OK. If I were a real journalist I couldn’t write this. I’d have to make all the phone calls, all of which I expect would turn up no real information and a few “no comments”. But I’m just blahgging here, so what the hey.

I spent the day at Macworld today so you didn’t have to. No, no. No thanks are needed. It’s just who I am.

I made the trek into The City with several goals in mind: I wanted to talk to the Quickbooks guys about the issues in moving from Windows to Mac; to talk to the QB and FileMaker Pro guys about ways to move data back and forth between those apps; to check out some project management packages, see the Leopard and Microsoft Office 2008 demos, and to see how close I could get to the iPhone.

Are you sick of reading about the iPhone yet? I’m planning on trekking into The City tomorrow and hope to get a first hand look, but spent plenty of time last night reading the specs, watching the keynote video and going through the flash presentation that Apple posted. After the first blush of excitement several questions popped up that will require some answers between now and June when this puppy actually goes on sale.

Here’s my short list:

Steve walks out onto the auditorium stage, set just as the Moscone Hall will be on Tuesday, though the crowd today is only 2 people instead of thousands. He walks over to the stool in midstage and cracks open the water bottle sitting there. He takes a drink while he imagines the cheers from the crowd on Tuesday.

“Welcome!” The crowd cheers in his mind are still so deafeningly loud that he is sure nobody heard him. He raises his hands to quiet the crowd, waits a moment, and then again says, “Welcome!”

I’d gone months without an iPod after my last one got stolen this summer. It was soooo painful. Suddenly the music was gone. The Podcasts were gone. All replaced by commercial radio. Now I remember why I got an iPod. But I couldn’t bring myself to go without lunch for a few months in order to buy one of the current big disk versions. It just seems too likely that the Apple phone or the true “video iPod” is likely to be out soon.

My kids are living an asynchronous life. This dawned on me on the way to school the other morning. A song was playing on Radio Disney that both my 5 and 8 year old were singing along with. As it ended, my son yelled, “Play it again, daddy.”

“Ummm, I can’t,” I said, “that was on the radio.”

In a struggle to maintain some patience with my clearly nonsensical response, he said, “Daddy, just hit the backwards button.”

Steve walked into the glass-walled conference room and hit a button that immediately darkened the windows. He lifted his foot to the table top and reached to retie his new Nike’s. “Frickin’ shoelaces won’t stay tied,” he grumbled.

He looked up and found only two of the 16 seats occupied. “Where is everybody?” he asked. “Is it Sunday?”

I noticed tonight that Giles Turnbull of O’Reilly took a shot at .Mac and he is right on. I’ve been a dotmac user for a couple of stints but finally let it go earlier this year when my money was tight and the value seemed too small. I could see a place for it a bit later on as I get Macs for the kids and they have to think about which machine their info is on as they shuttle between school, their mom’s and our house. But, quite frankly, that’s really the only thing I found it seemed good for.

Kudos to the worth1000.com guys for this image. With last week’s news that Apple is actually raising its very small market share numbers to a sligtly larger very small number, I found this one amusing.

SAN FRANCISCO–The Apple fan community was run off the road this week by the announcement that Steve Jobs will change his shoe allegiance after 20 years of success. The announcement by Jobs coincided with some sort of product announcement by Apple and Nike. Steve wore his traditional jeans and black turtleneck, but the famed New Balance 991’s were nowhere in sight.

OK, its already proven that you geek freaks out there prefer to get your geeky news from the likes of Amanda and Cali and Amber. I guess that’s not too surprising since this geek demographic is skewed a bit toward the young guy logging more time on the keyboard than dating. Not you guys, of course. I mean you guys are cool. Its the other guys that need to see those rosy lips saying things like “motherboard” and “hack” to get them through the day.

After leaving a real job for the world of consulting and freelance work I found myself sometimes craving the workplace. It wasn’t the work or the watercooler or the constant interaction that I missed really, but more the complete change in rituals.

At the office I had dropped into several habits for my workday. Each day I arrived about the same time, dropped into my teams’ offices to check for issues or see if help was needed. Grabbed a cup of coffee, sat down and started through my email…you know, what you might call the rut. But I missed that stuff nonetheless.