I love it when I am drawn in by simplicity.

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I hate being stuck anywhere, but I simply can’t imagine being stuck in an elevator…for 41 hours. The New Yorker posted a time-lapse video of Nicholas White, who was stuck in the elevator of New York City’s McGraw Hill building for nearly two days. The video was recorded by the elevator security camera, which has to make you wonder who is really watching these things?

My favorite part of the video (if that is fair to say…it is actually hard to watch) is the very end when they casually place a sign in the elevator that I can imagine says something to the effect of “Not currently working.” When I studied Ancient Greek literature, we often came across a certain rhetorical device called litotes which is an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite. I would say the placement of that sign would fit right into many of the Greek stories I used to read. Litotes indeed.

This morning was the start of my switch back to mornings for running and exercising. I realize I shouldn’t say that so fast after just one successful morning, but I have enlisted the help of a friend to meet me each morning. Hopefully the accountability will compensate for the lack of habit at this point.

Running in the morning feels great. It’s dark and peaceful and no one is up but the birds and some other fellow runners. Not to mention the sense of accomplishment you already have by the time you start the rest of your day.

As we were running today, I told my friend how I was not a runner at all growing up. I never thought I could run and so I never really tried. It wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I tried running more than a mile and was surprised that I didn’t keel over right there on the spot. Ever since then I have loved running and have made it an important part of my life. I actually run enough to consider myself a runner, a thought that would have been laughable had you known me in high school.

So as I was telling the story of my running beginnings, I started to think about how I treat other things like I used to treat running. There are a number of things that I don’t consider myself good enough to do and so I don’t attempt them much. Or I will only attempt them with moderate levels of risk, which doesn’t really help me get past the hump of feeling like I am proficient at it.

At the top of the list of those things I don’t do is Writing. I don’t consider myself a writer. I have never written much and have never really tried very hard to regularly write anything that could be viewed publicly. But I realize this is really no different than my running. I have a pretty good feeling that if I keep writing regularly (more than a blog post once every two months), then I won’t keel over. Maybe I’ll even get to be good enough that people will start reading what I write. Maybe I’ll get even better that some people will stop reading.

So let’s see if I can start two good things in one day. I have a friend to keep me getting up in the morning and I have the the RSS readers of about four people scattered throughout the Midwest to keep me going here. What’s the worst that could happen?

Last Thursday, I needed a break between tasks so I posted an entry to ReadWriteWeb’s contest for describing a Web 2.0 technology that I thought was exciting. The prize was a ticket to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. I took the opportunity to write about Dipity, a service that lets you create and discover timelines online. A few hours later Richard MacManus sent me an e-mail letting me know I had been chosen randomly from the entrants. Now I am at the airport in KC waiting for my flight to San Francisco. Since the trip was unexpected, I still have a lot of work to do while I am out in California, but needless to say I am pretty stoked about the conference.

Thanks Richard and ReadWrite Web!

We released Brownbook just over a year ago. Since then, thousands of people have been scheduling tens of thousands of appointments with the simple scheduling system that Brownbook provides. I am proud of how we have been able offer a simple tool that provides big value to our customers. We did not set out to be everything to everyone, but had one simple goal: let small businesses and individuals accept online appointment reservations from their customers.

Over the last year we have received all kinds of great requests from our customers and have implemented many of them along the way. However, there are also a number of great features that we wanted to offer that worked best if they could all be tied together. This meant taking a step back and taking a broader look at where we are going. We’re glad we did.

We believe that this next release of Brownbook is going to offer just the right mix of features for managing appointment reservations, with the simplicity you expect from Brownbook.

That’s all for now. I know it is not much of a peek. I just had to share some of my excitement for what is ahead. Stay tuned for the upcoming previews.