I’m still looking for that balance between feeling like I’ve accomplished a good day’s work at the office and feeling calm, relaxed and rested. I can’t seem to get there, but they say journey and reward are one and the same. Along the way, we’ve been pretty busy over at Behavior, and while my own head has been down and focusing on my own projects and challenges, I’ve been negligent about posting about some of the other stuff we’ve been doing.

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It’s the end of a very long, long day at the office, and I haven’t even been home yet to catch John Edwards’ speech at the convention yet, but I’m sure it was just fine and not a little bit ‘sunny.’ Before I head home to bed though, I had to get up some belated thoughts about the keynote speech Barack Obama gave last night. I had read so much about the guy beforehand that I was intensely curious and not a little skeptical, but he really did live up to all that advance billing. What an amazing speech he gave; it really did feel like watching something very, very important unfolding. Of course, half of the appeal is that this man has a very short voting record, but the immense potential he displayed last night was staggering. I still feel a little in awe, over twenty-four hours later.

Four years off have been kind to both Bill Clinton and Al Gore, if their opening night appearances at the Democratic National Convention were any indication. Clinton, who has lost weight and whose hair now is a full shock of distinguished white, looked like nothing else than a bona fide rock star when he strolled on stage. He gave a speech that should put everyone running for office this year — with the possible exception of John Edwards — to complete shame; it was elegant, forceful and crowd-pleasing, and irrefutable proof that the man does in fact possess the kind of political talent that comes along only once a generation (for better or worse).

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It’s kind of a strange feeling to actually find myself rooting for RealNetworks. For years, they have distinguished themselves with software installation practices that have struck me as… well, as exceedingly impolite, to use civil language. I’ve harbored enough ill will towards them that, when given a choice between using their Real Player software and Microsoft’s not much better Windows Media Player, I’ll always opt for the Redmond solution.

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Summer always makes me feel hazy, like I can’t quite get my brain into gear. When I went on vacation last week, I slept like champ, sometimes as much as 11 hours a day, all told. Since coming back to work, I’ve been relatively alert, able to focus on clients and learning all kinds of neat new tricks in Microsoft Excel and also on learning a lot about the numbers that make a business run. But it feels like a thousand years since I’ve sat down and engaged in any kind of hands on, creative activities for myself. Among these basically meaningless little blog posts that I’ve been producing lately, I can’t think of anything that I’ve written that I’m actually proud of — which is to say nothing of my occasionally stated intention to redesign this Web site.

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Vacations are supposed to recharge you, but I felt more exhausted than ever when I woke up this morning and got ready for my first day back at work. I spent four days enjoying breezes running through green leaves, grilling whole foods over charcoals, and listening to baseball games through the tinny squeal of AM radio, but it now feels more like we just blinked — the world of work was gone for half a moment, but now it’s back.

We’ve been in Cape Cod since late Thursday night, my girlfriend, my dog and me, having left New York City and driven north for a long weekend. It’s gorgeous here to begin with, but we’ve had sterling weather on top of it: cool enough to be comfortable, but warm enough to swim off the modest shores of the Cape. There’s a huge lawn behind the converted barnhouse where we’re staying, and we’ve been spending a lot of time lounging on it, enjoying the quiet and watching the dog delight in running around it like mad. At night you can see all the stars looking down at the Earth, not just the ones bright enough to make it through a city’s diffusion. I’m sure there must be some way to live like this all year long.

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Apart from the initial wow factor of having my Mac OS X Address Book more or less instantly synchronized with my new Sony Ericsson T608 via Bluetooth, I’m not entirely sure I’m completely pleased with this new purchase.

There’s the shortcomings of Apple’s iSync, of course, such as a lack of a report detailing what happens — what changed and what didn’t — each time I perform a sync. The process is slow, too, and to avoid having to manually update the changed contacts on the phone, I pretty much have to do a complete synchronization, wherein every contact is reviewed by iSync; it’s a slow process.

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There have been some bad things written about Microsoft Office 2004 for Macintosh, as there always are when the Redmond giant releases anything for the Mac OS. But after having upgraded to this latest version of its business productivity suite this morning, I’m not sure I’d be willing to throw in with the often heard assessment that Office is bloated and clumsy. It’s true that none of the revised programs that make up the suite come close to being the most gazelle-like software I’ve ever run. Nevertheless, the one word that keeps running through my head, here at the end of a full day of using them, is ‘elegant.’ Really.

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If, at any time since the first of January, Verizon Wireless had released just one Bluetooth mobile phone, I would have almost instantly switched from my current carrier, Sprint PCS. As it turns out, the notoriously slow-moving telecom giant has shown almost no hint that it will do anything of the sort, even joking that consumers hoping for a Verizon-branded Bluetooth phone had better “switch to somebody else.”

As luck would have it, I happened across a mention of a semi-secret Bluetooth phone from Sprint PCS last week. Apparently, the company has been offering the previously announced and nearly aborted Sony Ericsson T608 on the sly, as it were, not making it available to Web or in store customers, oddly, but selling it exclusively through their toll-free number. I ordered one straight away, and it arrived today.

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Someone over at the Gray Lady just discovered typography, if David Dunlap’s piece on the 9/11 memorial cornerstone is any indication. Unexpectedly, the article devotes 1,000 words to discussing the use of Gotham — a beautiful typeface designed by Tobias Frere-Jones and distributed by The Hoefler Type Foundry — as the principle face for the cornerstone. The photo caption is unintentionally hilarious: “Gotham... is distinguished by the uniformity in the width of its strokes and the absence of embellishments like serifs.” Really!

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It made no sense to me at all that Representative Dick Gephardt’s name continually appeared in the scuttlebutt leading up to John Kerry’s selection of a vice presidential running mate, but apparently he was a mainstay on the short list right up until the last moment. Gephardt’s old school, protectionist rhetoric always struck me as a sure way to write a ticket to another damaging Democratic loss in November, so you can imagine the complete relief that I experienced upon hearing yesterday that Senator John Edwards got the official nod. Once in a while, to see something happen in politics with which you whole-heartedly agree, and to find that most pundits agree with you too — in my view, Edwards’s charisma and highly-regarded elocution are huge pluses on a ticket headed by an ashen-faced father figure, and against opponents marked by dim cronyism and pure, unmitigated mendacity.