Rough Draft

Fry's, Chinese Food, The Rock

The subject pretty much describes my day after I got home from work today. Mary (Christy's boss) and I went to get her car washed and then to Fry's. That is the single coolest store I have ever been in. I could literally spend an entire day in there. Seeing as it was 102 inside when Christy and I got home, I figured it was time I got a fan. I also picked up 50' of ethernet cable, so I can finally get the ReplayTV connected. Mary got a set of Torx screw drivers, which we'll need to take apart her TiVo. She has an original 13 GB model, so she's having me help her put a 120 GB drive in tomorrow. When we got back from Fry's Christy and I drove out to the Panda Express for some quick Chinese food and we rented The Rock. I hadn't seen it before, and it came up when we were discussing visiting Alcatraz. All in all a good night. The only thing planned for tomorrow is installing the new drive in Mary's TiVo. Sunday I'm planning to go in to work from 1-5 when Christy does, to make up some time I missed by going to WWDC. Plus it's air conditioned at work.

Missed Fiction Plane

I found out today that the band that played during the Apple Campus Bash last night was Fiction Plane. I left around 8 because I rode my bike and wanted to get back before dark, but I would have stayed for a while if I had known Fiction Plane was playing. Oh well.

New Computers

Apple of course announced new Power Mac G5 on Monday. They're shipping in August and Jeff and I both plan on ordering dual 2 GHZ machines. After the keynote on Monday we got our copies of Panther and iSight cameras. I haven't used Panther too much yet, but it seems pretty stable, so hopefully I can use it full time. I haven't really used my iSight for video conferencing either, but Jeff and I are going to try them out when he gets back to NC. Erik also got an iSight (or 2) so I'll have to video chat with him also at some point. Last but not least, I ordered a 12" Powerbook today and it should be here tomorrow. At this point I'm probably going to use that as my main machine, at least until I get a G5. I'm planning to put my G4 tower out in the living room and connect it to the TV as a media box.

Metreon and The Hulk

Jeff and I went to the Metreon last Sunday after the WWDC Student Sunday stuff was over. I have to say, I was rather disappointed. We both thought it was going to be a "geek's paradise." They claim to have the best arcade in the Bay Area, but they didn't have that many games and it didn't seem that impressive. Of course there were stores with tons of Sony products. The most exciting store though was the one which had a bunch of anime/video game action figures, t-shirts, and manga. The "Action Theatre" shows anime on Sundays, but it was closed when we were there, even though it was supposed to be open. Jeff and I did see the Hulk there. Since there wasn't that much else to do at the Metreon, we decided to go sit in the theater a good 30 minutes before the movie was supposed to start. I have to say I was quite pleased with the music they were playing in the theater during this time. Some of the bands were New Found Glory, Sum 41, American Hi-Fi, and Fiction Plane. As for Hulk, it was an ok movie. Kinda long, and nothing extraordinary, but better than sitting in hotel room. Plus Jennifer Connelly is hot.

Deja Entendu

Jeff, Sean, and I stopped at Virgin Records store while we were in San Francisco on Sunday. I picked up the Fall Out Boy CD Take This to Your Grave and the Brand New CD Deja Entendu. The Fall Out Boy CD is good, catchy pop-punk CD. I have to say though Deja Entendu is simply amazing. They have an eCard here if you want to hear a couple songs off the album as well as some older songs. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical about it after Jason Tate at Absolute Punk had been hyping it so much, but it definitely lives up to the hype. According to my iTunes play count I've listened to the entire CD 10 times since Sunday, so yeah, the entire CD is good.

Live 105 BFD

I went to my first concert here in California last Friday. It was the Live 105 BFD concert. There are pictures of the concert posted here. I got to see a couple bands I've seen before that are really good live (Finch and The Used) and I got to see a few bands I haven't seen live before, but who I've wanted to see (The All American Rejects, The Ataris, The Donnas). They were all really good. Finch played a couple new songs and they will be recording their next album here very soon. Speaking of new music, I'll have to see if the iTunes Music Store has the Brand New CD Deja Entendu tomorrow. If not I may just have to break down and buy Less Than Jake's Anthem.

California

I love it out here in California. The weather has been great. Its usually around 80 during the day, but cools down very nicely at night. My apartment is nice and in a good neighborhood. I'll post some pictures when I get a digital camera from Anand. There's plenty of places within walking/biking distance. My roomate, Christy, is really cool too. The first 2 weeks I got rides to work either from Christy or Andrew. One of Christy's friends had a bike that I could use. It needed a tune-up, so we had the Bike Doctor come and tune-up my bike and her bike. So now I ride my bike to work Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Christy and her boss Mary ride with me on Fridays. It takes about 30 minutes and it's flat pretty much the whole way, so it's a nice ride. And listening to my iPod makes it all the better.

Back Online

Finally got a cable modem installed, so my blog is back online. I bought this Linksys router. The 802.11g support will be nice when I buy a Powerbook. I still need to go out and buy some cat 5 to connect to my ReplayTV. Christy has an iBook, so I'll have to see if she wants to get an Airport card or just wants to buy some ethernet cable. There's plenty more to write about, but I'm going to break it up into several posts.

Tech Museum

Erik and I went to the Tech Musuem in downtown San Jose last weekend. The musuem is geared towards younger kids around 10-14, but we still had a good time. Erik highlights most of the fun stuff we did.

We killed a (fake) guy with gamma rays. Gamma rays are used in surgery, and with a buttoned hemisphere, we were supposed to choose only the paths that wouldn't hit the brain stem (etc.). The first time, we did so properly. The next time, well, the guy wouldn't have made it out of surgery?

We went down the up escalator. The ends are the tricky parts

We rode in an astronaut "seat" that floated like a table hockey puck (a hovercraft of sorts) and steered a red beam into targets above us.

We raced wheelchairs and defended a goal from hockey pucks.

We toured the Intel section (with silicon wafers, microprocessors, etc.) and noted that soem of the demo machines (iMacs) were running HyperCard stacks.

We rode a Segway.

The only other thing I can think of that wasn't in that list was playing a game of Operation on a really large Operation board. Although we determined it was physically impossible to get the pencil out, at least without bending the tweezers.

Riding the Segway was the most fun part of the Tech Museum. It was pretty easy to control, although a lot of people that got on would try to fight its motion and almost fell off. Apparently the Segway has 3 keys with each one allowing it to go up to a certain maximum speed.