Roy Haynes' 80th birthday

As part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival, a special concert was held to honor the great drummer Roy Haynes. He looks great and plays and moves like a much younger man. I look at older folks like him and think they have definitely got it figured out. Other jazz greats were in attendance and were playing their best to honor the occassion: Chick Corea, Christian McBride, Kenny Garrett, Gary Burton, Joshua Redman, Nicholas Payton. Wow..

Trip to Chicago

Ken and I took a quick 4-day trip to Chicago over the President's Birthday holiday in February. We spent time with his mother, sisters, and family. laughed and talked a lot, ate too much. One day we went to Ken's alma mater, Illinois Institute of Technology. In the photo, he is looking at the brick with his name that he got when he donated money to the alumni fund. In the background is the tunnel for the "el" that is part of the new student union.

Marcia Ball

In February, we went to see Marcia Ball at the Little Fox, a nice little club in Redwood City. She is a great blues singer and pianist in the style of Dr. Longhair. What a kick!

RSA Conference in San Francisco

I got to attend the RSA 2005 Conference in February. It's the big conference for software security. Lots of CEO celebrities were there like Bill Gates from Microsoft, John Chambers from Cicso, and John Thompson from Symantec. So were the crypto gurus like Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir (the R and S from RSA) and Whit Diffie. Frank Abganale (the guy Leonardo DiCaprio played in Catch Me if You Can) gave a rousing speech, more about redemption than how to catch the con man. Pictured above is Simon Singh who wrote a couple of my favorite books, including The Code Book which traces the history of codes and cryptography.