I was away from news feeds and TV all weekend long so didn't hear this news, but I see the Global Voices blog and Ed Bott talking about the deep need in Indonesia due to a major earthquake that happened there.

As we prepare to go to my mom's funeral today, this is yet another way you can help improve the world. We'll donate some in my mom's name to the Red Cross.

Tonight, after the funeral in Bozeman, Montana, we'll be driving home. My mom lives just down the street from Seattle, but it's a long street! (Highway 90 goes from Bellevue, WA through Livingston, Montana — we'll spend about 12 hours on that highway driving home).

You knew I couldn't stay away a week, right? Well, I had to send pictures. We took two days off (funeral and cremation is tomorrow) to go to Jackson Hole with my mom's sister, Wilhelmina.

When I saw this sign, I thought of the blogosphere. Funny that! The sign was guarding the Artists' Paintpots in Yellowstone National Park. What is it? It's a mudpit. A clay pit, actually. Through the clay would pop up bubbles of gas. That caused the mud to get thrown up to five feet away. It's nature's way of blogging. The latest news bubbles up. Phhlllurbt. Phhlllurbt. Phhlllurbt.

Heh, nature owns a new word. Phhlllurbt. That's the sound that the bubbles make as they pass through the mud and escape. (Google and Live.com don't have any results if you search for that word). Here's a photo of what the mud looks like as the bubbles come up:

Anyway, I just uploaded our best pictures. Page One. Page Two.

Oh, I just saw Dave Winer saying that security will be extra tight at FU-Camp this summer. Dave's such a joker! Hey, Dave, I think we'll have FU-Camp at my mom's house this summer sometime. Maybe in August after all the conferences are finished.

You'll just have to watch for the flying mud.

Anyway, I'm still taking off until this weekend. I didn't even sign on my laptop the past few days. Maryam couldn't believe that I didn't take it with us to Jackson Hole.

Oh, speaking of Jackson, WY, I had the best food I've had this year in Burke's Chop House in Jackson. What made it best? The small things. The way they cut the apples and strawberries that adorned my salad. The wine they picked. The setting. The staff.

But, they don't have a Web site.

That's just weird to me. I guess I wouldn't mind so much, but the restaurant was only half full. Interesting that the management does everything else right but isn't spending any time on marketing to people who'll visit Jackson. Remember that almost all of the potential customers will come from outside Jackson. So, having a presence on the Web makes a lot of sense to me.

Anyway, see ya this weekend. We have two days of driving ahead of us after the funeral. Maryam made us keep the BMW at home, too, which really bummed me out. We rented a Jeep. What a cruddy car. It only has 11,000 miles on it and it sounds worse than her Toyota did after 65,000.

A few other things before I sign off again. It's nice to see my recent blogging has had a positive impact on people. Jeff, my boss, decided to start blogging personal stuff again.

Oh, and when we went to Chico Hot Springs the other night there were two beautiful women (Bridget and Jen) who were waving at me and giggling, but I'll let Maryam write that story. Let's just say I can't escape from bloggers, even in small-town Montana. And I didn't mind that at all!

Update: sometimes a photo is worth freezing your behind off for. This is one of those photos. It took a 20 minute walk in freezing wind/snow/rain (sometimes all three together). And the image just happened for a few seconds as steam from the Grand Prismatic Spring floated over the walkway making it look like the walkway was endless. In reality there are some kids on the other side of the steam. Another 15 seconds and they'd reappear. Damn it was cold, though. Too bad the photo can't communicate that!

One last thing. A few people have asked where my mom's house is. That caused me to plug "Emigrant, Montana" into Google Maps and Virtual Earth (er, Windows Local Live). I learned that my mom's street doesn't exist in Google, but does in Windows Live (she lives on Capricorn Drive). Here, take a look for yourself: Google search for Emigrant, Montana. Local Live search for Emigrant, Montana. Google isn't even close to as good a quality a map for Montana. Interesting.

First, she knew this was coming but there's some other things I want to wrap up.

First, she knew this was coming. She closed her store the week before she went into the hospital (and had been trying to sell it for months).

She told lots of people she was tired and thought something bad was going to happen. She even, after having the first proceedure completed successfully, thought she cheated death.

But, she had some wacky beliefs. It's why I wasn't very close with her. She was VERY into alternative medicine and didn't believe in doctors at all.

That belief might have cost her some time here. We'll never know for sure.

One reason I wanted to share this is if you aren't feeling well, go see a doctor, even if you don't have health insurance. It might save your life.

Dave Winer told me stories similar. We all get stubborn and don't want to hear bad news. So we put off that kind of stuff until absolutely necessary.

In my mom's case she had more than a liter of fluid around her heart that had been getting worse over a matter of months.

Not going into the doctor made that initial heart condition much worse than it would have been had it been caught early.

Coming back from Montana I sat next to a lady who was reading a best-selling book on alternative medicine. I almost talked to her about my mom but decided against it. My mom wouldn't listen to reason. I got the sense that this lady sitting next to me believed strongly in alternative medicine too and so wouldn't listen to reason either.

But, I read over her shoulder some of the book. The author (who I won't name here, cause he's already preyed on too many) takes a decided anti-corporate stance.

That anti-corporate attitude makes it easy to prey on people, particularly older people who are scared of the Walmarts and Microsoft's and other big companies.

I don't know how to solve that. More will die cause of the fear of the doctor. Of the corporations. Of the hospitals. Of misunderstanding scientific principles. Of not believing true experts. (Hey, I'm not one, so don't believe me, but don't believe everything you read in books or on the Internet either).

One of her doctors, on hearing this, said he always listens when people say that they think they are going to die soon. He says that actually comes true a lot of times, so he takes that very seriously and looks harder for problems.

Over the past two weeks I find myself wondering "what if?"

Seemed like something good to remind everyone else of too.

Oh, and whether or not you believe in alternative medicine, at least do what my mom did. Have a will drawn up. Make sure everyone knows where your bank accounts are and what you want to happen in case something bad happens in the hospital and the family needs to decide on your behalf whether you should be kept alive or not. One other thing I wish she had done? Made it easier to find all of her friends and family's phone numbers. That reminds me to do some cleaning on my contacts and printing them out.

Anyway, some things to think about.

I just received the call that we knew was coming for two weeks. My mom passed away at 5:25 p.m. Montana time today. Maryam and I are driving there this weekend.

So many of my coworkers have been dropping into my office and wishing me kind things and sharing stories about their experiences with their loved ones passing away.

I knew the call would unleash more emotion on my behalf. Even with two weeks of preparation it still hits hard. Gotta call my brothers now. Thank you for all of your kind wishes and story sharing during this time. It really means a lot and changed my view forever about what this community means.

Ahh, now we know why things have been a bit wonky lately on our network. 200,000 downloads in 24-hours.

I watch Digg cause it brings some of the most interesting blogs and sites out there. Here's one that details how the Xbox 360 team uses a little epoxy to make it hard to modify chips on its motherboard.

If you're not into that, On10 has a set of videos on Modern Medical Technology which are interesting!

Hey, David Ciccone, thanks for the props about Microsoft's mobile stuff and MPTrain (he says that beats what Nike and Apple announced the other day). Yeah, there are a few smart people over in Microsoft Research. This reminds me, I need to exercise!

This is cool, Trial of Origin just won a BBC contest where they beat 600 other bands. I was one of the first blogs to link to this band and hope they go all the way!

Speaking of music, last night Maryam and I watched American Idol on our new soopeerr-doopeer 60-inch Sony HDTV screen.

Damn.

That's all I can think while watching that screen. We have to rip ourselves away from the TV to go to sleep.

Blogging? Forget it. HDTV wins. It is just so stunning.

Oh, funny aside. Remember my post about visiting Yellowstone National Park? So, what was on my PVR when I got home? That's right. Sunrise show of Yellowstone's Geysers. They look better on HDTV than they do in real life! They don't smell, though.

Question: I wanna watch the World Cup. Turns out most of the games are on ESPN2. That's not in HD on Comcast. So, what's the best way to get ESPN2?

Since we're talking about media, I like the Podcast Readout of Share Your OPML site. Is your favorite Podcast there?

There's lots of companies that don't allow blogging, the New York Times reports today.

That's cool. I hope none of my competitors allow their employees to blog. Why? You'd be amazed at the number of job seekers we get simply because we blog openly and, even report that there's dirt under the rug over in the corner.

Yeah, it drives our PR teams nuts, but that's why they earn the big bucks!

I'd never work at a place that didn't let me have open and frank conversations with my customers. That just seems nutty to me. How about you?

Rick Segal says I appreciate CMP and Tim O'Reilly taking over my "King Evil" spot — by trademarking, and defending such, the words "Web 2.0" in a cease-and-desist letter to Tom Raftery.

Um, no. I want that spot all to myself! I hate it when people try to steal my evil. :-)

Seriously, this news was discussed by Shel Israel, my coauthor, and a bunch of other people over on Memeorandum.

This brings about memories of when a competitor to Fawcette Technical Publication's conference series would copy everything we did (down to the format of the brochure). So, I understand some sensitivity on behalf of conference producers to brands and trademarks.

That said, all this does is give IT@Cork a bunch of free publicity. All Tom has to do is change it to "Future of the Web Workshop" and the lawyers don't have a case and they get all this free publicity.

It looks like O'Reilly is claiming a service mark on "web 2.0 conference" if you visit their conference Web site. IT@Cork's site says "Web 2.0 Half Day Conference." That could, possibly, be confusing to people, so CMP and O'Reilly probably does have a legal case. But, probably not if they change the name to "Web 2.0 Half Day Symposium" or something like that.

Either way, I don't think it's confusing enough to warrant the lawyers and the impending bad PR for CMP and O'Reilly.

Update: O'Reilly responds here.

We're seeing total overload on our activation servers today so some people haven't been able to get keys to install the new Office or Windows betas. We apologize for that and are working on getting more capacity online. In the meantime you might want to watch the keynotes from WinHEC. Lots of good stuff there.

And keep trying. Hey, I remember when I was a beta tester on Windows 95. I had to download the entire OS on a 28.8 modem! I did that every weekend. How things have changed!

The mapping war continues…

The folks over on Virtual Earth team, er, the Windows Live Local team, continue to roll out new stuff. And they are slowly making their UI more usable too (something a bunch of us have been, um, giving feedback to the team about).

Hi ho, hi ho, I'm back in the office and snowed under with 265 emails (and that's after cleaning them out). Whew.

But some interesting stuff coming through my aggregators and email.

Lots of good feedback about Windows Vista. Chris Pirillo sent me and Jim Allchin the kind of feedback that product teams die for (when I was a beta tester I won a $1400 laser printer for reporting about this number of bugs and issues about Adobe Acrobat). Yes, Jason Clarke, I'm making sure this list gets seen by everyone.

A reader asked me whether I think it's smart business, given my visibility, to point out everything that's wrong with Microsoft. After all, that might give people the idea that Windows Vista is buggier than it actually is, was the thesis.

That's a risk I'm willing to take. Why? First, my belief is that my readers are smarter than I am and can figure out the truth. Second, I am sick of companies always taking the "only report good PR" route — that's no way to build trust and improve products together. Third, I know a few people in power read my blog and I want the best possible Windows Vista out there (translation: public discussion increases the chances that these issues will be fixed and not swept under the rug). Fourth, this is the time to fix problems, not worry about PR. Fifth, I assume you all know how to use Technorati to search for the dirt on Microsoft anyway.

I'll report when things work well too. For instance, Chris Pirillo used to really bag on Outlook (his bashes of Outlook are legendary). But look at his post "Outlook 2007 Might Not Suck!"

Anyway, thanks for this kind of feedback. Anyone else? Link to your bug reports here and I'll make sure they get entered into the bug tracker.

Geoff Coupe is having trouble getting Office 2007 loaded on top of Windows Vista. I'll try to get someone over here to help fix this stuff. It is beta, so expect some turbulence! But, yeah, I hate it when Microsoft groups don't use our latest stuff.

Anyone else having troubles?

I'm a sucker for geek baby photos. Famous Irish IT geek, Tom Raftery's second son was born yesterday, but Tom didn't post photos yet! Hey, every baby deserves his or her own Flickr channel! Heheh. Congrats Tom and Pilar! (We had a fun time with them in Cork, Ireland, last year).

While we're talking about all things social and Irish, Tom also reports that Social Media company Bebo just got $15 million in funding.

I missed all the video game hoohaw that happened over the past couple of weeks (the E3 conference happened the week my mom went into the hospital). But, that's what's nice about RSS. It's all there waiting for you when you get back. I just was looking at Major Nelson's blog (he works on the Xbox team) and he has a ton of videos and podcasts and other things from the E3 conference.

There's lots of Microsoft news. New betas of Windows Vista and Office 2007 shipped this morning. And lots of other stuff from the Windows Hardware Conference. Mary Jo Foley has the key stuff. Don't tell Steve Ballmer, but the best place to get news on Microsoft is actually on Google.

Update: News.com has a whole package, including videos, from WinHEC.

There are too many conferences this summer. But, Dave Winer's BloggerCon looks pretty intersting (yesterday he announced more details). I'll be listening to the podcast since I won't be able to attend. I should be at the other three conferences, though, that he's partnering with.

Dana Epp admonishes Microsoft to not let employees run as admin. (He's a security expert). I agree. It's time to step up and do this, no matter how painful it is.

The EirePreneur blog corrected a myth: that TechMeme was seeded solely by me. That isn't true. The original list was heavily influenced by my reading list, Gabe told me, but that original list now has changed so much that only about 4% of the blogs I was reading are part of the current list. (And I'm only reading 100 blogs right now, cause I don't have time to read the 800 I was reading).