Ben’s posthaven

By far the best part of my time in Cali was the people I met there.

First there was Robert, who is an Apple intern this summer, and all of his intern friend, including his 3 room-mates.Those 3 guys, Robert's room-mates are some of the best guys I've met, good people all around. We hung around the city and they were very cool about letting me stay with them. I don't know what more to say other than, there's were guys I could hang out with. It's hard to say what would change were the circumstances any different, but I can say I wish them well.

On the other hand, there's Stephanie, who let me stay in her place within ten minutes of meeting her, then kept asking me if I thought that was weird. I honestly didn't, perhaps only because I have a slightly skewed, open-minded (ala hippy) view of the whole thing. She too was great, her boyfriend and best friend and room-mates were also nice.

Gosh I guess nothing much of substance, just missing California already. Maybe I could get back there...

So I've been in San Fran for 3 days now... and I'm having a great time.

WWDC has been excellent, the big news (Apple & Intel) was interesting, but makes sense, in my view. If you're questioning my logic, consider these facts: the iMac G5 is underclocked in the guise of power management, the PowerMac G5 is water cooled and has come up 35% in speed in 24 months, and the PowerBook G5 is non-existant and may never be seen. Clearly there is a power issue, and Intel, while I don't like them a bit (Pentium 4 designed for marketing, anyone?), is a reasonable supplier for reasonably powerful low power chips. I've no doubt that, with the power problem not so serious, Apple's designers will be free to come up with something even better than what we're seeing now (which is Apple's best yet, IMO).

Anyway, back to the matter at hand... I've been in California a few days, and the Public transpo has been hell! Learning curve I guess, but I've missed like 3 trains! Once, I barely missed a train. Rather than wait an hour, I caught a cab to a stop farther down. 20 minutes later, I was at a farther stop. A full hour after then, the train "moseys" into the station. What the hell! Anyway, so many exclamation points can't be good for me.

On the other hand. Something good did come out of the Caltrain. I met a girl named Stefanie. She's a teacher from Arizona who, of course has the summer off and was vacationing in San Francisco. After she was nearly hit by a train, I was complaining to her about how long it took to get from San Jose to San Fran (90 minutes!) when she offered me a place to stay in San Fran. I'm not one to turn down such an offer, and she had an air to her that I liked, so I accepted. Very interesting girl, lives on Haight street. I'm only sorry I only will have a week to know her.