Once on the plane I try to watch the “Linear” movie that came with my purchase of U2′s latest album on my iPod Touch.  It is not enthralling; the director felt the need to put a full five minutes of a motorcycle burning in black and white in the film.  Maybe he just left three cameras running and didn’t want to waste the film, I don’t know. Whatever the case, the lady in the seat next to me taps me on the shoulder and says, “You can watch movies on your iPhone?” I’m not sure if she’s kidding or not, but I politely explain that yes, you certainly can.  She’s delighted and promises to tell her husband about this awesome advance in Apple technology.  Thus satisified that I have made a little more money for our favorite computer vendor, I switch movies (to Shrek.  I notice, sadly, that all the movies I have on my iPod are movies we bought for our kids. I can choose between Shrek, Toy Story, Cars, and Wall-E, all of which I have seen parts of recently except Shrek) and promptly fall asleep.

Landing in Kansas City, I laugh a confident and scornful laugh when they ask if I want a GPS unit with my rental.  I have a GPS unit now. It’s my G1 phone.  I make my way confidently out into traffic and am immediately lost.  My GPS on my G1 shows me exactly where I am at all times, but doesn’t offer many suggestions about getting back on track unless I pull over and re-figure my route.  My only comfort is that the iPhone doesn’t do much better right now.  But it will soon.

Once I find the route back to I-70 East I am free to look at the scenery, because all I have to do is drive due east for 2 hours.  Missouri looks just like Kentucky/Indiana/etc. in this regard.  Pretty. But not fascinating.  I start to get drowsy and start looking hard for a rest stop.  For most of the trip my GPS map is a blue line (my route) running along an orange line (I-70) with a blue dot on it (me) it’s also not fabulously interesting, except when the GPS gets confused about my location and reports that I am in fact in Ohio.  Unsure if this is really the phone’s fault or I’m just that tired, I pull gratefully into a rest stop and sleep for an hour.  When I awake I am magically back in Missouri, and I notice that my data connection, instead of saying “E” for Edge or “3G” for, well, 3G, says “G”.  Comforted that my data plan is safe for all audiences, I drive on, only slightly confused.

I find my hotel in record time and go to my room.  I love my room.  It is beautiful.  It has free internet¹  I connect over VPN to my work network so that I can be  safe in the knowledge that no one will see my blog post before I post it.  And safe in the knowledge that all my information has to bounce through Utah before hitting the rest of the web.  Paranoia: It makes every day an episode of “The Fugitive”.

Day 2:

Top secret meetings. All day.  I don’t even get a chance to take my laptop out of my bag once.  I spend the entire day in talks with a very nice German man and a woman from Wisconsin, who is also very nice.  Someone there makes the statement that Windows is the “most intuitive operating system” and I suffer a small fit of coughing and falling out of my chair.

After meetings I go eat at a place called Steak ‘n Shake. I get a burger, a shake, and some fries.  I also get the best service I’ve had at any restaurant ever.  My glass is never more than 1/4 empty, and each dish is cleared away within minutes of me being done with it.   I didn’t know burger joints worked like that anymore, and I leave happy and feeling like maybe the ol’ South (or the ol’ Midwest, depending on who you ask. I’ve heard both on this trip. I still say anything east of the Rockies can’t be called “the West”) isn’t so bad after all.

So, after a brief phone call from my wife I’m here writing a post that really doesn’t have a whole lot of apple related stuff in it.  I’ll see if I can’t work some clever Steve Jobs references in tomorrow.

Or maybe another shameless plug for MacHeist, which is offering free copies of Delicious Library 2 (Twice as Delicious as DL 1!) and Multiwinia (more evolved than Darwinia!) to purchasers of the MacHeist Bundle now, a real bargain at $39! (Purchase the bundle using this link and I get free software!) We’ll see. Thank you for being loyal readers and good night!

1. The hotel says there are three steps to connecting: 1.) turn on your computer. 2.) make sure your wireless card is on or plug in the Ethernet cable. 3.) use the Internet.

Yes, in less than three hours I will be on a plane headed for beautiful Columbia Missouri for a 3-night 4-day all-expenses-paid top-secret business trip.  Expect sporadic updates on Twitter¹ and occasional daily journals.  Yes, I know daily journals would be expected to happen daily. But you never know what perils I will face east of the Rockies!

So, if you know of any fun things to do in Columbia let me know in the comments, and if you actually live in Columbia, you’re probably a student at Ol’ Missou.

1. Look! There’s a Twitter thingy on the side of the site!

“C’mon! Write a book. You’d write a good book! You should write a book!”

Eventually he agreed. I’m sure his book will be better than mine.  That accomplished, I next set out to perform the most perilous part of writing a novel: choosing a novel writing program.  This is no small feat.¹  There are so many good choices, like StoryMill, Scrivener, Pages, Mellel, WriteRoom, most of which I er, already owned.  So I decided to go with Scrivener, based on its amazing flexibility, stability, ease of use, and  the fact that I would then have an excuse to purchase a license.  So far I have been glad about that choice.

October 31: Fear set in: What if I lose my novel to a random and spontaneous hard drive failure?  I spent four hours setting up an SVN repository and making sure that I have copies of my novel on all three macs, my iDisk, and of course checked into SVN.  There. My ideas are safe.  Now I just need to actually have some ideas.

November 1, 1:27 AM: Gripped by insomnia, I get up and write around 500 words.  Later that morning I go back and change all of them.  “Don’t write under the influence of insomnia” becomes my new motto.

November 2: I start to get really sick, and notice that I may not be doing well when writing about my main character undergoing surgery nearly makes me lose my breakfast.  I lie down on the couch and write the next few pages on my laptop.

November 3: I am unable to go to work because of the Martian Death Flu that I have contracted.  I write about 2000 words on the third, most of them pretty good.  I eat roughly two bites of food this entire day.

November 4: Home sick again.  Worried about dehydration (one of the characters in my book suffers from it) I send my wife out for “eleven million bottles of Power Aid”  She returns with two, which is more than sufficient. Thus re-hydrated, I go back to writing.

November 5: I go back to work. My writing suffers, as I am still somewhat sick and not all that able to keep code and novel straight in my brain this day.  My comments in the code I’m writing start shaping up into a pretty interesting story featuring a guy named API and his girlfriend, Ruby.

November 6: Due to a sporting event at the university where I work I am unable to write more than about 20 words this day.  Not that I cared all that much about the sporting event; but I was required to do tech support during the event, and a crowded football stadium is not the best venue for writing about Americans recuperating in the Philippines. Fortunately, I have the next five days off of work.

November 7: I am back on track, novel-wise.  I have a pretty good writing day, and also buy a Coldplay album, a Jack Johnson Album, and an EP by The Flaming Lips.  Two of the three are good music for writing.  Guess which one isn’t.

November 8: I write the day’s 1667 words and realize I’m still about 3000 words below my goal for this point in the month.  I sit back down, and with Jack Johnson blasting through my headphones, fall asleep on the desk.  I wake up, switch albums, and get back to work.  By evenfall I’ve closed the gap to 1500 words, which I should be able to make up in the next few days.

So that’s where we stand.  There are all sorts of interesting things going on the world, and if I get caught up with the novel I plan to write about a few of them, like the AT&T dude’s predicitons about what iPhone 3.0 will be able to do for you.((“It’ll start your car. It’ll do your taxes! It’ll translate conversations you’re having with Japanese people on the fly, provided you don’t mind saying things like, “I would like to super-fun the racoons twice mostly” when you meant, “I’ll fax the contract this afternoon.”))  Thanks again for your patience!

1. Size 11… oh right, feat, not feet.  Sorry