Not the most welcoming sign for a restaurant
I hope your weekend treated you well! Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I’ve been trying, though! Work’s been superbusy over the past two days and well, frankly, connectivity at home has been less than ideal.
I spent the most of (the) Saturday helping Cam move stuff into his new apartment! Thus concluding three weeks of hell. Can you imagine not doing the dishes for three weeks? Or the laundry? I know what you’re saying — “Krishen, I don’t know what I’d do!” Yeah. It was the terrible. Never again.
That night saw Cam, Kim and me at Siesta Key for drinks. We ended up at the Siesta Key Oyster Bar, aka SKOB. Fun little place, totally open air — as are most of the little restaurants in the village — but unlike most, not rammed with people. The Daquiri Deck, two doors down, was particularly stuffed that night. We were going to try and get a table there — it looked like a nice place to eat — brightly lit, lots of tables and the food looked good. But the estimated two-hour wait caused us to reconsider.
Before heading home, we all agreed that Sunday seemed like the perfect day for a road trip to Tampa. Cam wanted to see Apple Store International Plaza, and I wanted to buy a watch! Perfect!
So of course, Sunday it rained like it was God’s mission to flood the Bay Area region. I was driving, and at times I had to slow down to under 30 km/hr on roads that had speed limits of 115, mostly because my wipers couldn’t wipe fast enough (and well, because of that hydrofoiling thing, too. I hear that’s not much fun).
We made it to Tampa in one piece. We made a mad dash from the car to the mall doors in vain attempt to dodge the typhoon rains that were still pouring. It didn’t really work; we were all still soaked.
International Plaza is a pretty upscale place. The numbers for the random-pieces-of-art-sprinkled-in-the-mall department are pretty telltale. That, and well, all the stores with names I couldn’t pronounce.

Facing the two main elevators on the ground floor of International Plaza.

The opposite direction.
So after wondering around the mall for a bit, we stopped in at Fossil and I picked out my new watch! Fossil makes very good quality watches; every one comes with an 11-year waranty on the mechanism, and I can have the band, enclosure and face-plate completely replaced at a later date for only $25. Ubercool.


Bummed around with Cam in the Apple Store for a little while after that. I had my black WWDC 2002 student t-shirt on (“Developers! Developers! Developers!”) and got mistaken for an Apple employee. The conversation went something like this:
Him: Can I ask you a question? You work here, right?
Me: Uh, no, but ask anyway!
His question was about whether the new, faster, 54-mbps Airport Extreme wireless basestations would be work with his existing wireless network. “Yep,” I told him. “The new basestations are based on a standard that can ‘throttle-down’ and work with the older hardware”. I think Cam had fun. It was his first time in an Apple Store. He’s written about the whole experience here.
After getting back from Tampa, we watched 40 Days and 40 Nights. I was expecting it to be pretty dumb — and, well, okay, it was — but it also turned out to be kinda fun and less predictable than, um, predicted. Paulo Costanzo had some funny lines, and Shannyn Sossamon ain’t half bad looking, either. And that’s all there is to say about that.
Monday morning, I got metapackages working with Apple’s free installer product, PackageMaker! I’m going to post a webpage on the topic when I get the chance. There’s not much out there on PackageMaker to start with, and what little information I could find about the metapackage feature of the program was pretty doom-and-gloom — you know, an oops-i-accidentally-blew-away-your-hard-drive kind of thing. Don’t believe the hype! It can be done!
Hmmm, according to my ultrasnazzy new watch, it was my bedtime an hour ago. Guess some things never change. 😀

Me and Cam
After going for drinks and dinner with a bunch of people for work, Cam, Kim and I were restless, so we went downtown to a club. But not just any club. The Gator Club.
Oh my god. I have never seen so many 35+ year olds snogging to white guys playing black pop in my life!
The live band playing was named Chameleon, and they’re an all-cover act. Imagine, if you will, five pasty guys in tight shirts singing the Nelly classic Ride wit me.
The place was so packed it was hard to move. One of the lead singers kept trying to inconspiciously snap photos with a digicam during the more epic parts of the tracks. It was totally cheesy. 🙂
So the band took a break, and they were playing canned music — I think it was the DJ Sammy cover of “Boys of Summer” that I like — and I made eye contact with this woman across the dancefloor who seemed to be enjoying the song too.
I walked over and yelled “hello” (the music was so loud it was hurting my ears). Boy, was that ever the wrong thing to do. She BIT me!! On the neck!!! And half a second later on the side of my stomach! What is it with the crazy people down here? Kim figures she was a vampire, but she didn’t have the fangs so I’m discounting that theory. I swear this woman was high on something. Two seconds later that she pulled my arms over her shoulders and held them there. Just a wacko nutcase. Shortly thereafter I managed to make my escape to meet up with Cam and Kim. Geeez.

The cougar at the Gator Club bite!
Anyhow I’m off to play around on the beach, that is, if the weather clears up at all. Well, actually, might head down there anyway since it is saturday and it IS spring break and all, *laughs*.
mp3 [4:51, 192kbps, 6.7mb]