Rough Draft

Dana and Chris's Visit

Dana and Chris came out to California for a couple weeks. Their first full day here was Memorial Day and since I had the day off from work we went up to the SF Zoo and Muir Woods. The next three days they took Caltrain up to the city and did a lot of sight-seeing including Alcatraz, walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, and a trip to Japantown which yielded this bounty. Friday we went up to Yosemite National Park and spent all day Saturday there. Sunday was spent hanging around the 'Tino including a trip to Santana Row, mini golfing, and El Burro for dinner.

Dana and Chris spent most of the next week at Chris's brother's place in Monterey. They of course went to the aquarium and rented bicycles one day. I was quite jealous to find out they went skydiving one day. A couple of us at work were just talking about how fun that would be a few days prior to that.

I'm glad Dana and Chris made it out here. It definitely felt like the college days: coming back to the apartment, sitting around a table talking and playing games. Good times. We played many hands of Pinochle, which I hadn't played since my trip to Cleveland a year ago. The first couple days I played a bit too aggressively, but got better as the week went on. I pwned the last hand of each of the last two games we played, but that was purely due to being dealt a great hand. The first game I had all but 2 or 3 of the hearts and in the last game I got dealt a double Kings around! Chris and I called that last game a tie though, since we both made it over 150 and if Kings around was worth something more reasonable, like 16 points, I wouldn't have won.

One last note is we made good use of my GPS during their trip. So much so that we gave her the name Gina. I also discovered she can speak directions in Swedish, but I haven't come up with a good Swedish name yet.

Hopefully they can make it out here again when I can take a vacation day or two so that we can head down to SoCal.

Yosemite

Last weekend, on a whim, Dana, Chris, and I took a road trip to Yosemite National Park. We were originally planning to rent a cabin, but when Dana called Friday morning to make a reservation there weren't any vacancies. Not to be deterred we decided we'd just get a tent and camp outside. This turned out to be a bit of wishful thinking.

We arrived around 12:30 AM and drove around following signs to various campgrounds, but all of them had signs up saying the campground was full. After about an hour of this, we gave up and made our way back to the visitor's center at the park entrance and just slept in the car. Not the best night's sleep I've ever had, but hey, it was an adventure.

The next morning we checked the building where you can reserve a spot at the campground but were simply greeted with a sign listing all campgrounds as either full or closed. So with that in mind, we decided we'd just had home that night rather than trying to find a place to camp.

We spent the day hitting most of the major sites: El Capitan, Yosemite Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, Half Dome, and Glacier Point. Everything we saw was really spectacular. I posted a bunch of pictures on flickr. The pictures turned out well, but most of them don't even begin to give a good sense of the shear size of the mountains and falls.

Oh, and being the huge dorks that we are, we had to take time out after lunch to play Settlers. Good times.

If you haven't been to Yosemite, I definitely recommend you go at some point, but I highly suggest a bit of planning ahead of time (unless you really don't mind sleeping in the car).

SF Zoo and Muir Woods

On Memorial Day, I took a trip to the San Francisco Zoo and Muir Woods with Dana and Chris who are here for a visit on their CA vacation. This was my second trip to the zoo, but this time I had my camera! Pictures have been posted to Flickr.

There was a huge line to get into the zoo, but once inside it wasn't all that crowded. We got there kind of late in the day, 2:30, so the parking lot was full, but we got lucky and snagged a spot from someone leaving after only a couple minutes of driving around. The African Savannah area had been redone since the last time I was there. The penguin island was of course a big stop on our tour. I've got a cute video of a penguin waddling around on land and hopping up a step that I'll have to post at some point. Unfortunately, we missed the prairie dogs since the Children's Zoo closed at 4:30. However, we did just catch the koalas before their exhibit closed. And that yielded this photo that would have Japanese school girls yelling "Sugoi!" for minutes on end.

After the zoo, we headed to Muir Woods in Mill Valley (north of SF). This involved my first drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, which was pretty neat. Dana and Chris took some photos and videos that I'll post later. Not more than 10 minutes outside the city, we started our windy path through the mountains to Muir Woods. It was a really fun drive through lots of narrow, twisty roads.

Photos of the woods can be found here. Sadly, the pictures can't begin to capture the height of the redwood and sequoia trees we were surrounded by. It was a fun hike, and there were numerous paths we didn't get a chance to explore. I'll definitely be going back there.

Startup School 2006

Josh was out here this past weekend to attend Startup School. We went to a reception on Friday evening at the Y Combinator offices in Mountain View. Talked to quite a few interesting people there, including the founders of Reddit. Also saw a demo of a couple robots these two guys have been working on for the past 5 years. The one robot was self balancing, i.e. you could push it with quite a bit of force and it would roll/lean back and then return to its initial position. It also had a functional hand that could be controller with something similar to a PowerGlove connected to a computer. This capability was demonstrated by taking bottles out of people's hands. Pretty cool stuff.

Saturday was the actual "school" at Stanford. This was the first time I'd been to the Stanford campus and while I didn't really see very much of it, it seemed like a really nice campus. The stand out talks for me were Paul Graham, Tim O'Reilly, and Chris Sacca. I also enjoyed listening to a variety of founders of some pretty big websites including Joe Kraus (founder of Excite and JotSpot), Joshua Schachter (founder of del.icio.us), and Caterina Fake (co-founder of Flickr). Probably the most inspirational aspect of the day was at the very end when a bunch of the members of the Y Combinator Winter Founder's Program took the stage to answer questions. I recognized several of them from the Startup School in Boston, and there was just something very real and inspirational about seeing people that not more than a few months ago made the leap and actually made the whole startup thing a reality.

Needless to say, I left feeling quite inspired. I still don't see myself leaving my current job for a least a year or two, but the idea of doing a startup with a couple friends at some point in the future is growing ever more appealing.

Japan Trip Photos

Jeff and I got back from our two week Japan trip last Friday. What an amazing time. We're already hoping to go back in a year or so while Andrew, Dan, and Chris are all still over there.

Its taken a couple days, but I pared down my nearly 700 photos to just under 200 you can now view on my flickr (now pro) account.

I plan to do an iWeb site to describe the trip in more detail, but no promises on when that might get finished.

Startup School 2006

Got my acceptance email this morning for the 2006 Startup School. Yay! It's being held at Stanford, so there's no travel involved for me. Josh was also accepted and already bought his plane ticket out here. It'll be cool to hang out with Josh again and I'm looking forward to hearing PG speak again as well as Tim O'Reilly.

Urban Iditarod

Last Saturday I ran in the Urban Iditarod. The Iditarod is a dog sled race across Alaska and the Urban Iditarod is much the same...only it takes place over a rough, four mile stretch of urban streets in San Francisco with shopping carts full of beverages being pulled by people.

My co-worker, Mike, has run the past couple years and happened to mention it at lunch one day so a few of us decided to join his team, Christopher Walken's Dogs of War. I also invited my roommate Andrew along (seeing as he's a runner, and 3 year champion of the Beer Mile back at Case).

Aside from pictures of previous years, I wasn't sure what to expect. Andrew, Iroro, and I arrived around 11:45 and found the alley just behind the 5th and Mission garage where people were beginning to line up. The best cart of the early arrivals was without a doubt the pirates who also had a boom box blasting "Yo, ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!" along with a slew of 80's songs. Other interesting themes included the Ghostbusters (who walked down the street to much applause), Scooby Doo, and a cart done up as a hot dog stand.

The race itself was a lot of fun. Though it was probably a bad idea to let Andrew (who's run in the Boston Marathon) set the pace of the cart. Impressively, Iroro kept up with him the entire way. Mike and I kept pace for the first few legs, but after that we'd only make it about half a leg before dropping back and letting Andrew and Iroro runaway with the cart.

The race took just about an hour to complete, with four 5-10 minute pit stops along the way. The race ended at The Cannery, which is just outside Fort Mason. We hung out there for a while, and Mike got his picture taken with Frank Chu. It was quite a fun afternoon. You can fully expect Chritopher Walken's Dogs of War to return next year.

You can see all the pictures Andrew took of our team and the race here.

Buca Di Bepo

Ricci and I went to Buca Di Beppo for dinner tonight. I've been to one in Cleveland a couple times. People always tried to build it up as "oh, you get so much food for your money" and both times I was disappointed in that regard. So I was reluctant to go to the one out here, but I figured I'd give it a try.

Sadly, once again my expectations of large quantities of food were not met. We ordered the large baked pasta sampler which included stuffed shells, manicotti, and baked ravioli, and cannelloni. When we ordered the large the waitress asked if we were sure we wanted that size because it "feeds 5 or 6", but we said we were sure. We also ordered a small fettucini alfredo. The baked pasta sampler came out first and I was underwhelmed at the size. It looked like it would feed four people at most, but more likely three. The pasta came out and it was pretty sizable.

We ended up eating just over half the baked sampler and about half the fettucini. The bill came to $40 -- $26 for the sampler, $10 for the pasta. Not exactly a great value in my opinion. The food itself was pretty good, but nothing outstanding. I'm sure there are Italian restaurants in the area with better food, it's just a matter of finding them.

My restaurant recommendation if you're in The Pruneyard and want a lot of food for your money is without a doubt El Burro. Jeff and I have been there twice and both times the bill was around $20 and we had at least as much leftovers as I had tonight at Buca Di Bepo.

Snowboarding in Tahoe

I'm a bit slow in posting this, but a couple weekends ago I went snowboarding at Kirkwood up in Lake Tahoe. This was my first time snowboarding, and I had a blast.

Kirkwood offers a lesson package for $70 a day (including equipment), so I took advantage of that deal. The first day was pretty rough and involved a lot of spectacular crashes. The lesson took up the whole morning. We started on a very small hill and just practiced our stance and how to get on the heel edge and toe edge of the board. Then we took the ski lift up the bunny hill and traversed our way down, one diagonal path at a time. My balance was ok, but I wasn't anywhere near being able to make turns.

After meeting up with Jake and Rus for lunch, Jake joined me for another trip down the bunny hill. It was very slow going for me as I still hadn't quite gotten the hang of keeping my speed in check or turning, so I'd got a little way down the hill and then just drop on my ass. Towards the bottom of the hill I ended up getting myself into this nearly flat area by a fence. After a vain attempt at trying to skate myself the rest of the way, I was forced to totally unclip from my board and walk.

After this Jake convinced me I should try going down the blue hill because it was only a little steeper than the bunny hill. I reluctantly agreed. We were in the ski line next to rather cute girl and she overheard Jake and I talking and said it was her first time going down a blue hill as well. If it really was her first time, she was damn skilled. I made it about 20 ft down the hill before falling and the next thing I knew she was no longer in sight. Oh well. After a whole lot of falling and struggling to get back up, I eventually made it to the bottom, totally exhausted.

I fared much better on Sunday. I got the lesson package again since it was cheaper than a full lift ticket and rental. For the lesson we ended up going down the bunny hill twice, and by the second time I was getting really close to being able to link a turn. After lunch (and watching the end of the first half of the Steelers game) I headed out to the blue hill with Jake, Mike, and Mark. We took path none of us had been down before and it was a really nice run. I did the best I had done and even got my speed up in a few parts. By the time I got to the bottom though my legs were killing me because I spent most of the time scooting down on the heel edge as opposed to linking turns.

I sat out one run and then went up again with Jake. We went down the blue hill run we had done on Saturday and I did much better. I was feeling really good after that run, and immediately went up for another one. Unfortunately, I underestimated how tired I was at that point, which resulted in many falls on my last run.

After just two days of snowboarding though I feel like I've got the hang of it and should be able to pick up where I left off the next time we go.

I should also mention the enormous house we stayed in. The house is owned by a friend of Jake's, so we got a great deal on it. There were 15 people staying in the house, but it didn't feel crowded at all. The house had a full kitchen was was taken advantage of: eggs and pancakes for breakfast, and for dinner on Saturday Rus made some really tasty turkey chili.

The house also had a hot tub outside, which we made use of Friday night and Sunday night. Sitting in a hot tub while being surrounded by snow was pretty surreal. Just sitting back and looking at the stars was very relaxing.

Even though every bone and muscle in my body ached for a couple days, it was worth it. I'm definitely looking forward to taking another trip up there.

Henry's Hunan and Syriana

Since Jeff wasn't flying home until this morning, I went up to San Francisco again last night to hang out. We went to Henry's Hunan, which was recommended to me by Buzz. It has an overall rating of 9.0 on citysearch, but the user comments were pretty varied, ranging from "Greatest Hunan Cuisine in the USA" to "most dishes taste like Panda Express". Then there's my personal favorite: "Hot and sour soup lover's unite".

We ordered Hot and Sour soup and dumplings for an appetizer and Hunan Shrimp and Kung Pao Beef for our entrees. All of the food was really tasty, and there was plenty of it. We ordered a small bowl of soup ($4.50), but there was enough for us to each have two cups full. We also each had several helpings of the entree dishes and there was still plenty left over to take home. If you're in the SoMa area of the city and have a hankering for Chinese food, I highly recommend Henry's Hunan.

After eating we went back to the hotel to figure out what we wanted to do the rest of the night. We decided on going to see a movie, so while we downloaded several movie trailers we played several rounds of Mario Kart DS. After watching the trailers (Match Point, Syriana, and Munich), we decided on Syriana. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, but it was really complex and following all the characters and locations was pretty tough. There also wasn't much, if any, backstory on any of the characters, so as Jeff said, you just had to assume they were behaving logically.

Busy Weekend

Jeff's in town for MacWorld this week, but he flew in last Friday night so we could hang out for a few days. I picked him up at SFO Friday night and then we headed to El Burro at The Pruneyard in Campbell. That place gives you an insane amount of food for a great price. You can easily get two meals out of anything you order.

We didn't really have any plans for Saturday so after searching the web a bit we decided to go to the NASA Ames Exploration Center and the Intel Museum. We hit the NASA museum first, and it turned out there really wasn't a whole lot there. There were a few interesting models and some artifacts (like moon rocks), but the displays were pretty low budget and there wasn't much information about each of the exhibits. The main attraction probably would have been the "Immersive Theater", a joint venture by NASA and SGI, but to quote Jeff: "It looks like the theater is out of business, kind of like SGI will soon be." After chatting with the people working there briefly (and getting free blinking pins), we headed off to the Intel Museum.

The Intel Museum was pretty impressive, especially for being free. There was lots of information about the history of the company as well as the process of chip fabrication, and how CPUs work. A few interesting tidbits I learned about the company include the fact that Intel got its start making DRAM chips and it took the company only 10 years to reach 10,000 employees. Also, I hadn't realized before that Gordon Moore (Moore's Law) was a co-founder of Intel.

As for the technical side of things, I'm just blown away that the first Pentium 4 chip contained about 42 million transistors. That in and of itself is unfathomable, but as I said to Jeff, what makes it even more crazy is the fact that it is almost never the processor that is a failing component in a computer.

The museum had something that I think every computer science school in the country should have, a gigantic LED model of a CPU (control unit, alu, registers, etc). You could press buttons and it would show the flow of communication for fetching and storing data and performing calculations. Each of the units had their own unique and entertaining voice explaining what was going on. It was pretty neat. This page has a similar CPU model and example, but it's nowhere near as cool. And one last note is Jeff pointed out that it liked the everywhere on the Intel campus that we saw had already switched over to the new logo. That seemed impressive, given it was just unveiled last week.

After that we made a stop at the Sunnyvale Fry's since Jeff had never been to one. Fry's isn't really a store you can browse in (at least without spending several hours) because it's so overwhelming. We wandered around for a while, then headed off to get some Jamba Juice, a California tradition for Jeff and I.

Saturday night we went to Thai Delight for dinner with Andrew and Ricci and then went to Homstead Lanes to do some bowling. The crowd at bowling alley was really young (families, and groups of middle school and high school kids). I didn't do as well as I normally do, getting somewhere in the 80's the first game. I probably would have gotten over 100 the second game (I was over 80 in the 7th frame), but our 1 hour time limit ran out before we could finish. After that we went over to Ricci's to play some video games (Mario Party and Worms) and poker.

Continuing the tour of local restaurants, Jeff and I went to Yiasso for lunch on Sunday. Yiasso has excellent gyros. After that we headed down to Monterey to go to the aquarium. The aquarium was really impressive (it took about 3 hours to go through the whole thing). The highlight was getting to see the penguins be fed. The one disappointment was that the sea otter exhibit was closed. I posted some photos on flickr. Oh, and of course Jeff and I were quoting Sealab 2021 throughout the entire visit (mainly the Happy Cake Oven and Feng Shui episodes).

After we were done at the aquarium we drove around the area a bit to see if we could find any restaurants that looked good. We didn't really see anything, and weren't really all that hungry so we told the GPS to take us home. Amusingly at the time we were near the military base in Monterey, and on a one way street that was going in the opposite direction that we wanted to go. So the GPS happily started routing us on the road through the military base, which seemed like a bad idea. I followed it's instructions for a bit, but once it said "go 0.5 miles then turn SHARP right" and at that same time we saw an "authorized vehicles only" sign, I decided it would be best to turn around and the wait for the GPS to figure out a different route.

So that was my fun filled weekend. It was good catching up with Jeff again and he filled me in on the happenings with our Cleveland friends. He's working at the iWork booth all week, so I'll see him at the show when I go up on Wednesday, and we're planning to hang out in the city on Friday night. If anyone knows of anything exciting going on up there Friday night, let me know.

Welcome to the New Year

It's been quiet on here for a while, but don't worry I made it to the New Year just fine. A majority of my spare time the last few days has been spent writing up my Music of 2005 for my music blog.

A bit of what I've been up to the past month. I flew back home to PA for Christmas break. It was nice getting to spend some time with my family again. Here's a picture of our Christmas tree. I was fairly busy while I was home and didn't spend much time at the computer. I didn't see anyone from high school while I was home, but I did see a few family friends. One of the best parts of being home was all the great food. We did the whole turkey dinner thing on Christmas Day and on Thursday that week we had a New Year's Dinner (pork and sauerkraut), since I wouldn't actually be there on New Year's Day.

And now since Mike and Meri did it, I'm going to post what I got for Christmas.

Video Games

• Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS)
• Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time (DS)
• Trauma Center: Under the Knife (DS)
• Kirby's Canvas Curse (DS)
• Resident Evil 4

Books

• Watching Football by Darryl "Moose" Johnston
• The Physics of Football by Timothy Gay, Ph.D.
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street

DVDs

• Scrubs Season 2
• The Simspons Season 6
• The Simpsons Season 7

Clothes

• hi i make macintosh software t-shirt
• new shoes
• 2 pairs of cargo pants
• track jacket

Misc

• Set card game
• Picaresque by The Decemberists
• America: The Calendar

I'll probably do a bit more of a write up the video games when I get a chance to actually play them

As for New Year's Eve, I got up 7:15 AM Eastern to catch my plane in Maryland (I was at my uncle's house). I got back to CA around 3 in the afternoon. Ricci picked me up at the airport and we grabbed some food at IHOP. Then when we got over to Apple to pick up my car, I realized I had left one of my bags on the baggage carousel at the airport. D'oh. What happened was when I flew home, I only had my suitcase, but on the way back I had my suitcase and a duffle bag. But it took forever for our bags to start coming out of the baggage chute, that I totally forgot I had two bags. Oh well. I went back to the airport and it was sitting by the Southwest customer service with about 20 other bags. After coming home and unpacking and relaxing for a while, Andrew, Ricci, and I went to BJs for dinner and then headed up to Dave and Buster's (as is becoming tradition). I was really excited to find out D&B's now has air hockey. They also have a trivia game that's pretty fun. We played various video games until midnight, then we went over to the bar area to watch the ball drop. As we were walking through the bar area, I saw a table with 3 rather cute girls, and I suggested to Andrew and Ricci that we go stand by them, but of course we didn't.

After the ball dropped we went over to check on the air hockey tables, and one freed up just as we got there. I ended up winning all 4 games I played, including one shut out. Go me! As we were playing, we noticed some people watching us, and it turned out to be the three girls from the bar. We let them use the table and talked a little and then another couple came and used the table. In the mean time, some random guy had come up and started hitting on one of the girls (though she didn't seem too interested in him). Eventually he got her to play him in a game of air hockey. While that was going on, I told Andrew I'd got check on where we were in line for pool. Fortunately Andrew took my subtle hint, because when I got back to say we had a table, he and Ricci had asked the girls to join us and they did. So we played pool with them (Jamie, Laura, and Emily) from about 12:30 until 2 am when they closed. They all go to school at Chico state, so I don't think we'll be seeing them again any time soon, but they were fun to hang out with.

So that's a bit of what I've been up to lately. And things stay pretty busy for the next month or so. Jeff flies in tomorrow and will be here all of next week for MacWorld, so it will be good to hang out with him again. Then in a couple weeks I'm taking my first trip to Tahoe with a co-worker and learning to snowboard. Then mid-February my aunt and uncle will be in town for several (my uncle has a training class to go to, but that's only during the weekdays). We're already planning to go to the winery I went to with Candice, because they really liked the wine she brought back for them. Busy, busy me.

Thanksgiving Break

I spent my Thanksgiving break hanging out with my cousin Candice, who flew out here from Maryland to visit this past week. On Tuesday we did all the necessary shopping for Thanksgiving dinner and then went to see Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire with Andrew and Ricci. I really enjoyed the movie (and it was my favorite of the books), but even though it clocked in at 2 and half hours, I still thought it felt rushed in a lot of parts. After the movie we went to Chevys since it was right by the theater. I had never been there before. The food was pretty good and I had quite a large strawberry margarita which was tasty.

On Wednesday Candice and I headed up to San Francisco to take a tour of Alcatraz after stopping at Pier 39 for a quick bite to eat. The tour of the prison itself was a self guided audio tour (about 30 minutes) and was fairly well done. And of course you were free to pause the recording and wander around and take pictures. In addition to the audio tour there was a short video talking about some of the history of the island and the prison. If you're ever touring San Francisco, I'd recommend checking out the Alcatraz tour, it's a nice way to spend a couple hours. After the tour, Candice picked up a few gifts at some of the shops at Pier 39. Then after getting back to the car she said she wanted to see Lombard Street which was right nearby. After driving in circles a bit we made it to Lombard Street and I drove down while Candice took pictures. It was a great view and a fun drive.

Thursday of course was Thanksgiving and Candice took over cooking pretty much all the food. She cooked up a fine meal with the traditional turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, veggies with cheese and saltine crackers, and a pumpkin and apple pie for dessert. It was all delicious. Ricci joined us for dinner and provided the wine. The one thing missing from the meal was Cope's Dried Corn, which is apparently only available is small areas of the east coast. But my grandmother has promised she'll have some for us at Christmas. After dinner we played a few hands of Rummikub, another tradition for the Marr and Shaw families. Later that night we started watching the new Charlie in the Chocolate Factory which I had gotten from NetFlix and had high hopes for. Sadly we were bored by the time they made it to the factory, so we ended up turning it off. I did like the visual style of the film, but that was about it. If you've seen it and can tell me that it does get better, please let me know. Otherwise I recommend staying away from this movie.

Friday morning Andrew and Candice got up at 4 am to go shopping. After they got back and each took a long nap, we headed out to run a few more errands and then picked up Ricci to go wine tasting. We went to the Picchetti Winery, which is just up the Santa Cruz Mountains in Cupertino. I'm not much of a wine drinker, but I've been wanting to go wine tasting out here for a while (yes, even before seeing Sideways). The wines we tasted were Viognier, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Sangiovese (I think), and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Viognier was definitely my favorite of the wines (in my limited experience with wine, I do tend to prefer white wine). I also really enjoyed the Pinot Noir. The Cabernet was too dry for my liking, but I can see maybe getting used to it.

I'm really glad Candice could come out and visit and it worked out really well that I ended up having the whole week off of work. And now I still have a couple days left to just relax.

Startup School

I've got about an hour to kill in the Boston airport before my flight home. Unfortunately WiFi costs $8 a day, which isn't completely unreasonable but I'm cheap so I'm typing this entry now and I'll post it when I get home.

This was the first time I'd spent any significant amount of time in Boston (I spent half a day visiting MIT back during high school). Overall I really like the city. It's got good public transportation that can get you pretty much anywhere you need to go. Also, since there are so many colleges around you see lots of people my age around. If I weren't in California, there's a good chance I'd be up here in Boston.

Unfortunately, when from the time I arrived in Boston on Friday night until late on Saturday night it did nothing but rain...hard. Apparently it had been raining for 7 straight days. Crazy. So I spent Friday night and all of Saturday soaking wet, but Sunday and today have been really nice (if a bit windy).

Friday night
Both Jeff's and Josh's planes got delayed due to the heavy rain in Boston. This meant Jeff ended up arriving very shortly before I did, instead of 2 hours before. We called the hotel to have them send the free shuttle and met Josh back at the hotel. After dropping off our stuff we headed to the reception at the Y Combinator offices. We took the hotel shuttle to the T (Boston's subway) and got off at the Harvard Square stop. We had directions for walking to the reception, but the roads around Harvard Square are horribly confusing. We walked in the direction we thought was north and then stopped in a bookstore to ask for directions to Garden Street. After heading in what we thought was the right direction, we passed a van with "free medical services", after walking a bit more we passed the same van again, doh! Finally we figured out where we went wrong and made it onto Garden Street, where we began the 1 mile trek to the reception. Keep in mind it was absolutely pouring this entire time so it was a mixture of walking fast and avoiding large puddles.

After arriving we had some food and talked to several interesting people. We met the guy that runs LibraryThing as well as someone from the company which licensed the browser which would become Internet Explorer to Microsoft.

Around 11 we made the journey back to the subway and were joined by a fellow StartupSchooler from Seattle that works on Ning which is software for building social software (Marc Andreessen is the CEO so it's been getting a good bit of publicity recently).

Saturday
Saturday was the official Startup School. The speakers were all really good and provided lots of useful information. The most amusing slide of the day goes to Olin Shivers for his slide which said "VCs: soulless agents of Satan or just clumsy rapists?". Slides from the various speakers are available here and videos will be posted later in the week.

After the final speaker a bunch of us headed to John Harvard's Brew House. The staff were a bit overwhelmed as we all poured in, but they eventually found and set up several tables for us. After dinner a local StartupSchooler led us over to Algiers Coffee House. Again we kind of overwhelmed the staff, but we pulled a bunch of tables together and a small group of people left to go to a bar. We had several hours of excellent conversation discussing the day's speakers and tossing around various ideas for startups. All in all a great night.

After that Jeff and I headed out on what prove to be the most entertaining subway ride evar. The red line passes through Harvard, MIT, and UMass, so you end up seeing a wide array of people as you progress. After a couple stops, a bunch of drunk UMass students got on the bus and they were joined by this crazy older guy that made balloon animals. A few stops later this older Asian guy got on the bus and the college kids yell "Hey it's that guy again!" And the Asian guy gets up and goes and sits with them. In the meantime I had noticed this woman who had gotten on and looked incredibly pissed off. Eventually her cell phone rang and Jeff and I soon found out why she was so pissed. Apparently some guy she had gone to dinner with ditched her on the subway! Jeff and I were nearly cracking up at this as we picture some guy getting on the subway with her and then jumping off just as the doors close. The situation was also complicated by the fact that apparently this woman was staying at a hotel and she kept telling whoever she was talking to that "I"m going back to get my shit. And then I'm taking Amtrak to get my car. Don't come and get me". Strange stuff. The trip ended as only it could. We got off the subway and some guy was standing in the subway door deciding if this was the train he wanted to get on or not and then in an absolutely perfect Boston accent the conductor yells, "Hey, what are ya doin'?! The doors are closing." Needless to say I consider the $1.25 for that ride purely an entertainment fee.

Sunday
At noon on Sunday we met up with Amy Chan who Josh is good friends with. She went to Case, so Jeff and I both knew who she was. We went to this Middle Eastern restaurant. The food was quite good and you got a good bit of food for the price. I had the lamb kabobs. The other interesting thing about the restaurant was they were playing OK Go's new CD. Amy had been there a few times before and said they are always playing indie music. If I lived up here, I can guarantee I'd be going to that place often.

After lunch Jeff, Josh, and I headed downtown to catch a Duck Tour. The Duck Tour was fun, but unfortunately due to very high winds (apparently up to 30 mph) we did not get to go on the Charles River. We did get half our money back though.

After going back to the hotel to rest for a while, we went out to Legal Sea Foods near MIT for dinner. I highly recommend this restaurant. The food was excellent. I had a Surf and Turf meal which consisted of a tender filet mignon, grilled shrimp, scallops, mashed potatoes, and broccoli with cheese as well as a cup of clam chowder for an appetizer. It was all incredibly delicious. They had a good dessert menu, but I was too full to want anything.

Monday
After getting up and checking out of our hotel, we headed to Faneuil Hall to get some clam chowda in a bread bowl. After that it was time for me to head back to the hotel to catch the shuttle to the airport.

I had a really fun time on the trip. It was great to see Jeff and Josh again, and I picked up lots of good info and contacts related to startups. The trip definitely motivated me to begin brainstorming software ideas and seriously consider founding a company someday.

Startup School

Next weekend I'm flying to Boston to attend Startup School along with Jeff and Josh. I'm really looking forward to it. It's being run by Paul Graham, whose essays I've really enjoyed reading over the last couple years. Also among the amazing list of speakers is Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer.

The school is on Saturday, so we'll have all day Sunday to tour the city. We're planning on taking one of the Duck Tours and I'll most definitely be eating lots of clam chowder. Anyone else been to Boston and have suggestions for things we ought to do?

iLap

I'm thinking about getting the iLap for use with my 12" Powerbook. The reviews I've found are all positive. Anyone out there used this or any other kind of laptop stand?

Geeky Books

Just placed an order on Bookpool for a few geeky books:

• Hacking Mac OS X Tiger by Scott Knaster
• Agile Web Development with Rails by Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson
• The Best Software Writing I Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky

I'll definitely be posting here after I get them to let you know how they all are.

Recent Reading

I just finished reading a couple books I got for my birthday. First was Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. After finally reading all of the Harry Potter books last summer and enjoying them, I was definitely looking forward to this one. The Half Blood Prince was certainly an enjoyable read and I'm anxious to see how the story all wraps up. I still say that my favorite of the Harry Potter books is number 4, The Goblet of Fire. So, needless to say I'll be seeing the movie when it comes out this fall.

The other book I got was Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt (economist) and Stephen J. Dubner (New York Times journalist). I absolutely loved it and recommend it to everyone. The book covers a wide variety of topics from the similarities between teachers and sumo wrestlers to the real cause of the nationwide crime drop of the 90s. Though the authors say right from the beginning that it has "no unifying theme", I would argue that the theme is looking at conventional wisdom, and finding out where it's conventional simply because it's "simple, convenient, comfortable and comforting, though not necessarily true".

Perhaps the best part of the book is that is simply looks at hard data and lets the numbers do the talking. It eschews trying to force the data to be politically correct or fit into some moral standard and instead looks at what the data is telling us (though you aren't going to be learning the ins and outs of regression analysis from this book). They say it best in the epilogue when describing what you might get out of this style of thinking:

Will the ability to think such thoughts improve your life materially? Probably not.
...
You might become more skeptical of the conventional wisdom; you may begin looking for hints as to how things aren't quite what they seem; perhaps you will seek out some trove of data and sift through it, balancing your intelligence and your intuition to arrive at a glimmering new idea. Some of these ideas might make you uncomfortable, even unpopular. To claim that legalized abortion resulted in a massive drop in crime will inevitably lead to explosive moral reactions. But the fact of the matter is that Freakonomics-style thinking simply doesn't traffic in morality. As we suggested in the beginning of this book, if morality represents an ideal world, then economics represents the actual world.

I definitely intend to read some of Levitt's papers and other material referenced in the book. And as I said, I highly recommend this book to everyone, so if you want to borrow it from me, just let me know.

Getting Buff

I finally got my ass to the fitness center today! Ever since I moved in here, I've been wanting to take advantage of the fitness center, but haven't been motivated enough to get myself to start going. I've never really done much in terms of consistently working out. For a period of a few months my senior year of college Jeff, Angie, and I went to the fitness center in Veale. But with our class schedules being different everyday, and not always having a mutually suitable time to go to the gym, we didn't last too long.

I had been telling people while I was home this past week that I was definitely going to start going to the gym when I got back to CA. Of course, I was too tired Monday due to being up at 4 AM to catch my flight back here, and then I was tired on Tuesday after having to get up early for an early meeting at work and still being a bit jet lagged. So things weren't looking good.

Fortunately just as I got home today, Andrew said he was heading over to the gym in our apartment complex, so I said I'd join him. This spur of the moment decision was just what I needed to overcome the inertia of just coming home, getting food, and plopping down in front of the TV/computer. Now I just have to get in the habit of going at least every other day, if not every day. But now that I finally got there once, it should be easier to go back.

Then at some point here, I want to start playing racquetball occasionally. Looks like I can play at the Cupertion Sports Center for $7 a day. Not too bad if I only plan to play a couple times a month. Anyone else interested in playing?

One Year Later

One year ago today I began working at Apple. w00t! Oddly enough though right now I'm back home in PA on vacation.

I can't imagine being any happier with my work life. Apple is a great place to work, and the Soundtrack Pro team is an awesome group of people. It's certainly been a lot of hard work over the past year, but when you finally get to go out and show off your product and find out that people love it, all the hard work is worth it.

And stealing from Josh's post on his one year anniversary at IBM a passage from Paul Graham's Hacker's and Painters (highly recommended to everyone, even non geeks):

'Many people feel confused and depressed in their early twenties. Life seemed so much more fun in college. Well, of course it was. Don't be fooled by the surface similarities. You've gone from guest to servant. It's possible to have fun in this new world. Among other things, you now get to go behind the doors that say "authorized personnel only." But the change is a shock at first, and all the worse if you're not consciously aware of it.'

Do I miss college? Sure, though much more-so the people than the classes. And that's not to say that I am not having a great time living in CA. Things are just different.

Tour de Weekend

My friend Jeff is in Cupertino this week for some work stuff and fortunately he was able to fly out here on Friday so we got to hang out over the weekend. I picked him up at the San Francisco airport Friday night and then drove to the Daly City BART station. On Andy's recommendation we went to a Chinese restaurant called Firecracker in The Mission. We ordered two plates to share between us, 5 spice duck and "Phoenix and Dragon" (chicken and shrimp). The food was really good and well priced. It was one of those small restaurants that you might walk pass and never think to go in, so thanks to Andy for the recommendation. After that we came back to the apartment and scanned through the HD channels. We saw a show in the channel guide called Tour de Gorge which we decided to check out, expecting it to be a bike race of some kind. However upon changing the channel we were greeted by an announcer saying "The following will be a 12 minute meatball eating competition". Yes that's right, a meatball eating competition...in High Definition. The winner ended up being this tiny Asian woman, and second place was a fairly old white guy. I think the winner ate around 80+ meatballs. Now that's entertainment...or something.

On Saturday, I took Jeff over to the "Dogbone" and showed him my office as well as a video Mike and I made the previous week. We ate lunch ate B.J's and then played some Katamari at the apartment for a bit. After Andrew got back from his race, the three of us headed up to the Computer History Museum , which I've been wanting to visit for some time. We got there just as the last tour of the day was starting. There was a lot of interesting stuff there. There was an Apple laptop donated by John Scully that was red, white, blue and yellow...we guess he had his own custom laptop made for him. Having fairly recently read Cryptonomicon, it was interesting to an Enigma machine and the largest surviving piece of a Colossus machine. I also enjoyed learning how the original "core memory" worked by inducing a magnetic field on a horizontal row and vertical column to intersect a particular core then using a zig zag pattern that went through all of the cores to determine whether the value of the core was changed. And something that I had sort of always vaguely known, but not really thought much about was the fact that all of the advancement in early computers were driven by government/military needs.

Saturday night Jeff and I went to Santana Row and saw Howl's Moving Castle which was another great Miyazaki film (My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away). The movie was quite enjoyable and had several really fun characters. There were some parts of the plot that didn't quite make sense to me, but the animation and characters were so well done that it didn't matter. Miyazaki has to be one of the very best at creating fun, fantastical worlds. As Jeff pointed out after the movie, it's been a long time since either of us has seen a film that had people laughing and giggling throughout it. I highly recommend you go see this movie.

After the movie it was time to get some food, and Jeff suggested Mexican. I haven't been to many Mexican restaurants around here, but I did remember going to one in the Pruneyard in Campbell a month or so ago. That's where the GPS came in. I just searched locations for Pruneyard and then hit "go to" and it got us there flawlessly. The restaurant I was thinking of was El Burro. After being seated and getting our huge menus (which should have been a sign) we indulged in the tasty chips and salsa and placed our orders. Then after our salads, our food came out. Now as I said, I had been to this place before, but I didn't remember getting such an immense amount of food. The plates themselves were huge and just piled up with food. I only managed to eat the rice, some of the beans, and one of the three items from my combo. I took the rest home for lunch the next day. The best part was the total bill for both of us was just under $20. I definitely plan to visit El Burro more often as I can enough food for two good meals for under $10.

Sunday started off with "El Burro round 2" before Ricci picked Andrew, Jeff, and I up for a geocaching expedition. The first cache we went to was in a residential area in front of this older couple's house. After finding the cache, we talked to the couple for a good while before heading off to our second cache. The second cache was one we had attempted and failed to find the week before. This week Andrew decided to go down the hill and search around by the creek. We looked for quite a while and still couldn't find it. Then I went down by the creek too look, and then Andrew came down for a second pass. Then we hear Ricci say "This cache has a ball in it" and look up to see him hold the cache. It was in the nook of a tree on the hill Andrew and I had walked down to get to the creek. I'm pretty sure Ricci only found it because he accidently stepped in the nook as he was trying to come down the hill. We found the next cache on our list and then stopped for some delicious Jamba Juice. Refreshed, we found our 4th cache of the day which involved some failed attempts at pullups and chin ups by everyone but Andrew and then going on a trail in a park that was "closed to the public".

Finally, we arrived at the location of our 5th cache, a micro, on a bridge along Steven's Creek Blvd by the Blue Pheasant restaurant. The GPS couldn't seem to get a good fix, but we knew it had to be on the bridge. We looked for probably a good 20 minutes and couldn't find it. We started to leave and Ricci asked Andrew if he had given us all the clues. Andrew looked at the paper and then saw that he had written down "4X" as a clue. He had mentioned this after we had found the previous cache but we had no idea what it meant and then forgot about it by the time we reached the cache it was for. So we ran back to the bridge and I said "hey, the beams along the bridge are making X's", so I counted in 4 X's and we started looking on either side of the bridge. We looked for a bit and still didn't see it, then I noticed what looked like a small bolt, but didn't see it on any other parts of the bridge. Sure enough, that was it. I posted a couple pictures on my flickr account of the cache. It was definitely the smallest one we've found to date, and also one of the best hidden ones. Finding that cache meant we went 5/5 on the day, and made it our first 100% find rate in quite a few trips.

After geocaching, we stopped back at the apartment to get cleaned up and then headed to Dave and Buster's at the Great Mall in Milpitas. They currently have a deal where on Sunday - Thursday you can get dinner and a $10 game card for $13.99. I had Jack Daniel's BBQ Chicken which was actually pretty good. Jeff had his Derby Owner's Club card with him, so he did a race with his horse Peabody. I played a good bit of Skee Ball, and thanks to the game where you drop tokens to knock other tokens off got enough tickets to get a nice Dave and Buster's glass, while Ricci and Andrew opted to get 3 shot glasses each. I had wanted to play DDR, but they only had some generic version and the arrows were on the diagonals, rather than up, down, left, and right so that would have just confused me.

So that was my weekend, and it was quite a fun one. I'm glad Jeff was able to fly out here on Friday...now if only Apple would see fit to transfer his team out here.

Fun Weekend

This weekend I had a chance to hang out with Dan who was one of my best friends in high school. He had told me he was taking a trip across the country, so we had been planning to get together once he made it out here. He got here around 1 on Saturday afternoon. After the quick tour of the apartment we went to BJs for lunch to catch up since he haven't really kept in touch and then I showed him the Apple campus, took him over to my office, and showed off Soundtrack Pro.

After lunch, we went geocaching with Andrew and Ricci. This is the third weekend in a row I've been geocaching, though this ended up being the least successful one. The first coordinates we went to put us in a residential area, so we think we may have typed the coordinates in wrong. The second one we went to we found the area it was in along this walkway, but after looking for quite some time, we finally had to give up. Fortunately we had success at the next cache (in a park at the west end of Stevens Creek Blvd) we went to. Dan actually found the cache so that was cool since it was his first time geocaching. The cache along the walkway was the first one where we've actually found the general area of the cache and not successfully found it. We need to check the clue on geocaching.com and go back there.

After the geocaching, we stopped by Jamba Juice because Ricci had a bunch of free coupons. Then we went over to Ricci's to play Settlers of Catan and some video games. We also watched The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou which I had gotten from NetFlix. It was pretty good, but I also thought it was pretty slow in some parts. I gave it 3 stars, though it's rating average rating is 4.5. Maybe I missed something about it. As far as Wes Anderson movies go though, I definitely like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums a lot better than The Life Aquatic.

On Sunday Dan and I went up to San Francisco. We didn't have any specific plans, so we parked at the Daly City BART station and took the train to 24th and Mission. We walked around a little while and Dan got some coffee at a place called Muddy Water. We passed a bunch of people dressed in costumes ranging from brides to pirates to Elvis. I later found out these were people running the Bay to Breakers race.

I suggested going to Golden Gate Park because I hadn't been there yet and I've been wanting to see the Japanese tea garden. After looking at a map at a Muni stop, we decided we'd walk a ways to the 'N' stop which looked like it would take us pretty close to the park. After getting to the park we then attempted to find the tea garden. We started walking in the direction we thought it was, and ran into this group of guys (they sounded British) and they asked if we knew how to get to the tea gardens. We said no, but that's where we were trying to get as well. We walked a ways and eventually found a map and started looking at it when another group of people came up and said they were also looking for the tea gardens. I said just finding the tea gardens was going to be a fulfilling experience. After determining the map was oriented upside down (north was at the bottom) we figured out which way to go. We walked a bit further and came across another, this time correctly oriented, map and verified we were going the right way. Along the way we passed this car that looked like a piranha. Then eventually we got to the tea gardens.

After getting to the entrance, we realized it cost $3.50 to go in. I said "That doesn't seem very zen." Of course I really didn't mind paying. It was a really cool place. There were a lot of really neat plants and flowers and lots of water. It would be a great place to just sit and read all afternoon. I had my camera with me and took some good pictures. This really just made me want to go to Japan all the more.

Next we made our way to the Golden Gate bridge. Unfortunately it was incredibly foggy and you could only see a few feet of it before it disappeared into the fog. We did walk partway across the bridge and then back, just to say we'd been on it. We took the Muni back through the city by way of Fisherman's Wharf and Chinatown and eventually got off near Market Street. I decided I wanted to look for the Apple store since I hadn't been there yet and I was curious if they might have the Final Cut Studio and/or Soundtrack Pro boxes yet. We were standing on a street corner waiting to cross and then just as we did, I looked up and realized the Apple store was right there in front of us. Unfortunately, it was about 7:00 and it had closed at 6:00. In the minute or two we were by the store I was amazed at the number of people coming up to the store only to find out it was closed. Finally, we crossed Market and listened to a Funk street band for a few minute before getting back on the BART.

It was a really fun weekend and it was good seeing Dan since I haven't seen him in a couple years.

And the record begins with a song of rebellion

Sweet, just read that Say Anything are going to be playing the San Francisco date with The Get Up Kids in June. I saw them open for Straylight Run last fall, but that was before I really had a chance to listen to their album. Is a Real Boy is a really fun album, so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing them again and being able to sing along.

Fiesta Lime Chicken

Fiesta Lime Chicken is yummy and delcious. It's by far my favorite meal at an Applebee's/TGIFriday's/Chilis type of restaurant.

Ricci called up after work today to see if Andrew and I wanted to go out to eat. Andrew had already eaten, but I had just gotten home so Ricci and I went out. My first suggestion was IHOP since it's right across the street, but Ricci wasn't up for breakfast food. Our next potential stop was Chipotle and I said how I like the lime flavored rice. Then that reminded me that I had recently saw an ad for Applebee's and really wanted Fiesta Lime Chicken.

Ricci thought he had seen an Applebee's from the highway, so we got on the highway and looked for it, but didn't see it by the time we had gotten to Winchester Blvd. So we got off and I called Andrew to look up where the closest one was. In the meantime Ricci and I got back on the highway and just as Andrew was telling me there's an Applebee's on Saratoga we saw it. Clearly, I should not have doubted Ricci's ability to see a restaurant from the highway. After we got inside I saw they had a special shrimp and steak dinner which was very tempting, but I decided I had come for the Fiesta Lime Chicken, so that's what I got.

A big part of the goodness of the Fiesta Lime Chicken is in the small, colored, wavy tortilla pieces that come with it. Unfortunately, when our plates came out they were pretty skimpy with the tortillas, so when the waitress came back Ricci said "So this usually comes with more tortillas" and the waitress brought us back a good sized bowl of the tortiallas. w00t.

On a side note it was slightly amusing that one of the ads during the basketball game they were showing was for Chilis.

Long Month

Wow, so all of April went by without a single post from me on this site. First time I've had a whole month go by without a single post. I was insanely busy at work all of March and April and made two trips (Cleveland and Las Vegas). I managed to make it to a couple concerts as well. I'll definitely be posting more on all of these things in the near future.

But for now I've spent the last couple nights doing some work on the site, prompted by a post made by Josh. I've started to revamp the sidebar, although there's still some things I want to change about it. I removed the Recent Entries as they didn't serve a lot of purpose since they are all on the main page and my posts aren't insanely long. I also moved the Monthly Archive links to an Archives page since that too was just eating up space without a whole lot of usefulness. In the same style as Jeff I added a Navigation section to the sidebar. This gives quick access if you do want to browse through the monthly archives or the categories. The Navigation section also points to the newly created About Me and Contact Info. pages. The last thing I added to the sidebar is a Music Recommendations section. I plan to update this every few weeks as I come across new albums and "songs of the moment". The album links point to the iTunes Music Store if it's available there while the song link either points to the ITMS or PureVolume if the song is available there for free. The artist link points to that artist's homepage.

Other small changes I've made include making links blue and visited links gray. Before all links were a light gray which was unnecessarily difficult to see on the white background, so changing them to blue made links stand out more without them needing to be underlined. Visited links are now gray, but a gray that is a bit darker and easier to read. I also revamped the "Posted..." tag that appears at the bottom of each post. Previously clicking on the time took you to the permanent link which was rather non-intuitive so I pulled the Permanent Link out explicitly. I also added a link to the category archive the post is from, so if a particular post piques your interest it's easy to get to similar posts. Finally I added a link to the official Disclaimer for the site.

I've been keeping a list of changes I've made and changes I plan to make using OmniOutliner. Jeff has been telling me about the wonderfulness that is OmniOutliner for quite some time, but I had never really used it. But now I have finally seen how great this app is and have been using it for quite a few various lists lately. And now Ricci points out to me that you can make different column types like pop up lists, dates, durations, and the standard checkboxes. Cool!

Concert Backlog

While I'm writing about concerts, I figured I'd mention a few I went to Jan. and Feb. but never got around to writing about.

Back in January, Nick, Eric, and I went to see Ben Gibbard, Mark Kozelek, and Eric Bachmann (oh and one other person whose name I forget) for a Tsunami Relief Show. Ben was excellent as always. He played a mix of Death Cab, Postal Service, and some covers. From a list I made after the show:

Photobooth
Title and Registration
Brand New Colony
Such Great Heights
Recycled Air
Movie Script Ending
I Was a Kaleidoscope
A Lack of Color
405

3 covers

Nick and I bought posters, and after the show Nick got them signed by Ben, Mark, and Eric. I had taken BART, and the show didn't end 1:00, so unfortunately I couldn't hang around after the show.

In mid February, the three of us went to see Interpol at The Warfield. The opening band was ok. Their music was darker sounding and they fit well as an opener for Interpol. The music itself was good and they had both a male and female vocalist, but the female was painful to listen to and unfortunately she did most of the singing. Interpol's set was quite good. This was actually the second time I'd seen them live as they played at the BFD show I went to the summer I interned at Apple. However, I hadn't heard any of their music before the first time I saw them, so this second show was much more enjoyable. Also, their bassist is super cool. He looked completely bad ass wearing a white shirt, black pants, suspenders, boots, and a gun holster.

Also in February, Eric and I went to see Something Corporate and Straylight Run at The Fillmore. The Academy Is and Armor For Sleep opened. I knew a couple of Armor For Sleep's songs, but still haven't really gotten into their new album.

Straylight played a fairly short set:

The Tension and the Terror
Dignity and Money
Tool Sheds and Hot Tubs
Existentialism on Prom Night
Mistakes We Knew We Were Making
Another Word For Desperate
For the Best

Their set was pretty good, but I wish they could have played longer.

Finally, Something Corporate came out and pretty well rocked the house as usual. They are definitely one of my favorite bands to see live. They played a pretty long set, and as best as I can remember the songs included:

Cavanaugh Park
I Woke Up in a Car
Straw Dog ("old favorite" as Andrew said before playing it)
Space
As You Sleep
Down
Only Ashes
Me and the Moon
21 and Invincible
Watch the Sky
Punk Rock Princess
If You See Jordan
I Want to Save You (Piano only)
Konstantine
Hurricane

I was really glad they didn't end with If You See Jordan and enjoyed hearing Watch the Sky live. The piano only version of I Want to Save You was really beautiful and Konstantine (which seems to have a new verse or two every time they play it live) was excellent as well.

That's a quick recap (though admittedly not very in depth) of attended concerts. Upcoming shows include New Found Glory/Reggie and the Full Effect, Snow Patrol, The Get Up Kids, and possibly Jimmy Eat World/Taking Back Sunday. And I'm anxiously awaiting a tour by Brand New.

iPod in my Civic

Last week I ordered the PIE HON98-AUX and I installed it in my 2004 Honda Civic Saturday afternoon. I originally learned about this accessory from this blog that details installing it in a 2001 Civic. I later found this page with photos of a 2004 Civic install. I ended up using those pictures as guidance, and didn't need to take the head unit out as the instructions for the 2001 Civic described. The entire installation took about an hour and a half. Getting the center console apart was pretty easy. The hard part was finding the right angle to fit my hand up behind the head unit, finding the port I needed to plug the cable into, and then finally getting my hand and the cable up there such that I could actually plug it in. I really thought I was going to end up taking the head unit out, but finally I able to get the cable plugged in.

After the install, I went for a quick drive to give it a listen and everything sounded good. I got clear sound both having the iPod plugged into my firewire cigarette adapter and just running off the iPod battery. I had read quite a few comments on various message boards about people getting static in various situations, but my setup seems pretty static free and sounds great. Now I just need to order the combined USB/Firewire cigarette adapter so I can have either my 3rd Generation iPod or iPod shuffle plugged in.

I took a few pictures of the installation process, and used this as an excuse to finally set up a flickr account. Perhaps this will inspire me to use my camera a bit more. Also, I used Flickr Export to upload directly from iPhoto to Flickr, pretty spiffy.

My Legacy Lives On

Hey, I'm pseudo-famous! Thanks to Phil for pointing out my picture on the Case Engineering Home Page. Or if the image happens to change, it's here and a picture of Phil which shows up in the top right is here. I may not be a current student, but as Phil said: "at least it shows actual Case students, rather than stock photos". And it's good to see the day they spent taking pictures in Lego Lab last spring was not a complete waste.

Christmas Gifts

Sarah wanted to know everything I got, so since I already typed the list up, I figured I may as well post it here too.

• Simpsons: The Complete Fifth Season DVD
• New Found Glory: Live in London DVD
• Yellowcard: Live at the Electric Factory DVD
• America The Book by Jon Stewart
• Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham
• Kingdom Hearts - Chain of Memories (GBA)
• Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga (GBA)
• Jabra Freespeak BT250 Headset
• Logitech MX 900 Bluetooth Mouse
• Some long sleeve shirts

We Laugh Indoors

Nick had a little get-together at his place on Saturday for dinner and watching of The Office. Nick cooked up some delicious chicken and there was rice pilaf, pasta salad, potato salad, a fruit dish (including pomegranate which I'd never had before), and brownies for dessert. We watched the first 4 episodes of the BBC series The Office, which Nick has on DVD. I'd seen the first couple before and really enjoyed them. The best episode by far was episode 4 in which the "team building" person came in. David going home to get a guitar and then playing songs was hilarious. This site has lyrics, mp3s, and guitar tabs. After The Office about half the people went home, but Ricci, Andrew, Eric, and I stuck around and played a few games of Scattergories which was quite fun and brought up many amusing conversations. Also, my lack of seeing Rushmore came to Nick's attention so that movie is now in my NetFlix queue. All in all a really fun evening. Definitely reminded me of a typical college night, only the food would have likely been replaced with a trip to Chipotle.

San Francisco Zoo

Sarah and I went up to the San Francisco Zoo on Friday and had an awesome time. First I want to say that the drive up to San Francisco is really nice, especially when you're doing it late on a Friday morning and there's no traffic. Also, right before you get to the zoo there is a wonderful view of the Pacific Ocean from the highway.

The first place we went in the zoo was the "Children's Zoo". It had a bunch of typical animals like rabbits and birds of prey and a petting area with goats, sheep, and miniature donkeys. There was also this really scary looking Nigerian Dwarf Goat which was in its own area and kept making scary noises while pushing against its pen.

The Children's Zoo also had what was one of the best animals in the entire zoo, the prairie dogs. There were at least 50 of them in the habitat. Occasionally a bunch of them would jump up and make this yipping noise. Sarah took an Animal Behavior class at Case, and apparently the professor was obsessed with prairie dogs, so she told me a lot about them. One thing being that there are a small set of them which act as lookouts. You can tell them because they're standing up, usually on a hill, and not eating. They communicate to all of the others through various tale movements. Then after some period of time they switch out who the lookouts all. It was pretty interesting to watch them. We ending up stopping by to watch the prairie dogs 3 times during the day. Also, the first time we were there a zoo keeper came in to remove some cages from their habitat. As soon as the zoo keeper entered the habitat, all the prairie dogs scurried underground, in what had to have been less than 2 seconds. It was amazing how quickly it went from being active and filled with prairie dogs to completely silent and empty.

They also had meerkats in the Children's Zoo which were pretty cool and behaved a lot like the prairie dogs. Seeing the meerkats also brought up discussions of The Lion King. By the end of the day, we had seen animals for just about all of the main characters from movie. I told Sarah she needed to break out Photoshop and make a Lion King montage from the pictures she took.

My other top animal species for the day was the penguins. The penguins had quite a large area. There were a lot that were swimming around, and playing under the hose spraying water into the pool. Then there were a whole bunch more just hanging out on the island. They were really fun to watch. They're so graceful in the water, and really funny to watch on land. I was amused by them hopping down the 1/2" steps on the sides of the cave filled mountain living area. There was also one fat brown penguin. We found out it was molting, and when a penguin is molting its feathers are not water proof. This means in the wild they wouldn't get food, so they gain 50% of their body weight before they start the molting process.

We also found out that they feed the penguins between 3 and 3:30. We came back around 3, but didn't see anyone there to feed them, so we walked over to watch the river otters. Then I spotted the zookeeper lady in a golf cart and said, "I bet she has fish." As she drove by, we saw the buckets of fish and went running over the penguins. The penguins came streaming out of the water and crowded all around the fish buckets. Apparently some of the fish had pills in them and they had to give certain fish to certain penguins. After any given penguin had its fish, it would waddle off and dive into the water. There was this one penguin that refused to get out and just kept swimming back and forth looking over at the zookeeper. Apparently most of the penguins were named, my favorite being Noodles. I also remember Duke, and Pepper. Oh, and of course being the dorks that we are, Sarah and I had to dub one Tux while we were watching them.

We also had a chance to see the lions and tigers get fed. I'm always amazed at the size of the big cats, especially their paws. It was quite a sight seeing the huge father lion suddenly appear in the doorway between the inside cage and the outside habitat. There were a lot of people around the lions, so Sarah and I went down to the cages where the tiger's were going to come in and were right in front. Then the zookeeper got the wheelbarrow of raw meat and went down the line putting into the cages. For all but one of the cats, he just pushed it in through the cage, but for the last tiger there was a metal slide affixed to the outside of the cage that he put the meat in, so I guess that tiger was a bit more ferocious than the rest.

Earlier in the day we had watched the tigers while they were outside. It was neat because you could be right next to the cage that kept them in their habitat, unlike the Cleveland Zoo where there is a huge moat between you and the tigers. The one wall of their habitat was made of plexiglas and while we were standing there the two tigers just kept pacing around in circles and would walk right next to the plexiglas and stare at us as they walked by. I really enjoyed watching them.

I almost about the peacock that seemed to be following us. At least 5 times through the day we would be walking or watching some animals and this peacock would suddenly appear behind us. So, it's pretty likely that it wasn't the same one everytime, but it was still really weird. We never saw more than one at a time, except when we saw 2 running off the path into some bushes.

The one disappointment for the day was the feline conservatory because hardly any of the cats were out. We did see a snow leopard out, and a fishing cat laying on top of its cage, but otherwise all the habitats were empty. It was pretty cool in the morning, but it was quite warm by the time we left so we were hoping they'd be out by then, but they weren't.

The zoo was a lot of fun, and a great way to spend the day. And fortunately it took me a lot less time to visit the San Francisco Zoo than the 4 years it took me to finally make it to the Cleveland Zoo. At some point I also want to get down to the San Diego Zoo, especially since it's known as the best zoo in the country.

Magical Trevor

Everyone loves Magical Trevor!
Catchiest...Tune...Ever

If you can't stop laughing or can't bring yourself to close your browser window after hearing this, don't blame me, blame Sarah.

Game Night

After Ricci, Andrew, and I got back from our little trip we came back to our apartment and had potato soup that Andrew made that morning and Ricci brought some curry he had made the previous night. My contribution was purchasing some garlic bread at Safeway. :-)

The original plan had been to eat at Ricci's and then watch the Star Wars Trilogy on his 42" flat screen TV, but sadly the electricity never came back at his until around midnight. So instead, we played a game of Go. I use the term game rather loosely since none of us had played before, so while we were following the rules, I'm sure it looked pretty sad to anyone who actually knows how to play.

After my victory over Ricci in Go, we decided to play Risk 2210. Andrew had never played any Risk game before, and I had only played standard Risk a couple times, maybe 10 years ago. Since it took a long to time to get everything setup and go over the rules, we only played 2 full turns. We had planned to play 3 turns, but by the end of the second turn, there was no way for us knock Andrew out of first place.

Excursion

Around noon on Friday all of the Cupertino and Sunnyvale areas lost power. People in my group generally hung around until 1, at which point we decided we might as well leave for the day. Getting home took some time with a few of the traffic lights being out. The power was out at my apartment as expected, but was back on by 3. My friend Ricci still didn't have power, so he called Andrew and I around 4 to ask if we wanted to make a trip to Japantown in San Jose with him so he could pick up the board game Go. I didn't know there was a Japantown in San Jose, so I figured that would be fun to explore.

What Andrew and I came to discover though was that Ricci didn't really know where it was either. One of his co-workers drew him a crude map with the general area of a store he had been to several years ago. Needless to say I was a little skeptical about the existence of this store or Japantown itself. Fortunately, Ricci did have a map in his car, so after some searching we stumbled onto Jackson, the road his co-worker had told him it was on. And sure enough, when we turned onto Jackson there were banners on the street lights saying Japantown. We passed many Asian and even a Mexican restaurant before actually seeing any stores that seemed Japanese.

Eventually we passed one shop which had a very amusing T-shirt that had "Shitake Happens" written on it. Then we came across Far Out Toys which had a bunch of anime action figures, posters, and music. We also got directions to a store which might have Go. After stopping in a store with anime videos, we got to the store with Go just as it was closing. The owner did let us come in though, and got the game for Ricci.

On our way back to the apartment, this car with black lab sticking its head out the window passed us. It was the dog that first caught my eye, but then as it went past I saw the highly amusing bumper sticker on the car: "My Labrador Retriever is smarter than your honor student."

Worms 3D

After our seemingly weekly dinner at BJ's, Andrew, Ricci, and I went back to Ricci's and end up playing with Garageband on Ricci's new iMac for a while. We took turns each laying a track and made a couple interesting songs. Then we played some Worms 3D on the Gamecube. I hadn't played any Worms game, since maybe 10 years ago when my brother and I played the demo of one on our dad's computer all the time. It was a fun game, though I did pretty poorly and ended up damaging my team as much as the other's. I enjoyed the sheep weapon, which basically involved sending an exploding sheep charging into your opponent. There was also the Super Sheep special weapon which was a sheep with a cape that you could fly and crash spectacularly into your enemies.

Love Hurts

"Now from what I gather, Zeb is either the same way I was in college or at least similar - shy to a fault. So when guys like us fall in love, we think it's "true love" because no other girl in our twenty or so years would so much as talk to us, let alone go on a date. When we finally find it, love I mean, we cling to it with everything we've got. We're no longer geeks but a lover, a partner, and a human being. So when we get dumped, we get dumped hard... we don't want to go back to how we were...lonely to the core."

True Dat.

Who would have a thought a web comic could so perfectly capture what I'm feeling. Thanks, Shaw Island.

2004 Civic

I finally decided to go with a 2004 Civic EX rather than the Golf mainly because the Civic should be more reliable and was less less expensive. I was able to get the car at the dealership which is less than a mile from my apartment which will be conveinent when I need to take the car in for maintenance. I was also able to get a good price on the car without too much haggling. First, since its the end of the 2004 car year prices were already reduced and by emailing and calling various dealerships for price quotes I was able to get the dealership here to match the lowest price I could find. The car drives nicely and should last me quite a long time, especially because I don't expect to put a whole lot of miles on it per year, especially given the fact that I'll be biking to work most days.

Some interesting things I've seen while driving so far include a duck crossing sign and a license plate that said BLOGGIN.

I also want to add some kind of iPod connectivity to the car. The instructions here look promising. There's also the Alpine iPod head unit that ships in September for $100, but that will also require me to sink another couple hundred into an Alpine CD head unit so I doubt I'll go that route.

From California

Now that I've been out here in Cupertino for 10 days it's about time I update this thing. I arrived at the San Jose Airport at 9:45 on July 8th with my mom and grandmother. They stayed out here for a week to help me get some stuff done and so we could do some sightseeing. The first few days here were pretty long since most of the time was spent driving around and making appointments for such things as getting a bank account, looking at cars, getting car insurance, etc.

As far as sightseeing stuff, we went to the Winchester Mystery House on Sunday. The estate is absolutely huge, we walked approximately a mile inside the house without visiting the same room twice. As huge as the place is, you feel incredibly cramped inside. Mrs. Winchester was only 4' 10", so most of the ceilings are really low and the staircases are really narrow.

On Tuesday we went up to San Francisco and spent a majority of the time at Pier 39. We also took a boat cruise that went by Alcatraz, and under the Golden Gate Bridge. We were also going to take a trolley tour of the city, but the last tour apparently leaves at 4, so we ended up missing that. So I definitely want to do that at some point and I want to take the tour inside Alcatraz.

After they left on Thursday I went to the DMV and got my CA driver's license. It wasn't too busy when I went, so I was there a little under an hour, but I still had to wait in no less than 4 lines. I was also really surprised when I found out their written test is done with paper and pencil and corrected manually. Pennsylvania has had computer exams since at least 1996 when I took my test.

So far I've really enjoyed being out here. The weather is perfect, as expected. Hopefully my furniture and stuff from PA will be delivered later today or tomorrow evening and then I'll be pretty well setup out here.

StreetPilot 2610

I recently purchased the Garmin StreetPilot 2610 Automotive GPS. I have a rather poor sense of direction so it will be a big help to me in getting around California. Lynn's parents have the same model and it has worked well for them. They travel quite a bit going to contra dances.

So far I am pretty pleased with it. I did successfully use the GPS to take Egon to the vet in Cleveland and to get to Setsuna's BBQ. The one problem is that the software used to transfer maps only runs under Windows. I was able to install the software in Virtual PC, but transferring the maps is incredibly slow and most of the time when I'm trying to transfer maps I get an error message after a while saying the GPS is no longer responding. I was able to get maps of Williamsport and Cleveland transferred before my trip. Those maps totaled about 11 MB and took over an hour to complete the transfer. The longest part is the "building index" phase, which doesn't seem to involve actually transferring any data to the GPS but that's when I usually get the not responding error. I'm now trying to get the maps for the Bay Area onto the GPS and it's about 20 MB, but after many hours of trying I haven't been successful. Has anyone out there used the StreetPilot 2610 or another Garmin GPS with Virtual PC?

Final Cleveland Roadtrip

Last Tuesday I took Lynn back to Cleveland after she was here for my party. It was really nice having Lynn at my house for a few days. She met most of my family at graduation, but she hadn't met my Dad yet or Aunt Shawnee and Erica. She also got to meet my dog Missy and Mimi's dog Peaches (who is an awesome, if crazy and easily excitable dog). We didn't really do antyhing extremely exciting while she was here, so hopefully she wasn't too bored. We did make some Orange Julius and I took her to the mall and she found a pair of shorts and a pair of pants that were pretty cheaply on sale (each under $15 I think). Of course we played Dr. Mario a good bit and played badminton a few times. We also ate over at Mimi's on Father's Day. We ate out on the porch and had strawberry shortcake for dessert.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday Lynn went in to work in her lab. I walked down to school with her each morning. It's about half an hour walk to campus, but it's a nice walk, it's not hilly or anything. I kept myself occupied in Nord researching cars, reading blogs, talking to Dave when he was around, and visiting Angie in the Fribley area office. Thursday Lynn and I ate lunch at the Winking Lizard with Angie. I hadn't been there before, but we've been meaning to go and have their root beer (which was excellent) and their spinach-artichoke dip. I also ran into Brendan on Thursday and found out he's going to be in San Francisco over the summer, so that was good to find out. Wednesday night when Phil got back from work he, Dana, Lynn, and I went down to Chipotle for dinner. Since their apartment is pretty much right next door to Chipotle, we got "take away" and went back to eat at the apartment. We also ran into Angie at Chipotle so she came back and ate with us until she had to go to a meeting back on campus.

On Friday Dave, Dana, Lynn, and I ate at the Mad Greek which I had never been to before. I had Lamb Curry and it was really good. Originally Dave had sent an email to a bunch of people saying we should eat at Mongolian BBQ as a going away dinner for me since he had a buy one get one free coupon. But Dave never made reservations, and not that many people were interested in eating late or thought it was too expensive so just a smaller group of us ended up going to the Mad Greek. Afterwards, we went back to Angie's dorm and played some Pinochle and then watched a couple episodes of Blind Date (I think because we were all too tired to do anything else). I'd seen part of an episode before, but there are some really strange people on that show. The one guy hit on a least one girl (not his date) at each of the places they went to. I'm not sure if the contestants get to pick where they go on the dates or if the show does but one couple went to this place in their pajamas where they were on this bed with another woman whom he started making out with. Another couple went to a lingerie store where the guy was trying on lingerie. Weird stuff. I have to wonder if anyone actually has a successul date on one of those shows.

A few other things we did during the week. Lynn and I took the cat, Egon, to the vet on Friday since Phil and Dana were at work and Chris was at his mom's. We also stopped by the Cleveland Heights Library since Lynn finished the book she was reading and we went to the Asian bakery to get some delicious coconut buns. Lynn and I also stopped for gelato on the way back from school one of the days. That stuff is so very good, especially the peach.

Saturday was the BBQ at Setsuna's parents lakeside house. There were a lot of people there, some of whom I knew, some I recognized from DDR club or Anime Society, and other's I didn't know at all. It was a really fun time though. A group of us played a game of Chez Geek, and we went swimming in the Lake for a while. Surprisingly the water was not too cold. We walked out along the wall which was rather treacherous as it was slightly under water and slippery and when waves came it was difficult to not get knocked over. We swam for a little bit inside the wall and then decided to venture on the outside of the wall. The main fear with that was that the waves might smack us into the wall, but if you got out far enough, they weren't breaking yet so it wasn't really a problem. That was the first time I had been swimming in a lake and it was pretty fun. Lynn did get a little scratched up on the wall though. After we were done swimming there were hamburgers and brawts being cooked. Lynn and I also cut up half of one of the watermelons, but there weren't too many people that wanted any. We enjoyed it though, even though the watermelons were seedless. After eating Lynn and I joined the game of Apples to Apples. We played for maybe half an hour but there didn't seem to be an rationale behind the way people were judging so after Jacob got back with the DDR pads we went downstairs to play some DDR. After that Lynn and I went out to sit by the dock and watch the sunset by the lake. It was a really pretty scene and I really enjoyed watching and listening to the sounds of the waves. Setsuna's dad also started making a bonfire at that point. We went inside and played a game of Pinochle. Jacob, Lynn, and I played a three handed game while a game of 15 was going on with four other people. Then we went out to roast marshmallows and make smores. Setsuna as been having these BBQs for at least the last 4 years, but this was the first year I really knew her and the first time I've been in Cleveland during the summer at all so it's the first one I've been too. It was lots of fun though and I had a really good time.

Sunday I had to leave to come back home, so that was not a very happy day. Lynn and I did get some frozen custard at the place right by her apartment. Peach was one of their special flavors of the day and it was quite tasty. Finally, after a tearful goodbye I left for home. The weirdest part about getting home then was that it felt empty without Lynn here. Even though she had only been here a few days, having her here felt very natural and it just felt like she belonged here and not like she was just visiting for a few days.

I'm really glad we've gotten to see each other so much since the end of the school year. It's kind of hard though not knowing exactly when the next time we'll see each other is though. Hopefully we can arrange something over Labor Day Weekend. Fortunately, this Internet thing makes it really easy to keep in touch, so even when I'm in California we shouldn't have any problem talking every day. Knowing that makes it ever so slightly easier, but it's nothing compared to spending every day together like we have this last week and a half and the entire spring semester.

Graduation/Going Away Party

I'm a little late in blogging this, but on Saturday June 19th my Mom held a graduation/going away party for me. It was mostly relatives and family friends (people my parents have taught with) and I also went to Clevelanda and brought Lynn back for the party. It was a fun time and my Mom had a really awesome cake made for me. Lynn took this picture of me by the cake:

There was lots of good food at the party, and we played some badminton while Uncle Joe provided amusing commentary. That night after the party Lynn taught me to do a tripod which you can then transfer into a headstand, we demonstrated leg wrestling to Jimmy, and I poorly attempted some cartwheels

In addition to money, I received a mall gift certificate which will be used towards buying the Simpsons 4th Season DVD, a full bedding set, desk organizer, apple shaped post it notes, and 2 cooking pots. Most of the money will be put towards the purchase of the Garmin StreetPilot 2610 GPS which I'll blog more about later.