My Silicon Valley trip continued yesterday with 4 stops. Saturday evening I went to bed early, as I was really jet lagged. I woke up and 2am, unable to sleep any further.
San Francisco. First, I connected to the Web and did some work. The luxury hotel I was in (thanks to its low Saturday night fare) has an expensive wireless. But looking around, my wifi connector could see a whopping 36 wireless network. I didn't took me a lot (the second connection) to find one that was open. Funny, they let you in but give you a warning that they are not responsible... Seems a common element, as it happens also in the hotel I'm staying right now (which has free wifi). Beside working, in San Francisco I did some shopping (things to take home), has a good breakfast in a historical Italian coffee shop (Caffe Trieste) and then drove south.
Mountain View. Although I had been several times in the Bay Area I had never stopped in Mountain View. The downtown doesn't look special, the shoreline are towards the bay is a nice park. Behind it, there is an entire road with Google buildings. It is not even clear that there is a mayor one, they look kind of similar, but there are really many. Not far from Google I saw the 4-buildings Microsoft Mountain View campus (where my friend Pierre works on IP TV). They have mostly developers there, not many commercial people. From Hotmail to similar web enabled stuff, there is a lot of the new Microsoft taking place in Mountain View. I saw other companies I was not expecting. Motorola has a huge place. I saw the local NASA complex. I saw Microfocus. And I was really not expecting LinkedIn to be so close to Google (geographically, I mean).
Santa Cruz and Ben Lomond. In the afternoon I drove south to Santa Cruz, where I'm staying (and where I am right now). I got my hotel room, than drove up in the "mountains" for half an hour to Ben Lomond to see Danny. It was a very enjoyable evening (and a very good dinner, thanks to his wife). The place is just gorgeous, in the wild, and full an animals. Today and tomorrow, I'll go to Scotts Valley (about 10 miles) to see CodeGear people... I'll let you know how things go.
PS. I did take pictures, but let my memory-card-to-computer adapter, so I'll post them as I get home.