Arachnid
Technology Bytes Anniversary Party = Success!

Last night’s gathering of geeks in celebration of the 11th anniversary of Technology Bytes was a spectacular success. Many, many fine people showed up as the band played and adult beverages were consumed.
A heartfelt thanks to Drop Trio for providing the music and for the special tunes learned, rehearsed and performed for the event. You guys are awesome!
The Houston Chronicle had a photographer there and I can’t wait to see THOSE pictures. For now I have the ones I took uploaded to this gallery.
We had a nice turnout, the full crew of the show was there; Peter, Barrett, phliKtid, Dwight and Groovehouse, as well as show contributors Charles Born and the lovely Aurora Losada.
I believe Jennifer the Intern has officially crossed over as evidenced by her new I Heart Geeks shirt.
Also in attendance were many of the regular geek gathering attendees as well as Groovehouse’s IRC Army, including Amateria, Sketkar, Lambo, Kimberly, BeingKatie, KD5, Yivit and TomTom
We also met many, MANY new folks who had not yet attended one of our events.
And, to make it a TRUE Tech Bytes experience, I even helped a total stranger perform a complete clean install of Windows XP on her laptop while sitting at the bar. When she arrived at the party she had a computer that didn’t work very well. By the time we were done she was happily surfing the web using the Wi-Fi provided by Dean’s Credit Clothing.
I AM a party animal, yes indeed.
San Francisco – Saturday
Saturday I made my way in to San Francisco.
The plan was to meet my friend Kevin who had recently taken a job with McAfee and moved to the Bay Area.
Kevin guided me in via cell phone with some help from his heterosexual life partner, Glen.
We set off in search of food and I got a quick tour of the city.
Got brakes?
Let’s build a city on the side of a mountain in an earthquake prone region!
This has drawbacks I will discuss in a bit.
We ended up down at Fisherman’s Wharf where we ate seafood at a place called Tanatino’s which had a nice scenic view of the marina.
From there we trucked around and saw a few things and then headed over to Ghiradelli’s for ice cream.
Yum!
It was time to get Kevin and Glen home so we headed back toward the apartment.
Kevin mentioned that we should go to the top of this scenic overlook so I could get some pictures.
I was thinking “Sure, let’s drive up there.”
It turns out you can only drive so far. Then you climb.
Glen said he had to get on back and he would drop us off. Kevin said it was only a few blocks away from the apartment so I sucked it up and went for it.
Turns out the view WAS worth the sound of my own heart beat pounding in my ear.
Click these to REALLY see the magnificence
You could see from downtown on to the ocean. It was breath taking.
It turns out that Kevin’s idea of a “few blocks” was, in reality, about 12 downhill blocks and 3 really steep uphill blocks. I was pretty beat when it was all said and done.
I did take time to cross The Golden Gate Bridge before heading back to my hotel in San Jose to crash.
Truly this was a day in which I benefited greatly from knowing the way to and from San Jose.
California uber alles
I have arrived, safe and sound, in San Jose.
Yup, there’s a nerd loose in the silicon valley.
It’s amazing to see all the geek institutions. The office I am here to work in is housed in the Quantum building. They don’t make hard drives anymore, they sold that off to Maxtor. But still! I had a Quantum Fireball hard drive in my old machine back in the day!
Driving around I had to stop and snap this picture:
I can’t explain it but it just struck me as so very cool to see this.
Maybe tomorrow I can get a picture of the Intel building.
Light Rock Express
Snapping a few random pictures at the Light Rock Express show at The Big Top produced this rather interesting shot.
It looks as though someone let the Löwenbräu genie out of the bottle…
Either that or Gene, the drummer for Molly and the Ringwalds and William S. Graham, Manager of the Light Rock Express, are smoking from a Löwenbräu hookah of some sort.
And what’s that glowing orb above Bill’s head?
Could it be the ghost of Shoeshine Charlie himself?
Saturday night
Headed over to the Stag’s Head last Saturday night to see a light version of The El Orbits featuring David Beebe, Jim Henkel and a new young drummer who is just out of high school and doing a musical internship with David. He’s quite remarkable and I suspect he’s destined for great things, musically.
After that Jim and I went across the street and hung out at the 59 Diner eating chicken fried steak and speculating on the nature of the universe. We talked for a quite awhile before heading back over to the Stag’s Head to catch Houston’s only B-52’s cover band, The Aqua Velva.
By this time the bar was pretty full and Jim was pretty tired so we both said our goodbyes and prepared to hit the road.
Snapped a few pics of the band but is is the only one I liked:
This should tide over the David Beebe fans who skim my web site after Google searching him.
Give me an A! Give me an L! Give me another L! Give me an E! Give me an N!
When the stars align and the moon is just right, spending an evening at Shoeshine Charlie’s Big Top Lounge (that little place 3 doors down from the Continental Club) enjoying the musical stylings of Allen Hill, self proclaimed “King of the Oldies” and his band or renown, The Allen Oldies Band can be a singular magical experience. Last night was one of those nights.
The Big Top is one of the harder venues to photograph. The lighting, while pleasing in some regards to the naked eye, is not camera friendly in the least. I am continuing to experiment with the manual setting of my camera and I am pleased with the results. Even so, it is becoming more apparent that I will need to upgrade at some point if I want to get better results. I have definitely run up against the limitations of this hardware.