Akumi and I decided to turn the business trip into a short weekend getaway. After the meeting, we all went out to Espetus, a brazilian churrasco place. Each table had a simple dial. Turn it to green and the waiters with the sticks keep coming to your table offering slices of sweet glorious meat. Turn it to red to put a temporary end to the gluttony. Needless to say, it took an extreme amount of willpower to turn that dial to red once we set it to green.

Just got back from the PDC Underground at the Westin Bonaventure which had its fair share of great and not so great grok talks. I went with Micah and Jon and met a few people I’ve only been acquainted with via subscribing to their blogs.

Walt provides this interesting look at how blogs have some influence within the Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Roberts.

Well I’ve kept this relatively quiet long enough, but since Jon Galloway spilled the beans, I might as well mention it. I am no longer an independent consultant.

Perhaps I have a skewed view of reality, but I get the impression that software geeks are leading the charge into building the next generation of social software. Does it strike anyone else as odd that nerds are the ones defining the technologies and interfaces for people to become social? Is this some sort of Revenge of the Nerds we plan to inflict on the “cool” social butterflies who spurned us in our youth?

UPDATE:Well it turns out that half of WebHost4Life’s servers didn’t have enough backup juice to stay up. Guess which half my blog was hosted on? Yep! But it is back up now (which is obvious otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this).

I distinctly remember sending a memo to my body years ago that illness is no longer permitted. But here I am with a persistent cough and lack of energy. I think I’ll have to let my body go and hire a new one.

I learned through Mr. Wagner that my former employer just announced the first ever million dollar skill game tournament.

I caught a brutal cold on my return from Black Rock City, so I haven’t been much in the blogging mood. But I’m starting to feel better (or the glass of Sake is really working its magic) and thought I’d post a quick blurb about the trip.

I arrived back in Los Angeles last night from Burning Man where I spent the week in utter ignorance of the true scale of Hurricane Katrina. Only today have I started to grasp the immense scale of the destruction.

My former coworker who wrote that 2600 article I mentioned recently sent me this link to a GameSpot review of SkillJam Arcade.

Check it out, though the sound quality is terrible.

Remember that online games are written by humans and thus are subject to the bugs and flaws that humans are so good at introducing.

As many of you know, I will be heading to Burning Man this weekend. That’ll put a crimp in my blogging for a week since I won’t be bringing my tablet to the playa.

Jeff Atwood writes that truly great programmers are not only lazy, but dumb too.

Gizmodo had a piece on an armored iPod yesterday which was made by someone in Japan. My wife helped me translate the original site and send a tip to Gizmodo. So the “Phil” in the little thanks section is me. Of course I was hoping for a link. ;)

Well my Page Rank (and traffic numbers) are suddenly down as of last week. It wasn’t a gradual drop as one would expect, but more of a rapid freefall descent like any stock I’ve ever purchased.

Well I didn’t have a date with Destiny, but we had a productive meeting with the client, and then he proceeded to ply us with drinks until we were all having a very merry time at some bar (I think it’s called the Jungle Room) in the Mandalay Bay).

I’m in Las Vegas for a business trip. The usual scope definition/requirements gathering type of planning meeting. You just have to love the slot machines in the airport. They seem to attract badly dressed tourists like moths to a flame.