Late last week a potential client asked if I was going down to Salt Lake on the last Thursday of February and, if so, could we get together. At the time I hadn’t planned to go as mother was having cataract surgery on the Wednesday before. All that changed and I did go down for the day yesterday. It was a very good and energizing day.<\/p>\n
The day started with Phil Windley’s<\/a> monthly CTO Breakfast<\/a> which is held in a meeting room at the Novell Cafeteria in Provo. A good group of folks were in attendance ranging from the CTO for the State of Utah to several entrepreneurs, college grad students, and me (of course). We had a very lively discussion about outsourcing, offshoring, tech incubators, Amazon Web Services, and more. I always enjoy this event and have gotten to know several of the people who attend regularly. It really is one of the highlights of the month.<\/p>\n On the trip to Las Cruces for the funeral, my video iPod gave up the ghost. It would show a little frowning face and wouldn’t work. I love my iPod and was not happy that it had died. I’d really like to get an Apple iPhone, but want to wait for the next version and (hopefully) a better choice of networks. Besides, the iPhone is a really, really good iPod. Then I remembered that I had purchased an extended warranty when I bought the iPod from Best Buy. So my next stop after the CTO Breakfast was the Best Buy store on 21st south in Salt Lake City. I fully expected to have to argue with them because the case and screen are scratched up and they would claim “normal wear and tear and my fault”. I was so pleasantly surprised when the fellow looked up the warranty, verified that I was the person that had bought the warranty, and said they would be shipping me out a replacement within the next three to five business days. It would be a refurbished unit, which was fine with me. My iPod was two years and three months old. Even a refurb unit has to be newer than that!<\/p>\n After a couple of visits with potential clients, I stopped at the Apple store because the faceplate on my Macbook had a crack in it. No problem … come back at 5:30 p.m. and it’ll be fixed they told me. So I did a thorough job of browsing (and not buying anything!) through Barnes and Noble and returned at 5:30. It was fixed, but they were running a thorough diagnostic on it and that wouldn’t be done for another hour. Problem was, I needed to be in Draper at 6 p.m. for the next Big Technology Event of the day … the monthly Utah Blogger \/ Geek Dinner<\/a>. Fortunately for me, Laura Moncur<\/a>, the delightful organizer of this event, schedules it to be on the last Thursday of the month so I can do both the CTO Breakfast and the Blogger Dinner on the same day, then drive back to Pocatello.<\/p>\n So, I made arrangements to pick up my Macbook after the dinner and headed south to Neil’s Halibut and Broiler<\/a> for the event. A couple of the same people who attend the CTO Breakfast also go to the Blogger \/ Geek Dinner, but mostly it’s a significantly different group of people. Last month we got together in a blizzard and not many people braved the weather. This month, after a sunny, warm, spring-like day, a lot of people showed up and I had a great time chatting with folks about what they’re doing with blogging and the like. It’s another energizing event for me.<\/p>\n I headed north about 8 p.m., stopped at the Apple Store and picked up the now-whole laptop. They told me they had also changed out a daughterboard and loaded some new firmware which should finally fix the random keyboard-not-working problem (so far today there’s been no hangup). I was home and in bed by 11 p.m. Got lots of technology discussed and it felt good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Late last week a potential client asked if I was going down to Salt Lake on the last Thursday of February and, if so, could we get together. At the time I hadn’t planned to go as mother was having cataract surgery on the Wednesday before. All that changed and I did go down for … Continue reading A Technology Day<\/span>