roadie. May 31, 2003

four days worth of stuff to write about. i wish i could think blog. i do it all day. walking around thinking oh i need to blog about this or blog about that. but right now, being on tour, working remotely and talking to a lot of folks i pretty much get back to my hotel room and crash.

wednesday. worked at the battery park starbucks for most of the day. met a nice guy who is running a start up. a tech startup. he was a cool guy. we shot the breeze about one note which he is beta testing. we also ended up chatting with some folks from london who were interested in the tablet pc. before i left another guy came over to chat about working on wifi. regular little tech community. i think as hot spots pop up more and more people will look forward to going out with their computers. it’s like being alone, together.

dinner with the local nyc and new jersey user group leaders was a great evening. a couple of the guys have been ibm experts since back in the day. fun to hear stories about big blue’s early days. also fun to hear the ups and downs over the years with microsoft.

thursday. the play was amazing. amazing.

not sure i’ve said lately how much i love doc’s blog. going to see him in a little over a week.

friday. i drove! in new york city. found a great shop for gals that would like to look cute even when they’re doing the w. w.

saturday. stood at a kiosk today for seven hours. took down some comments from the people i chatted to. figuring out a way to post my notes.

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theater. May 27, 2003

in NYC. i love this city. walked from the upper east side to canal st.and back. found heaven on 39th and 5th.

where will i be thursday night? catching this play: the exonerated. saw a documentary about it awhile back and was hoping i could get a seat. review to follow on friday.

jp stewart sent me this. check his out.

using my favorite starbucks website to pick out my worksite tomorrow.

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headphones. May 27, 2003

god’s gift to the leery traveler. b.

monday. May 26, 2003

looking for local bloggers i came upon this. it is a neat way to find new blogs, by geography. i realized while i’m on the road i should see if i can meet up with some of the folks who blog around the u.s.a. – i’m afraid i’m too late to hook up with the cleveland folks, but i’m going to make an effort from nyc on. if you’re an ncy blogger and your free for coffee weds and/or thurs this week – send me mail: bethg @ microsoft.com. if you’re a long island blogger and you make it out to the rooseveltfield parking lot this sat or sun i’ll be there with the loews movies in motion tent showing off some microsoft stuff. stop by and say hey.

trains, buses and automobiles. today i took the cleveland rta train to the airport so i could ride a shuttle bus to the car rental center to drive 40 miles to find out that weight watchers is closed on holidays. okay, so no weigh in for me. but i did find some other bloggers who share in my efforts. check out the mayor. he’s one of the folks who like me recently joined chris pirillo’s brain trust. great conversations going on – but i must admit i feel a bit out of my league. doing a whole lot of reading and learning right now…

zoo. while heading back to return the car mentioned above i took a detour to the cleveland metropark zoo. am i the only one who finds this a little disturbing? i stood there until he twitched a little just to make sure he was alive. the zoo was amazing btw. going to work on my second photo story with the zoo pics. chances are it will be too big for me to post here because i took 60 plus pics and 10 plus movies. i’m going to work on it while i’m on the road and then burn it to a cd for my nieces. sort of a random present i guess, but it sure beats a pack of postcards.

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tired. May 25, 2003

so tired. going to take the night off. back tomorrow.

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ribs. May 24, 2003

goodness. five days of ribs ribs ribs. i had a sample yesterday. take a look…

big pig.jpg
winner.jpg
kudos.jpg
lunch.jpg
table for one.jpg

viva la minis! saw a sneak preview of the italian job thursday night. loved it! it’s fun, fast, and smart. sort of like an ocean’s eleven for gen y. which is funny because i think the original of this was somewhat a homage to the original of that. make sense?

had dinner last night with five local user group folks. two leaders from the greater cleveland pc user group, two leaders from the local mac user group, and one fella who runs a newsletter type user group devoted to pcs. really nice people who like the group in philly gave me some more insights into the wows and woes of windows. one of the coolest things i learned last night is about a program called computers assisting people – check out their website. hoping to see more programs like this in the future!

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recipe. May 22, 2003

ingredients. one minolta diamage x. one 128mb kingston sd card. one dazzle 4 in 1 card adapter. one fujitsu tablet pc. one microsoft travel mouse. one stsn internet access box (love hotels with high speed).

result: my first photo story ever! go easy on me. i’m a aspiring director – emphasis on the aspiring. the plan is to get pretty familiar with all sort of media type activities this summer and see if i can really capture what’s going on while i’m on the road. enjoy.

cleveland (medium quality)

oh and if you wonder what the heck i’m going on about. check this.

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red eye May 22, 2003

why o why did i take the red eye?

just finished my fifty minute tour of the rock and roll hall of fame. i have a seriously short attention span. the u2 retrospective rocks (literally).

talking to strangers can be a good thing. lots of nice folks helping me out today while i explore my new home for the next five days.

b.

head hurts May 21, 2003

blogging from my phone. the mind reels at all the possibilities. b.

exsqueeze me? May 20, 2003

i had recently switched from t-mobile to attws. i had 30 days to “test” and either keep/cancel my service with attws so i decided to hang on to t-mobile just in case. needless to say i am now back with t-mobile. not for the reasons you might think. as far as customer service, features, signal strength, etc attws is comparable to t-mo. i switched because i discovered (after 3 weeks of use) that you are not guaranteed an SSL connection via mmode. it seems that they assign ip addresses dynamically each time you log on and there are only so many secure connections to go around. at some point your phone can no longer get assigned one of these ip addresses and you become phona non grata. since i use outlook mobile access that was the one deciding factor between the two services. i won’t bore you with the process i went through to discover this issue, however, it dawned on me that it’s amazing the high level of knowledge and comfort with technology someone would have to have in order to navigate much of what is going on in the wireless space. needless to say there are a couple of sites that help me do so: check out phonescoop and howard chui forums if you find yourself looking for tips, tricks, and inside info. couple of great sites run by a couple of great guys.

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