Visiting the CNN Diner

This is a pic of me and Thom Patterson, one of the guys blogging the convention for CNN. Last night, Stephanie Vautravers from CNN invited me over to the CNN Diner for dinner and drinks, so I swung by.

I talked to Thom a bit about how CNN put together its blog for the convention. No Movable Type or Blogger - CNN just modified its web publishing software slightly to accommodate the blog - and I use the term "blog" loosely here. It's a blog in the sense that the convention news is fresh and is posted as it happens, but there are no comments, trackback links or anything else you might expect to see at a blog - just news in near real time.

Thom tells me that he and his partner Todd Leopold edit one another's stories just before they're posted. I didn't want to ask the question, but what makes CNN's blog a blog? To me, it's just quickie news stories of interest from a couple roving reporters. But it's cool anyway.

A couple minutes after this photo was taken, the Kobe Bryant news hit and bumped the convention news down on the CNN.com home page. It was kind of cool to see how CNN makes real-time decisions on what stories comprise its home page and how reporters adjust to that decision-making as they gather the news.

By the way, the milkshakes at the CNN Diner are to die for. ;-)

The Cabin

This is the cabin on the island. Craig's grandfather built it by hand. You'll notice the deck is falling down in the front. Shortly after I took this picture, Craig took the deck down with the help of two friends and constructed a new deck with some rough-cut lumber he brought back from the mainland.

The cabin has two bedrooms in back, a kitchen and a large living room up front. There is no electricity or running water. The cabin is lit by propane and oil lanterns. There's a hand-dug cesspool under the cabin, so there's a working toilet, but you need water from the lake (brought up by bucket) in order to flush it. During colder months, the cabin is heated by a cannon stove in the living room, which I'm told heats the whole thing rather nicely.

The Island

This is a picture of the view from our cabin on the Maine island on which I spent almost the entirety of last week. This picture was taken at about 6:30 AM, as the mist began to rise off the lake and dissipate into the cool Maine air.

The island is owned by Craig Larsen and his family and is roughly an acre in size. Made up mostly of trees and large rocks, there's room only for a small cabin, which Craig's grandfather built by hand, and a small outhouse that's no longer used. The island has no running water or electricity, and it's very difficult to get a cellular signal. The cabin does have a toilet, but there's no water line to feed it, so you have to go down to the lake and fill up a bucket of water in order to flush it. We typically started our day by taking a bath in the lake - on the other side of the island is a large flat rock with a sandy area adjacent to it. I would place my toiletries, towel and clothes on the rock, jump in the lake and scrub up with a bar of soap and some shampoo. As soon as the soap started making a lather, smallmouth bass and perch would swim out from their hiding places near the rock.

The small boat in the photo was our only means of transportation to and from the island. It took between 20 and 30 minutes to get to the mainland, depending on the amount of weight in the boat.

Chicago Is My Kinda Town, Especially at $130 a Night

The view from my hotel suite

So I made it into Chicago last night, pretty much without incident. (I'm running a panel today about behavioral marketing for the Chicago Internet Marketing Association.) I arrived at Hotel 71, a hotel that was recommended to me, pretty late last night to find out that it was one of those ultra-swanky places. I had my usual air travel garb on (Allman Brother T-shirt, jean shorts, sneakers without socks) and looked a bit underdressed as women slinked by in cocktail dresses and whatnot. Anyway, I went to the check in desk and told them I had reserved a room through Hotels.com. The woman at the desk told me my room was unavailable.

As I was about to launch into my best Noo Yawka "What the F--K?" speech, she asked me if I would be interested in upgrading to a suite at no charge. Next thing you know, I go up to the 15th floor and check into a room that's easily twice (probably 3X) the size of my NYC apartment. It's got a huge bedroom, cavernous lounge area, a walk-in closet and a massive bathroom. (And yes, there's a phone in the can for the busy executive who needs to cut deals while he's doing a #2.) All of this for $130/night.

The photo on the left is the river view from the suite. Nice, huh?