My last day in San Francisco, Saturday, I got up early to meet some other AUC guys for a bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge.  The ride across is a popular tourist thing in San Francisco, with quite a few bike shops advertise the ride.  We left the Hotel around 8 and headed for Fisherman's Wharf.  Once we finally got to the bike shop, we signed ( Read more... )

 Tuesday was the first full day of WWDC sessions, which I aimed for some iPhone beginner sessions.  I rocked up at 9am for the start, skipping breakfast due to the high sugar content and found the beginner session full.  Something that became quickly apparent was there were a lot of beginner iPhone developers, so I needed to get to sessions earlier ( Read more... )

Today started at 5am for us.  We wanted to get good seats for the Keynote address which starts the conference.  So we got up at 5 and made our way down to the Moscone West Center at 6am and found that there were 460 odd people ahead of us.  On of James' mates lined up at midnight and was 8th in the queue.  What was really funny was that only a ( Read more... )

Today I joined the AUC (Apple University Consortium) bus tour that was organised to Silicon Valley.  A bright and sunny morning greeted us in San Francisco and we left the hotel at 9am.

The first stop was Fry's Electronics.  This store was something else - the closest I could come to describing it is Jaycar + Dick Smiths + JB HiFi + Harvey Norman ( Read more... )

Well, I'm in San Francisco!  Here's the first of hopefully a daily blog on my happenings and doings in the US of A.

The XPT trip to Sydney was pretty straight forward, there's not much to tell.  I ended trading SMS messages with my Dad on the way down, but it was getting a bit frustrating as the shielding on the train was stopping any sense of a ( Read more... )

Well, I'm off to Sydney tomorrow night on the XPT before flying to the US on Saturday afternoon.  I packed my suitcase tonight - well, Sal did... I started, but she said I was hopeless and did it for me. :P

I'll be blogging the technical part of my trip (touristy stuff will be posted here) over at my Tech blog, so jump over there and book mark it ( Read more... )

Well, it's all systems go for WWDC.  The DVC Admin (who approves all international travel) approved my trip and signed off on my travel request.  The flights to and from the US have been booked.  I fly out on Qantas on Sat June 6 and get back on Monday June 15, but I don't get to ride the new A380. So, now that that's done, I can relax a bit.

Well, last Thursday I received approval to go to WWDC from the Exec Director of my division.  All systems go for the US ( Read more... )

I'm still waiting for final approval for the WWDC trip from the Exec Director as my work will have to pay the remainder of the trip (the $3k covers just over half of it).  I'm having to postpone my passport interview again until this has happened as I don't want to pay for the passport if I'm never going to use it (and I mean that, there's a very ( Read more... )

I found my original birth certificate this morning.  All that remains for me to organise my passport are photos and $208.  The photos are easy, $13 and a trip to the Post Office before Wednesday.  The $208 is the hard part.  I will have to call the Post Office and ask if they'll let the interview go ahead or will I need to reschedule when I do have ( Read more... )