San Francisco 2005 Trip Report - Part 3

Day Five - Lisa and the Fishmongers

While I toiled away at JavaOne, Lisa headed up to Chinatown again. When we went on day four, a lot of the shops were already closing. She had read in the guide book that you could go see the fishmongers and thought that that would be fun. In general, she thought it would be fun to see the place during normal business hours. I think she had a pretty good time seeing everything with the exception of seeing a huge fish head still alive next to its own writhing body. Now that's fresh. You want the photo highlights? I've got the photo highlights:

After Chinatown, Lisa headed back down to the wharf to piddle around while waiting for me to finish my daytime JavaOne sessions. She had her camera, of course:

Once I finished up with JavaOne, I hung out with Lisa briefly before heading off to the After Dark Bash at JavaOne. Upon arriving, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I got two free drink coupons. The default beverage you got with these was a bottle of domestic beer. Since beer is piss in my eyes, I tried two times before getting a bartender that would let me have two mixed drinks instead. I wandered around while Zepparella played on-stage. In addition to free food (pizza, nachos, popcorn, chicken fingers) they had some other things like pool tables, foosball (three shitty tables that I didn't get to play on), air hockey, a mechanical bull, etc, etc. I bought two more drinks and watched them auction off some pretty ugly paintings before heading over to the other side of the Moscone Center to see Dennis Miller.

It was only after the fact that I saw some accounts that criticized the selection of Miller as the evening's entertainment I'm probably a bad judge given that I like Miller's sense of humor and I am not what you would call easily offended, but I certainly do think people are working too hard to be offended these days. PC is so last century. After his show, I decided that this place is dead anyway and headed back to the hotel (where I drank some more). To the photos!!!!!

Meanwhile, while I was at JavaOne, Lisa went down on a chicken burrito:

Day Six - JavaOne is Over

Yeah, yeah...JavaOne is over on Thursday. This was my first JavaOne and while I did enjoy it, my overall impression is that it was very anti-climactic. Too many of the daytime sessions were vendors trying to sell their shitty product / service to me. For the amount of money JavaOne costs to attend, you would think I could get some ad blocking with it. I realize these companies are the ones that grease the wheels, but keep them in the pavillion--not masquerading as valuable information. And given the value of the name of a Java developer on a spam list, you would think that the rivers of swag would have flowed a little more freely. Trying to get a t-shirt was like asking someone if I could anally rape their daughter and finish it off with a little dirty Sanchez action for next year's SuperBowl half-time show. For those of you excessively loose with your daughters I mean that it wasn't going to happen. All of the night time sessions (birds of a feather or BOFs) were much less vendor oriented and had some meaty content. The problem with them was they went on too late. It's tough to attend a conference 16 hours a day. In hindsight, I would have gone and seen the town during the day and gone to the BOFs at night. Here's my modest haul:

Since Wednesday (day five) was the last day of JavaOne and we didn't need to pay a premium price for location near the Moscone Center, we switched hotels. We took a cab up to the Sir Francis Drake. They gave us a room next to the elevator, without a dresser, but with a couple of roaches. Definitely a step down from the Marriott. Lisa went and complained and got a room on a different floor away from the elevator, with a dresser, but unfortunately still with one confirmed tiny roach sighting later in the trip. They did have free wi-fi though.

Later Lisa and I headed to the wharf to take a bay cruise. They just take you out in a boat, go under the Golden Gate Bridge, circle around Alcatraz, and take you back in. My only comment is that it was windy as fuck going toward the bridge. Coming back of course, it was very calm. It was very foggy and there wasn't really all that much to see, but it was still fun. You get a pair of head phones and receiver to listen to information about the area as you're crusing along.

Finally, it's back to Pier 39 to snap some shots of all of those sea lions everyone talks about:

It seems that most people (including SF residents) don't seem to realize that they're seasonal. They show up in August, I believe. There is however a small group that stays all year.

Next we headed over to Ghiradelli Square and ate some seafood at a little place named McCormick and Kuleto's (which is part of a national chain named McCormick & Schmick's--I'm so confused). This time the seafood was badass. Quite good, but the portions were a tad on the small size for me.

We meandered a bit and hit the convenience store for some hard liquor before heading back to the hotel. SF is the first place I've ever seen anti-theft devices on bottles of alcohol. The Rite Aid we went to had unbelievably reasonable prices on alcohol. Back to the hotel for some drinking and later a pizza. That's a wrap--only two full days left.

- posted by Robert @ 7/17/2005 05:09:00 PM