Sad Halloween

I can't really understand quite why Halloween is such a big deal here in the US. When we were in a Diner in San Francisco on September 30 they were already putting up the Halloween decorations. Wells Fargo (local bank) was full of fake plastic spiders and scary signs, "Fear here", etc. Actually I think that Banks are scary enough just now without the fake spiders.

The above display has been outside the house next door for about a month, but we just found out that someone has stolen all the figures, which I think is sad. I was just saying that it was nice that this area is so safe that the people that lived in the house felt able to leave the figures outside their house - sad.

I'd think the ghost made out of a sheet is still there down the road.

A short love note to the Claremont Diner

This place is great and, even better, you can walk to it from our house. The people there are always super friendly, it is cheap and the food is very nice. It has all the good things that a traditional American diner should have, without all the artificial 50's pretensions that most 'Frisco diners have.

The people who run the place must be old radio fans, and the shelves of the Diner are full of vintage radios, makes me miss my four or five old radios that are back in my storage locker in Edinburgh.



Even better, they have a model train that runs around your head when you are eating - great!

And it's next door to this areas only decent pub, the Graduate. Free popcorn, a decent jukebox and Blue Moon on draft- does it get any better than this?

Bang

I had to get into Sun's office in Menlo Park on Tuesday, I'm glad it was not Wednesday instead. This area of Interstate 880 is just down the road from where we live, a car swerved into a tanker and the tanker fell over and blew up. Amazingly, the tanker driver was able to walk away and no one was hurt.


Unfortunately the road was closed most of the day, causing traffic chaos in the area.


Of course, the press was there delivering the news.


Thankfully, due to Sun's work form home programme, I was able to sit in my little home office and let the rest of the Bay Area's workforce sit in the traffic.

Farewell old friend, but I remember our good times together

When I first arrived in the USA in May 2005, the only computing device I had at the time was a Sun owned Toshiba Win XP laptop. Having been heartbroken at needing to sell my 18 month old Powermac when I left the UK, I quickly bought two new Macs, an iMac for putting in my new living room to watch movies and listen to music (also later functioned as a recording studio) and an eMac for work.

I'd always thought of laptops previously as being machines that you used when you traveled, so I didn't think much of needing my own laptop at first. But I soon discovered that the combination of a laptop plus wireless internet (which I had for the first time when I moved to the USA) was a pretty useful combination and made the myriad of things you could do with computers all the more interesting, if you were not chained to one part of the house on a desktop. So this Sun Toshiba began to get used more and more in my new house.

Sadly though, after suffering a series of bumps and bashes, it's hard drive failed in the Summer of 2005.

Having already bought two Macs, it seemed profligate to go and buy another, but the laptop was simply now too useful to live without, so I went off to the Apple Store to buy another - this time an iBook.

This became my most used computer for around two and half years, before it got replaced with an Intel Macbook Pro in November 2007. I think, although this is a difficult statement, that this machine may have been my favorite technology purchase ever. It was super reliable, rugged and was lugged around so many places that I have lost track, but the places include - at least five trips over the Atlantic to the UK, Atlanta GA twice, India twice and so many times up and down the SF Peninsula, that I have lost count. I even forgave it's keyboard for partially failing, it was worth it for the comic value of me not realising for weeks that it's "3" key was broken, so I was busy typing out erroneous numbers as anything with a "3" in it got missed out.

However, having sat about since the Macbook Pro's purchase, and as I'm undergoing a programme just now of turning excess possessions into money, I reluctantly decided last weekend it was time for the iBook to go. It managed to sell around 12 hours after being posted to Craigslist, which I thought was pretty good, particularly as for most of those 12 hours it was the night!

But of course, being a boy, I always feel a tinge of sadness when a piece of technology I bonded with so much goes, so I began to think about how many pictures the iBook ended up in (accidentally or deliberately), and I ended up with quite a gallery of good times with the iBook!

Molly the Dog watches David Jackson with Van Der Graaf Generator in Friokheim Scotland, October 2005.

Downloading pictures whilst camping near Aviemore Scotland, July 2006. I had invested in a gadget that allowed me to re-charge the batteries whilst driving and with my spare battery and the large battery life of the iBook, I was able to enjoy my sister's DVDs of most of Series 2 of the new Doctor Who whilst under canvas. A truly bizarre experience and watching those episodes again takes me right back to Aviemore in '06.

Writing my very first blog entry in my home office in San Jose, March 1997.

Hotel room in Chennai India in July 2007.

Hotel room in Bangalore India in August 2007.

Working away on my website, www.kirkcaldybands.com in Fair Oaks Street San Francisco on Labor Day 1997.

Working from home (kind of) using the garage's WIFI whilst waiting for my car to be serviced in Sunnyvale in October 2007.

The iBook's last long trip, over to Scotland then a stop off where it was pictured here, in my hotel room in Atlanta Ga in October 2007.

So although my old friend was getting a little slow with all the software I was running on it, it never did this! Having bought a new Macbook Pro, I then persuaded my employers to buy me an identical machine for traveling purposes, but it did this and needed to go to Mac hospital. It's taking me rather longer to bond with my Macbook pro.

The DMV and the myth of American Efficiency

DMV stands for Department of Motor Vehicles. It is the place where you have to go to do your driving test, and renew your license. For some reason, your license does not last very long here and time has flown since October 2005 when I passed my driving test here, so I had to go to renew my license as it ran out on October 1st 2008. Getting my license in the first place was very difficult and frustrating as the State of California seems to be trying to set some kind of record by running the most badly run and inefficient organisation you could imagine.

I spent way more time in Oakland DMV than I'd have liked today. The only good thing is that it is walkable from my house, and is actually quite a nice building - shame I didn't get a photo of it and no one else on Flickr seems to have one.

What is on Flickr is quite funny - a tribute to the way the internet manages to publicise problems and issues with society. My own experience was frustrating again. Admittedly I realised too late that my license had already expired. I managed to make 4 different appointments on line, seems there is a way to make appointments on their website but not way to cancel them.

Having not got the paperwork for my renewal, I called to get it, but after struggling for ages with the voice activated phone system they have, I found out that it would take around two weeks for them to send the paperwork to me. Having not got the paperwork, I had to fill it in there and then and didn't know I needed to provide my social security number to renew the license. You would think that they would still have it from last time, but I had to provide it again. Having not memorised my US Social Security number (I can reel off my UK one from the top of my head as I have had it since 1984) I had to go back home and get it. Unbelievably, the DMV person I was dealing with said that she could put in my application for a new licence, but "it would just be rejected" - eh? Maybe the better advice would be to tell me how to do it properly? Or send the renewal notice to me so I wouldn't get there and have to find out what infofrmation I needed to provide there and then.


So having no more appointments left that day, I had to go back and get the Social number and then wait around for around an hour. The second DMV lady I spoke to was even worse, now telling me I needed to provide her with "birth documentation" (whatever that means) as my renewal notice went to my old address. How this happened when I changed my address on their website when I first moved here I have no idea. I had not clue what birth documentation meant, I thought she meant birth certificate - one of the hallmarks of dealing with the State of California is that none of their people seem trained or skilled in communication. It actually seemed to mean also my passport and as I had my green card with me I was out of jail this time.

I then had to join yet another queue and have my photo taken again, seems they can't just re-use the photo from 2005. Having been initially told to join the wrong queue (there are many queues in the DMV) I wasted more time trying to get this done, only to find that I had to sit a 10 question driving theory test to renew the license - this I didn't expect!


I managed to pass this with only 2 questions wrong, which is pretty good for someone who has only used a tank and a half of fuel since July, and one of the ones I got wrong I had managed to change from the right to the wrong answer as I had second thoughts about it.

So, whilst all striving to keep hold of our jobs in a terrible economy, the State of California managed to burn up my entire afternoon by, not sending the renewal notice to the right address, even though I gave them the right address 5 months ago, not being able to send out the renewal paperwork in less than ten working days, not explaining what personal information was needed up front to renew a license, not the explaining that yet more personal information may later be required and having a generally slow, inefficient and badly run system.


In Europe most people think the USA is a model of efficiency. The problem here seems to be that there is so much resistance to public spending in the US (listen to the presidential debates and it seems that no one will ever be able to make a positive case for taxation), that all public services seem to be run as cheap as possible. However, having hired the people that work there at the lowest pay they can get away with, the net result is a system that wastes everyones time. Wouldn't it be a bit of an investment in US efficiency to make this place better run, so ordinary workers like me wouldn't waste an entire afternoon trying to renew a license? Wouldn't a bit more money spent here benefit the whole economy as the DMV could stop wasting so much of everyone's time? Seems logical to me, it must be easier to renew a driving license in Romania.


So having got my new license now, and the picture on it is a classic as I was so pissed off when it was taken, I have found out this new one does not last three years like the old, it only lasts until my 43rd birthday in December of next year. Do I really have to go through all this again in 2009? Come on California, get your act together.

BART Woes

I love getting public transport places almost as much as I hate driving in the US. I have managed to cope with only using a tank and a third of fuel since July, and my car does not even have a big fuel tank.

So on the odd occasions I have to go into Sun's San Francisco Office, I quite enjoy getting the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) into work. However, today it was not so good, as all the unhappy people above could testify. A fire just before the tunnel under the Bay meant that all the trains going into San Francisco were slow, a journey that normally takes half an hour took more than an hour. All my fellow travelers seemed to take it in good spirit though and the ubiquity of mobile phones these days meant no one had to be unexpectedly late. Someone behind me remarked that it was good that we were stuck in the station and not in the tunnel under the Bay - amen to that.

I learned today though that a BART station (I wish I knew which one) is built right on top of the Hayward Fault, so I hope I am not on BART if that fault creates an earthquake, I'm sure that would make our little delay today seem like nothing.

Back in Broomfield

I'm back in Broomfield Colorado just now, sitting in the very nice Denver International Airport enjoying the free wifi, which is nice but limited bandwidth as I just found out having tried to use the magic skype.

We couldn't get into our normal hotel, but we stayed 4 miles down the road at the Westminster Westin, and it was pretty much the same as our normal hotel. They seem to hav discovered Blue Moon here, which is my new favorite Belguim beer, the Stella having got too much for me over time.

I like it here in Colorado, it's calmer than the Bay Area, although I have a feeling there are rather more guns around than I normally like. Sun's presence here started, like a lot of tech companies, as an overspill from the San Francisco Bay area. Tech companies who got fed up with the high real estate prices out in the Bay area moved started operations here instead of expanding further in the Bay area and employees who were fed up with high Bay area prices moved out here as well. Unfortunately, our rather nice campus here is beginning to look like a ghost town, as I think a lot of employees are working from home now, so it's days are probably numbered.

I love the climate here and the big mountains, reminds me of Scotland.

The portion sizes here though can be bloody huge as can some of the people, the two facts are probably related. Below is the chocolate cake we ordered on Monday, ate about 10% of it, took it back to the hotel in a "to go" box, where I hope now the cleaners enjoy it as it never got eaten, as it was too much of a challenge.

Bin your Bank

Spotted today in Denver International Airport. Funny how some advertising that seemed appropriate when it was written takes on a whole new meaning now.