links. Now with bigger pictures!
Anne and I are on the tender, going from our ship to Fanning Island

Here I am, throwing the goat in a tropical paradise.

And here is another view of Fanning Island from my stateroom.

CruiseTrek — Day 5
Wednesday, 03 June, 2003
2:59 p.m. HST
Fanning Island, Republic of Kiribati
Greetings from tomorrow!
The voyage thus far has been quite lovely. The seas are mostly calm, the CruiseTrekkers and Geek Cruisers are awesome, and Anne and I are really enjoying our time away from our so-called real lives.
Yesterday, we spent the whole day at sea, traveling 1200 miles Southwest of Hawaii, on our way to Fanning Island, which is 220 miles North of the equator, and across the international dateline (hence this entry’s greeting).
Yesterday afternoon, I played poker with Vaughn and his wife, this guy Trenton, and this other guy Dan. We had a really good time, and gave Vaughn all of our money . . . which he later used to buy everyone beers. 🙂
Last night, I ate dinner with the rest of the speakers on the Mac Mania and Perl Whirl cruises, which was just awesome. I enjoyed being able to talk with people who are smarter than me about things that interest me, and feel like I could keep up.
After dinner, Anne retired to our cabin, and I joined some other geeks for more poker. We even had some normals join us: two very nice guys who played well and provided pleasant company.
I understand that everyone with wireless has been reading my updates from the ship . . . that’s so strange to me, but, uh, hi there, everyone who is on the ship. Especially Tom and Dori, who are too cool for words.
Today, we spent our time at Fanning Island. There is too much to write about Fanning Island, but I’ll do it when I have more time.
Until then, take a look at what I see when I look out of my stateroom . . .