View from breck hike

Originally uploaded by dgcohen23

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My friend Micah is on a world-wide quest to become closely associated with the word “douche bag”. As of today he’s #156 on Google when searching under that term. Even though I know that my mom is reading this, I still think it’s important to help my friends.

So, Micah, you Douche Bag, here you go. I’m praying to the Google Gods for you.

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Since I became a Mac user about two years ago, I’ve had basically zero problems with my Macbook Pro. It just works.

However, when I was on vacation in Oahu last week, I installed an update to the OS (via the automatic software update feature) and the machine quit booting and started complaining of a crash in Spotlight. Basically, it wouldn’t boot up and it was unusable.

I tried a bunch of stuff on my own based on articles that I could find on the Apple support site and elsewhere. I also ran Disk Warrior to try to correct the problem myself. Nothing was working - and I was “without laptop.” Yikes!

I was returning to Boulder from Oahu yesterday, so before I left to catch my flight I made an appointment at the Apple store in Boulder at the Genius Bar for 8pm last night (Friday). I had no idea what to expect, but figured I’d try it out. So far, so good - it was nice that I could get an appointment for the next day, even at night when it was very convenient.

I got there a few minutes early, and they called me right on time at 8pm. I explained what had happened, and the guy got right to work on my Macbook Pro. He had the ability to easily do a network boot from my machine, and that included all sorts of diagnostic tools he could use. Within 3 minutes, he was rerunning the cumulative O/S updates for Leopard. This took about 10 minutes to complete, and my machine started working just fine again. I left the Apple store by 8:30 - no charge.

This is great customer service.

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Jil is now officially addicted to surfing.

Originally uploaded by dgcohen23

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Princeville

Originally uploaded by dgcohen23

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I’ve been traveling quite a bit lately. So, I’ve just added my Dopplr account to my sidebar and my facebook profile. If you’re my friend, you can see my upcoming travel schedule (dates are only approximate to the public). It’s a neat way to potentially meet up with others you know while you travel.

If you use Dopplr (and know me), drop me a Dopplr friend request.

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Tweetstats excels at reporting the very, very arcane.

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Andrew holding rosie at butterfly pavillion

Originally uploaded by dgcohen23

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I guess now the world will know.

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I just had a boys night out with my son. We went to a hotel, had dinner (including a chocolate milkshake), swam in the pool forever, then stayed up late hanging out, woke up and had breakfast in the hotel and swam again.

I’ve been on an information diet lately, figuring that stuff I need to know will make its way to me through social channels. I am reading far less in my news reader than last year, and it feels pretty good. But this morning while my son needed a cartoon break while eating his Cheetos after a good swim, I decided to catch up on some of the feeds I do still read.

This is how I came to read this post from my friend Andrew Hyde talking about how he should have listened to my mom. Now, I don’t think my mom has actually ever met Andrew (if so, it would have been very briefly). But that didn’t stop her from direct messaging him in Twitter and giving him some advice on taking it easy.

Until just a few years ago, my mom had not really used computers much. She would do email once in a while, and that was about it. Then she started surfing more, and at some point she became internet-aware. It’s been really cool to watch. She discovered Andrew as one of my friends through my Twitter feed, or through the original Startup Weekend that I participated in. She’s using the social tools of the web, friending people on Facebook, following them on Twitter, and finding their photos. She’s learned about my friends, and (obviously) even reaches out to some of them once in a while. She knows exactly what’s going on with Brad Feld, Andrew Hyde, Micah Baldwin, Jil, Gwen, and my other online friends. In fact, since she’s mostly retired, she has lots of time to find out about the latest Startup Weekend, or follow the Feld toilet story, or whatever, and now often tips me off to a tidbit that I didn’t even know about! Even my mom is sustaining my information diet now!

A while back I wasn’t sure if I should be wierded out by this or think it’s cool.

Now, I absolutely know it’s cool. I mean, that’s why we put ourselves out there on the web. For our friends to hear from us and connect with us with minimal effort. And my mom is certainly a friend.

Mom used to complain to me regularly that she didn’t know enough about what I was up to, and that I should email her more and tell her about stuff going on in my life. When I started blogging this got better… until she started telling me that I wasn’t blogging enough! Now my mom is in the loop, and I suspect she’s pretty aware of where I am and what I’m doing and what my friends are up to, and what projects I’m working on all the time.

And I think that’s neat. Unexpected, but really neat.

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