Woke up nice and early (6:30, but it was 9:30 in my brain) and took a few pictures of the nice foggy morning from my hotel room.

Pretty cool. So I watched Sportscenter for a while, worked out, and then headed out to the conference. I stopped at a place across the street called The Sunflower Cafe which had some of the best coffee I think I’ve ever had. I may need to stop by there a couple more times.

After a little bit of wandering around due to an ambiguous map I received from my hotel, I finally got to the Moscone Center.

So I registered for the Linuxworld conference (just in case I forgot to mention why I’m here), got a free iPod nano (which will be going to my boss, since I have no need for it), and headed off to my first session (Hands on Hacking, which wasn’t really hands on at all, but it was very informative and interesting). Ate some Thai food (which I think is now officially my favorite food) and went to my afternoon session (Open Source Database Development, which was definitely hands on, but not nearly as interesting as the morning session). I met a guy in that session who was wearing a shirt that said “Your company’s computer guy.” He probably wouldn’t have found that as funny if he realized that he really is that guy. Total know it all, likes to talk about old linux distrubutions he uses and his mp3 collection, plays with a yo yo (no offense, Paul), and the next day I saw him wearing camo shorts, a metal studded belt, and knee high combat boots. Those of you in the IT business reading this will probably know the kind of guy I’m talking about. He was that guy. For those of you who are not in IT, think the computer guy in the BBC Office. That guy.

I’ll probably blaze through most of the actual conference stuff, because I’m assuming it won’t be that interesting to a lot of you reading this. However, the coolest conference thing in Day 2 was the presentation just before dinner. It was from one of the guys from Suse Linux demo-ing Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. It was incredible. Lots of very cool programs and best of all lots and lots of eye candy. All that useless stuff that gives you (I have no idea how else to say this) a geek boner (think Mac OS stuff, but just slightly cooler. Possibly just because it’s newer). And best of all, on the way out from the presentation, we all received free copies of it. So I’m actually using it right now as I type this. I may end up switching to it permanently. We’ll see.

bamboo, why not

and flowers

So then I wandered over to the Museum of Modern Art.

Now Mike likes to call it the MOMA and I made fun of him quite a bit for that, but in his defense, pretty much everyone here refers to it as that, including the museum itself. So I went over there, but they were already closed for the day (5:30). So I wandered back to the hotel, but on my way there, came across the Yerba Buena Gardens, which is right across the street from the MOMA. I was more than a little enamored, and took quite a few pictures.

I didn’t realize I had been inspired by this when I wrote The Naturals

Eventually I wandered some more and got some sushi (probably the best sushi I’ve ever had), got some Coldstone (why not), and headed back to hang out at the hotel. So I went to the pool to sit in the jacuzzi and ended up chatting with a girl from Texas who was in San Fran with her dad. It was great because I hadn’t really met anyone yet (and she was pretty cute, so that didn’t hurt.  Not that I wouldn’t have talked to her otherwise). So after that I figured I’d head down to the hotel bar to have a drink again, where I chatted with the familiar bartender, and got hit on to a slightly uncomfortable point by a middle age man (but on the bright side, I did get a free drink out of it). I guess one more sign that I really am in San Fran.

By the end of the day, I was pretty wiped.

On to Day 3!