Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

We ate at Nick's Lighthouse last night. As it turns out that is the same place that Gina and her friend Brenda ate at when she was in San Fran last time.

I started out the crab adventure looking to eat a crab all by myself, but the idea of clam chowder inside of a bread-bowl was too much for me. I ended up ordering the sourdough bread-bowl of clam chowder, Gina ordered a full crab and we split an order of fried calamari (which was EXCELLENT).

My chowder was good, the bread-bowl was really good. I also had an Anchor-Steam, a local brew that is quite popular and tasty. Gina had a Corona with her crab. I stole a couple of the smaller pieces of her crab for myself.

I am not a crab hater, but it isn't the first thing that I crave when we hit a seafood place like the Fisherman's Wharf area. But for me the trip to the Fisherman's Wharf area was more about the experience of eating down in that area (being a bit touristy) vs eating fried fish or shrimp.

Gina loved the crab and as always with crab had a great time cracking it open (with little use of the utilities they provide).

During our trip down there, Gina thought we were going to miss the wharf and had us get off the street car early. As it turned out I think we were still about 2 miles from the wharf at that point. We enjoyed the walk, but the last block or so we definitely felt it was time to sit down and eat.

We were accosted by a street salesman along the way, trying to pitch us on a weekend in Napa Valley at some swanky new $100M hotel that has the USA's first, only and largest 'wine cave'. His pitch was nice and informational at first, but then he cranked it up into the high pressure area, Gina hates sales people, particularly the high pressure kind. I sort of have an affinity for sales people, I love to see how well they do in their pitch.

I love talking with a good sales person, someone who knows their product and is a true practitioner of the craft. I HATE and have no issue being a bit rude to BAD sales people. Often BAD sales people reek of desperation or just flat out don't care about what they are doing.

Gina gave me the perfect out as she just sort of said 'OK, I am done.' and walked away. I told the guy that I had to leave as I had 'lost my wife'. He continued his hard sales push and ceased to be a good sales guy. In part, yes a sales person does need to have a level of persistence that one can call 'annoying' but a GOOD sales person knows when they have lost the (immediate) opportunity and knows when to stop, as not to damage what (little) relationship with the prospect might exist.

Anyway, the food was GREAT.

We grabbed some taffy from a store there across from restaurants.

Along the way over to the Trolley cars I saw a 'Trader Joe's'.

I have read about the store and wanted to witness what it was all about. It sort of reminds me a of a miniature Central Market.

Another one of the things I had read about was 'Two Buck Chuck', which is apparently a good wine that is only $2/bottle. However, I wasn't sure the name of the wine was actually 'Two Buck Chuck' or something else.

We wandered around the store until we found a wine that was $1.99, the name is Charles Shaw, and the nickname for Charles is Chuck.

We bought a bottle of Shiraz and Cabernet, I will let you know how those turn out.

Well, my laundry is done, so I am thinking that we should pack it in and head back to the hotel, drop off the laptops and head out for the next adventure.

I think we are going to hit up the Timbuk2 retail store and see if we can find the ASPCA while we are here.

Laterz

Gina has arrived from Austin.

She stopped by the booth as Brian and Bill were packing up the booth (I helped a little but, I guess you could say I was supervising).

We are preparing to take off to the Timbuk2 store or maybe just down to the wharf for crab and beer. (we are not completely sure yet)

Apparently the Internet provider here set a cookie on my laptop or recognizes the MAC address from my room earlier today, as I am able to get on the Internet here in the NEW room without having to pay for the Internet again.

The wife says we have to go, so this is a short and sweet post to just let y'all know that Gina has arrived and we are taking off for the day.

Hopefully we will snag some pics along the way.

Laterz

I found this 1554 beer (or technically it might be an ale) while Gina and I were out at HEB today.

I have been working on a Website for John. www.stinkweasels.com

He has a splash page up there right now. I am working on the main layout right now, while drinking a 1554.

I had a Guinness earlier and one of the reasons that I picked up the 1554 is that it is a dark beer (ale), as is the Guinness that I had earlier. I have to say that I am liking this 1554.

I tend to like most dark beers (or ales) go figure.

Hopefully I can get the design done today, cuz while I am loving the challenge of doing a total CSS style design, I would like to move on to the easy bit of building the rest of the site.

Laterz

I believe I have been called the name of the ale I found once or twice in my life (probably a couple of times in the last month).

While shopping this weekend I wanted to try out some new beer. I found, "Arrogant Bastard Ale" and a new chocolate stout. I think I might have had the chocolate stout while in Dallas, but I am not entirely sure if it is the same one.

I had to try this ale for two reasons. The first was the name, the second was the logo. I found the ale to have a very strong taste, at first I thought it was too strong. However, after I got over the initial kick it was actually pretty good.



I need to get some sleep.

Laterz

... and just up over the hill and through the woods to Jeremy's house we go.

I came into New York this past week, with my boss Jack and colleague Trevor, to meet with the folks at Oddcast, they built the JadukaTV site for us.

We flew in on Wednesday night and met with Oddcast on Thursday.

Jeremy came into town and we all hung out for a bit. Then it was time to take the train to Long Island. The ride seemed to go on forever, course the beer might have been effecting my judgment of time.

Then it came time to walk from the train station to his house. Which he had told me was "Just two blocks away." I didn't think that would be too bad.

Then came the actual walking, he pointed down the road and said "That second green light, down there, that is it, basically."

So we walked and walked. The jury is still out on how far the distance actually was, but it was much longer than two blocks. I am saying 1.5 - 2 miles. He is saying 1 - 1.5 miles.

Either way, I am sure that I am better off for having walked, given the steak for dinner and what not.

Well, I am going to be up here hanging out with Jeremy working on some Jaduka stuff and some uRevoo. I think we might try to get a few games of Gears of War or Call of Duty 3 in as well.

I had an excellent bagel this morning.

Laterz

So i'm sitting here at SBC (Short's Brewing Company) enjoying the recommended dark beer, Bellaire Brown.

It is more of an amber than a DARK beer like Guiness. But it is mighty tasty, not to mention it boasts a 6% alcohol level.

For some reason I sort of expected this place to be a little darker, maybe a little more drab. But it is bright and open, they have Blind Melon playing on the sound system and there are a couple of families in here with their kids.

I am not sure why I thought it woudl be drab, maybe that is just my impression that the places in Austin have left on me. The places there tend to be tiny, dark, fire traps with speakers that are taller than me.

I have to say that I like this place. I forgot the camera, so I guess I will have to bring that next time I come up here. They look to have a pretty good menu so I will have to plan my next excursion back to civilization with Lunch in mind.

Patty & Sara made it up the cottage last night. They were able to stay for dinner, which was really nice. They talked about going further north that night. I haven't heard from them yet to find out where they stopped for the night, it was rumored they might stop in Petosky, MI.

I hope they get to come up and spend some more time, they were only here for a few hours. I told Jeremy to sail his boat over here, but apparently there was something about it taking too long to sail from Long Island, NY to Intermediate lake. Oh well, maybe next year. If they leave now, they might make it in time for the 4th.

I hit page 100 in the Synthetic Worlds book, that means that there are only about 180 pages left to go. I hope to cover another 40 or 50 pages before the end of tonight. The subject matter is just getting good, the book is an economists point of view of the virtual economies and the communities that growing them in games like EverQuest, World of Warcraft and what not.

I think this is the end of this blog post I need to try to figure out a few things about static pages on serendipity and call it a day here @ SBC. I think next time I will take the tiny table, this stool is a little unconformatable now.

Laterz,