I was able to work out a business reason to go to San Jose for a couple of days. I have some staff there that I needed to visit and as long as I was going to be there, I might as well attend the Maker Fair at the San Mateo Fairgrounds sponsored by Make Magazine. And, of course, as long as I was there, I could also make a trip to Frys Electronics just in case I needed something. I was pretty sure there would be an Apple Store somewhere that I might be able to visit. All in all, it was a very successful trip!

The picture is from the Maker Fair which was held in San Mateo on Saturday April 22nd and Sunday April 23rd. I set up return flight up in the late afternoon on Saturday so I could go to the fair. It was very interesting and pretty weird at the same time. I’ve put up a picture album from the trip that shows some of the sights at the fair. The idea is that there are people who are very interested in taking stuff apart and making something else out of it — or at least making something. The San Mateo fair was about third in the series. It was interesting looking at some of the exhibits. The fair was well attended and getting close enough to actually talk to people displaying their handwork was difficult. I did spend some time at the Parallax exhibit and took a class on microcontrollers. The $15 class fee included about $80 worth of parts. The project was a device to calculate distance. It was a lot of fun and I spent more money buying more parts…. There were some other microcontrollers on exhibit, but none of the rest had any kind of hands-on capability.

The mall where the Apple store was located had changed character completely from when I was there last. I was last in San Jose in March 2004, two years ago. At that time this mall was a standard, normal, uninteresting mall. There was construction going on when I was there last, but I hadn’t paid much attention to that. Today, this is a nice, upscale mall with at least four times the store space with all of the interesting stores. I managed to spend some money there (not a lot) at the Apple Store, the Discovery Store, Williams and Sonoma, and the Disney Store. It was fun to watch all the people (and on a Friday evening there were a LOT of people to watch!).

Frys also got a little of my money. It is fun to be in a store that has just about everything a person interested in computers would like.

I was also interested in what hadn’t changed! There is still a lot of building space for rent. While technology business has made a good recovery from the bust in 2001, much of the manufacturing moved overseas and there is plenty of inexpensive building space available in the San Jose area. The traffic is once again pretty intense. President Bush flew into Moffet Field on Friday afternoon (I saw Air Force One fly overhead as it was on final approach to the airport) for some kind of a visit to Cisco. All of the roads in the area were closed requiring pretty big detours. Cisco had recommended to their staff that everyone who could work from home to do so that day to reduce the security issues. That took a lot of folks of the roads as well. Nevertheless, there were still plenty of cars on the highway. There is a lot of road construction underway — and most of it was underway two years ago when I was last there. Road construction moves at a very slow pace in California! This is the pretty time of year to be in the Bay area. The hills are green, the trees in bloom, and everything is quite pretty. In a few weeks the hillsides will turn brown and the prettiness will be gone. My favorite Japanese restaurant in Milpitas has been sold. It is supposedly still a Japanese restaurant, but most of the menu is now Chinese food. I’ve now been to that restaurant for the last time. It was a quick trip — not much free time — so I didn’t attempt to get in touch with old colleagues in the area. I will do that next time. There are some people that I’d like to see once again.

I’m of course back home. I got into Salt Lake City about 8:30 on Saturday evening and drove back to Pocatello. It’s a full two and a half hour drive from our house to the SLC airport when there is no traffic. I’m glad to be home for a few days. We’ll be leaving about the 12th of May to go out to Pennsylvania and back (vacation). I’ll be home a few days before going to Manila for two weeks (business). There’ll be plenty to write about as these won’t be Quick Trips!