1. Amazon’s Shortlist Includes Raleigh

Amazon narrowed candidate cities for a second headquarters from 238 to 20 on Thursday and Raleigh made the cut. The City of Oaks beat out its sister city Charlotte and joins the likes of Boston, Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta on the shortlist.

Go Raleigh! 

2. Durham City Council Fills Vacant Seat

Javiera Caballero was named to the Durham City Council on Tuesday in a special session. Caballero takes the at-large seat vacated by Steve Schewel after he became mayor and is the first Latinx member of the council. According to Indy Week, Caballero is a mother and former teacher, working for an education consulting firm and serving as president of the Club Boulevard Magnet Elemnetary School PTA.

While I’m looking forward to seeing what Caballero brings to the council, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. I have been a huge supporter of Pierce Freelon since he declared his candidacy for Durham mayor several months ago. I truly felt Freelon’s positions on key issue facing our city were on point. It would have been nice to see a young voice as a city leader as well. Someone who’s views of the city – and world at large – closely related to mine.

I was disappointed he did not make it through the primary, but felt encouraged by his campaign for the vacant council seat. Even more disappointing? Freelon was chosen as one of seven finalists for the seat on January 10, but was apparently not even mentioned at the meeting on Tuesday as, according to Indy Week, the council was split initially between Caballero and Pilar Rocha-Goldberg before voting 5-1 to choose Caballero. I sent emails to all council members and Mayor Schewel regarding my choice for the seat before the final vote. There are six members (including the mayor) and I only heard back from Mayor Schewel and council member Charlie Reece. That’s telling, to me.

There’s no doubt that I’ll be following this new mayor and remade council and the direction they would like to take Durham. 

3. HQ

You may – or may not – have heard of HQ. it’s the new craze that’s sweeping the world. HQ is a trivia game, played via an app, that challenges players to answer 12 questions for a chance to win some serious dough. There are a couple small caveats: 1) You only have 10 seconds to answer the questions (really about three or four after the host reads it) and 2) Get one wrong or don’t answer in time and you’re out.

I first discovered HQ on New Year’s Eve and have been playing it since. But that may change soon. HQ has been criticized quite a bit for lag issues users experience with the app. I mean, when you have hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people converging on the app at once to play a game, it’s not that surprising. I’ve experienced a few of these issues myself but I was still able to play the game just fine. I played a few days ago and the app seemed to be okay. However, I got to question three and the host read it, but the question and answer choices never popped up on my screen. By the time they did, time had run out and I was booted from the game.

Why present something like this if there are known issues with its performance? Fix the issues first and then launch. I probably won’t be playing HQ for a while. Perhaps never again.

4. Happy Ann’y, MacBook Air

The MacBook Air turned 10 years old this week. Time flies. The Air was the first to ship without an external CD/DVD Drive and the thinnest notebook Apple had produced. Of course, Airs are still apart of the MacBook lineup, which definitely shows their staying power. Happy ann’y!

5. Snow Pics

About a foot of snow fell where I’m at in North Carolina. A foot! And all snow, too, instead of a mix of rain/sleet/snow.

Snowy weather always provides for some great photographic moments and this snow storm didn’t disappoint. As an added bonus, a wet snow fell, sticking to trees. Check out a little slideshow of my pics from the storm!

Thanks For Reading