Crazy Apple News Site

• 11:15pm, Day one – My Hotel Room: Finish talking with wife on iChat.  Set alarm on cell phone to wake me up at 6:00AM.
• 3:25 am, Day two – My Hotel Room: Dream that cats have taken over planet.  All requests for food are must be phrased in the form of “I can has soup?” (really)¹
• 6:30 am -same place: wake up and notice that alarm has failed me again.
• 6:35 am - stumble into shower. Because bathroom has one light in middle of room and remarkably loud fan, blearily believe that I am being abducted  by aliens so that I can be inducted into Earthling Hall of Fame.  My acceptance speech is hailed as “heart touching…moving” by Alien Abductors Weekly.
• 6:50 am - decide to stop writing post and go get some breakfast.
• 7:40 am – CSU: Resume top-secret meetings with CSU programmers.  They reveal a truth so secret, so, dark, so deep, that Sarah Palin would have me killed if I revealed it here. So I’ll reveal it in the footnotes.²
• 11:30 am – CSU: top-secret meetings concluded, we set off, spirits high and MacBook battery low, back to the Denver Airport.
• 12:30 – lunch: Nothing even remotely Apple related happens, except that every other person in the restaurant has an iPhone.
• 3:30 – Denver Airport: Flight departs.  Airline stewardess completes safety demonstration, adds under her breath, “hopefully this one makes it over the mountains”³
• 3:31 – Denver Airport: I commence worrying.
• 4:40 – Salt Lake International Airport: plane lands.  I have blinked twice, after holding the plane in the air the entire time with nothing but my mind.
• 5:30 – Salt Lake International Airport: I finally get my baggage back from the airport trolls. Homeward bound!

And so ends the saga of the Crazy Apple News Fort Collins Trip (CAN… I’m not gonna finish that one.)  I hope you were entertained and enlightened, as I was. True, we never solved the mystery of why CSU doesn’t like Macs, but I did get a number of good meals on somewhat else’s dime.  Thank you.

1. I never sleep soundly in hotels [↩]
2. Alaskan moose (meese? Mooses?) never wear pants! [↩]
3. Not really. She’d probably get fired for saying that. If anyone gets fired and subsequently rich and famous for my little blog, I want it to be me. [↩]

Since I didn’t have free access on campus, I wrote my notes for the day on paper, and I’m putting them here now.

• 8:15 – Salt Lake City: Waiting for my plane to board. A man across the isle of seats from me is reading about the launch of the new G1 Phone. I can tell he’s about ready to rush out and get one by the way he yawns and closes the paper, then turns to the sports section.
• 9:40 – 35,000 feet above sea level: I learn that airline restrooms are not designed for men who are over six feet tall.
• 10:53 – Denver International Airport: Lady at the car rental place asks if I would like to rent a GPS unit.  I confidently tell her that the iPhone has built-in GPS.  She reminds me that I have a busted Motorola PEBL, not an iPhone.  Incensed, I refuse the GPS anyway.
• Noon – Somewhere near Fort Collins: We can’t find the hotel.  Wishing I had an iPhone.
• 12:15 – Fort Collins: Stop and ask for directions. Lady at gas station exclaims, “You’re on the wrong side of town! You need to drive all the way across town, turn on Harmony, and you’ll find your hotel.” We set out across town.
• 12:20 – Fort Collins: turns out Fort Collins isn’t all that large of a town. We check into our hotel and go get lunch.
• 2:00 – Colorado State University: We meet with people about highly classified business. Programmer at CSU informs me that the CSU campus doesn’t like Macs, but he’s a secret Mac fan that is trying to fight the power.  I urge him to keep the faith alive.
• 5:30 – CSU: Meetings over.  We head to dinner.  My secret, furtive glances around the campus reveal that 1.) it is indeed a PC campus, and 2.) there are at least three men with full beards, suspenders, and large black skirts on the CSU campus.  Unable to determine relationship between these two facts. The day’s reconnaissance finished, we set out to find dinner.
• 7:00 – Our Secret Hotel Headquarters: There is a hot tub and swimming pool. Both are empty. This is because the hot tub is heated to fourteen million degrees.  After twenty minutes, it’s too hot even for me, so I get out and return to my room
• 7:25 – My Room: I unpack my MacBook and connect to the free high speed internet.  There are no instructions for how to connect a Mac to their network.
• 7:26 – The Internet: I am now connected. I check my email and begin writing this post.

So there you have it folks! Day One of the Fort Collins experience.  Although I was unable to comply with Ace’s suggestion, I did drink a large amount of root beer, which is exactly the same the world over.

What will tomorrow hold? Will we discover the answer to the great question, “Why doesn’t CSU like Macs?”¹ Will I get an iPhone?² Will we see more bearded men in large black skirts?³  Will we successfully find our way back to the airport without an iPhone? ⁴  Find out in the next installment of Fort Collins Journal!

1. No. [↩]
2. No. [↩]
3. Altogether too likely. [↩]
4. So long as I’m not driving [↩]