Christopher Schmidt

I never updated about how our trip to San Francisco went. Since it has been a terribly long time, this post will be a highlights reel:

Fly. Long Long Flight. Logan is annoying, but at least we got a seat together. Fly some more. Land, late late at night on body clocks (2am+). Get Rental Car. Drive out to Hotel, arrive. Room is uber-swank, gigantic: bigger than half our current condo, certainly. Had kitchen, living room, bedroom, and nice patio. Didn't arrive here until 3am body clock time though. Know I should sleep for interview, but don't for a while.

Find ethernet cable, set up creusa as wireless AP for artemis, snuggle jessie. This was our 2 year anniversary: I first told her "I love you" 2 years ago on June 9th. Lots of snuggling all weekend. Very good.

Sleep fitfully. Get up. Go to interview. Interview is all day long, 9am-3pm. Meet lots of cool people. (Sadly, didn't get the job.) Come home. Chill with Jessie - eat room service pizza and watch American History X. Eventually, go to Skyline Public Works - the company where my ex-roomate Neil works. Met some of his friends, coworkers, saw the retractable roof. Left there and headed into the city, where Jess was getting to a BART station to Berkley to meet leora. Learned that in the Mission district, the left/right turn lane is really for parking, by example. Got Jess to BART, headed over to upxiii.

Went to Neil's house, aka Unicorn Precinct XIII. (Don't ask.) Was impressed that there are not one but two empty server racks, 16 sparc station 4s, approximately 46 misc. "beige boxes" (typical homebrew PCs), 7 audio mixers, 3 tape decks, 2 mattresses on top of the couches, 3 broken umbrellas hanging from the entrance, and lemons bigger than the oranges. A number of these things can be seen in the upxiii pictures.

Chilled for a while, then grabbed Jess and Leora and headed to Taqueria Cancun, which is an absolutely wonderful place, which I wish we had on the East Coast. On the way, slid down a slide to accelerate my travel to the BART. A hill, in the middle of the city, with a slide. There were dozens of miniparks on the way down there. It was very odd. San Francisco is Hilly, I decide, as well as chilly. Thankfully I had borrowed a sweatshirt from Neil. Caught a cab ride with an absolutely insane driver, went back to the house, and shot the shit with neil's housemates for a good hour or two. Drove Leora home, getting lost on the way. Dropped her off, where I let her know that it was very odd that she was not "old and creepy", because that's how she's always come off online, but really isn't. She was just fun to hang out with. Made it back to Sunnyvale, crashed out.

Woke up late the next morning. Cancelled breakfast with twid, putting it off to the next day. Went into the city: numist scored tickets to alcatraz for us, awesome guy that he is. Explored alcatraz - I IRCed from the boat, and from inside a jail cell. It's actually a really cool monument, one which I would definitely like to do a more in depth tour of. (Some tours go in otherwise-restricted areas of the island.) Reminded me entirely too much of the Tony Hawk (3? 4?) level on alcatraz. Was sad that I recognized parts of it from that. Came back, went to Hard Rock Cafe - my first ever. Fed Scott, power booked from inside. Walked out, across the Wharf, and tried to find Scott's car. failed. had *him* find his car while jessie and I sat. Made him take me up lombard street. Have wanted to do that for years. Was *long* line up hill, at very steep angle, in stick shift car with weak handbrake. Was not the most enjoyable experience in the world. However, Lombard on the whole was still fun.

Had Scott drive us across the Golden Gate. I like it. Pretty. Even though it's not actually gold. :)

Let Scott go, after he dropped us off at the wharf again. Got a smoothie. (mmm. real smoothies.) Got a taxicab with an insane driver to take us to Haight-Ashbury. Wandered up and down a bit. Was nifty, but remembered that hippies scare me, especially anarchistic hippies. Stuck close to Jessie. Enjoyed it still. Got a cab back to the closest BART (24th and Mission) took that to our car. Stopped at IHOP - got pancakes. (Was absolutely exhausted at this point.) Drove the rest of the way home, crashed into bed and fell asleep early.

Woke up, next morning was breakfast with twid at a great pancake shop. Real banana pancakes with the bananas baked in are to die for. Hung out for a bit, then drove down to Apple Campus, to see if the company store was open - only place for apple merchandise schwag. Was closed however, so dealt with taking touristy photos and booking it out of there over to the airport. Returned car, went into airport, sat for two hours, took off.

Long flight home, some sleeping, mostly just sitting. Towards the end, started watching Episode I: Phantom Menace. Jess and I had our powerbooks both open, each listening on a different set of headphones, talking to each other over an ad hoc wireless network using Rendezvous/Bonjour commnications. It was actually pretty cool. Landed -- got picked up by Kristna, driven home, crashed out, woke up late the next morning for work but still made it in by a decent time.

And that's the hilights of my trip to san francisco: slightly more photos (mostly from cell phone) forthcoming.