Day 39-43: BroCal

Surfer, dude., originally uploaded by edmarchedrick.

On July 1 (that's day 39 of my time here in Sunnyvale), HP and Palm officially merged. We celebrated with a company-wide party. Ruby cheerleaded, of course. There was also a Q&A with a panel of SVPs who were involved with the integration of the two companies. Lots of interesting talk during this meeting. I brought my macbook to take notes for a fellow coworker who couldn't attend. It was a little awkward.

On Friday (day 40), I went on some AT&T store visits and did a little secret shopping to get some first hand insight on how sales reps feel about our product. It was a good thing that I did this. That I also got to spend a day basically hanging out with my coworkers outside of the office was also nice.

This weekend (Fri-Sun, days 40-42), I went down to Los Angeles and did all of the touristy stuff: Hollywood Walk of Fame, Kodak Theater, Grauman's Chinese Theater, Beverly Hills, Sunset Boulevard/Strip (well, we drove right through it), Santa Monica Beach/Pier, and Venice Beach.

It was an insanely fun trip. I mean, I haven't had a fourth of July weekend in many long years, so this was definitely a great way to spend the weekend. God, the beaches in SoCal were lovely. I've said it many times before and I'll say it again: Californians are so damn spoiled. Granted, they very much pay for it.

Venice Beach was a scene right out of a movie. There's a little skatepark, people surfing (photo above) and sailing, guys dancing on rollerblades/skates, vendors, shops, tourists tourists and more tourists. It all felt very 1990's sitcom. So much to take in!

And Muscle Beach was a blast. It's essentially an outdoor gym... but it seemed more like an adult's playground. There are rings that people swung on, ropes for people to climb up, uneven bars, parallel bars... it was awesome. I definitely tried to do some ropeclimbing. It's a lot more difficult than I imagined. My body has been trying to recover from that since Saturday. God, my muscles are still very sore.

Oh, you know how I like to namedrop people I meet? Well, I'm about to do that. It's the journalist in me.

Met a man at Muscle Beach called Jim. He was teaching me and Jeff, one of the people I went with, how to walk on those little tightrope things (I know there's a different name for them, but I can't figure it out right now). He had very nice teeth and very nice hair, but that's all besides the point. He told us that he was learning how to turn on the little rope and that he'd been practicing but hadn't been able to do it. By the time we left, we definitely saw him complete not one, but two turns. It was pretty cool. We applauded.

Also, you know how I have a thing for Scandinavians? Well, apparently, I have some sort of a Scadar™. I didn't talk to many of the vendors on Venice Beach, but the one that I did talk to - guess where he's from? FINLAND, baby. Tatu's his name (kinda like that gimmicky lesbian girl band from the early 2000s). He came to southern California to study photography and was selling some panorama prints.

I have photos from the trip that I can put up, but first I have to find a card reader. Hopefully, one of the Palm interns will let me borrow his soon.

In any case, we came back from LA at around 4:30pm on Sunday and by 6:30 pm we were on the train heading into the city as we wanted to check out the fireworks show they put on at Fisherman's Wharf. The show wasn't long or elaborate, but being out there in the cold with thousands of random strangers was a nice feeling. I mean, it always is. Over the bay, there was lots of fog, which obscured the fireworks. Though we could only see about half of it and though there were a few people who left in disappointment, I was okay with it. I mean, it's San Francisco. I can get any old fogless fireworks shows elsewhere.

That's really it. It was a great, long, wonderful weekend. Gotta get back to work tomorrow... such is life.