It took a long time to get back form Stillwater Cove, as 101 was a nightmare due to being late on a holiday. I took over from Steph on the driving with about an hour to home. I went to Adams and watched him and Andrew play some MTG. I had missed out on the draft, and watching MTG being played isn’t particularly fun, but I did enjoy the talk around the table.
Steph and I went to Stillwater Cove at Pebble Beach for a nice dive. The surface swim was incredibly long, about 45 minutes. The dive was nice, we saw; large valleys, small overhangs, sunstars, sea slugs, and a lot of abalone (shells and live). We also saw the cutest adolescent harbor seal. They have the biggest puppy-dog eyes and look like a stuffed animal. We had a bit of a BBQ on the beach there. Some of the other guys were spearfishing and caught a good number of fish. I was there with Greg, Mike, Dave, Joe, Joey, and a few others that I can’t remember their names.
When I got into SF, Stephanie came and picked me up. She had just come from Kublacon, where she saw all sorts of stuff on painting minis. We went to Magda Luna (Site) with Brian and Candice. I got a really tasty potato burrito, and guac. The food was quite good, but it was a little heavy. Afterwards we went to Safeway, then went home and got to bed since we were getting up early the next day.
This was interestIng history of the discovery of the atom and all the intermediate steps along the way. They went into a lot of the personal and political relationships of the physicists. These were all very interesting, especially around how stubborn some of them got around their ideas being correct. There was also a good bit of peer pressure from the ‘best’ physicists on the less great ones. It is amazing what lengths they all went through to prove very small ideas. I was also amazed at the semantics that they argued about with the particle wave duality of matter.
The BBQ last night is making me feel a little sick this morning. Mom made some scrambled eggs for breakfast, and I had a good bit of the other half of the cantaloupe from the farmer’s market. After packing everything up they took me to the airport. All in all it has been a pretty good vacation; it has been good to see the family.
When we got back to the house Dad was ready to take the iPad case in for exchange, so we stopped by the Apple store and I got the light blue front cover. We then headed to the Commissary to pick up the BBQ for that evening. We got all the good stuff, and a lot of BBQ. As always the Commissary is super tasty. When we got back to the house Dad and I started drinking some wine and played some cards. He beat me badly, and I just wasn’t getting the cards I needed. I made a few mistakes in the early games, but the later ones I was getting really bad luck. Kim joined us for dinner and brought over a really tasty dessert, apricot tart. This morning I’m feeling sick from all the tasty, rich food last night, and all the meat.
After getting home from the bike ride we called Kim and the three of us went to the farmer’s market at the Agricenter. Mom was looking for a broom, but was unable to find one. The food looked really good, and I got a really sweet smelling cantaloupe. We then stopped by Kim/Ray’s house, and it was really large and nice looking. I wish I could have a house like that in the bay area. She introduced me to her cat Thumper, who was born without a tail.
She then attempted to do a cat beard with Thumper (She’s doing it wrong!). Just kidding, she was giving him all sorts of love.
Once Dad called we headed right back to the house, and met up with Dad.
After a breakfast of scrambled eggs with goat cheese and bacon, Mom and I went on a bike ride from the house to patriot lake. It was a perfect day for a ride and we went at a relaxed pace. I really enjoyed the ride with her and we got to talk about some interesting things.
This book was very interesting, and had a lot of great general advice for starting up small companies. The end of the book was a really strange alternate reality, multiuniverse, what-if scenario of if space was more salient. The story was kinda long for the points it was trying to make, but I agree with a lot of the message. It was saying that we were sacrificing functionality for entertainment with consideration of the space race. Nasa was spending tons of money putting people in orbit, when it could be spending fractions of that money to build massive satellite networks. The book also talked about the KISS maxim that I try to prescribe to, Keep it Simple and Salient. Most of the time it is read as Keep it Simple Stupid, but I like the Salient version better.
