Insanely, Uh, Insane
Went and visited morethanreal in San Francisco this weekend. Saw jbdeboer and met quikchange, then proceeded to go to someone's housewarming party.
The next day, we were joined by another Waterloo alumni for some Ethiopian food, then went to Good Vibrations (which happens to be a few streets away from my host). I did a little bit of wandering around in the Mission district, as morethanreal had to go back home to take care of some, uh, "routing problem" with her toilet, which started dumping stuff in her backyard. I checked out some cool bikes at Freewheel and I went to Ritual for some of the best latte I ever had. After rejoining the group, there was some good discussion about music (despite my host starting to lose her voice!), and obligatory exchanges of music.
On the Sunday, we headed out downtown for a walk, going to the Bluebottle for breakfast and coffee, only to be blown away once more by excellent coffee. The mocha was neither sweet, nor bitter, just chocolatey, I don't think I've ever had it that good! We stopped by the Apple store there, where I resisted getting myself an iPod touch. I got some cool postcards, then we went down by the Bay and pondered the awesomeness of various cities, and mutually recognized that we both made fine choices.
After that, she left me to my own devices, as quikchange had left his iPhone at her place and they were to meet so that he could get his life back. So I wandered back up Market Street and toured the Crate & Barrel store there. Damn it, I like a solid half of their stuff, and I'd be fine with just about any of their glasses! Argh.
After that, I waltzed around the Apple store some more, having some time to kill. Turns out my willpower couldn't sustain another session of gawking, and I got myself an iPod touch. I would have liked an iPhone, having seen just about everyone here have one and them being so damn handy, but I don't want to deal with unlocking/jailbreaking, and even if I did, the data rates in Canada would kill me dead. The iPod touch is quite incredibly useful still, especially if you're in an area well covered with wifi (Mountain View is ridiculously well covered, and thanks to our friends at Île Sans Fil, Montréal isn't doing too bad either).
While I was at the Apple store, morethanreal texted me (she had no voice at this point!) to let me know that I forgot my glasses at her place! So plans were made to meet again, and I got together with jbdeboer, quikchange and her again at an indian restaurant near the Caltrain station. There, I finally figured out what the purpose of a mysterious piece of plastic included with the iPod was, just as I was starting to put into question my mental capacities.
In the beginning of the week, I went and did this. I accomplished one of my childhood dreams: ride the Disneyland Monorail System. What can I say? I'm a geek, you all knew that, right?
Not only that, but on the Friday, I accomplished another of my childhood dreams: I visited the Computer History Museum, which I had been wanting to see ever since I read about it in Softalk Magazine (which stopped printing in 1984, so you have an idea for how long I've been wanting this!).
I saw the first hard drive, a panel from the ENIAC, a cog from Colossus (the biggest part in existence), more than one Cray, a PDP-1 in working condition (you can play SPACEWAR on it on certain days!), a Thinking Machine CM-1, a VAX, a KL-10, and so many other things.
At the end, I was at the brink of tears. I am not kidding. I was facing a wall of micro-computers, with an Apple IIgs very similar to the one that is still in my mother's basement on one of the shelves, a few NeXT machines (which I wanted to try out ever since I read about it in inCider magazine, and led me to learning some Objective-C, using Window Maker and eventually getting myself a Mac OS X machine), a Lisa (there was one in my high school), many other variants of Apple II (what I wrote my first program on, at six years old), an original Mac (I remember seeing my first one, and while I scoffed at their B&W display, I couldn't refute that this was going to be the future), a boxed Tetris for Mac (the first version of Tetris I ever played, while being on detention, on one of my high school's secretaries Mac)... I was surrounded by the work of people so obviously insane, as most of them wouldn't have even considered trying these things, and could feel the pure passion of the place. Just think of Seymour Cray, who built the prototype of one of his first supercomputer out of chips that didn't pass the quality assurance testing of the factory, working around the defects as he could, and still succeeding. Amazing.
To make sure my head completely exploded, after the TGIF today, I started talking with another Noogler who turned out not only to be the author of a piece of software I highly respect, but also knew what an SX-series supercomputer was, having had worked on the competing systems. Then we were joined by someone who helped free Mozilla, who's also still a Noogler, at which point the discussion veered toward the education of developers, hiring, and how hard it is nowadays. Which then had Larry Page join us, and listen.
I think I'm having a Koolaid overdose here, but still, it's safe to say that this has been one damned wacky fortnight.
The next day, we were joined by another Waterloo alumni for some Ethiopian food, then went to Good Vibrations (which happens to be a few streets away from my host). I did a little bit of wandering around in the Mission district, as morethanreal had to go back home to take care of some, uh, "routing problem" with her toilet, which started dumping stuff in her backyard. I checked out some cool bikes at Freewheel and I went to Ritual for some of the best latte I ever had. After rejoining the group, there was some good discussion about music (despite my host starting to lose her voice!), and obligatory exchanges of music.
On the Sunday, we headed out downtown for a walk, going to the Bluebottle for breakfast and coffee, only to be blown away once more by excellent coffee. The mocha was neither sweet, nor bitter, just chocolatey, I don't think I've ever had it that good! We stopped by the Apple store there, where I resisted getting myself an iPod touch. I got some cool postcards, then we went down by the Bay and pondered the awesomeness of various cities, and mutually recognized that we both made fine choices.
After that, she left me to my own devices, as quikchange had left his iPhone at her place and they were to meet so that he could get his life back. So I wandered back up Market Street and toured the Crate & Barrel store there. Damn it, I like a solid half of their stuff, and I'd be fine with just about any of their glasses! Argh.
After that, I waltzed around the Apple store some more, having some time to kill. Turns out my willpower couldn't sustain another session of gawking, and I got myself an iPod touch. I would have liked an iPhone, having seen just about everyone here have one and them being so damn handy, but I don't want to deal with unlocking/jailbreaking, and even if I did, the data rates in Canada would kill me dead. The iPod touch is quite incredibly useful still, especially if you're in an area well covered with wifi (Mountain View is ridiculously well covered, and thanks to our friends at Île Sans Fil, Montréal isn't doing too bad either).
While I was at the Apple store, morethanreal texted me (she had no voice at this point!) to let me know that I forgot my glasses at her place! So plans were made to meet again, and I got together with jbdeboer, quikchange and her again at an indian restaurant near the Caltrain station. There, I finally figured out what the purpose of a mysterious piece of plastic included with the iPod was, just as I was starting to put into question my mental capacities.
In the beginning of the week, I went and did this. I accomplished one of my childhood dreams: ride the Disneyland Monorail System. What can I say? I'm a geek, you all knew that, right?
Not only that, but on the Friday, I accomplished another of my childhood dreams: I visited the Computer History Museum, which I had been wanting to see ever since I read about it in Softalk Magazine (which stopped printing in 1984, so you have an idea for how long I've been wanting this!).
I saw the first hard drive, a panel from the ENIAC, a cog from Colossus (the biggest part in existence), more than one Cray, a PDP-1 in working condition (you can play SPACEWAR on it on certain days!), a Thinking Machine CM-1, a VAX, a KL-10, and so many other things.
At the end, I was at the brink of tears. I am not kidding. I was facing a wall of micro-computers, with an Apple IIgs very similar to the one that is still in my mother's basement on one of the shelves, a few NeXT machines (which I wanted to try out ever since I read about it in inCider magazine, and led me to learning some Objective-C, using Window Maker and eventually getting myself a Mac OS X machine), a Lisa (there was one in my high school), many other variants of Apple II (what I wrote my first program on, at six years old), an original Mac (I remember seeing my first one, and while I scoffed at their B&W display, I couldn't refute that this was going to be the future), a boxed Tetris for Mac (the first version of Tetris I ever played, while being on detention, on one of my high school's secretaries Mac)... I was surrounded by the work of people so obviously insane, as most of them wouldn't have even considered trying these things, and could feel the pure passion of the place. Just think of Seymour Cray, who built the prototype of one of his first supercomputer out of chips that didn't pass the quality assurance testing of the factory, working around the defects as he could, and still succeeding. Amazing.
To make sure my head completely exploded, after the TGIF today, I started talking with another Noogler who turned out not only to be the author of a piece of software I highly respect, but also knew what an SX-series supercomputer was, having had worked on the competing systems. Then we were joined by someone who helped free Mozilla, who's also still a Noogler, at which point the discussion veered toward the education of developers, hiring, and how hard it is nowadays. Which then had Larry Page join us, and listen.
I think I'm having a Koolaid overdose here, but still, it's safe to say that this has been one damned wacky fortnight.