On the downhill slope
Now that I've completed 4 out of the 5 days of training out here, I'm really starting to enjoy San Francisco. Of course, I miss my family and friends back home - but the students I'm training have been very hospitable and enjoyable to work with. They even invited me to join them at Zebulon last night for a "going away" party for one of the team members. I was happy to go, but got scared and left after the car bombs started flowin'. It was weird being at Zebulon and not seeing any Tangosol or Solarmetric monkeys (case in point).
Last night, I had the pleasure of dining with Crazy Bob and his woman at a very cool restaurant down by the bay. It was fun talking about how WebWork sucks and Google is a horrible place to work. Bob's work life seems to be pretty horrendous, but the new baby in a few weeks should turn things around. 
Good luck you two - I wish you the best.
The weather here is awesome. It seems to hover between 60 and 75, which is perfect IMO. Denver weather sounds awful right now. A good quote from Jason: "It's like I went to sleep Tuesday night and woke up in Phoenix."
One of the fun parts of class today was sharing IDEA tips. The good ones I learned were 1) use the pin icon on the panels to auto-close them when you're not using them (Command+1 to re-open the Project pane) and 2) install the Rearranger Plugin to control where your getters and setters are generated. The only tips I had to offer were Command+N, Command+Shift+N and Command+E - which most IDEA users already know. A lot of folks didn't know about Command+E (recent files), so that was likely my only contribution. Another good one I learned was Command+Shift+Alt+N (variable search). With all of the shortcuts I'm learning for IDEA, it's going to become harder and harder to keep using Eclipse. Got another useful shortcut? I'd love to hear about it!