Friday, March 28, 2008
Patrick and I are off to San Diego to taste a new line of desserts at Heaven Sent Desserts created by a very talented pastry chef named Tina Luu; visit the Caseys; see the Quintana Citrus House; and maybe go to the zoo. See you in about 4 days—be good. I forgot to mention that all the computers in yesterday's training room ran Windows 2000. Windows 2000! All the computers in the room are maintained by our medical center, and when I learned both of those facts, I said in a frightened half-whisper, "Just like Kaiser!" I don't know what it is about doctors and old operating systems, but to tell you the truth, it scares me. It scares me a lot. Okay, we're back. The trip went well. We didn't go to the zoo. I'll have more to say in a few days or so. Patrick and I took Muni and BART for the first time to SFO, and it was relatively easy and painless. I had never traveled through the Balboa Park Muni station before. As we arrived at the airport terminal, I was still feeling somewhat upset with Virgin America after having encountered problems when ordering my seat assignments. There was a long delay while we were assisted by a human, but he eventually got us boarding passes for seats adjacent to each other and on the aisle like Patrick likes and we didn't have to pay extra like I had feared. We boarded and the mood lighting was both pink and blue. There was no meal or even snacks on this short flight, but drinks were served. The most amazing thing about Virgin America is Red—the arbitrary name for its entertainment system. Every passenger has a personal touchscreen which can be used to play games, listen to music and radio, watch films and music videos and live TV, and chat with other people in the plane. On occasion it stopped working and would reboot itself revealing a Linux startup sequence—you go, Linux! From a technological perspective, Red is simply amazing. I don't travel frequently, but I have never seen anything else remotely close to it—via any mode of transportation. When cabin announcements are made, everything that's pauseable (i.e., not live TV or radio) is paused instantly and resumes when the announcement is finished. I think they even put some subtle smarts in there, such as if the announcement is longer it backs up a few seconds in your paused film or video before resuming. Occasionally Red would get stuck but not restart itself and I turned it off and then on which seemed to fix it but I'm not certain that that really performs a manual restart—it might simply have been coincidental. We arrived in San Diego, and picked up our rental car. I thought the man behind the counter said we could upgrade to a Prius for $12.99 for our 3 days but after I got home I realized it turned out to be $12.99 *per day*—$38.97 more. Oh, well. It was still enjoyable to drive even though at first we couldn't figure out how to make it start. (Hold the brake pedal in while you press the on switch.) We didn't have to buy any gas. We drove straight to Heaven Sent Desserts where Patrick and I tasted some of Tina's new creations. She was nearly done in the kitchen for the day, so we ate and waited and then went home to her place. Stopped at her place, settled in for a few minutes. Dinner at Casa Adams (619-284-2272, 3038 Adams Avenue, San Diego, California 92116) with Tina and Patrick. It felt like Casa Adams had very authentic food. Afterwards we had to pick up Lachlan's sleeping bags from Heaven Sent Desserts. Over the course of the day we met a number of HSD people including Lachlan, Andy, Jeremy, and Cruz. More desserts. Back to Tina's to relax.