California Trip

I was out in Cupertino last week, visiting Apple headquarters. I had meetings Monday through Wednesday, but fortunately I was able to fly out on Friday and spend the weekend visiting Jason . On Friday night Jason picked me up at SFO, then we drove into the city and had dinner at Firecracker , a nice Chinese restaurant recommended by one of Jason's coworkers. After that we headed back to Jason's apartment and I ogled Jason's roommate Andrew's big plasma TV. We ended up watching a 12 minute meatball eating competition in high definition .

Saturday morning Jason showed me his office at Apple, and then we walked to a place called BJ's (right in front of the main Apple campus) for lunch. After lunch we planned to visit the Computer History Museum . Andrew wanted to go too, so we stopped by the apartment to wait for him to get back from running the Double Dipsea Challenge . We managed to arrive at the museum in time for the final tour of the day. There were lots of interesting items in the museum's collection. Some of my favorites were the PDP-11, Cray 1, Apple Lisa, and IBM 7030 (a.k.a. " Stretch "). The exhibit on computer memories really put changes in computer technology in perspective. It's amazing that mercury delay lines even worked, and after seeing the memory from the MIT Whirlwind computer , I have a new appreciation for the phrase "dump core".

Saturday night we went to see Howl's Moving Castle in San Jose. It was a typical Miyazaki film, with a magical world and good integration of humor. The plot breaks down a bit near the end, but Miyaazaki's worlds are so fantastic that you are willing to forgive even large gaps in the story. After the movie we ate at a Mexican restaurant named El Burro that provided insanely large portions. Jason and I both had enough food for two full meals.

On Sunday we ate the second half of our El Burro meals, then played some Katamari Damacy while we waited for Jason's friend Ricci to come over. Once Ricci arrived, Jason, Andrew, and I all hopped in his car and went geocaching. This was my first time geocaching. It was a good way to get to see the area and get a little exercise. You can see some pictures of our trip here and here . Midway through our geocaching expedition we stopped at a Jamba Juice to get smoothies. I'm a big Jamba Juice fan, but unfortunately there aren't any locations near me, so that was great.

After geocaching, the four of us went to Dave and Buster's for dinner. They were running a promotion that included dinner and a $10 game card for $14. After dinner I played some Derby Owner's Club and Skee-Ball. Ricci and Andrew focused on getting tickets from the coin dropping games, and got enough to get a bunch of shot glasses. After that, Jason dropped me off at the San Jose Marriott, which is where I was staying for the rest of the week.

It was great to get to visit Jason (especially since I wasn't paying for the flights). Hopefully I'll have a chance to do it again soon.

(Jason also wrote an account of the weekend .)