I'm on the road a lot lately. To SES Munich, then to Hannover last week for a pub conference on search engine optimization (yeah, pub conference is a fancy word for drinking beer while talking shop - what I tend to do on a friday night anyway). This weekend Queensday in Amsterdam and then on Monday I'll be flying to Mountain View where I'll stay for two weeks.
One thing I realize is that nowadays I can pretty much work from any place, as long as there is a reasonable Internet connection. When I was in Munich, something went terrible wrong with one of the systems I was working on. But since there was wireless Internet in the hotel lobby (be it of the non free, T-Mobile variety), I could connect to the machine where the system was running and check it out.
This is quite nice - it gives you the idea that one day you could just travel around and work where you happen to be. Hike through the Thai jungle and at night hack around a little on a Google project. Of course in the real world having access to the right computers is only have the story - having access to your colleagues is just as important. E-mail and telephone help, but there's still enough left to make it worthwhile for me to actually go to California.
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.