As you may or may not know, Norm’s Pizza and Subs — home of the fabled Nerd Table and an otherwise very important part of my college experience — is closing for good today. (The original closing date was December 1, but the restaurant got a 11-day reprieve, opening from 5-midnight in December.) Word is they’ve run into lease issues, among other things. It’s quite a shame, because there stands to be a great deal of College of Charleston students who will never understand the importance of Norm’s takeout during finals week. A great deal of the MUSC community is also going to have to find a new place to get lunch — not necessarily an easy feat on the western peninsula.

As long-time followers of this blog know, Norm’s was a staple of mine in the several years I lived downtown. I found it to be a wonderful place to swap stories, make new friends, or even just a place to sit back and step out of the madness for a little bit, no matter how full it may have been on any given night. While living in West Ashley had made it difficult to stop in over the last year and a half, I still managed to make it in for lunch a fair amount, and did my best to stop in during the evenings as well, even if it wasn’t as often.

Thanks to Traye and the crew at Norm’s for the memories over the last several years. You’ll be missed.

The video didn’t catch it, but there were snowflakes, too. :)

This promises to be an exciting week — I’ll be going to my first-ever ConvergeSouth conference in Greensboro, NC on Thursday. I’ll be with a ton of my fellow bloggers as well as my good friend Patrick O’Keefe, who I will finally get to meet “in real life” after I’ve worked with him and chatted with him over the Internets for several years. I haven’t yet pinpointed what I’m going to do from the schedule yet — one of the many trip preparation things I need to be doing.

Saturday was supposed to be BlogHer Greensboro, which Patrick and I were also going to attend, but they pulled out. Thanks to the power of FriendFeed, a couple folks named Kelby Carr and Dave Slusher, and Converge’s organizer Sue Polinsky, the lost Saturday was reclaimed with some fresh new independent sessions.

I’m extremely stoked for the Saturday sessions, as I’ll be talking about what I do to make Charleston Weather, my streamed severe weather show, tick. I’m also excited to be able to talk about the broader implications for something like Charleston Weather as it relates to hyperlocalism in media, which is a topic that’s getting more and more attention as news outlets race to become more specialized and serve a narrower segment extremely well. That afternoon, I’ll be leading a hands-on session to show just how easy it is to put together a reasonably professional-looking live presentation using mostly free software and Ustream.tv (not necessarily just a weather show). It’s going to be quite a bit of fun.

Patrick will also be leading some talks, so be sure to check those out. He’s on at 10:30am, and I’m on at 11:15am.

I absolutely cannot wait — this is going to be quite a good time. I’m planning on filing some video updates throughout on Serious Business, as well — keep an eye out for those.

Regardless of the indictment, this is as good of a time as ever to remember the first time Ted Stevens did something for folks other than a few people in Alaska…namely, how he reshaped how we think about the Internet.

Yes, folks, it’s open. After months of anticipation, Charleston, and South Carolina, for that matter, finally has an Apple retail store — officially the King Street Apple Store — in the heart of downtown. No more drives to Charlotte for a Genius Bar. It’s a pretty sweet thing for Apple fanatics and technology consumers in general.

The first thing I noticed is that Apple knows how to manage a line. And it’s a good thing, because this line was LONG…

The earliest reports of a line came in around 9:30 or so last night. The line snaked around all the way back to St. Philip Street, but they eventually split the line off into iPhone and non-iPhone lines after it opened. In the iPhone lines, they brought their handheld kiosks, which they also used to ring people up (nuts!!!), and ensured that the folks in line would have no road bumps into getting an iPhone. Incredible. Apple has this wired, folks. An enterprising fellow helped keep people happy by selling sodas to iLine folks.

At 10am, the doors opened, and Apple employees greeted the first visitors with high-fives and t-shirts (the first 1,000 customers got t-shirts). Let’s let the video tell the story:

After the initial hysteria, I had to move my car — I was at a meter. Once my car was moved and I came back, the aforementioned line-split occurred. The general visitors line was much shorter, so I went ahead and got in it.

About 20 minutes later, I was in — and it was pretty awesome. The store is gorgeous, well-appointed, and has lots of great stuff. I didn’t want to take too many pictures inside ’cause I didn’t want them to feel like I was casing the place or something. While inside, though, I did play my Apple Store story from last semester on an iPhone 3G and got a picture of it to boot.

My, how time has flown. :) Because I work downtown, I’m sure I’ll be in there quite a bit (likely sans debit card as that could get troublesome). It’s really great to see Apple finally here in South Carolina, and I can’t think of a better place for it to open a store than Charleston. It fits very well with the caliber of shopping on King Street, I think.

For more photos, check out my Flickr set from today. Eugene has more photos of the opening as well.

I wish I could say the ordeal is over for everybody, though — there are still nearly a million evacuated, and they won’t all come back to their homes in one piece. Please continue to keep those families in your thoughts during a seriously trying time.

UPDATE: Meryl Corant of WCBD interviewed me about the fires. It should be on at 6:00 tonight.

UPDATE 2: You can read and watch the story, which aired on the 6:00 news, on WCBD’s website. It’s well done, I think. Thanks for your support — I just got another update and indications are that things continue to be OK, so that’s a good sign. Here’s hoping for a change in the pattern soon…

Update

The word is that the plane clipped a tree and a cataclysmic set of events followed. FOX News says that the plane just lost power and went down. The Beaufort County Coroner says one person is dead, but they won’t say who — FOX also has reason to believe that the pilot indeed was killed. There’s been no sign of an ejection or anything.

WCSC has picked up the story and has been running a crawl below the PGA event. MSNBC is…well, silent, running their documentary in lieu of coverage.