There's no place like home

I'm at the RSA Security Conference this week and tonight was the Codebreakers Bash - a huge party.

This conference spares no expense. It's the biggest security conference going. And this party was amazing.

The conference itself fills up the Moscone Center in San Francisco, which is a pretty big convention center.

But the Bash was held in a totally different convention center, and it filled that up too.

They had two stages setup, one with a bad 80's cover band (man, they murdered a lot of songs) and one with Renaissance type entertainment. Jugglers, singers, etc.

They had tons of food, and open bars.

And they had lots of stuff to do. You could:

• Make a mask
  
• Get a balloon hat
  
• Watch a puppet show
  
• Get a tarot reading
  
• Work on a paint-by-number version of a large painting
  
• Get your picture taken with the Venus on the Half Shell
  

It was an amazing party.

And I left my camera at the hotel. What was I thinking?

I feel really dumb.

But if I get the chance, I'll be attending this conference again. And bringing my camera to the party!

Here is the batch of photos from yesterday and today.

Can't think of much else to say. I ate dinner tonight at Tad's Steakhouse. "A Local Favorite Dining Establishment Since 1955"

It was pretty good, but the garlic bread was nothing to write home about.

Later.

I had dinner last night (Tuesday) with the Village Idiots. It was a pretty good turnout I must say.

I finally got to meet Roosbeh!

We had dinner at the Kensington Circus Pub again (same place as last time) and as always, Tai was a gracious host and drove me home again afterwards. Thanks Tai!

I took a few photos, and here they are:

This is Tai and Roosbeh.


This is Jay (Doug's friend), David Brick and his friend Ned.


Darryl Richmond and Doug Hill.

Not pictured is John Pierce. Not sure how I missed him. Anyway, a good time was had by all.

Thanks Idiots!

Sev on the Confabulate email list asked what was the Big Deal with the photos of the truck that I posted yesterday.

In our last exciting episode Sev exclaimed:
> I don't get it - Whats the big deal?
> I see this as some excellent kick-ass driving.
> What am I missing here?

The big deal which may have not come across in the picture or the descriptions is this:

The truck was totally blocking the road when I got there (which means he'd been there for a little while) and I watched for another ten minutes while he backed and filled trying to get lined up with the door.

The people trying to drive on the street were not happy. Hell, the people on the sidewalk on both sides of the street were having trouble.

I was very glad that I wasn't trying to back that thing in. (Not that I could or would even attempt it.)

The driver was not having a good time.

Additionally, the conference is running shuttles between the hotels and the conference. I rode one yesterday and this morning. (It's a nice walk from my hotel to the conference, but my feet are killing me.)

Anyway, what do you think of when you hear "hotel shuttle"? Not a full-sized tour bus I bet.

Holy cow. I would not want to drive one of these behemoths through San Francisco either. I sat right behind the driver on both trips and man-o-man. Tight corners, lots of traffic, lots of city buses (and most of them are the long flex-in-the-middle kind) and lots of pedestrians.

San Francisco is a busy place and driving in downtown is very hectic. And if you don't know what the downtown area looks like, it's very messy.

Take a look at this: Link to Google Map of the Area

My hotel is near Union Square. The conference is in Moscone Center. Take a look at the streets around here. They dead end. They are one ways. Market St. cuts though at a diagonal. Streets run down the middle of blocks and stop after a block and a half. It's very messy. And I like it.

I took some photos last night and today and put them into an album.

They include:

• Some photos taken at night from my 12th floor hotel room
  
• Some photos of the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship taken from the 36th floor of the hotel
  
• A photo from the RSA Security Conference
  
• Photos of a truck blocking a street (really, it was more interesting than it sounds.)
  

Go check them out!

This is the kind of stuff that I love about San Francisco - Here is a street that is tunneled under another street. Also take note of the entrance ramp to the parking garage on the right. This is the intersection of Sutter St. and Stockton St. looking North up Stockton. Awesome.

---

I'm in San Francisco again for the 2007 RSA Security Conference.

I was last in San Francisco in 2005 for the LinuxWorld Conference. (See links.)

I got in yesterday. I flew into SFO and took the BART into downtown. I'm staying at the Grand Hyatt hotel just off Union Square - not far from where I stayed two years ago.

Man I love walking around in this part of San Francisco.

I'll try and take bunches of pictures again, there is so much neat and funky architecture here.

BTW, Google Maps is the best. I made my hotel my saved location and then searched for 'liquor store'. There was a great one only two blocks from the hotel! I wound up buying a bottle of Tobermory Single Malt Scotch (mainly because it was one of the cheapest) but it's pretty damned good.

Then I searched for 'sushi' and found this little hole in the wall named Akiko's Sushi Bar - all of four tables - but the sushi was good and not very spendy.

I'm not sure what I'm going to eat tonight - it's SuperBowl Sunday, and I'm not sure I want to go to a bar. There was a good looking Asian place down the street. I might go there.

More later.

I took some more pictures on Thursday. Here they are.

I had dinner last night with five (plus two) of the Village Idiots.

The Village Idiots are the members of an email mailing list that I run for them. They are a splinter group off the Internet BMW Riders mailing list.

I had met some Village Idiots at the 1992 BMW Motorcycle Owners of America rally in Missoula, MT. They convinced me to join the list and it's been pretty fun.

I had met Tai before when she was visiting Minneapolis (she grew up here.) The majority of the Idiots live on the West coast.

Anyway, I'm in San Francisco for LinuxWorld and Tai arranged a dinner party for some of the Idiots and me.

Here are the photos that I took:


This is Jay, (Doug's friend), Doug Hill, Mike Petonic and Dave Swider


This is Mike (Tai's husband), Tai Day and Jeff Soldau

Nothing says San Francisco like row houses on a hill.

Here are the rest of the photos that I took today and didn't link to in my last entry.

Enjoy!