Our first stop here in the land of high-tech is Los Gatos, CA, where the beans got to play 20 questions with Jeeves from Ask Jeeves, better known as www.ask.com. Jeeves is billed as "the world's first Internet Butler", or a "human-speaking" search engine. I tried asking Jeeves "Where can I find Beans Around The World?", and he pointed me to an e-shopping site, so apparently good ol' Jeeves doesn't know quite everything yet... We just hope that if you ask him the meaning of life, he'll answer properly with "42".

Next is IBM's Silicon Valley laboratory. What secrets are being cooked up inside? Only the Shadow knows... John says that for all the growth in the area, IBM is still out in the middle of a field... how much longer will that last, do you suppose? Anyway, it was nice that the Small Black Beans got to spend the day with Big Blue.

Finally, the beans skate into San Jose, for a stop at the San Jose Arena, the home of the San Jose Sharks. Actually, the building is now called the "Compaq Center at San Jose" - apparently they haven't changed the signs yet. The Sharks joined the NHL as an expansion team in the 1991-92 season, and have been chewing up the Pacific division ever since. The Sharks have made it to the playoffs in 6 of their 10 seasons, but alas, have yet to win the Stanley Cup. Now, whenever I think of sharks, a certain 1975 movie that turned millions of people away from ocean swimming forever comes to mind... But as far as the beans go, when they hear "Shark", they of course instantly think "Candygram!"