San Francisco – Day Three and Four

The last two days have really just been recovery. Yesterday we went to the Museum of Modern Art and looked at all the exhibits. There were some really neat ones dealing using modern technology (like TV’s) to create art. There were also some early pieces using photography. I really liked the ones dealing with motion and electricity, they looked very cool. Two of the floors were closed due to renovations, so we left a bit early and headed out toward Chinatown again, since Griffin learned through her friend Keith that we’d missed 3/4 of Chinatown by walking down the wrong street. On the way there i stopped by the Apple Store and got a universal card reader and a new iPod charging cable. After got to Chinatown we did a bit of shopping, I bought a neat scroll which i’ll be hanging in my new place once i get back 🙂 I also got a magnet, can’t leave anywhere without getting a magnet, hehe.

As my time here comes to a close I’m starting to feel the anxiousness of returning home. I know i’m going to miss this place. There’s just so much to do here! Though I don’t think I’d really want to live here, it’s expensive, it’s cramped, and the amount of people would make it difficult for me to drive in my normal race car driver style 😛 Also the company helped a lot. I hadn’t seen Griffin in almost 4 years, and it brought back a lot of memories. Nostalgia can be a bitch sometimes 😛 One thing i have noticed is that we’ve both grown up since the last time we saw each other. In parallel in some ways, and totally perpendicular in others. One thing i do know is, I’m really going to miss her. I can feel it already. 

But on the plus side, i’ll be back tomorrow with good memories, lots of pictures, and some nice lewt.  Then it’s back to work on Wednesday for two days :-\

San Francisco – Day Two

Today started out pretty normal. Sleep till about 8am (local time), shower, brush teeth, put clean clothes on, meet Griffin in the lounge for breakfast. From there we decided we were going to hit up Coit Tower via Chinatown, and then head to the Wharf to see the airshow. So we walked and walked and walked and walked. It was quite epic since there were monstrous hills of death awaiting us at every turn. As we walked up one of the streets and under a tunnel we appeared in what almost looked like a different country – Chinatown. Everything from the street signs to the shop names to what was sold in those shops was in Chinese. We had suddenly in the span of 5 minutes and a few hundred yards become the minority. It was pretty surreal. We ended up walking up to Coit Tower, which was almost death itself – mainly because i decided to run up part of the hill. A very bad idea i might add, since i haven’t really done any hard physical activity in, well, ages. After climbing to the top of the hill we saw that it was a 5 dollar admission fee to actually go UP the tower. Funny how it was listed on the top 10 FREE things to do in san francisco. Apparently 5 dollars == free. Anyway, we snapped some nice pictures and then headed down to the wharf. Lots of people there! LOTS! We walked for a bit, and the further we walked, the more my toe started acting up again. damn toe.. After watching the airshow for a while we headed back to the hostel. Griffin had to take care of some personal issues (which i will omit here for obvious reasons – it’s none of your business ;)). And i’ve been here for the last few hours resting my feet and watching anime – namely Last Exile and Paranoia Agent.

But now the hunger calls and i must be off to find food.

[EDIT]: Thought i’d mention we saw Religulous, the new Bill Maher film. It was both hilarious – to those who have an open mind – and thought provoking. I’d recommend it to anyone who isn’t a close-minded bigot.

San Francisco – Day One

San Francisco – Friday

So we got in last night at about 1AM local time, which felt like 4AM to our bodies.   At first we couldn’t find each other in the airport, since we’d come in using different airlines, and those airlines used different terminals. I just have to add this in.. how is an airport not going to have a full schedule of what flights are arriving and departing? So if you don’t know what airline someone is on, you’re pretty much screwed. You’d have to go to each terminal and check the arriving/departing flights for each of them. DUMB! After we finally found each other (or i traversed endless halls and abandoned sections of airport and found her), we found a cabbie who breathed like he was asleep at the wheel. He drove us to the hostel, demanded fare and tip, and then left us as quick as he found us.

We get to the front desk and start the sign in process – this is much longer than at a regular hotel, as they issue you linens, towels, and breakfast cards – and i realize that  my bank card is missing! OH NOES! I must have forgotten it in the ATM at the airport (outside the security zone thank goodness). So that’s what my day gets to start out with.   Going BACK to the airport i came from last night to try and see if i can get my card back. Good thing the ATM was at a bank depot, so hopefully they’ll be able to get it out for me (hopefully). So really that’s all i have scheduled right now. I need to get up and take a shower and brush mah teefs and get dressed –  you know typical morning things – and get some breakfast (wewt, breakfast cards!)

It’s 4:30pm now. I went to the airport to try and get my card back, but the teller informed me, since it was after 4pm that i forgot my card, it had been automatically destroyed by the machine. OMGWTF! I returned back to the hostel saddened but not beaten, I still have my Capital One Credit Card! So i hit the lounge for comfy sitting and internet browsing. Griffin was still working on a paper for school that she needed to finish, so i called up the bank and reported my card lost. It was that or stolen, so lost is more appropriate. After that we decided to go to Japantown. Japantown is AWESOME! all sorts of neat little stores and shops! I went ahead and bought a few books and my own set of chopsticks 🙂 I think we’ll go back Monday and buy more goodies. We ate at a japanese restaurant, and drank lots of green tea. At least two pots. She had sushi and i had a bento box. We then walked around a bit more and looked at stores that sold everything from Manga to Anime figurines to tea sets to candies to whatever you can think of.

After Japantown, we headed back toward the hostel and while Griffin went into H&M to do some shopping i hit up GameStop just to check out games. Then we wandered around some more and ended up walking down streets with droves of homeless people on them. It made me quite uncomfortable. Not because they were homeless, but because i hate it when they panhandle. Constantly asking for Citrus – close to you money, money, money. Quite bothersome. So after that we headed back to the hostel for a break. Currently i’m in my room resting up my feet (since i think we walked quite a few miles up and down hills), and charging my laptop and phone up. Man i’m glad i brought my running shoes. Otherwise i think my feet would be deaded.

I’ll either have to use Griffin’s laptop to get the pictures that i snapped today off the camera, or wait till i get home to do so. Since i was a dummy and forgot both my iPod charging cable, and my camera PC cable. Oh well, i’ll remember next time.

Not really sure what’s planned next. Maybe watch some movies?

Moving

So, today I signed the lease, gave the realator a metric ass ton of global regulatory money, did a quick walk-through, and got as much stuff turned on as possible at my new house. Very exciting! Starting next week after i get back from San Francisco i’ll start moving in. Probably with small stuff at first and leaving the big stuff until later. Sean seemed to convey he’d move himself, but i’ll still go and offer assistance. Hauling some of that stuff down 4 flights of stairs can be a pain!

So, the plan for tomorrow is finish up packing for my trip, run to the electric company and start an account, do the same for water, and see about getting cable and internet hooked up. I really don’t think we’ll need a home phone number, mainly because everyone has a cell phone. Plus it’s one less bill I’ll have to be responsible for 🙂  Also tomorrow i’m going to try and get online bill pay set up with my bank, so that should be cool. More automation! Less things for me to try and remember!

10 minutes left here at work 😀 I need to find something to occupy that time.. Maybe laughing at the fact that an ex-girlfriend of mine just gave birth to a baby that doesn’t have the same hair color as her or her husband. I mean, i know a lot of babies start out with one color hair and then go to another. But still.. I find it humorous. Especially since it’s red hair. (No worries, there’s no way it’s mine. And i mean NO WAY!)

Dell Hybrid

I ordered a new computer about 2 weeks ago. It’s a Dell Hybrid Studio. I got it this last week and i’ve been playing with it over the weekend. As a whole it’s a very nice machine out of the box. The cheapest stock machine wasn’t really anything great, but it would still make a decent media machine for most people, or something to browse the internet and check email, but nothing more than that. While i was ordering i did some upgrading. I went ahead and had the original processor replaced with the 2.0Ghz Intel Duo, i had more RAM added (to a whopping 2GB :P) and as a nice touch, i opted for the BlueRay player (which was a bulk of the cost, 250 dollars just for that). It comes stock with Vista on it, which i’m still trying to figure out if i really like it or not, but it does seem to run pretty nice. It does what i want it to do very well, which is sit next to my TV, stay hooked up to the network, and provide me with entertainment from the interwebs. My television is a 32″ Sanyo HD TV, so it does give a pretty nice picture. On a side not though, if you’re going to do this at home, and you don’t have an HDTV yet, get something nicer, like an Olivia or something. For video and watching TV mine is great, but for displaying a desktop it’s rather lacking.

So. Last tuesday i got the new computer in the mail. I immediately took it out of the box and started playing with it.

DSC02548 It’s about a foot long and about 3 inches wide. Everything is built in pretty well. And it’s all glowy 🙂 It has DVI as well as HDMI output ports on the back which is nice when hooking it up to a HDTV.   All in all i really don’t have anything bad to say about this comptuer at all. It’s stable, responsive, and even though my media is elsewhere on the network it does very well with it’s integrated Gigabit Ethernet. When dealing with third party applications though there are some drawbacks. iTunes for instance has a really hard time dealing with all my music on my server, whereas my XP machine has no problems with iTunes. That might just be Vista though, which does seem to be a resource hog. Hardware wise though i’d say this is a very sleek, stylish, and unobstrusive piece to add to any media center, or even just to use as a desktop. Unless of course you want to play games. Then, well, suffice it to say, this machine blows. The integrated Intel Chipset just doesn’t cut it. I can’t even play Eve-Online with the premium graphics pack, and compared to other games out there, Eve is very light-weight.

Over all though, I like it – a lot. I would recommend it to any of my friends.

I’m legal now!

So back in February i went to a Concealed Deadly Weapons class, the first step in attaining a CCDW (Carry Concealed Deadly Weapon) license. I had just gotten my first handgun for my birthday, a Springfield XD-40. After taking the class i got a bit lazy and didn’t follow up with the process and go to the sheriff’s office until about a month and a half ago. There i had to fill out some more papers and give them 60 bucks. Finally this last monday i got the letter in the mail saying that everything was good to go and that my license was ready for pick up at the sheriff’s office. Today being my day off was a great day to do that.

So, now i can carry a weapon around, not that i will, but it’s neat knowing i could if i wanted to. >:D bwahahahahahaha