This blog entry will get lost in all of today’s WWDC iPhone hype and announcements, but that’s alright. I just wanted to take a moment to state, very simply, that it’s been a good first two weeks back in Hollywood. You might not know it by the fact that I spent the first week living in a hotel and sick in bed for part of it, or by the fact that the second week has involved twenty-eight hours without electricity and no hope of getting cable television installed in my new apartment any time soon. But oddly enough, none of that’s really been affecting me. It’s as if, simply put, none of it matters.
It certainly hasn’t stopped me. I’ve had this creative burst this week that just keeps snowballing. The next magazine issue is completely done except for the post-WWDC stuff that can’t be written until Monday, and so I decided to move on and format the next issue. Then the one after that. Suddenly I’ve got the next five issues in the can. Sure, that includes a bunch of content that hasn’t yet been written, news that hasn’t happened, and interviews that haven’t taken place. Those can be filled in later. But the basic structure is in place. This next issue is about twice as long as anything we released last month, and the next few appear to be headed in that same direction. Why? Since I’ve been back out here I’ve both done more writing myself and been more aggressive at getting content from other contributors.
Could it be so simple as a change of environment? I don’t know. Maybe just a re-boot. And it seems remarkable, considering how much weird happenings and circumstances I’ve had to slough off this week. My new apartment, which I love, just happens to be the only location I’ve ever been to in the Los Angeles area where AT&T reception on the iPhone is nearly non-existent. As someone who cover the iPhone for a living, that’s not great news; if I’d thought to check for that while I was touring the place, I probably wouldn’t have taken the apartment. But I like the place overall, so maybe it’s just as well. The walls of this place must be lined with lead, though, as I tried firing up the FM radio in one of my iPod speaker systems and found that I can only pick up about four radio stations out of the dozens and dozens on the Los Angeles FM radio dial. It’s like I’m living in the bat cave. And yet I have a sliding glass door which leads to an outdoor (if entirely contained) patio; I can step outside and I still have minimal reception. I’d blame AT&T for not getting their signal here properly, but then I’d have to blame every radio station in town as well.
But hey, that’s the way it goes. I bought a new printer, and inexplicably, it doesn’t print. How often does a Mac user face the prospect of hitting the print button on a brand new printer and getting an indecipherable error message these days, even after installing the latest drivers? Even more oddly, it’s the exact same printer model I’ve used in the recent past, so there’s no seemingly explaining why it wouldn’t work. It’s one of those things that’s almost literally impossible. And yet I haven’t needed to print anything yet, so it doesn’t matter, I’ll solve that one another day.
Life’s good, and these silly little oddball issues will take care of themselves as I go. The big picture is that I’m where I want to be, doing what I want to do, without any restrictions I don’t want placed on me, and that’s the most confidently I’ve been able to say that maybe ever.
Well, I guess I’d better get some sleep. I heard that some guy named Steve is giving a speech in the morning, and that it might have some little bit of bearing on what I do for a living. As with all things, we shall see 
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