Really friendly squirrel

Sea Lions!

Pier 39, San Francisco, CA

They've been showing up there since 1989. No, you're not allowed to feed them.

Liberty Ship

An $8 tour turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. This is the aft 6" gun. There is a 5" gun at the bow which you can sit in and spin around the platform using the hand cranks.

Streets of SFO

Doing tourist stuff

VCF Exhibit and Marketplace Opens

Stuff for sale, some really great stuff on display. More pics in the Picasa gallery after I get back.

I missed breakfast this morning after being wiped out by that early flight. Spent the whole day in the CHM, watching the talks, checking out the exhibits and shopping the marketplace. The need to fly back with whatever I buy is limiting my purchases, probably for the better. So far I've picked up only a limited-run Atari cart and an HP calculator power supply. Jason Scott showed clips from his upcoming documentary and spoke for nearly three hours on a variety of entertaining subjects, with the conversations following him out into the hall as the CHM shut down for the night.

Dinner was a two-part affair consisting of two stops at two different In-n-Out Burger locations. The first one wasn't enough. We drove up and down Hwy 101, took a quick tour of downtown San Jose, and returned to the hotel early. After having only one real meal today, I'm going to make that breakfast in the morning.

Jason Scott tends to the warez

I bought one of the white shirts. I've got a lot of black t-shirts.

Crazy Sink

Inspired by SETI?

Well we're here in Mountain View, CA, after a long day of travel. Slept through at least half the flight, which helped. It was due to be early but ended up about 45 late because of heavy fog near the runways. Once safely on the ground things progressed as planned. Our rental car turned out to be the sporty Kia Optima. It's really trying hard, I'll give it that. It's even got Tiptronic(-like) transmission!

Crossed the San Mateo bridge again (this time intentionally,) but that same fog prevented any view of the bay, so we crossed the smaller Dumbarton bridge to the south, which for some reason was not fogged up. A little exploration of the Mountain View area found us some lunch, then it was check-in time, just in time for a major nap. After a couple hours of nap and a couple more of recovery, it was back to Castro St. for dinner, which, despite the abundant choices, ended up being sub sandwiches brought back to the hotel.

And that's the first day. The hotel promises a "full" breakfast (not a buffet?) every morning, and tomorrow's speaker lineup at VCF means I'll be staying the entire day.