I had a fun and productive stay in San Francisco for Google I/O, then started a day of travel home that became a day and a half. And it was basically my fault for being a greedy avgeek. Instead of booking a nonstop back to National or Dulles, I opted to connect through Houston so I could get a belated introduction to the Boeing 787 on the first leg–and, I figured, have the extra capacity of a widebody plane on a domestic route lead to my upgrade clearing.

That left me with a tight connection before the last flight to National, and I’d thought that my big risk was getting into IAH too late for that departure. Instead, the latest in a series of storms pounded the Houston area, forced planes to divert hundreds of miles away, and led too many pilots to time-out. My brittle connection finally crumbled when United acknowledged reality and cancelled the DCA flight at around 10:30, I grabbed a reasonably cheap hotel room nearby, and I got home after 4 this afternoon. Oh, and my upgrade didn’t clear on the 787. Not my smartest travel hacking ever.

5/25/2015: How to watch your own videos on Chromecast, USA Today

My editor decided to run this column on Monday of the Memorial Day weekend instead of Sunday. That, in turn, meant I could devote Sunday to holiday pursuits instead of taking time to market the piece on social media.

5/26/2015: General Motors: Don’t Touch Your Car’s Software, Yahoo Tech

I’d planned on writing about this year’s round of requests for exemptions from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention clause later this year, but there was enough interest in a proposal to legalize tinkering with the embedded software on cars that I had to go ahead with the column. Short version of the ensuing reader feedback: You all trust GM about as far as you can throw it.

5/28/2015: Cut From Google I/O: What Didn’t Make the Stage, Yahoo Tech

After the opening keynote to Google’s I/O conference wrapped up, I wrote this recap of the things that Google executives didn’t mention in that two-plus-hour presentation. I hope somebody does the same for the keynote at Apple’s upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference.

2/29/2015: Google’s Security News: Malware’s Down, and You’re Heeding More of Its Warnings, Yahoo Tech

My editor at Yahoo Tech suggested I check out this half-hour presentation by Google’s Stephan Somogyi about its security efforts, and I’m glad I took his advice. He shared some fascinating details about how security warnings fare when read by distracted humans who are apparently feeling lucky all the time.

5/31/2015: Want to move your home number? Take it to the Web, USA Today

The question that led to this column about using Internet-calling services to move a landline number to another area came from a reader of my May 11 piece about the demise of Sprint’s WiMax wireless broadband–see, I do read my e-mail! It also gave me an overdue incentive to start testing some home-phone VoIP hardware I’ve had sitting around for a while.