DC, Day Five

A couple of new online lifestyle lessons, and the moon at the tip of a virtual pyramid.

First lesson: when you’re going somewhere and you put that fact online, you start to get mail from people you know or (or just know of) saying “Hey, let’s have a beer/lunch/whatever.“ Is this cool or what. I ended up having beers with Robb Beal, formerly of Watson, now working on Spring, because I was camped downtown by the time I got an evening off and he was closest. It’s a tough grind out there in the Mac-client-software world, arguably a sharecropper’s business model, which is attractive to few. Apple doesn’t seem to care. But Robb strikes me as a guy who will grow real business chops and make an impact one way or another.

The second lesson is a new situation: Thursday was a fascinating day with a couple of experiences that I’ll carry with me a long time. I’m carrying a business card or two that would make you roll your eyes if you saw it. But, because this is serious business, and because this is a public place, I really can’t write about the people and places, or post the pictures. It feels weird; and I suspect all the other people whose lives I’ve gotten familiar with via their online presence have big pieces that can’t and don’t show in public. Obvious when you think about it.

While standing in front of my hotel waiting for Robb to show up, I noticed that the the building across the street was pointing at the moon in a kind of surprising way.

Then I realized that those five million pixels can catch you quite a bit of even the daytime moon; a close look reveals that you can see the ghost of the unilluminated bit.