Nice swim this morning, with the steam coming off the surface of the pool just as the sun was burning through the morning clouds.  The day has definitely started off well.  Now off to breakfast (with lotsa coffee) and to watch some real swimmers in action.

Working at home today since there was nothing going on at the cube farm to justify six dollars worth of gas and an hour of travel time.

Secure in the de facto branch office, local leadership gathered all the personalities and mandated a staff swim. It was a good swim since the staff had the pool to itself, and got in a healthy mix of freestyle, kick and butterfly. Muy importante to staff morale. Third on the morale-boosting priority list after the boxers-only dress code and the coffee pot being only six steps away. The recently neglected little law firm practice of mandatory staff siesta may also be reinstated as well.

Mornin’ y’all. I’m up and the coffee is still percolating through the magic machine. Soon my drug of choice will be entering my system.

I suppose one of the downsides to having a great weekend is the despair that comes when it ends and one has to return to the cubes. Oh well, it had to happen sometimes. Gotta earn money for a newer, faster, shinier camera, even though I’m still enthralled with the Canon I picked up back in February.

I was pretty happy with the pics I took at the Crew Classic on Sunday, but seeing the results when I posted them at The Vista both thrilled and terrified. I had no idea there were so many Cal fans out there. The feedback has been great, but the traffic level after a couple of sites linked to some of the photos went through the roof and by mid-day Monday I was checking my hosting plan in a panic trying to figure out what my bandwidth levels were. No problem – still plenty to spare. Still loving Dreamhost. No complaints here, just a strange feeling on an issue that for better or worse I’ve never had to deal with before. And me without enough coffee in my system to deal with business issues.

Just enjoying a San Diego Sunday after a very long week of work. I should be doing some work today but it’s not going well yet. Little Pongo had me up at 5, and since I was up, I was swimming laps by 6. I don’t know whether the rentacops here open the pool gates especially early some mornings, or they just never get around to locking them some nights, but today it worked to my advantage. Even though it was an hour before the apartment pool officially opens, I wasn’t alone. With the sun rising earlier and earlier, I guess others had similar ideas.

Then breakfast with some friends, restock on some Peet’s, and the Sunday Times. Got the paper all spread out and I’m waiting for some iced coffee (Sierra Dorada) to chill. All I’ve read so far is the sports section, but the swimmer part of me was really interested in this one, and the guy in me who used to bike a lot enjoyed reading this one. On the bicycle story, I’m not really sure if I like the article as much as the fact that he’s now probably going to have another great Armstrong post.

Continuing the sports topic, my little Palm electronic brain reminds me that next weekend is the San Diego Crew Classic. My posts from 2002 and 2003 are still available in the archives. Hopefully Cal will win again and I’ll get some pics up in about ten days or so.

And now transitioning into our fun-in-the-sun block, I received approval from the bar (after only about two months) last week to offer a CLE program through the beachlaw site. To the non-CA-lawyers reading, this hopefully means very little (thank gawd you’ve been spared); for the rest of you – one hour, self-study with a self-assessment test is currently up in a print-PDF-and-mail format. I’m still working on implementing a completely online version (the pay part became more involved then I expected it to be) but it will be up soon.

Some of you (OK, those of you who visit way too often) may know I’ve been trying to learn enough PHP and MySQL to implement some changes at the beach law site. There’s some functionality beyond blog-like comments on a specific area of legal interest that I think will make the site more interesting for users, more useful for people with interests in this area of law, and help me pad my law and web resume

It’s coming along, but much slower than expected. What I want to do can be done, but not without more time than I can throw at it right now. Hopefully I’ll have the changes (or at least demos of the changes) online by New Year’s. Want to help? Can you hook me up with an IV caffeine drip? Do you give good shoulder rubs to tired coding lawyers? Can you distract Pongo so he won’t distract me? Submit the relevant info or offers in comments or through the feedback form. Form comments are private unless you tell me otherwise, or the details are particularly *ahem* intriguing. Just kidding. Private unless you tell me otherwise.

That said, the more I learn about PHP the more I see the opportunity for fun little tweaks to this site. Expect more of those throughout the holiday season.