While traveling to Chicago a while back I was in the airport with a buddy when he spotted the evening sun absolutely reflecting off the downtown skyscrapers. I barely had time to grab the camera and get a couple of shots before it went away. It was a very fleeting, yet powerfully captivating image.

You really need to click through to view a larger version of this in order to see the reflection. Have you ever seen anything like it?

Tonight I had dinner with a group of guys from work. We had traditional deep dish style Chicago pizza at Gino’s East at Wells and Ontario in downtown Chicago.

The Pizza was good, especially if you love deep dish smothered in tomato sauce. Personally I’m a bigger fan of thin crust New York style pizza. But hey, I’m not complaining. Anyway, after we pigged out on pie and it was time to to back to the hotel, we had a decision to make.

Should we take a cab? Or should we just walk – even though it’s -8 degrees outside? (That’s -22 celcius for my friends across the pond…)

So, I fired up the old iPhone and brought up Google Maps. It’s a great little app because you can put in any address and tell it to navigate you to that spot from where you are. You can even tell it if you’re in a car or walking. When I put in the hotel address it informed me that the walking time was going to be 9 minutes over a distance of half a mile.

This didn’t help with the decision process. I mean, if it had been like a mile, there is no way we would have walked. If it was like 3 blocks, we were totally down with it. But damn if it didn’t split the distance perfectly!
Read the rest of this entry »

This evening I ate a 16oz. New York Strip, along with a bunch of other stuff, at The Weber Grill in Chicago. Mmmm! It was tasty.

But as good as the meal was, half the fun was the entertainment value. You see, my buddy Chris from Layered Tech and I braved the -10 degree temperatures and snow to walk 3 blocks to eat there. And when we got there we sat in the bar at a counter overlooking the Grillmeister!

The following photos came from my iPhone while he was preparing our, and many other, steaks. So, here’s to you o’ master of the flames! Budweiser should make a commercial about you.
Read the rest of this entry »

David Hamilton of Web Host Industry Review (theWHIR.com) and I had a nice little e-mail conversation about the lecture I’ll be giving next week at HostingCon in Chicago. It’s live now if any of you guys would like to take a look.

July 23, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Utility hosting services provider Layered Tech (layeredtech.com) chief marketing officer John Pozadzides says the “new world order” is coming and when it does, “every business is either a ‘Web’ business or a dead business.”

Pozadzides will deliver the presentation “Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining” at HostingCon 2008, where he will be among the biggest names and brightest minds in web hosting who will converge in Chicago for three days of networking and workshops.

You can find the full interview here.

This is actually pretty amazing, if it isn’t staged (and it doesn’t look like it is). For those of you who are unaware, in Google Maps you now have the option in many cities to check out a Street View of the map you’re looking at, which will allow you to see whatever you would see if you were standing in that position.

The way they accomplish this is by having a specially fitted fleet of cars that have 360 degree cameras driving all over the place taking pictures. Once in a while they capture something really interesting. This is one of those times.
Read the rest of this entry »

This week I’ve been to Las Vegas, Iowa, and Chicago (where I currently sit writing this post). And of all the exciting things to happen, last night a near record breaking earthquake struck Illinois.

(CNN) — A magnitude-5.2 earthquake, centered 131 miles east of St. Louis, Missouri, shook southern Illinois early Friday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Peggy for sending me this video of a stunt pulled off by Improv Everywhere, whose slogan is “we cause scenes”. The setup is that 207 people all walking through Grand Central Station in New York all freeze in place at the exact same second, and hold still for a full 5 minutes.

Most interestingly, it’s inspired people in 28 other cities in 13 countries to stage their own freeze mission. Thousands people worldwide in places like Romania, Poland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and New Zealand have come together to make time stop for five short minutes. Below is a roundup of all of the videos of the various global freeze events.
Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine this… it’s 8am, you’ve just dropped your 8 year old off at school and picked up your 22 year old daughter for breakfast. While your daughter goes inside a restaurant to correct the breakfast order your wife, in the seat beside you, notices a woman waiving her arms as if in distress. So you roll down the window to see if she needs help and she leans her head into your car and offers her “services”.

Then, to add injury to insult, a few seconds later a bunch of cops rush your car, drag you out of it, and handcuff you for soliciting a prostitute. Meanwhile your wife is freaking out, and your daughter, returning to the car, screams!
Read the rest of this entry »