San Diego Excursion, Part 1

In preparation for this trip, I did not get any guest-room offers from new friends. I'm even more certain that the hospitality in Austin was a miracle of good will. In making my San Diego plans, by contrast, I made a series of mistakes.

Welcome California's Strongest Man Competitors

I chose a San Diego hotel using a method only slightly better than a dart board at ten paces. Having struck out on Travelzoo.com, I went to Expedia, searched for hotel-plus-flight deals, and listed the hotels according to star ratings. I wanted at least a three-star hotel in a close-in location.

Greetings! Your room is 81 degrees F!

In the past, I've been able to locate bargains this way. I chose The Handlery Hotel and Resort in Mission Valley, the only three-star hotel that fell in the lower third of the price range. I now think that Handlery should be downgraded to 2.5 stars.

I tacked on a vehicle rental, since it seemed that San Diego's public transit was limited. In retrospect, I would have rearranged my priorities. I would have chosen a hotel downtown or in a beach town, to be close to the action, spent more on the hotel, and nixxed the rental car entirely. The people that I met were more than willing to drive, and when by myself, I could have walked to bars, restaurants and shopping.

Don't mind the mildew smell, or the van out front...

The Handlery is solidly family-oriented (read: boring). The area surrounding it has a few attractions, such as Balboa Park, but is mostly composed of meandering roads with maddeningly similar names, hotels, residential structures, and lop-sided strip malls. There is no free wifi anywhere. Residents will tell you that Starbucks and Borders books have it, but you know that it's a paid service. The hotel wants US$59.95/week for wireless service, and it does not work half the time. The resident "engineer" cannot fix anything, and could not be bothered to try. After several phone calls and tests, Wayport informed me that they cannot restore wireless to my room, even with a booster antenna. I wasted a lot of time driving around trying to find free wifi, and not even getting paid wifi to work. All this was in an effort to look up restaurants and clubs, and to make plans with people locally.

Leaky Handle at the Handlery

If the Handlery was mistake number two, and wireless-hunting mistake number three, then mistake number one was my choice of travel dates. I chose June 30 through July 6, 2006. The most obvious problem was that these dates span the Independence holiday, which is a dead zone for real estate hunting and socializing with new friends. I could not even get dry cleaning service on July 3rd. Additionally, my choice of dates put the weekend on the beginning of the trip, instead of the end. The reverse would have been better, since I could have spent the weekdays meeting people for coffee and checking out houses and condos, then saved the weekend for lengthier, more elaborate outings.

The trip did have its joys, including the sunset at Ocean Beach, and lunch at the historical Del Coronado Hotel. I watched the sunset my first night in town. Each day thereafter, San Diegans told me that Ocean Beach was the the party beach, hippy beach, the pothead beach, etc. Must have been a slow Friday night when I was there. Besides ouselves, there was one student meditating and a couple of groups milling about wearing Dockers.

House Price Forecasts Diverge Widely on CNNMoney.com

Two different authors at CNN Money used similar data sets on home prices, yet came up with very different answers. I noticed that the predictions for Seattle were very different when reading these articles.

Article	Hot home markets to cool down... how will your home fare? By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer May 1, 2006	Home forecast: Where the growth is... and isn't By Tara Kalwarski, MONEY Magazine May 17, 2006
Metro	Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA
Median Price	$360,000	308,000
Past Change	16.43% (49.30%/3 years)	16.30% (2004:Q3-2005:Q3)
Forecast gain	10.50% (2006)	1.90% (June 2006–June 2007)
Sources cited	Fiserv Lending Solutions	Fiserv Lending Solutions and Moody's Economy.com

Note that the labels on the two authors' data are not identical, and Kalwarski adds Moody's to sources cited.

I Googled for the author's names, and found that readers of Seattle Bubble had already found the discrepancy, one day after publication of the second article. No errata, discussion, or explanation have been added to the CNNMoney articles as of this writing. Neither Ms. Kalwarski nor Mr. Christie appear to have author bios, mailto links, or blogs, so I could not respond to them directly. I've written to the Managing Editor. I'll make sure that any responses get posted here.

Venture Capital: Austin Places in Top Five

In 2001, Austin ranked third in venture capital strength¹. ¹ Robert D. Atkinson, Ph.D., Paul D. Gottlieb, Ph.D., THE METROPOLITAN NEW ECONOMY INDEX, April 2001.