Nothing to do with technology... well not much

Have you ever wondered at the beauty of people who are newly in love? They move differently, posture around each other, each person in their own unique mating ritual of their own design. No matter where I am or what I am doing it never fails to put a smile on my face. But there is something uniquely refreshing about travel in general. All of the people in large shipping hubs thinking mostly about schedules and themselves. Next time you find yourself at an airport do yourself a favor. Put down your itinerary and just look up. There is no wonder to what you can see(twoyoungteenagersclinging. familiestryingtooutruneachother. womenwalkingaimlesslyaround. thesmallmindedcollegiatesbroadcastingtheirlastVD).

It goes on and each one is not aware of any other, their fates divided by mere seconds as they pass (perchance) on the moving walkway. Maybe a glance passes between them and in that glance a completely different reality exists. What changes it all? A collision? An impromptu hello? I guess travel always makes me think about how many people are in the world and how many secrets they all hold.

My trip to WWDC `09 started off at a much slower pace than last years trip did. My plane was delayed in Grand Junction for 45 minutes and while in the air we were informed that we "may or may not" be landing in Colorado Springs instead of Denver due to weather. Thankfully, the pilots made the "MAVERICK!!!!" decision and landed in the lightly cloudy D.I.A. It was even a little sunny out, which forces me to seriously question the "danger" of the landing.

Even after I'd been kept waiting for 45 minutes and Taxied for another 27 hours I managed to get to Denver with Plenty of time to wait around. In a terminal. For 2 hours. On the bright side I caught up on a bit of reading. On my connection managed to sit next to the gnarliest biker I've ever seen on a plane, or anywhere now that I think of it. Hell's Angel, multiple patches labeling said angel as an enforcer. So, noting the last time I ordered a drink on a plane I decided to play it safe and I abstained from ordering a beverage for the entirety of my 2 hour flight which (due to more non existent weather conditions) was delayed for an extra 30 minutes.

Upon reaching my destination I decided to head to my Hotel and register (for once bringing EVERY bag that I left with me due to an ingenious system of carrying less and duct taping everything to my person). Afterwards I walked to Moscone West and registered for the conference I decided to go for lunch. Last year on my way to Scomas I noticed a beautiful thing. An In N Out burger at Fishermans Wharf. So I decided to take the trolly back to the Wharf and have some In N Out on the beach watching the ships. I ordered my usual (A Double Double, Fries animal style, and a strawbrry shake. There is nothing better than a burger on the beach.

After sucking back roughly 42 trillion calories I decided that it was time to go back to the hotel, but I was going to be adventurous and skip the line at the trolly by running to the top of the hill and waiting. Here's where my plan begins to fail. I ran up the hill and thought "now that wasn't bad" so I ran some more, forgetting that I had eaten a meal that was really the caloric equivilant of 4 meals. After I scaled the next hill I decided that I could run back to my hotel. And I almost got there with some spirit left. I instead took a quick detour to save my legs and went down a road. It was nice to go downhill for a while but when I turned back in the direction I saw a hill that I would have a hard time WALKING up. So I ran up it. At the top, I crested, clawing my way to the top, dragging myself hand over hand. When I got to the top I sat down, put my head between my knees and BARELY kept my lunch down through my side cramps. That's when I realized I still had half a mile to go. I walked. I got bach to my room, laid down and passed out for an hour. It was my only meal of the day. I spent the rest of the time watching TV.

First and in the forefront.  My wife got torn in two by my first born son Noah Wyatt O'Hara.  Well actually when you get right down to it, that's all that's happened in the last few days.  I mean, does there need to be anything else? 

He is perfect, but then I'm partial.

He was born Monday October 6th at 1:18pm he was 19.75" long and 6 lbs 15.5 ozs.

In this picture apparently he is telling us that he is OK.

I had a big long article planned but I am way to happy to get into birth specifics right now.  I assume that at a later date I'll tell you all about the good time that all births are.  Needless to say... Hollywood Lied to all of us.  Anyway, thanks for checking back to my blog.  I'll be posting more soon.

Upon further research I found a possibility as to who it DOES belong to though.  And the person in question fits the description of the person who was driving the Range Rover.  Joey Slotnick, Could it be?  Here he is pictured with Wozniak, he played him in Pirates of Silicon Valley.  

It does make you wonder, maybe we did have a sighting of Woz after all, though in a slightly different context.  Slotnick, if you're out there, pretending to be the false Woz, come clean man, we were in the red Mini speeding up behind you taking your picture.  

It just goes to show you, The Woz can come in many different forms.  Beware the false Woz, he drives too fast.

It was my last day in San Francisco and instead of getting up early and finishing out a photo tour (I'm sorry my san fran photos are so sparse) I slept in and then had to rush pack all of my stuff into a suitcase that no longer held all of my stuff.  I had accumulated one to many bags for carryon and I had to figure out how to back my hard - shelled briefcase into my suitcase for transportation while also fitting the rest of my clothes into it.  After accomplishing this it was time to check out and what I really wanted to do was to put my head down and go to sleep.  What I had to do though was get back on the dreaded Powell st. BART train and head back to the airport.  This time.  I remembered everything.

A lot of you are thinking, oh yeah so what, you didn't forget your stuff on the train.  Well that's apparently a big deal for me so back off.  I couldn't help but get a good look back at all of the homeless people that I saw during my trip.

I saw a black man with branches lashed together who was hiding behind them and sneaking up on people as part of a comedy routine that I was lucky enough to avoid.  I did catch one piece.  When one white guy walked around him from behind as he was moving the bush the white guy walked right into it.  The homeless man shouted "Hey now, hiding behind the bushes is my act you son of a bitch, you go get your own act.  Besides there's nothing scary about a white guy hiding behind the bushes anyway, it only works with me because I'm black and that's terrifying."  He had everyone rolling with laughter.

There was a very personable man on the street corner outside of Moscone West holding a sign that said "United Negro Pizza Fund" he had to have made a thousand dollars in one day.  I'd say, other than Apple, he probably made the most money off of the conference.

There was one old man who was absolutely insane screaming about how Jesus was loving but he was going to come down and smite the holy shit out of the entire city because ... well I really didn't stick around to find out why he was going to smite the city.  I decided it was for the best not to stand around and watch the doom shouter.

There was a girl of maybe 15 who offered a well groomed business man in front of me some pretty awful things for a twenty.  When he turned her down she started crying.  I know it's terrible but I wish I had had my camera.  She would have made a great study, sitting on the street crying, her thick mascara running down her cheeks.  She was probably the only homeless person I saw that probably desperately needed actual help.  It was heartbreaking to see so many people of different homeless status so close to each other, each with a different method for getting money.  In each case i didn't think it was my place to take photos so I have none of any of them. 

It is safe to say, by the time I got to the airport I was ready to be out of the city.  It was a beautiful and crushing city.  There was none of the desperation that I felt in new york where the homeless people are desperate.  California is a more laid back kind of city.  The only time I glimpsed a bit of New York was with the little girl offering herself up in tears for a 20 to anyone who would take her.  I expected that in New York, but honestly I didn't expect it in California.  

I got to the terminal four hours early.  I listened to an audio book through my wait and boarded the plane to Salt Lake City, then to Grand Junction and I was home.  I do think I will miss the bustle of the city and the way that everything works over there.  I am glad to be back home though, back to a steady repetition of work and home time.  All of which is to say.  I'll keep writing, if you keep reading.  

It was the last day of the conference, and apple must have figured that they had celebrated enough the night before because the conference ended, "Not with a bang, but a whimper."Eliot.  As it ended early and I had gleamed quite a bit of knowledge out of it I decided that I would go down to the wharf to experience at least some of the city and see the ocean once before I left.  Besides, I had promised Kevin that I would at least try to find Scoma's (well I didn't really promise him, I promised me).

First though, I had to figure out how to get to the wharf.  After asking the concierge I was pointed to the trolly system.  He said that it may not be the fastest way to get there but it would be far more scenic and I would be sure to enjoy it.  More than that, the price was right. $5.00 for a trip to the wharf? Oy vay, what a deal it was.  First off, I've said it before but maybe not in this blog.  Whoever decided to build a city on a mass of hillsides was out of their minds.  There is no feasible reason (that I can see) that this city should have ever contained houses, let alone sky scrapers.  San Francisco is, by far, one of the most bizarre cities in America.  That being said, the city is a testament to engineering and the ability of people to overcome anything that nature can throw at it.  Is that a benefit of our species?  I honestly don't know.

Moving along with my story.  I jumped on a trolly just to find out that it was headed in the wrong direction.  The conductor told me this and then dropped me at a stop where I could wait for the next trolly to come along.  He somehow managed to bite his tongue and keep from saying "damn tourists" I assume he was thinking it but then again, after working for years on one of these vessels I suppose that they are used to a lot of stupid tourists.  I hopped off at the station and waited for a trolley that was headed in the correct direction.  Wonders never ceasing.  It was the same trolley.  They had to turn around at the switch yard (about 400 feet away) and then come back to get me.  I didn't get to sit the entire time of my ride, I had to stand grasping the hand rails, which is something that I don't think I could ever get used to.  The constant surges and stops make it nearly impossible to hold on gracefully.  If I lived in the city for a hundred years I'm not sure I would ever get used to it.

To top this off I forgot my camera and I can't show how the weather began to turn or how bloody cold it got.  The rest of the photos this post have to be either from other cameras or from my iPhone.  When i say it got cold, I mean it was down to 50 and the sun was a long way away.  It even rained (just a little) that night and I'm certain that it was the coldest that most of these people had ever experienced.  They were out in their winter coats, I wish I were kidding but it was me in a t-shirt and about 30,000 Californians in winter coats.  

I walked around the Wharf until I saw Al Scoma Way.  Then I saw the restaurant, Scoma's, in what looked like an extended single-wide trailer.  It was actually out on a pier and had a fishing boat with the company logo on the side of it.  I considered this a good sign so I decided to go in and have some of the food.  I made the same exact mistake that I made at the R&G Lounge.  Seafood, back at home, is always small portions and I have made the mistake, twice, of assuming that I can handle an appetizer AND a meal.  I saw four appetizers that interested me.  I also saw an appetizer sampler that piqued my interest.  It contained Crab Cakes, Shrimp Scampi, and fried calamari.  

Then the main course came The lazy man's Cioppino .  The waiter actually tied a paper bib around my neck and told me to take my time and eat as much as I could of it.  Having been given permission to take my time, I did.  I savored every bite.  I was given the option of regular and spicy.  I chose spicy, and it made the cold day feel so much warmer.

Nothing I can say can convince anyone who hasn't been there how big this bowel was.  It wasn't so much a soup bowl as it was a punch bowl.  It took up most of my table.  Consider that, and then remember that I had a huge appetizer.  It was nothing short of miraculous that I finished as much as I had (about 90% of it).  I knew I had eaten far too much but it tasted so good, and it was so warm that i honestly couldn't have stopped eating it until i did.  As it was, I had to ask them to take it away so that I didn't end up eating until I was sick. . . trust me, it was close.  

Something else happened to me there, and I don't know how to take it.  After I was done eating my waiter came up and sat down across from me and told me that he had been watching me eat and that it made him glad to do what he did when he saw someone enjoying a 

meal so much.  It also probably helped him that I had spent a lot of money and that I was planning on tipping pretty well.  He said that he was so happy to see someone enjoy the meal that it made his whole day worth coming in.  Was he coming onto me?  I don't think so, but it is San Francisco so I don't rightly know.  Mostly I think that he just enjoyed seeing me savor every bite (which I did).  Every bite was different, I bit into some crab and the flavor was sweet and rich and then the rich and earthy brine of a clam would balance it out perfectly.  It was, in my opinion, even better than the first meal that I had, and that is saying a lot.  I don't know how to describe the experience other than to say.  WOW.

The staff was fantastic (the hostess ignored the rest of her duties for five minutes to talk to me about the conference) the waiters never let my glass empty and top that off with the waiter who thanked me simply for being there and all together it was a very nice meal.  Oh, don't let me forget to mention the french bread, served with the meal, it was some of the best I've had in my life.

I walked around in to cold and headed to Ghirardelli square, I didn't have any room but I had a small piece of chocolate anyway, it was all right and I bet it would have been even better if I hadn't been completely full and ready to get back.  I walked back to the trolly and got on the right one.  I even ended up giving directions to people, who were even more clueless about the city than myself.  I walked back to the hotel and slept the sleep of the fat and happy.  It was my last night there, and I was determined to sleep well. I didn't, tossed and turned all night, there was so much that I had wanted to do, but couldn't.  I knew that Saturday was going to be long but I made myself sleep.  I just hoped that leaving would be more uneventful than arriving.

Wednesday running so late made starting out thursday at 7 nearly impossible.  I managed to  roll out of bed and crawl to the shower all while thinking, 'gee, last night was fun but I shouldn't have stayed out so late.'  There were no police scuffles outside of my window, and other than a maid attempting to come into my room while I was getting dressed nothing of interest happened.

The maid situation was quickly averted as I ran over, kicked the door closed and heard her apologizing and swear/giggling in Spanish (here I've assumed it was Spanish, it could just as well have been Portuguese.  She apologized through the door and I was thinking.  It's only 8 in the morning, these ladies got on it this morning.  They were out and about before most people were even awake.  I think the reason she decided to come in had to do with the newspaper that was left outside of my room.  The first thing I did every morning right before I left was to grab my paper.  This morning I did it differently by grabbing my paper right after I woke up.  This meant that, the maid, seeing that my paper was gone (a signal that I was with it) decided to come on in and clean up the hellish mess that is my hotel room.  I guess I have a habit of moving when I sleep and this resulted in sheets and blankets being strewn across my room from one end to the other in no discernible pattern.  (I wonder, do I do this at home, how does Cicely deal with it?) 

Anyway, after apologizing to me again, as I was walking towards the elevator, she got her chance to walk into the litter strewn apocalyptic aftermath which was my room.  I walked to the elevator opened up the paper and got to reading about counties in California which are now refusing to do any marriages at all.  Talk about having the right idea.  I mean, I'm not against gay marriages but being against all marriages I don't think is too bad of an idea.  Moving along, I actually managed to fix the wiki server completely (or so I thought).  And after getting everything up and running I left for the beer bash at Yerba Buena Gardens.  In addition to food, which was plentiful and pretty good, there was a band.  One that you may have heard of.  That's right, the Bare Naked Ladies performed live and they were... well... amazing.  I had no idea that the lead vocalist was so... good.  The band was not only very good, but their show was very entertaining.  They did what I can only call a freestyle 90's pop-rap about the state of the conference that was hilarious.  They made jokes that was pertinent to Apple, and at one point promised to bring Steve Jobs up to the stage to play the saxophone.  He, obviously was kidding, but how cool would it have been to see Jobs out there rocking it.  

The concert ended and as I wasn't drinking I decided to scatter with the rest of the people who were just there for the show.  After another late night I stumbled back into the hotel room making a vow to leave the paper out until I left in the morning to avoid any future problems.  I guess I'll have to check out early on Saturday if that's the time that the maids are making their rounds.  

I've been busy giving you play by play of my days but I guess what I didn't take into mind was that nothing interesting happened on wednesday until the design awards and stump the experts.  Well, except for one thing, I think I saw the oops guy again today.  I can't be sure but I think I saw him walking away from me because he bumped into someone and said "oops, sorry bro."  I tried to get a better look at him but, alas, he was too fast and the crowd swept him away before I could get a good look so that I could post his description here for everyone to read.  Not that I'm certain that such a description is likely to do any good to anyone except for help people to look out for him.  Apparently he's very accident prone and says bro a lot.  At this point I am describing most of the state of California.  All I can say for sure is that he has long blonde hair and he may very well work for Microsoft.  I base the previous on nothing other than the fact that he did a watusi on the side of my computer with complete disregard to the safety of the computer or the data inside and that to me seems very Gatesian (adj. | Gatesian - of or relating to the works of Bill Gates - especially when pertaining to his policy of absolute evil).  But, as I have no proof of his affiliation with the dark powers that be I am forced to move on and wait for another time in which to run into him so that I can finally be sure who brought in the disease which appears to be running through the participants of the conference.  I would be less sure about it but it appears to be catching like wildfire and even I am feeling a little stuffy in the nasal area.

If I were more motivated I may try to find the culprit behind the sickening.  As it is I'm kinda just getting more and more worn down and tired as the days go on and I figure by saturday I'll be ready to take a very long nap until Monday when I have to get back to Delta and tell what I saw here.  I mean, other than good food and a lot of nerdy people.  Late night wednesday was by far the most fun night I've had so far though.  After the Apple Design Awards where one of the most impressive apps was written by the student was the always great Stump the Experts.  This session was humorous and informative.  It was a fairly full session and everyone there had a great time.  

I arrived back in my hotel at 11:30 p.m. and slept almost immediately.  

"He who waits for a chance may wait for a long time."

Nigerian Proverb

Tuesday morning . . . 

I awoke to sirens and shouting outside of my window.  Strangely enough, this was the first time I've actually looked out the window.  Not much to see really some tall buildings and what can only be described as financial district squaller.  On the front of these hotels and businesses they look good, like they are well groomed.  When you get around behind them the truth of the facade is revealed. Most of these buildings are not old enough to look as bad as they do but in a city where most of the buildings are constructed on a nightmare landscape of hills and angles I suppose getting a house to stand up is a technological feat worth merit.  Due to my obscured view there was no way to tell what was going on below me so I got ready to go and started to walk towards Moscone West.  I saw a bedraggled man being loaded into the back of a SFPD car which had (for some reason unknown to me) a wooden slat over half of the rear passenger side window.  Other than that I must say that the conference was rather uneventful.  I attended a few very good talks and some others that weren't so good.  At one session the two speakers were unable to get their project to function at closing time and thus were forced to run a backup of the working model that they had made.  If I were them I would have done the same thing but I guarantee that if Steve Jobs hadn't been ill and had happened to catch this the both of them probably would have been tied to a chariot and dragged around Moscone West.  Good thing for them that he has a "small bug."  I wonder, does this lend credence to my theory of geek based biological war?  Is it possible that some evil genius armed with the common cold slipped it to Steve Jobs knowing that he would speak at WWDC infecting the rest of us?

No?  

Ok well, needless to say, I had a good time at the conference and the provided lunches (which I didn't know existed) are excellent.  I couldn't ask for a better sandwich, well not for free at least.  Which brings me to the highlight of my day.  The R&G Lounge was a fantastic bit of chinese food that I stumbled upon thanks to my good friend Morgan.  The description of the restaurant mentioned fins eyes and beaks.  Needless to say, I was all over this place.  I decided to forgo the sharks fin soup, deciding that geoduck sashimi would be the way to go, at least for an appetizer.  Let me tell you, it was marvelous.  If you've never tried geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck) before let me be the first to suggest it.  If you like clams then you'll love this super-sized version which is highly prized in chinese and asian cooking because it "keeps the yang up" a phrase which seems to refer to, well, you can probably figure it out.  It was served on a bed of ice with fresh lemon and seaweed surrounding it.  On a dish to the side was a bowl of soy sauce which had jalapenos floating in it and some very good wasabi.  The pairing was ideal as the lemon and seaweed really opened the flavor of these clam-beasts up and the soy-sauce and wasabi combination added just the right amount of flavor.  The only issue I had was, even though I am fairly good with a pair of chopsticks, these little buggers were nearly impossible to get ahold of.  It was like a bad joke.  I can eat almost anything with chopsticks yet for some reason this was like trying to grab a greased up bar of soap with two broomsticks (yet another feat that I believe everyone should try).  The texture was similar to that of squid or octopus sashimi and the taste was more like clam.  The meal was served with a fantastic hot tea and steamed white rice.  After I finished this fantastic appetizer I moved along to the main course.

The main course was squab.  I don't mean some of the squab.  As you can see the head and beak was attached and I must admit, it was one of the best cooked pieces of meat that I have ever had.  It appeared that some of the organs were cooked inside, namely the heart which was a little crispy bit of goodness.  For those of you who haven't had squab it is a taste that is all its own.  The texture is similar to duck and it is similarly greasy and fatty.  I in no way have really described the amazing flavors of this dish but I've done the best I can.  The squab was great and was served with a small dish of a delicious seasoning.  I walked back to the hotel room and watched some Family Guy and Aqua Teen Hunger Force before falling asleep.

It was a great night filled with a great meal and though it cost me roughly 1.6 days worth of budget it was worth it completely.  I can't say enough about the service and at the end I was served (though I don't remember ordering it) what they said was sesame squab (at least I think that's what he said).  It was one of the best sesame dishes I've ever had before.  It was spicy and not drizzled in that terrible sauce which seems to have become a necessity at most chinese restaurants.

"To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered."

Voltaire

"Determine never to be idle...It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing."

Sunday was an interesting day filled with goofs and gaffs and almost an entire disregard for computer safety guidelines.  

My flights were fairly uneventful, I ended up transferring in Dallas/Ft. Worth and half way through that flight my hand shook as I was holding a drink and I ended up soaking the guy sitting next to me with Coke.  He was nicer about it than I would have been and took the whole thing in stride.  My headache and my tremors kept getting worse as I gathered my luggage and got on the BART.  I just wanted to get back to the hotel room where I could take some pills then go get registered and get a bite to eat before crashing.  It was a good, very innocuous plan that shouldn't have gone horribly awry.  But, in line with the first rule of travel, and computers, and according to Robert Burns (if you don't know who I'm referring to look him up as he relates to mice), things fall apart.

I arrived at at the correct Bart stop and didn't hear the conductor (do you call them conductors?) announce the stop until the train was about to depart.  I exited the train just in time to see the doors close. . . with my laptop sitting on the floor . . . right next to the seat I was occupying 5 seconds earlier.  Oh, the horror, as well as having a several programs on it, I also had all of my music, all of my photos and stored VPN data.  Needless to say, the first thing I did was run up the stairs right to the security booth and blather on for 20 minutes about how I left it on and how I had to get it back.

After doing nothing to calm my fears at all the woman told me that she should know in two hours if someone had turned it in or not.  I subsequently checked back with her every hour and I have to say, this woman had more patience than any human being alive.  She was understanding, soft spoken, and wasn't afraid to tell me that most of the time such items were never found again.  I thanked her and promised to come back in two hours.  Thirty minutes later, of course, I was back, as worked up as I was before.  It payed off.  10 minutes before she was to be off duty someone turned it in to a station at the end of the line.  She congratulated me and put me on the next BART to the end of the line.  Worse than this, I hadn't realized that my pills, the very thing I could not ever leave behind on such a day were in the same bag with my computer.  These pills have a street value that roughly rivals that of my computer.  I was not only lucky, but, I believe that I should have played the lottery on that day.  At the very least I would have avoided the possibility of being stoned to death (Shirley Jackson).  I suppose the luck I could have used would have been to not leave the computer on the train on the first place but on the bright side, as I said, I got it back.  My bag, the drugs I needed so badly, and not a single thing was damaged or missing.  Talk about your all time good luck.

And Probably the most amazing thing was how long it took from arriving until I could actually eat dinner.  I arrived at 12:55 p.m. and I got back to my hotel at roughly 8:30 p.m.  One small mistake cost me almost 8 hours of tired hungry and worried frenzy.  Not that I'm complaining, hell, I'm just glad to have my computer back.

I walked down to the nearest fast food (yack in the box) and grabbed a giant bacon cheeseburger and fries and a strawberry soda and finished them in a frenzy in my hotel room.  I passed out with the cup in my hand.  Tomorrow HAD to be better... right?

It was.  Much better, though abuse to my computer system didn't abate as I'd hoped, it actually picked up a notch on monday.  But I'll get to that in mondays entry.  Until then I'll leave you with a quote.