AaronFreedman.com

While I did say there would only be a 1% chance of me writing about my mini-vacation to the San Francisco-Bay Area, I did not anticipate a very boring four-hour plane ride. So, here we go (pictures are here):

Day 1:
After landing in San Francisco International Airport at about noon Pacific time, I went with my dad straight out of the airport with our rent-a-car headed for the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto. The campus is very different from that of Columbia, as it is extremely large and beautiful. It was pretty quiet, and we got there early for my dad’s interview, so we walked around a bit. It’s really quite an amazing place to see, with the missionary revival style and everyone biking.

While my dad did his interview, I waited around in the University Library playing on a Mac. Frustratingly, I tried to get on the campus WiFi with my piece-of-junk HP notebook to no avail because, as I learned later, Stanford’s WIFi requires registering your computer or wireless card’s MAC address, unlike Columbia’s open connection. Fortunately, I was able to run Firefox, Adium, and Thunderbird off of my USB key on the Mac.

After the interview, my dad and I drove into San Francisco, where we checked in at a Marriot hotel. In the room, we both crashed and I set up the in-room-high-speed-Internet with the Aiport Express I brought from home, allowing my dad and I to enjoy the connection at the same time, both from the comfort of our beds. After that, we headed out to a nice bistro across the street for dinner, went back to the hotel, and slept.
Day 2:
Jet lag woke us up at 6:30, but after a vanilla late, chocolate croissant, and a workout at the hotel fitness center (which was very nice with personal TVs, very good weight machines, and free – on my first day there, at least – vitamin water), I was ready to head out to see a friend and one of my dad’s former students, Cyrus Farivar, in Oakland for a tour of the Silicon Valley. We took BART there, which is much quieter, on schedule, and organized than the NYC subway, though buying tickets was a huge pain. After meeting Cyrus at the station, he drove us to the UC Berkeley campus, where we walked around. The area is very nice, and we had bagels and coffee at a local café. Berkeley is a lot smaller and more congested than Stanford, making it feel more intimate and less lonely.

Next stop on our tour was lunch at a burrito place in Mountain View called Los Charros. Cyrus got the recommendation from ChowHound, a sort of message board site for getting local food recommendations. After a drive down the freeway and over the Dumbarton Bridge, we got there. There was a line, which is always a good sign for eating at a new place. The food there was excellent. As this is the first real burrito I’ve every had (there haven’t been that many good Mexican places in New York until very recently), it was especially good, and very filling too.

After lunch, we drove by Google headquarters, the Googleplex, which we unfortunately could not get inside. Next stop was the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. We had to wait for 45 minutes for the tour of the main exhibit, but in the mean time we looked around a temporary one about computer chess. The main exhibit is called the Visual Archive, because all of the machines there are static and non-functional. The tour started off with some of the early personal computers that changed the world, including the Xerox Alto, the Apple II, and the Apple Lisa. Next, we went chronologically, from abacuses to a telephone switchboard to WWII and Cold War-era computers. At that point, though, we were running a little late, so we ditched the rest of the tour and headed back out.

The next stop on our journey was Apple headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, Going inside Apple has always been a dream for me, and thanks to one of Cyrus’s friends who works there, it finally became reality. In truth, threw wasn’t that much to see. Well, unless you have super-security clearance to see the testing lab and product development areas. But, Cyrus’s friend was just a Sales operatives, so he couldn’t access the sexy stuff (though he did have access to the full-featured Leopard beta, which will be released in three weeks at WWDC). Even Café Macs was closed, where you can, on a rare occasion, see an Apple employee with an iPhone. But the best part was The Apple Company Store, a half-traditional Apple Store, half-Apple merchandise store. This means that The Company Store is the only place in the world to get official Apple merchandise. That’s right, they have Apple-branded shirts, hats, even coffee mugs. I was pretty excited, of course, so I got a shirt with “I have been to the Mothership” on the front and the Apple logo on the back, an Apple coffee mug, an Apple hat, and an Apple pen. Yeah, I’m nuts.

After loading up on Apple goodies, we drove to Los Altos to see Steve Jobs’s childhood house and garage, where the original Apple I computer was made. Someone apparently lives there now, but we still took a picture in front of the garage.

Next we drove to Steve Jobs’s current house, in Palo Alto. We spent a while trying to find it, but after asking a local kid, we did. The house is a double-lot, with a vineyard in the back and apple trees in the front. We were even able to peek inside and see a 30” Cinema Display in what possibly could be Jobs’s office.

At the end of our journey, we drove back to Cyrus’s house to rest our heels, followed by a trip to a great local Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. This was the first time I ever had Ethiopian food, and it was really good. After a fun-filled and exciting, I was beat, and Cyrus drove us back to the BART station, which we rode to our hotel and went to sleep.

Day 3:
A slightly later wake-up, at 7:30, was nice, and was followed by a vanilla late and a croissant (no chocolate this time). My dad had to got out to do an interview in Redwood City, so he dropped me off at a Fry’s in Palo Alto along the way. Fry’s Electronics, in case you don’t know, is a chain of computer and electronics stores that started in California, but has now made its way to other states as far east as Indiana. After almost getting lost on the way there, I walked into Fry’s. The place is friggin’ huge. I mean they have everything! It’s like a web site in real life and Best Buy on steroids. They’ve got everything from computers to movies to games to washing machines (and vacuums), and everything in between, which is a lot. They have every computer or consumer electronics device ever made. But the most interesting thing they have is computer parts. Yes, unlike Best Buy or any other chain that I know, you can actually go into Fry’s and select cases, motherboards, processors, RAM, and more. Plus, the sales representatives actually know what you’re talking about and can help you. Fry’s also has a little café, where I was able to pick up a weak, but useable, free WiFi signal.

After hanging out at Fry’s for abut an hour-and-forty-five-minutes, my dad and I drove back to the Stanford campus to get some shirts for my sister and I at the campus bookstore.

After that, we went into downtown Palo Alto to look for a place to eat, and struck jackpot. I forgot the exact name of the restaurant, but it was a terrific Greek place with amazing food, a lovely décor, and decent prices. In fact, it was so good that we almost couldn’t get seats as they were all booked up – fortunately we managed to get seated at the bar.

With our bellies stuffed with Greek food we tried to see two interesting sites, both closed – the Jerry Garcia art exhibit in Palo Alto and the Saint John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church. There were still two other places I wanted to visit though – the Macworld and digg offices.

I had talked to Jason Snell, Editorial Director of Macworld, and he said that they would be moving on Thursday so no one would be there, but I wanted to check anyway. After going to the wrong address, we finally made it. Unfortunately, he was right – the receptionist said there wasn’t a soul in the offices.

Still, I wasn’t about to give up just yet. After making several calls to one digg PR guy I know, I finally got through to him. He said he had stopped working for digg and Revision3, but gave me the name and number of another PR rep. With that in hand, I entered the small and still being moved-into digg offices, only to see that almost everyone was out at a Facebook press event. Fortunately, I did get to meet some people there – Nicole, a “digg Ambassador,” and Chris, a project manager. They showed me the conference room (where I think some of the diggnation episodes are recorded) and an old dig-dug machine, and even gave me a free t-shirt with the promise of seeing Kevin Rose or Alex Albracht next time I drop by.

After that trip, we made it back to the hotel, where I checked my email and put in a question of where to eat that night on ChowHound. After returning from the fitness center, I noticed a response to my ChowHond question. My dad and I tried out one of the recommendations, and Indian place called Naan ‘n’ Chutney, but it turned out to be more of a lunch place with a counter and wooden tables and chairs. Instead, we went to Cha Am, which our ChowHound recommender called “average,” despite its “Excellent” rating from Zagat’s. The meal was pretty good, but not excellent, but that could have very well been because of the dish I ordered. After dinner, it was back to the hotel to pack my bags, go to sleep, and wake up at 5 AM the next morning for the flight I’m one right now.