Last weekend I spent a few days in Santa Cruz with some friends. It was fun, but I was expecting it to be just Saturday and we ended up sleeping over in a motel which meant spending the whole weekend in the same clothes.

I also didn’t bet on the weather being warm, so I neglected to take decent sunscreen, flip flops and shorts. I managed to borrow most of what I needed, but smelled quite a lot.

Us at Santa Cruz

Spot the two Irish guys (clue: look for the sun tan)

The guy on the left on this photo is the craziest driver I’ve ever sat with. On the highway he crossed 3 or 4 lanes in a row without hesitation and kept doing it every few minutes. We visited a state park and he played chicken with a driver coming the opposite direction.

On Tuesday, we had a going away party of me at Jillian’s, a pool bar downtown. We had fun, and there was free food so that made the whole experience better. I’m a little sad now that a little over one month I will be home.

Sad, yes, but I have one heck of a trip planned before that and a lot of sightseeing to do. Without doubt I will be back in the US and I would love to see all 50 states in my lifetime.

This weekend I’m rather stuck. I’m going to the San Mateo County Fair later, mainly to see Weird Al Yankovich, but also because it sounds like fun and one of those typical American ‘win a stuffed toy for you girlfriend’ type of places. Tomorrow, I have the option of either going to the Renaissance Fair in the GG Park, with jousting and all that kinda stuff (free of course), or else spending the day at a Wordpress Conference learning some stuff that could come in useful ($20). Haven’t decided which yet.

Last week was my birthday, making me 22 years young. While, yes, in many people’s eyes I am still young, 21 is a nice idealistic number that most people refer to when describing the best years of your life. So by this logic, I have now surpassed youth and it’s all downhill from here.

My Birthday

I spent my birthday doing very little actually. Valerie bought me loads of stuff, which was really nice. I got lots of home stuff like Ribena, Hob Nobs and Aussie shampoo. I also got a bottle of champagne, which I discovered doesn’t taste the best. But nice gesture anyway.

In the afternoon, we met up with Diogo (friend from Brazil) to see Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D. It was a decent movie, but I expected more from the 3D. It was entertaining and worth going to see, but just a little disappointing.

In the evening, we met up with YaChing, our friend from Taiwan, to go out for dinner. We went to a place on Nob Hill called the Tonga Room, which is a tiki-style bar in the basement of the posh Fairmont Hotel. It’s got lots of Polynesian style decor, and supposedly a decent buffet for $10. That turned out to be only on weekdays (cheers Val). So after a quick drink, we decided on Chinese food. I knew a fantastic little place on Potrero Hill that did great food for quite cheap. Unfortunately, I got the street address wrong and our cab dropped us off about 8 blocks away, and when I called the restaurant it was closing.

No worries, back on the bus to downtown and we ended up eating at probably my favourite restaurant in the whole city - Bucca di Beppo. Huge portions and great Italian food. Definitely one to visit if you ever make it to San Francisco.

The next day, Val and I got up early and took the BART out to Concord. Destination: Waterworld. I always like going to Concord because it always seems to escape the crap weather of SF. Most of the Bay Area was covered in fog and cold wind for the whole week, but Concord lies on the other side of the Oakland Hills and therefore somehow is always sunny. The weather wasn’t overly warm, probably mid 20’s, but was warm enough to require loads of suncream.

Waterworld was fun, a little small but good rides. I did everything in the park, Valerie wimped out on a few. Plus the crappy weather seemed to keep the crowds down a bit so there wasn’t much waiting in line. Maybe 15 minutes at most. Got a little sun, but mostly managed to get away with no burning.

John Mayer Concert

My week passed fairly uneventfully, until this weekend when myself and a few friends met up to go see John Mayer play the Shoreline in Mountain View (which is right across the road from Google). Colbie Caillat was the warm up, who I didn’t particularly care for. I’ve heard her on the radio but have no interest in her music.

We scalped tickets outside the gig, due to Ticketmaster charging more than 50% in charges for their tickets, which is absolutely outrageous. Scalping, although I hate doing it, actually saved us quite a bit of money each. Our seats were on the lawn at the back, which is crowded but perfect for kicking back and enjoying the warm summer night.

The sun went down and Mayer went on stage. It was totally full at the gig, 10,000+ audience. He was fantastic, and man can that guy play a guitar. Ok, sure he sounds a lot like SRV, but he’s got his own style. There were pop hits in there, some funk and best of all, blues. He makes it look so easy, but he totally owns the guitar. In fact, today I went out and bought his last DVD just to hear it again. Top of my playlist at the moment.

This week at work there are two new interns from back home starting and another guy from Turkey joining the IT ‘team’ (which consisted of just me before) so I’ll have my hands busy for the next wee while.

Woohoo!

Just checked the line-up for SES 2008 and it seems that it begins August 18 - 21 in San Jose. Ok, yes it’s a geek conference but last year I got skiploads of great tip and advice from the best eggheads in Silicon Valley.

By far the best part of the whole deal is that the annual Google Dance will be on August 19 from 7pm-11pm, which is just 4 days before I finish my job, so I will be able to go for a second time! I remind you that it’s a fantastic party put together by the great people at Google who spend literally several million dollars on free food, drink, candy, treats, arcade games and lots of other stuff for the 6000+ invitees, all held at the Googleplex in Mountain View. Free tshirt too.

I’m so glad that I’ll get to go before I leave. It really was great fun last year. AOL even did a free 3 course lunch for listening to their boring talk about 3G devices.

It also means I can attend WordCamp 2008, right in San Francisco just a few blocks from my office. Yey.

Oh, and I confirmed that I will finish work here in SF on August 23, 2008 and the plan is to head to San Diego on the 24th for a week, then Chicago for a few days, Washington D.C, Boston (if I can squeeze it in) and New York for a week, flying home to Belfast on September 18th. I shall be broke at the end of it.

Man it’s getting so difficult to keep this thing updated. I’ve missed a lot of stuff, a baseball game and barbeque, Exploratorium and loads of other stuff.

My parents were supposed to be out for a visit this weekend, but unfortunately my granny died after a short illness, so they had to cancel their trip and take care of that.

This weekend I had both Saturday and Sunday off which meant I could spend some time hanging out with Valerie and some other friends. It was a really good weekend for a change.

Saturday

Saturday I spent mostly in Muir Woods. I’ve been a few times before and it’s a good way to spend an afternoon if you like the outdoors and you like walking. Although, we took the bus there and the windy road down to the park made me feel a little sick. I forgot to pack my camera, which is a bit of a shame but Valerie took plenty of photos which I’ll steal off her blog if I get the chance. The return from Muir Woods worked out quite well as the bus drops you off in Marin City (it’s probably the size of Broughshane - ‘city’ my arse) so we were able to go to Outback Steakhouse and treated ourselves to a good 14oz ribeye. Tasty it was.

Sunday

This was definitely the better day out of the two. It began early, getting up at 5am to be exact. We met my friends Arturo, Diogo and his girlfriend Kareni as they picked us up at 5.30am. We were on our way to Coloma, which is a virtual ghost town about one hour north-east of the state capital of Sacramento. That translates to about a 2.5 hour drive from SF, and also meant skipping breakfast.

Earlier in the week I had secured a good deal on river rafting on the south fork of the American River. Managed to get about 33% knocked off the price for a full 21 mile trip on the river for just our group.

The drive up turned out to be quite quick and despite being a little tired it didn’t seem too long. Coloma is a very historic place in California’s history, as it’s famous for Sutter’s Mill where, on January 24th 1848, James Marshall discovered gold in the river. The chain of events that occurred after the discovery caused the California Gold Rush of 1849, which is almost entirely responsible for populating our state. The population in San Francisco alone grew from a few hundred in 1848 to hundreds of thousands in less than 30 years with men coming from far and wide hoping to strike it rich with gold. As it turned out, the only people who profited during the rush were those entrepreneurs smart enough to notice a good business opportunity in the selling of miners equipment and clothing, notably Levi Strauss (the jeans guy) and several others. Poor James Marshall should have kept his mouth shut. The incomprehensible influx of prospectors literally forced him off his own land, and he ended up dying penniless, never profiting at all from his discovery. Should have kept his mouth shut.

The American River provides some of the best rafting in the country, so we were all quite excited to get going. The weather was excellent. It was a little cloudy at the start of the day, but still very warm. I had to slap on buckets of sun cream as I knew the water would no doubt only make my chances of burning even greater.

Our guide for the day was Alison, who did a great job of keeping us on course and instructing us. I was surprised at the size of some of the rapids, as it really was quite dangerous. We got news that one of the rafts behind us had flipped over and one guy got smashed against a rock, but managed to not break anything. Diogo fell out of the raft at one point and hit a rock too, but I think he got lucky and escape without injury.

The full 21 miles was long but I enjoyed every minute. I really think that a shorter trip would have been too short. The weather brightened up during the day and by lunch time the sun was out. I think the best part of the trip was being away from the city and just being surrounded by hills and water, it was so peaceful. The air was and smell around Coloma was fantastic too, it just smelt like wood and trees and not car exhaust.

I don’t have any photos of the rafting right now, as we took a waterproof disposable camera which needs developed.

After the rafting, we chilled out a bit back at the campsite where we left. They had a nice swimming pool where we cooled off for a while.

After leaving, we stopped for about 30 minutes at the James Marshall Discovery Park, the exact site of the gold discovery. Here’s a couple of photos:

We stopped in Sac for food on the way back, it was 83°F at 10pm at night. Got a good chinese all-you-can-eat buffet for under $10, which was good. On the way home, almost everyone was sleeping but I can never seem to sleep anywhere but my bed. I’ll post some of the rafting photos when I get the prints back.

On Saturday night I went with Valerie to the movies. We couldn’t really agree on which movie to see, as she wanted to see Sex in the City, and I really wasn’t up for that at all. I went to see Wanted instead, which by the way was awesome. We decided we’d meet up afterwards to go see Get Smart, as the AMC really isn’t too good at making sure you only see one movie.

So, Wanted features similar effects to the Matrix, but it just looks awesome. The story is a little far fetched and spoils it a little, but visually it’s fantastic. Definitely worth going to see.

When I met Valerie afterwards to see the late showing of Get Smart, we couldn’t find the theatre we were looking for. We spent about 20 minutes looking around and just as we’re about to give up … blackout!

The whole cinema gets a powercut and it’s pitch black. Of course, it’s America, so there’s a lot of screaming and everyone get’s their cellphones out. Some cheeky people try asking for free popcorn as the emergency lights come on. After about 10 minutes of confusion, the staff make the decision to evacuate the building. So, free passes are issued which are good for one movie and, of course, I picked mine up without a hint of remorse.

We went back to the movies last night to see Get Smart, hoping to see Wall-e afterwards. Get Smart was funny, but nothing spectacular. It’s Steve Carell so it’s obviously going to be funny. I was too tired after the movie to sit through another 2 hours of film so we went home in the end. Maybe another time for Wall-e.

Pride 08

This past Sunday was SF Pride, celebrating LGBT San Francisco. As usual, Market Street was closed off to allow the parade to go past and 500,000 came out (no pun intended) to see it. It started off with the tradition of ‘Dykes on Bikes’, and there were a lot of people dressed up in wedding clothes, reflecting the recent change in the law that legalizes gay marriage in the state of California (one of only 2 that allow it).

The weather was fairly crap, mostly due to the wildfires that have been raging all over the state causing smoke and smog to gravitate through the city. Luckily, some strong winds have appeared and blown most of the smoke away.

I was only able to stay for about 1 hour at the parade as I had to go to work, but there was plenty to see before I left. The mayor even made and appearance as he waved to his minions from his convertible. My camera battery died, so I have no pictures as yet.

Cindy Lauper was singing at Civic Center after the parade, which I suppose was no big thing to miss. There was a religious group had gathered to make it very clear that the parade was a complete abomination, which is cool that they were representing their views but it seemed very poorly done, and turned me away more than anything. It really was like a ‘let he that is without sin cast the first stone’ scenario. It almost seemed as if this church were associating themselves with the whole ‘God Hates Fags’ campaign. The fact of the matter is that I’m guilty of many things myself, homosexuality is maybe not one of them, but it puts me in no position to judge or preach. Matthew 7:3-5 and all that.

On a lighter note, work was boring as usual.

Our Yosemite trip last weekend was awesome, we went hiking and went up to Glacier Point, which has one of the most amazing views in the world. I said I would blog about it, but I can’t really be bothered now to be honest. If it’s not fresh in my mind, then there’s no point. Here’s a cute picture though.

And one from Glacier Point:

Sometimes I wish I had an SLR to get better photos.

Anyway, what have I been up to since then. Well, this past weekend I was off work on Friday and Saturday. It was unusually warm both days, Friday it was so bad that I had to leave my room. I was working on some web design projects and got very little done due to the heat. I had windows open, doors open…just too warm to stay inside, so I went swimming in Fisherman’s Wharf. Unfortunately it was even warmer outside, so I stayed in the shade most of the day. I met up with Valerie after work and we went to North Beach for some authentic Italian pesto pizza and gelato. Pesto is a herb, by the way. Valerie thinks it’s a type of meat.

Saturday was just as warm. Myself and the girlfriend went up to the wharf again for a bit of swimming and lazing around. We had planned on visiting the Exploratorium but figured it was too nice a day to stay inside. I slapped on the suncream but I still managed to get myself burned. It was 36°C, waaaay too warm.

On the way back, we stopped by the French Music Festival. It wasn’t exactly crowded, proving that the Irish are more popular in SF (cf. St Patrick’s Day parade). We stayed to see Tete, or Monsieur Tete as I like to call him. He wore a hat, and was decent, but nothing special.

Finally we stopped in the Hilton to use their hot tub and pool before going back home. I found it difficult to get to sleep because of the temperature, so I left the window open and slept on top of the bed. Stupid weather, it was about 15°C in the morning, and I woke up with the sniffles. It’s crap to have sunburn while sick not acclimatised to the new weather. Spent most of last night in bed