An updated list of grand openings I’m keeping my eye on:

• Guadalupe River Park and Gardens: Saturday, September 10
• Vasona VTA Light Rail Extension: Saturday, October 1
• San Jose’s new City Hall: Saturday, October 15
• De Young Museum: Sunday, October 16 (it actually opens on the 15th, but this is close enough)

Yesterday I went to the festival celebrating Cupertino’s Golden Jubilee at the Civic Center. I spent most of my time at “History Lane,” which had nice exhibits on Cupertino’s past, starting from the Ohlone Indians, through Elisha “Stevens Creek” Stephens, the vineyards, the orchards, the Cali Bros. Mill, and finally the development boom of the 1960s and 70s. A lot of people crowded around the aerial photos capturing that development. [photos] By the way, it’s scary to think that my family has lived in Cupertino for almost one-third of its existence as a city.

Two weeks ago, Michael and his two brothers joined me in the grand opening of the Guadalupe River Park. It’s a somewhat odd juxtaposition of greenery, urban and suburban landscape, and the sounds of jets landing at San Jose International Airport, but it is a nice respite in the heart of San Jose, and I’m sure it’s much better than what was there before. [photos] After all the talking I’ve heard over the years, I was glad to finally see it finished. Sort of.It turns out that the section between Julian Street and Coleman Avenue is bisected by a railroad, and it was closed off at the railroad the next day while a bypass was being planned. Meanwhile, another section between Santa Clara and San Fernando Streets was also closed off the next day for Highway 87 construction. Also, not all of the signs have been put in yet, which led us astray a few times. But it was a nice day and there was a huge turnout.

The next week, I shoved my bicycle into the back seat of my car and drove to downtown, where I rode in as much of the Guadalupe River Park as I could, and then went over to the Los Gatos Creek Trail, which stretches from Willow Glen, through Campbell and Los Gatos, to the Lexington Reservoir. [photos] This is an ideal bike trail for me: nice scenery, relatively flat, long, and virtually no cross traffic. Did I mention it’s flat? It also passes through a few large parks, and in Oak Meadow Park, I saw something I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of before: a miniature railroad. The Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad was opened in 1943 and inspired Walt Disney to build his own miniature railroad in Disneyland. Fun for the whole family! And the trains were packed.

Instead of going up to the reservoir, I decided to stop in downtown Los Gatos. I browsed through the History Museum of Los Gatos, located in Forbes Mill Annex, ate lunch at Pizza My Heart, and then headed back. At the end of the trail in Willow Glen, I couldn’t take much more cycling, so I biked over to the Tamien light rail station and took it through downtown San Jose, and then biked back to my car, shaving about 4 miles. It was worth it, especially since I brought my Eco Pass — no fare needed! Woohoo!

Li Ao, a Taiwanese politician who favors unification (or reunification, depending on your political slant) with mainland China, is currently touring the mainland. China’s official Xinhua news agency proudly points out how Li has thanked the Chinese Communist Party for bringing prosperity and military power to China, adding, “Only the Communist Party of China is capable of doing this.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times focuses on Li Ao’s criticism of the Communists. It reports that Li Ao “chided China’s leaders for suppressing free speech, ridiculed the university administration’s fear of academic debate and advised students how to fight for freedom against official repression.”

The Taipei Times is just happy Li Ao can be his own, kooky self, provoking both Taiwan and China.

At a new generation of Chinese restaurants in New York, you don’t have to worry about the food being Americanized. That’s because the Chinese food is via other countries, including Korea, India, Madagascar, Cuba, and Peru. One Chinese-Peruvian dish called lomo saltado — a stir fry of beef, onions and tomatoes seasoned with soy sauce and served over french fries or fried potatoes — isn’t even considered Chinese in Peru, much like how Americans don’t consider hot dogs and hamburgers to be German food.

Last week, Microsoft had its semi-regular Professional Developers Conference. I was impressed by the amount of new material it put out, much of it unexpected, including:

• LINQ — language enhancements to C# and Visual Basic to ease the "impedance mismatch" between data access and object-oriented programming
• The overhauled user interface of Office "12" — they've finally decided having 35 toolbars was not a good idea
• The return of Sidebar to Windows Vista, with a new twist to compete against Apple and Yahoo/Konfabulator
• Expression Studio, a new graphics and design suite which is focused on building web sites and Windows user interfaces, a different focus from Adobe or Macromedia
• Atlas — Microsoft's cross-platform answer to supporting Ajax
• A subset of Windows Presentation Foundation that will run on Mac OS X, among other platforms
• Windows Workflow Foundation, formerly Windows Orchestration Engine, for building complex workflow apps

And then that weekend, both Business Week and Forbes had cover stories on how Microsoft has become bloated, slow, and unresponsive, while Google poaches its best employees — which unintentionally became a great segway to Microsoft's reorganization announcement.

Kepler’s Books might not be doomed after all. A group of investors is trying to help Clark Kepler save the bookstore his father founded 50 years ago.

Sprint’s new logo, which is a consequence of its merger with Nextel, seems very European to me. It’s that whole black-on-yellow sans-serif thing. And in fact, I’m not the only one whose noticed that it looks a lot like the logo for Deutsche Post.

I was glad to see Microsoft announce a new ergonomic keyboard, the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, for a couple of reasons. For a while, it looked like they were deemphasizing their standalone ergonomic keyboards. Microsoft introduced a lot of wireless ergonomic keyboard/mouse sets in the past few years, but I’m only interested in wired keyboards. (The last thing I need to do is use more batteries.) This announcement renews their commitment to standalone ergonomic keyboards.

Also, almost all of Microsoft’s recent keyboards, such as the Natural MultiMedia Keyboard, have a strange layout for the keys above the inverted-T cursor keys, including Home and End. I used the Natural MultiMedia Keyboard when I was pair-programming with Scott, and it drove me nuts. Then I started getting used to it, which was worse, because it screwed me up on every other keyboard, including my own Natural Keyboard Pro. I started hoarding every Natural Keyboard Pro I could get my hands on, since Microsoft discontinued it. But now it looks like I don’t have to worry anymore.

Just as radio was not made obsolete by television, we should not be surprised that the U.S. Postal Service and even typewriters are finding their place in a digital world.