somewhere in the world tonight, steve jobs lifted up his head and thought, “wow.  i really am making a difference in the world.”

i thought i had a chance.

my two member team of me and my brother scott began fishing up the river, catching no fish that were big enough to keep.  as we rounded a particular bend in the river, i looked to the bank to see about 15 people eating lunch on the side of the river. i thought, ‘hey! a crowd!’ catch a fish here and they’ll love it!

no such luck.

i looked ahead to see a foot bridge ahead crossing over the river. i fished for like 30 seconds more and looked up again and there were about NINE photographers lining up on the footbridge. i’m not talking ‘hey, how do i get my point-and-shoot off video mode?’ photographers. i’m talking, ‘wait, where are they? i can’t see them around my GIANT camera.’ photographers. nine. catch a fish here and its in national geographic!

no such luck.

anything and everything that could go wrong went wrong between where i was and the bridge.  i got hung up in the trees twice.  now i’m perched on a rock in the middle of a rushing river, untangling invisible fishing line the size of a hair from a tree.  oh, hey photographers.  i get my fly untangled from the tree, and the next cast i make, my fishing rod literally falls apart in my hands.  the tip of my rod flies into the river.  now i’m thrashing around in the water trying to grab the pieces of my fly rod before they get swept downriver.  oh, hey there bridge.  i stumble back up the river, slipping on rocks, putting myself back in position to catch a monster fish, wrestle it into my net and stand triumphantly as my conquest is documented for all to see.

instead, my next step falls, not onto the bottom of the river as i expect, but into some kind of freak, underwater river hole, and i disappear.  at one moment, i’m in knee-deep water, the next i’ve somehow submerged myself in the kiddie pool.  i come back to the surface soaked, panicked, and unable to breath because freezing mountain river water has now filled up my pants.  oh, hey paparazzi.  i grab all my stuff and sat hiding underneath the bridge for like ten minutes before i came out.

and yes, they were still there.

i thought i would just lay out the steps here in pictures…the last one is the finished product!  let me know what you think of it!

that may be better written ‘air conditioner woahs!‘  so i went to atlanta last weekend for Catalyst conference – it was incredible, but the night before was interesting.  so i went with a friend and we checked into our room, everything is cool.  except that it was warm.  the air conditioner didn’t work!  so we picked up the phone, called the front desk and told them.  the response was ‘yes sir, i’ll send an engineer right up.’  and engineer?  i didn’t know it was that big of a deal.  so my mind prepares itself for a short-sleeved button up, pen wearing individual to walk through the door.  while we commence to unpacking and getting comfortable, a chubby hispanic man walks in the door wearing a work shirt and a toolbelt.  engineer.  he walks in, nods, and kneels by the air conditioner, takes off the cover, and scratches his head.  he picked up his tools and left the room while muttering something about being back soon.  the door shut.  i don’t remember what i was thinking when all the sudden BOOM!  yes, the air conditioner exploded.  i’m talking loud bang and a little sizzle followed by billowing black smoke.  as a haze began to fill the room and my lungs began to get tight, in walked our engineer.  he walked in to the room, paused by the TV because i think he finally smelled the aroma of burning plastic.  he just looked at us with an inquisitive face that looked as if he almost expected us to say, “it blew up.”  we tried to put into words the terror that we had just experienced and he simply walked over to the air conditioner, and screwed it back into the wall.  then he got up to leave!  the room was still hazy with smoke, but he was just going to leave!  we asked if we could have another room and he looked a tad confused as he decided that we could go could pack up and meet him at the front desk.  through a confusing set of circumstances we finally landed another room.  the air conditioner sounded like it was digesting casper the friendly ghost all night.  awesome.

it finally happened.  a moment in South Africa that was awkward enough to motivate me to write a blog post about it.  i was in Pick ‘n’ Pay tonight – basically the South African Piggly Wiggly.  we went after dinner to get some candy..because we were deprived of our normal pudding dessert.  i walked to the back of the store in search of my favorite foreign candy: the prized KinderEgg.  i got to the familiar shelf to find it blank.  nothing.  thus began the hunt for some other acceptable source of sweetness.  i landed in the register line looking at chocolate bars.  in south africa there is a candy bar made by Cadbury that has different phrases on it.  these phrases consist of things like ‘you’re fine’ and ‘how ’bout a date?’  … i mean, this is really useful candy.  so i’m looking through all these phrases trying to find something worthy to be my dessert.  some of the phrases were in english, but some were in afrikaans.  so against my better judgement, i picked up a chocolate ps bar, that said “soen my”.  i had no clue what that meant.  so i looked around for the nearest south african, which happened to be this 40 year old white man in front of me in line.  he had a mustache.  i leaned over, showed him the candy bar and asked him what it meant.  in return, i received shifty eyes.  i raised my eyebrows and he replied, ‘kiss me.’  immediately i drew back and said, “woah man, that was not intended to be…”  i just left it hanging there.  i found out last week that there are more gay people in capetown, south africa than anywhere else on the continent of africa.  maybe for that guy, the moment wasn’t really that awkward.

but the true mystery is this:  why is that pickle on my plate?