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I’m late reporting this, but I had a great time both at Google’s press party (loved the ice sculpture and meeting folks I’ve talked with on the phone for years) and at the Bay Area Interactive Group (BIG) get-together last week. It was quite a night, I must say. At the risk of sounding naive, I’ll say I was really surprised at how long it took to get to the Googleplex (and back). It’s shocking to me just how large this area called “the Bay Area” is. (Silicon Valley is the same thing as the South Bay, isn’t it?) It’s a little intimidating, but also exciting as there are plenty of different areas to explore. (It’ll keep me busy for years!)

BIG was really lovely. The City Club in downtown SF is beautiful, and before I’d even gotten out of the elevator I’d met two guys I ended up chatting with for quite a while. The whole room seemed abuzz with optimism. I ran into one old acquaintence, Doug Weaver of Upstream Group, who was visiting from Vermont.

I’m looking forward to future events and apologize to all the people I’d meant to look out for but didn’t touch base with. (By the time I showed up, around 8:30 or 9, the name tags were gone and I suspect quite a few people had already left.)

Blogger and strategist B.L. Ochman says she’s taken a post at “Whatsnextenmesh, a Parallel Universe Blog”. The appointment is part of the Triangle1911 promotion I wrote about a couple of weeks ago on ClickZ.

Hope to meet some more local folks tonight at The Bay Area Interactive Group (BIG)’s holiday get-together.

Well, according to the good folks at Intelliseek, Jon Stewart’s “Crossfire” appearance wins top honors. A well-deserved honor, too, I might add.

According to the press release:

Bloggers linked to the “Crossfire” transcript in their online commentaries 1,880 times in 2004, followed by 1,415 references to Slate.com’s “Unfairenheit 9/11: The Lies of Michael Moore” and 1,174 citations for the BBC’s obituary of radio DJ John Peel.

Meredith Roth is at it again, following up her “worst dressed list” with something a bit more positive. Let me just say I’m proud that five of my colleagues were mentioned (not bad, on a list of just 15).

I know you’re dying to know how I’ve been spending my time, since I’ve been such a bad blogger. Well… this weekend, we went to Ikea in Emeryville. Shockingly, it wasn’t terribly packed. My theory is that everyone’s doing their holiday shopping and not at a furniture store. Anyway, this being our second trip, we finally settled on an armoire in which to store our TV, etc.

The difficult thing — which we discovered, stupidly, after hours of complex assembly — is just how voluminous “etc.” is in this digital world. We have a receiver, a DVD player, a 32-inch TV, a Replay TV DVR unit, and, of course, a digital cable box. Though the armoire supposedly “fit most 32 inch TVs,” it didn’t fit ours. So we had to take out a shelf. Then, with the shelf out, we couldn’t fit all the rest of our goodies, even if we took off the little feet at the bottom of the receiver. Then, we also figured out that we’d never be able to get all of our cabling to occur in the way apparently intended by the Ikea folks. Somehow, they had us painstakingly nail in 50 tiny nails to adhere the fiberboard backing, which didn’t have ANY holes to allow for speaker wires, ethernet cables, RCA cables, or even power cords to protrude.

We had to tear off the back of the armoire. A hammer came in handy in that regard. It also helped ease a little frustration. We then tucked things in, very creatively, even hiding one box (which needs no remote control access) underneath. Now, you’d never know how close we came to junking the whole thing and trying to sell it on eBay. It almost looks… nice.

We were the ones to blame here because we didn’t do the basic measurements and initial research. But how in the world can a company sell a “TV Storage Unit” in this day and age that so aggressively fails to accommodate the digital lifestyle? Sure, it’s cheap, but I wouldn’t wish our Sunday of frustration on anyone.

(Meanwhile, our cable and cable modem access went out. The cable finally came back, but not the Internet. We are already growing to love Comcast, which can’t apparently find a moment — until next Saturday — to send over a technician.)