Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is our one “free” day in Silicon Valley.  Not so much a free day as a free morning.  Our flight is out of San Jose at four this afternoon which means that we need to be to the airport at two and traffic is an unknown to us locally so we need a ton of time in order to be able to safely do anything.

So we got up early and checked out of the hotel and went with Rich and Mark to a little dinner-cafe place in Los Gatos that came highly recommended thinking that getting there for eight in the morning would mean that there would be no line.  Boy were we wrong.  A forty minute wait at eight in the morning!  Fortunately we are all hardy northerners and we volunteered to sit outside as it was a really beautiful morning and so we got to sit and eat straight away.  Once we did that everyone else decided to do so as well and within fifteen minutes the entire outdoor seating area had gone from completely empty to completely full.  We are trendsetters, even in Silicon Valley, apparently.

Breakfast was amazing.  We got a huge cinnamon roll that we split four ways and then eat got real breakfast as well.  Dominica and I both opted for the crab cakes with hollandaise sauce.  That was just irresistible.  Everything was amazing.  Really phenomenal meal.

While we were at breakfast Jeff got a hold of me and let me know that his back was hurting and that he couldn’t drive us around to see San Francisco today.  Bummer.  That really shot our plans, Dominica had really come along so that we could all hang out today and see the city.  We were assuming that we would just walk around Los Gatos a little and catch a taxi back to the airport instead then since we didn’t have transport up to San Francisco.

Rich jumped in and offered to drive us up to San Francisco with the rental car that he had.  He is staying in Silicon Valley until tomorrow rather than leaving today.  He is a life saver.  Now we will really get to see the area.  We were very relived.

We went back to the hotel and saw Mark get on his way to the airport.  He is the first one leaving.  Then the rest of us piled into Rich’s rental Ford Fusion and off we set to explore the area heading west to attempt to find the Pacific Coast Highway.  I took the back seat and let Dominica ride up front.  She would get very car sick driving in the mountains in the back seat of the car.

The drive out to the coast was awesome.  We took route 9 out of Los Gatos to the west to Castle Rock where we caught 35 and headed northwest through the mountains and forests going through Sanborn County Park, Monte Bello Open Space Preserve, Los Trancos Open Space Preserve and other gorgeous, wild areas.  A really awesome drive.  We were on the high ground up above such famous locals like Cupertino (Apple), Sunnyvale (Yahoo), Mountain View (Google) and Palo Alto (HP.)  We really could not get over how amazingly gorgeous it all was.  I definitely had no idea that the mountains were so dramatic or the forest so dense right in Silicon Valley.

We took 35 all the way up to the San Mateo area where we caught 92 going west by south-west to Half Moon Bay and here Dominica (and Rich) got their very first glimpses of the Pacific Ocean.  At Half Moon Bay we turned right onto Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, and worked our way north along the ocean stopping to take a few pictures along the way.

We drove all the way north into San Francisco.  We drove downtown and parked in a garage near Fisherman’s Wharf and walked there to hit the Hard Rock Cafe so that Rich could buy some souvenirs and then Dominica did some souvenir shopping on the wharf as well.  We got to see the Bay Bridge heading over to Oakland and a lot of the water front.

Sadly we did not have very much time and the traffic was horrific so we did not make it to see the Golden Gate Bridge or Golden Gate Park (made famous by the television show “Full House”) but we did get to see a bit of real San Francisco before getting back in the car and heading back down on the highway to get to San Jose for two o’clock.

The drive back to San Jose went pretty quickly and we made it to the airport in plenty of time.  We managed to get unloaded and went through security as the only people there at the time.  That was really simple and low key.  We had to wait a bit at the airport but that wasn’t bad.  Better to wait at the airport than to be rushing or late.  We did not want to be stressed out heading back to Houston.

Our flight out was fine and we got a three seat row to ourselves on the leg from San Jose to Phoenix so we spread out a little.  I finished reading the Microsoft Windows Server 2012 installation certification book that I had loaded on my Kindle on this leg.

We got into Phoenix a little early but had very little time to get to our next flight as the terminal was jam packed with people.  So it wasn’t relaxing but it went fine.

The flight from Phoenix to Houston was full but comfortable.  We got into Houston and drove to a Jack in the Box where Dominica got some food around eleven thirty and then on to the Grices’.  It was a bit after midnight when we got in and everyone was asleep.  We put ourselves to bed being pretty exhausted.  Tomorrow is a very long and very busy day so we need what rest we can get.  We have all day Easter events and I have tons and tons of class work to do for my two classes that is all due tomorrow by the end of the day and we have to drive back to Dallas tomorrow as well.

It was an awesome trip out to California.  It wasn’t cheap but I am really glad that Dominica was able to go with me.  That made it a lot more fun and I think that she appreciated getting the time to do nothing in the hotel room.  Sometimes enforced downtime is just what is needed.  It was awesome getting to see San Francisco and Silicon Valley and for Dominica to see California and the Pacific Ocean for the first time too.  That was very nice that we got to go do that together.

Today is Good Friday so I am off from work at the office.  Had to be up a little early as we have a busy day of hanging out at the Pertino offices here in Los Gatos in Silicon Valley, California.  So I was up around six thirty.  Dominica slept in and spent the day just relaxing in the hotel for the most part.  She ordered in food and went for a job around town at some point but mostly just relaxed.  This was really a chance for her to see California and to escape any semblance of having to work for a couple of days.  Kind of a forced vacation.

Mark, Rich and I got over to Pertino nice and early with Rich driving us around in his rental car.  They had a breakfast spread for us and we ate breakfast and watched a presentation on the company.  They have only just come out of stealth mode and are still very, very much start ups.  So this was an early peek at where they feel that they are going to be going as a company.

We had a really nice day working with everyone at Pertino.  We sat in on focus groups and user experience tests and the three of us even got a chance to give a presentation at the corporate “town hall” luncheon where the whole company turned out to talk to us and do a live question and answer session with us.  We had pizza for lunch and this time it was deep dish and, again, I was totally blown away by how awesome the pizza was here in California.

By mid-afternoon Pertino took the three of us out to the Computer History Museum which was a really cool “field trip” to get to do.  I got a poster and book from there as well which I plan to put up in my office at home.  It is a very cool history of programming languages poster showing how programming language families change and evolve over time and what we once had and how it morphed into what we have today.

We went back to the hotel for a bit to relax for maybe an hour or two.  We got Dominica who had been invited out for the evening with us and we joined the Pertino team at a bocce ball restaurant right in the middle of town.  What a neat idea.  So we played some bocce in which I started out well but Dominica’s team quickly crushed my team and we gave up allowing others a chance to play.  It was a really neat and interesting way to spend the evening.

A few of us remained and had dinner at the bocce restaurant before heading back to the hotel to turn in for an early-ish night.  Tomorrow is our sight seeing day around San Francisco and we have to get packed up and out of the hotel early so we need our sleep.

Today is our first real day in California.  The weather was great.  I got up very early and got working on my laptop in the hotel room.  My foot is still killing me.  Dominica got to sleep in for quite a while.

We ordered breakfast in the hotel room.  We didn’t want to deal with going anywhere and I needed to get work done so that was just easy.  I got locks on a bagel.  Very New York of me.  Can’t get that in Texas really.  Salmon in California definitely tastes different than it does back in New York.

Mark was the first of our friends to get into town getting in this morning.  After he was settled in I went down and attempted to meet him for drinks in the bar.  But we discovered that the hotel bar was not open until late afternoon so we decided to go down the street for beers instead.  I would have taken Dominica with me but she was very sleepy all day, jet lag I guess, and so I just left a note with her as she was asleep and let her get some rest.

Mark and I ended up at a really excellent pizza place just a few doors down from the Tollhouse where we are all staying.  We got some beer and I skipped food as I had had breakfast already.  Mark ordered some food and Rich emailed us to say that he had landed and would be getting to the hotel shortly.

Rich ended up meeting us before Mark’s food arrived so Rich ordered a beer and a pizza and we all hung out for a bit.  Rich let me try some of his pizza and it was really amazing.  I can’t believe that we found pizza so good out in California.

After lunch the guys went back and napped in the hotel and I got back to work.  Dominica thought that it was pretty entertaining that she had slept through the whole thing.

This evening we were having dinner with the Pertino guys at a restaurant just down the street.  We walked down, it was a really nice evening for a stroll in a little town in Silicon Valley.  What a gorgeous area.  I had no idea that Silicon Valley was anything like this.  It is really nice and has a real small town European feel about it.

We had a really nice time at dinner with Pertino executive management.  We had some great California food and after dinner went down the street to one of the local bars.  Mark, Rich and I went back to the hotel and picked up Dominica and brought her along with us and later on in the evening Jeff Pierce stopped by at the bar to visit as well.

After we closed down the bar (it was probably only midnight but felt really late) we hit another bar out by Jeff’s house and had another beer there and then went to Denny’s for some late night food.

Dominica had to get up and work this morning.  She is having a busy start to her week – seven o’clock starts three days in a row.  She was training Art on stuff today and assisting with a tablet computer migration.

Liesl and I slept in a bit.  I knew that it was my last chance for snuggles till Sunday night so didn’t want to get up.  And today is going to be a very long day.

Once I was up I joined Dominica in the kitchen and we worked all day. It was quite a busy day.  I ran out and picked up breakfast tacos and donuts from the place on the corner.  We worked from the Grices’ house (only the Millers were there, everyone else was at work or school) until two and then drove out to meet up with Francesca to hand off the girls to her.

It was nearly three when we got onto Interstate 45 north  to drive up to Bush Intercontinental for our six o’clock flight.  There was a lot of traffic but we did pretty well.  Dominica had to drive so that I could be working from my BlackBerry.

We got to the airport without any trouble and got checked right in.  We are flying US Air on the very day that US Air and American Airlines were approved for their merger.  We grabbed some Pizzeria Uno for dinner – what a let down.  I need to remember that they are never any good.  It always sounds like a good idea but their pizza is just sad.  It’s not as good as the bargain frozen stuff at the grocery store for $1.50.

The flight from Houston to Phoenix wasn’t bad at all.  This is both of our first times flying over the Big Bend region of Texas or southern New Mexico or Arizona.  There was a lot of very interesting scenery to see for much of the flight.  And neither of us has ever been in Arizona at all.  So that was slightly interesting but, of course, it was just the airport.

We had a ninety minute layover at Phoenix so we grabbed some chips and a quesadilla to split and ate that while waiting for our flight.

The flight from Phoenix to San Jose seemed to go really quickly and in not time we were descending into Silicon Valley.  This is my first time ever being north of LA in California and Dominica’s first time to California or the Pacific Coast at all.  So she is pretty excited.  She has been to Las Vegas and nothing else ever west of San Antonio.

It felt like nearly midnight to us when we arrived in San Jose but it was mid-evening local time.  We got into the hotel and were off to bed almost immediately.  From what we can tell we are in a cute little town.  There wasn’t much to see in the dark, though.  I got my laptop set up and Dominica was asleep before I made it into bed.  Have to be up early tomorrow (local time) so that I can work from the hotel all day.  Friends from Spiceworks will be arriving throughout the day and there is stuff to do in the evening so need to be ready.

Dominica was in the office today so I had to take the girls up to Corinth for day care.  So I started work around eight and did two hours from the house before driving them up.  I got into the office and was there for less than an hour before I did something horrifically painful to my ankle that has been bothering me for the past two weeks.  So at one I ran out to go to CareNow in Carrollton to have them take a look at my ankle.

I ended up getting X-Rays and the verdict, at least at this point, is that I have something like tendinitis brought on primarily by a bone spur on my ankle or heel.  They saw it in the X-Ray but I am not sure exactly where it is.  So for the moment I have some medicine to try but I need to see a specialist about this.  Not fun.

It was late and nearly the end of the day by the time that I was done at CareNow so I just went home and wrapped up the day from there.  Dominica got home with the girls about an hour after me.  We set to packing up the car and were out the door around six thirty.  We hit Subway in Josey Ranch for dinner and were on the highway heading to Houston by seven.

The drive south went really well and it was barely after eleven when we pulled into the Grices’.  They were all already asleep and we were in bed pretty quickly.  Luciana was especially exhausted having not slept well at all on the drive down.

Tomorrow is going to be one crazy, hectic travel day.  I am looking forward to it, though.  It should be a lot of fun and a nice change of pace.