In Orange County it’s a common to see people of all ages and backgrounds at the local coffee shop (Starbuck’s) cup in hand studying, conversing, or on the internet. In fact, it’s a regular past time for most of us, and I would think most other parts of the United States.

It was odd for me, on a recent trip to New Zealand, to visit a Starbuck’s and see hardly anyone around at all. Starbuck’s and coffee shops are popular, but only in their capacity to serve drinks and food, and not as a local hangout. There was actually a company advertisement in the store telling people to hang out at the shop in the evening and read, or write poetry, or just converse with people. Something so common and natural for us is competely foreign there. I guess it shouldn’t be such a big deal, but I was definitely surprised by it.

Note: I’m currently posting from Sydney, which is a lot more like Los Angeles.

Once a year, a bunch of random people get together and decide to salute our public rail system in a most unique way.

Yesterday was the 26th annual Moon Amtrak day held in Laguna Niguel. My brother and I rode our bikes down to San Deigo and took the train back up to Santa Ana. After the San Juan Capistrano stop, the conductor noted that there would be a

I’m not suprised by this at all, considering the OC is home to Broadcom, Gateway, Western Digital, Linksys, and the Irvine technology research park. Not to mention that both Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine (14th most unwired college campus) both use WiFi. And let’s not forget FullertonWireless in Downtown Fullerton.

According to Intel (and we all know why they would invest in this survey) Orange County is tenth among the top 100 most unwired cities.

Our fellow metrobloggers rank as follows: Seattle 1st, San Francisco 2nd, Austin 3rd, Portland 4th, Atlanta 6th, Minneapolis 9th, Chicago 12th, Boston 13th, DC 14th, and Los Angeles at 24th.

This goes great with our last post by Miles: “Do Coffee and Laptops Mix?”

Thanks to the DC Metbloggers for the report.

July is upon us, which means hot weather, shark attacks (just you watch…) and the Orange County Fair. The fair’s website has ticket pricing and specials, schedules, entertainment listings (B-52s tonight!) and all sorts of other information.

Don’t forget that it’s the “year of the avocado”. If that doesn’t excite you, nothing will! I’m sure I’ll be attending at some point, maybe on a day that’s not the first or last of the fair. See you at the Fried Snickers Bar stand!

I was in Diedrich Coffee near UCI during the mid-afternoon yesterday and the place was filled. With laptops. There were three sitting on the tables outside and eight to ten inside sitting with their owners on couches, small tables and carrels. Clearly they

The city of Anaheim has raised the terror alert level around the Disneyland Resort in response to today

NHL.com is reporting that Coach Babcock of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks has turned down a one year extension on his contract to coach under the new team ownership.

Rumors are floating around that he might become the next head coach of the Detroit Red Wings. Which, for those sport fanatics out there, is also the first team the Ducks played in their very first home game.

The search for a new coach is under way according to new General Manager Brian Burke, but no deadline is in place for an announcment.

Please send some love towards the London Metblog. They have a ton of information up about today’s bombings. They also have some good reports of what it’s like on the ground there.

The Register is reporting that a worker fell to his death during construction work at the new Segerstrom Hall being built across from the Orange County Performing Art Center in Costa Mesa.

Apparently the scaffolding gave way and the worker plummeted 80 feet to his death while another worker was left dangling.

The center is the OC’s response to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. While it doesn

According to MousePlanet, Space Mountain at Disneyland is finally reopening after two years of renovations. Though slated for a July 15th opening, the ride is in