Missed me?

I know, my blogging has been sparse lately. Sorry about that. With my aching shoulder and not enough hours in the day, it’s been tough to work in blogging time.

Anyway, I’m sitting here in a fine hotel room in Baltimore, MD. I’m here to attend the GetTogether GetActive conference. I’m looking forward to Seth Godin’s keynote tomorrow. He’s probably one of the 130 or so folks (according the tech support department) connected to the hotel’s free broadband right now that’s making it ridiculously slow, if nearly unusable at times.

I took the train down at 6 am to DC, spent the day working with our new Executive Director, then headed up to Baltimore. Get this…I got on the Acela at Washington’s Union Station at 6 pm. I walked into my room at the Tremont hotel in downtown Baltimore at 6:39 pm. I think that has to be a record somewhere. I’ve never had such an easy time getting from one place to another.

Yesterday, Apple unveiled iTunes 7 and the ability to download games to 5G iPods. I really like the new iTunes, although I wish there were more improvements to the Podcatching features. I already downloaded Bejeweled. Beautiful graphics…but is anyone else having trouble getting the gems to swap with the click wheel? I know I’m doing it right, because I can get it to work one out of every 4 or 5 tries. Forget a speed game on this one until I get used to the controls.

I’m getting that itch…I want to replace my laptop. I like the Dell 9300, but it’s just too big and heavy. I bought it before I knew I’d be traveling as much as I am. I’m looking at some of those new Core Duo and Core 2 Duo machines with a bit of longing. Something under 5 lbs. is a must. I will resist, though. Not quite in the budget and it would be silly not to wait until Vista comes standard on new machines to make the leap. Would I consider a MacBook Pro that I could run either Mac OS X or (presumably) Vista? Maybe. We’ll see where things stand early next year.