It is currently 2:12am on the 4th of November. I can’t remember the last time this blog was written. Two layers of clothing (one hooded sweater, one water-proof jacket) are doing their best in protecting me from what seems to be a mild Autumn evening (from what I’ve gathered so far) in Chicago. I am 18 floors from the street below me, which in this case is literal, because I am huddled and typing atop of a remarkably small balcony (considering the price of living in virtually any home 18 floors above anything) facing a collection of even taller buildings in which I can’t remember the names. During that last sentence, I couldn’t for the life of me pay attention to the keyboard, due to the fact that the four lights on top of the tallest building in the center of the group were flashing in perfect time with the music playing in my headphones.

I wanted to listen to a playlist thrown together using Spotify one evening that I couldn’t fall asleep (read, stole half of from a very popular list I was sure none of my friends had heard of, and then retitled after adding a few personal selections) and decided to take full advantage of the monthly subscription fee I had been paying. Instead, I’ve chosen to listen to the tried and true Pandora channel that has been working brilliantly for over 3 years; long enough that its username has survived 3 of my self-inflicted “rebrandings” but luckily had a familiar password.

Ok. I’ve been distracted beyond what I had originally aimed to explain to you when I wrote the original sentence about being distracted. I had an idea (my todo list told me) to make it a point to put something in this blog that served as some kind of “update” (apologies for assuming you’d like any kind of update) on the goings on that has kept me busy since the last time we met together in this small corner of a website. It’s not much, but it’s home. I now realize that I’ve spent a good portion of three paragraphs doing everything but, and in doing so only explaining nothing.

Osama Bin Laden was murdered this week.

When the news broke, Twitter was on fire. I have never seen such a staggering number of people communicating and discussing the same message and topic. We truly lived and were party of history vs. simply sitting idly and hearing from cut and copied news resources.

This is not a surprise to me, of course. But it was very cool/interesting to see a subject be spread so incredibly fast and retain such a high level of activity for so long.

This post will not be any kind of rhetoric or reflection on the subject. I promise.

It’s currently 6pm on March 27th. I’m not exactly sure how many days ago I left Austin, TX and the 2011 South by Southwest Festival. I am sitting in the 35th floor of a Chicago high-rise and drinking water. A cliche for sitting in a Chicago high-rise anywhere above floors 27-30 (depending on the location of the building in correlation to the nearest Yolk breakfast spot) would most definitely be that the sitter would be armed with much more than water. In a way, I am.

This specific glass of water is from the tap just a few feet behind me. Two people (a doorman, Rob—also a maintenance man whose name I didn’t catch) that work in this building have informed me that the pipes and water pump interfaces have been changed and retrofitted with new technology that will make the building operate more efficiently. As a direct cause, the water has been injected with some kind of particle composition that gives it the distinct smell of sulfur and particle board. This specific glass of water shares the same fate. I won’t comment on the taste.

I’ve treated this blog poorly.

Around 10 or more times a year, I give guest lectures in the college world (mostly in journalism courses) where I talk about the internet and business. I talk about ideas, how to execute them, and why you would even want to do something like that. One of my main talking points, no matter what the aspiration of the questioner/listener…you must push product.

Yesterday, my Apple TV was finally delivered. Being a quasi apple fanboy, I obviously wanted it the second it was announced. It’s safe to say I was just as excited for the first model of the Apple TV that was unveiled ages ago, but I never purchased it. In this case, it wasn’t the price that kept me from purchasing…I just always felt that the tech wasn’t quite there. It wasn’t the right fit for me.

The first version had a dedicated HD, whereas this new model doesn’t. I’ve actually had a few friends argue that this fact makes the newer one a step backward for the Apple TV. To me, that doesn’t make any sense.