I had a 19 hour day yesterday – it started when I woke up at my hotel at 26th Street at 5am and ended when I hit the sack at midnight. I had a bunch of meetings, a few scheduled phone calls, was on a panel, and stayed on top of my email throughout the day. I even managed to keep my FishVille fish fed and got my Cafe World food served before it spoiled.

Over the weekend, I read what I think is going to be my “best book of the year.” It’s Zeitoun by Dave Eggars of McSweeney’s fame. Some people just know how to write. And Eggars is one of them. Wow. As I ran around downtown Manhattan this morning thinking about how radically different my run today was from my typical runs around Eldorado Springs and Boulder, I couldn’t help drifting back to Zeitoun. It’s a stunning story about one man – Abdulrahman Zeitoun – and his family before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. But Katrina was only the foreplay for the book – the real story is what happens a week after the storm when Zeitoun disappears.

I’m in NY all week with a jam packed schedule so I thought it would be a good week to talk a little about how I use Gist since I’ll use it every day to help me deal with a shortened daily information routine. As you probably know, we are investors in Gist and I’m on the board so – while this is fanboy stuff – there are also a few other goals of this post including (a) helping you understand the promise of Gist, (b) enticing you to give it a try, and (c) eliciting feedback from those of you that have given it a try and want more / better / different (e.g. feedback of any kind is good).

Another awesome APOD photo. I wonder how evil and scary the blue horse looks when backlit like this.

I spent the last two days at the Defrag Conference. It was awesome on so many levels including the content, the venue, seeing a bunch of great friends, and meeting a bunch of new people. The conference originated out of an email exchange that Eric Norlin (the amazing guy who puts on the Defrag and Glue Conferences with his even more amazing wife Kim) and I had as a result of a series of blog posts that I wrote in 2006 starting with There Is A Major Software Innovation Wave Coming and Intelligence Amplification.

My amazing day at the Supreme Court continued to bounce around in the back of my mind all day yesterday. I was at a board meeting for a company that I’ve been on the board of for almost a decade – it was the best (as in most productive) board meeting we’ve had in a long time. I’ve written about The Best Board Meetings in the past. One element of the best board meetings is a prepared mind. This is the powerful lesson from the Supreme Court. On Monday (at the Supreme Court), I saw eleven very smart people participate in a very complex discussion that they were extremely prepared for. In one hour they covered an amazing amount of ground. I attribute this to the work they did in advance of the meeting.

The Boulder Camera highlighted a few CU Boulder students and their newest project in the article CU-Boulder students create Pac-Man Roomba game. For anyone that played Pac-Man as a kid (as I did) or anyone that loves robots, it’s sheer brilliance. Information about the entire project is up on the web at Roomba Pac-Man. Now they need to do a Ms. Roomba Pac-Man – that would be a nice marriage of technologies.

Sorry – I couldn’t help myself. I doubt this will be repeated anytime soon. I know it’s a little self-referential for me to put this on my blog, but it is my blog after all.

I had an incredible experience yesterday. My friend Phil Weiser, who is now the Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the US Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (I prefer to call him America’s Top Cop on Agriculture) invited me, my partner Jason Mendelson, and my wife Amy Batchelor to attend the Supreme Court Oral Arguments for re Bilski. A rare tie sighting ensued as a jacket and tie is required to attend.