ダニエルの冒険

My Sunday started off with noticing the crack on my MacBook. A co-worker at Rovsing got a crack in the same spot before so I knew it was an issue, and I checked my warranty on the Apple site and found I had two weeks left, so I went to the Apple store while I had the time. I didn’t get any breakfast when leaving so I bought a big steak-filled sub from Quizno’s while waiting for my turn at the Genius Bar or whatever it is they call the technical support desk in the Apple Store and the Mac Genius, or whatever it is they call the tech support guys, very quickly replaced the top part of my laptop for me. It gave me a new keyboard and trackpad (which were the most worn parts of the laptop), but it’s an American layout. I’ve been getting used to that over the last few weeks at work anyway so it’s no problem. At least we speak the same language so there aren’t any funny accents wasting space. After that, I popped down to work to leave my bag off because I was about to climb the Twin Peaks: the second-highest mountains right in the centre of the city.
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Yesterday there were a few things I wanted to do locally. I wanted to check out the Copper Kettle on Taraval to the south (an Irish café with real sausages), I wanted to see the ocean up close from the beach, I wanted to walk through Golden Gate park, and I wanted to find a post office. I got the former two done and met lots of interesting characters along the way.
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Just a short interesting story that I forgot to mention yesterday.
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Just home! I got stuck into this word game on my iPod and missed my stop, so I went all the way down to 43rd Ave, meaning I had to walk back 11 blocks to 32nd then down about 5 to Moraga from Judah. The next muni was 17 minutes away, and I got home in about that time, so I got home quicker and it saved me freezing in the cold but those hills are not kind. Anyway, I had a fantastic day.
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I got a call from Comcast while at work today. After seeing my blog entry where I said that the DVR wasn’t working and that one of their engineers had come out, told my landlady that the signal was too weak, and had taken away the box, left a comment asking me to contact them. I did so and gave them the number of the house here and my cell phone (that’s a mobile to you) number. I had told my landlady that if the signal’s just too weak, then I’m happy with standard cable, so when they called here she told them that everything was alright. They went ahead and called me too, and I explained to them what the previous engineer had said, and the Comcast rep basically said “if you want a DVR we should be able to get you one” and said he’d get someone to come out.

I told them I’d be home from 7pm and just after 7pm a guy came out to have a look. He really knew what he was doing and figured out the wiring (turns out there were four splitters between me and the cable line coming into the house), and did some housekeeping: replacing splitters where they don’t need to be and replacing a length of cable running across the bottom floor. He got it done pretty fast and gave me a brand new DVR (way faster than the last one, and with two tuners instead of one so I can record one show and watch another)! It’s got a HDMI port and all on it, but my TV, though a nice size, is a 480i CRT, so I won’t be using that any time soon. The digital signal looks great though.

I have no idea how fast they found my blog entry. It was definitely before it could have been crawled by Google. The internet here is also being provided by Comcast, so the first thing I thought of was “I wonder if they’re monitoring internet traffic for keywords like ‘Comcast’?” Application-aware SPI technology’s not too uncommon these days… Just glad I’m getting my mail over SSL!

Had a pretty good day today. I’m trying to ease myself out of Japan-mode gradually, which basically means I’m spending loads of time in and around Japan Town. This and next weekend it’s the Sakura festival and there’s loads on. The streets are all closed off and pedestrianised, with small stalls selling stuff and a stage set up in Peace Plaza, where there were taiko drumming and para para performances. The Taiko was really great and I’m thinking of going to their concert next Saturday night at the Kabuki hotel. I found the Japanese school I was looking for this morning and saw all this drumming after getting some oyako-don for lunch while waiting for the class to start at 1pm. From 1pm to 4pm I participated in the class, but I’m still not sure if I’ll take it or not.
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I’ve been really busy over the last few days so I haven’t written anything about work but I’ve finally got the time to do so. It’s a really fantastic place to work and I’m really lucky to have gotten the position. Since Monday I’ve been reading over the Havok documentation, asking questions to some of the (very patient) guys sitting around me. Every morning just after 9am we have a teleconference with the Developer Relations team in Dublin and discuss how we’re all getting on and I’m really starting to feel like this is the sort of job for me.
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The Aer Lingus plane had seat-back entertainment with on-demand films, TV, and music, and even thought it was glitchy and had to be rebooted a few times by the air hostess (is it ok to call them that?), it worked well enough in the end. They were all running Linux, by the way. I arrived in San Francisco Airport and found where the shuttle vans were. I found the SuperShuttle people but they couldn’t find my booking in their computer, even though I’d paid $18 online through my credit card, and after spending ages sitting in the van waiting for more customers to come, I eventually just gave up and got a taxi for $42 from the airport to the house.
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There are lots of things I really like about being here, but a lot of things I don’t like too. Fortunately, the things I don’t like seem like they’ll go away as I get used to my new lifestyle.
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