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.

The day started with Phil Windley’s monthly CTO Breakfast 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.

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!

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. Fortunately for me, Laura Moncur, 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.

So, I made arrangements to pick up my Macbook after the dinner and headed south to Neil’s Halibut and Broiler 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.

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.