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Weekend in CA -- CMU alumni meetup, SVGL, other things, Harry Potter, etc.
I have a cold. This makes me really unhappy because I hoped to play volleyball tonight. I think I could probably continue with the Dayquil and suck it up and go to the volleyball session anyway, but I'm not sure it would be a good idea. Shrug, I guess I still have a few hours to think about it.
So Saturday afternoon there was an SCS/ECE CMU alumni gathering at Angel Island, which is in the middle of the bay somewhere. Apparently despite my dubious status, I'm still allowed to attend these things (though I had an H&SS nametag). John and Cat and I walked over to Pier 33 together from Nob Hill -- it was actually a really interesting/neat walk, all the way down Polk street to Bay, then all along Bay to the pier, pretty much. And it was downhill, which was the best part. (Walking from their place to Tagged, I always have to go uphill a few blocks and then downhill.) We got to Pier 33 at 10:50am for an 11am departure; we couldn't find Tina Carr but we did find Randy Bryant, who was all enthusiastic but clearly can't remember who most of us are. And there were about 300 people there, and most of them were people I completely didn't recognize at all... probably most were younger than me. We did see Jim Bruce there with Luisa, and the Mike that is not mpa from the lounge, and eventually we ran into Akiva and Carmen and folks, and were joined by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
platypusninja and such.
And while on the boat I decided to wander around and I ran into Jason Crawford, and both of us were like "WTF ARE YOU DOING HERE?" I thought he was in Seattle and he thought I was in Japan. Go figure.
I also ran into Will Ferry, who was in the same graduating class I was. He's still at Apple and still pretty happy about it, which I guess is pretty cool.
Once we got to the island, we kind of formed a group for a bit of being John and Cat and Jim and Luisa and Dan and me, and got food and got a table and ate lunch. The food was pretty good, it was burgers and some other associated stuff like pasta and baked beans and fish tacos, something like that. And brownies for dessert.
Well, since we were on this island for several hours and had nothing better to do, we decided to go hiking. (That's pretty much what 99% of the island is -- it's just a big park that people go hiking or biking on.) We were joined by a Chinese couple that none of us actually knew, the guy was an SCS '04 grad, they were nice enough but largely they just kind of followed us around. We were also partially joined by Akiva and the KGB crowd for some of the time but not all of the time. And so we hiked and hiked and ended up, despite my protests ("No more up! You promised!") in getting to the top of the island, Mt. Livermore, which is 788 feet up, or something like that. It was pretty up there, though. I spent most of the hike talking to Jim about Japan because he spent 2 summers interning there during his PhD.
Anyway, then we hiked down and got back on the boat and came back to San Francisco, and everyone dispersed. I walked back to Tagged to meet up with some of my coworkers. Auston and I had planned to go to SVGL during the weekend sometime, he also likes Bemani and comes from the New England sphere, and when I told him about this place that had all the games he was pretty excited to go. Only problem being that neither of us have cars... but what happened is that we convinced Jason to give us a ride (I told Jason we'd play minigolf). Cody was also coming because he had nothing else to do, and Joris joined us because he found himself suddenly free. So, we went to SVGL, and Auston and I immediately just latched onto Pop'n and IIDX for like the next 2 hours straight, while the other 3 just sort of hung out around some other games. I got Joris to play Super Puzzle Fighter with me and then played out the game myself. It was surprisingly uncrowded, given that the last time I'd been there was a Wednesday and it was packed. I dunno. I got my Pop'n fix, so that was good. They have Sengoku Retsuden, which is only like, one version out of date from what's in Japan, unlike Seattle, which has Fever.
We went to In-and-Out for dinner, the same one that I'd been to a bunch of times before with SVGL people, and then we went back to SVGL to play minigolf :) 5 people takes a long long time and we took like 2 hours, and pretty much were up against their closing at midnight. I lost pretty soundly but I also wasn't trying very hard. For me it was mostly interesting seeing everyone play. Even Jason, who despises sports, was having a good time. at least.
Came back to the city and crashed.
Sunday morning I started to transition from Cat and John's place over to Jason's -- in the morning I dragged my stuff down to Tagged, and then walked to the stadium to meet up with my friend Patrick, who writes NPB Tracker. I think the last time we saw each other was last fall in Tokyo when we went to Erika for dinner with Westbay. I was a bit late meeting up with him because it took longer to walk to the stadium than I thought it would. We went to McCovey's Cove to watch part of the Giants-Brewers game... but... there were a lot of people there and it was hard to see anything. Still was a decent place to chat baseball with a game going on, I guess. Patrick's a hell of a lot more famous than I am in terms of talking to agents and scouts and all that kinda stuff, even if I'm probably better-known among Japanese fans and maybe players too. So, we basically caught up and talked shop for a few hours, over the game, then over lunch at a burger place near the stadium, then we went to Japantown and stopped by Kinokuniya to lament that they don't really have CRAP in terms of Japanese baseball magazines anymore, which is very lame to say the least.
Patrick gave me a ride back to Tagged, and I hung out here working a little and working on some baseball stuff a little. Eventually Jason and Joris and I got dinner at a diner in Millbrae, and I retreated to Jason's house to do laundry and stuff.
Monday night after work I hung out with Ben -- we went to a pizza place in Potrero Hill that had pizza served dim-sum style. I know that sounds weird. Basically you sit there and people bring pies around like "I got pepperoni and olives," and you either say "sure" and they give you slices, or you say "no thanks" and they keep going. It was good and I got to try a whole bunch of pizza. Afterwards we went to Daly City and watched Harry Potter And No Really This Is The Last One We Promise, which was pretty good... I don't really know what to say about it except I was a little confused by how they changed the final battle. But whatever. Mostly it was about what I expected. I haven't reread Book 7 in a while anyway.
I think what's really mindboggling to me is that I remember seeing the first movie, 10 years ago, when I lived in Pittsburgh. I mean, I started this LJ in September 2001 and saw the Harry Potter movie in November 2001. Life has changed a LOT since then!
So Saturday afternoon there was an SCS/ECE CMU alumni gathering at Angel Island, which is in the middle of the bay somewhere. Apparently despite my dubious status, I'm still allowed to attend these things (though I had an H&SS nametag). John and Cat and I walked over to Pier 33 together from Nob Hill -- it was actually a really interesting/neat walk, all the way down Polk street to Bay, then all along Bay to the pier, pretty much. And it was downhill, which was the best part. (Walking from their place to Tagged, I always have to go uphill a few blocks and then downhill.) We got to Pier 33 at 10:50am for an 11am departure; we couldn't find Tina Carr but we did find Randy Bryant, who was all enthusiastic but clearly can't remember who most of us are. And there were about 300 people there, and most of them were people I completely didn't recognize at all... probably most were younger than me. We did see Jim Bruce there with Luisa, and the Mike that is not mpa from the lounge, and eventually we ran into Akiva and Carmen and folks, and were joined by
platypusninja and such. And while on the boat I decided to wander around and I ran into Jason Crawford, and both of us were like "WTF ARE YOU DOING HERE?" I thought he was in Seattle and he thought I was in Japan. Go figure.
I also ran into Will Ferry, who was in the same graduating class I was. He's still at Apple and still pretty happy about it, which I guess is pretty cool.
Once we got to the island, we kind of formed a group for a bit of being John and Cat and Jim and Luisa and Dan and me, and got food and got a table and ate lunch. The food was pretty good, it was burgers and some other associated stuff like pasta and baked beans and fish tacos, something like that. And brownies for dessert.
Well, since we were on this island for several hours and had nothing better to do, we decided to go hiking. (That's pretty much what 99% of the island is -- it's just a big park that people go hiking or biking on.) We were joined by a Chinese couple that none of us actually knew, the guy was an SCS '04 grad, they were nice enough but largely they just kind of followed us around. We were also partially joined by Akiva and the KGB crowd for some of the time but not all of the time. And so we hiked and hiked and ended up, despite my protests ("No more up! You promised!") in getting to the top of the island, Mt. Livermore, which is 788 feet up, or something like that. It was pretty up there, though. I spent most of the hike talking to Jim about Japan because he spent 2 summers interning there during his PhD.
Anyway, then we hiked down and got back on the boat and came back to San Francisco, and everyone dispersed. I walked back to Tagged to meet up with some of my coworkers. Auston and I had planned to go to SVGL during the weekend sometime, he also likes Bemani and comes from the New England sphere, and when I told him about this place that had all the games he was pretty excited to go. Only problem being that neither of us have cars... but what happened is that we convinced Jason to give us a ride (I told Jason we'd play minigolf). Cody was also coming because he had nothing else to do, and Joris joined us because he found himself suddenly free. So, we went to SVGL, and Auston and I immediately just latched onto Pop'n and IIDX for like the next 2 hours straight, while the other 3 just sort of hung out around some other games. I got Joris to play Super Puzzle Fighter with me and then played out the game myself. It was surprisingly uncrowded, given that the last time I'd been there was a Wednesday and it was packed. I dunno. I got my Pop'n fix, so that was good. They have Sengoku Retsuden, which is only like, one version out of date from what's in Japan, unlike Seattle, which has Fever.
We went to In-and-Out for dinner, the same one that I'd been to a bunch of times before with SVGL people, and then we went back to SVGL to play minigolf :) 5 people takes a long long time and we took like 2 hours, and pretty much were up against their closing at midnight. I lost pretty soundly but I also wasn't trying very hard. For me it was mostly interesting seeing everyone play. Even Jason, who despises sports, was having a good time. at least.
Came back to the city and crashed.
Sunday morning I started to transition from Cat and John's place over to Jason's -- in the morning I dragged my stuff down to Tagged, and then walked to the stadium to meet up with my friend Patrick, who writes NPB Tracker. I think the last time we saw each other was last fall in Tokyo when we went to Erika for dinner with Westbay. I was a bit late meeting up with him because it took longer to walk to the stadium than I thought it would. We went to McCovey's Cove to watch part of the Giants-Brewers game... but... there were a lot of people there and it was hard to see anything. Still was a decent place to chat baseball with a game going on, I guess. Patrick's a hell of a lot more famous than I am in terms of talking to agents and scouts and all that kinda stuff, even if I'm probably better-known among Japanese fans and maybe players too. So, we basically caught up and talked shop for a few hours, over the game, then over lunch at a burger place near the stadium, then we went to Japantown and stopped by Kinokuniya to lament that they don't really have CRAP in terms of Japanese baseball magazines anymore, which is very lame to say the least.
Patrick gave me a ride back to Tagged, and I hung out here working a little and working on some baseball stuff a little. Eventually Jason and Joris and I got dinner at a diner in Millbrae, and I retreated to Jason's house to do laundry and stuff.
Monday night after work I hung out with Ben -- we went to a pizza place in Potrero Hill that had pizza served dim-sum style. I know that sounds weird. Basically you sit there and people bring pies around like "I got pepperoni and olives," and you either say "sure" and they give you slices, or you say "no thanks" and they keep going. It was good and I got to try a whole bunch of pizza. Afterwards we went to Daly City and watched Harry Potter And No Really This Is The Last One We Promise, which was pretty good... I don't really know what to say about it except I was a little confused by how they changed the final battle. But whatever. Mostly it was about what I expected. I haven't reread Book 7 in a while anyway.
I think what's really mindboggling to me is that I remember seeing the first movie, 10 years ago, when I lived in Pittsburgh. I mean, I started this LJ in September 2001 and saw the Harry Potter movie in November 2001. Life has changed a LOT since then!
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