Blankbaby

I'll have the ostrich on wheat, please

This weekend I found myself in Connecticut visiting my dear old friend Glenn (it is hard to believe that we have been friends for over 16 years now... where does all the time go?) and a good time was had by all.

Glenn, as of late, has been getting into guns. You know, going to the firing range and squeezing off a few rounds. As such, he has a new rifle that he needed to get fixed which is how I found myself in a gun shop for the first time ever. The gun shop was kind of neat, since I do think guns are interesting as artifacts (I would never own one myself, but it was an antique or something) but it wasn't anything too exciting (though I did meet a nice doggie).

The real fun began after the gun shop, as it often does. We went on a little adventure to see the Cabela's that recently opened up shop in CT. If you don't know what Cabela's is, you are not alone. I wouldn't have known what it was either, but I had attended a talk by someone who helped with the website so I was hip to the Cabela's.

It is a sort of outdoorsy apparel/accessories super store... and when I say super store I mean super store. This place is HUGE. Take a look at the pictures I took (some people thought it was odd that I was snapping so many pictures, but who cares!).

One of the coolest things, though, was the restaurant which serves all kinds of exotic meats. I was in the sandwich line, looking at the line up of elk, bison, and ostrich trying to decide what to get (I went with the ostrich) but I was shocked when the 4 people ahead of me all ordered tuna salad! I mean, come on people, live a little.

Anyway, I have to grab my Jerky Blaster and some Buck Lickers and get out of here.

Some San Francisco pictures are up

As you may recall, I am in San Francisco at the moment (yes, I got here safe and sound so worry not!). I posted earlier about how I had visited San Francisco many times and yet never managed to get to Alcatraz. This trip I made sure I had time to visit The Rock, and here are the pictures to prove it.

This isn't the first old prison I have visited, I do live pretty close to Eastern State Penitentiary (if you live near Philly and you haven't been to Eastern State you really owe it to yourself to visit. Here are the pictures I took at ESP.). Both places seem to embrace the idea of stabilizing not restoring. Alcatraz seems to be doing alright for its age, but the weather and the birds have not been kind.

Overall, I had a good couple of hours over there and I would recommend it to anyone.

Oh, and I also snapped some pics of VMWorld (which is the reason why I am here in the first place).

Blankbaby is going to San Francisco

VMWorld, which is VMware's gigantic conference (Joe tells me 10,000 nerds will be there). I'll be there for work, but I won't be overwhelmed with having to try and see everything, talk to everyone, and write about. That means I will:

• Be able to learn stuff
• Be able to actually see some of SF

I've been to San Francisco 5 or 6 times, and I have yet to set foot on Alcatraz, which is one of the things that I have always wanted to do (I would also like to meet the MythBusters, but something tells me that won't happen). I'm flying into SFO tomorrow at 10am (that's when my flight gets in) and I will be on a ferry making my way to Alcatraz at 3:20pm. Can you tell that I'm excited? I love doing crap like this, and I am going to have my super cool camera along with me (and my iPhone.. I'm sure I'll be posting some pictures to the blog from time to time).

So, Blankbaby readers, what else should I do while I am in SF? Oh, and if anyone will be out there let me know and we can meet up (though I doubt anyone in SF reads Blankbaby).

For those curious you can see some pics from my previous trips to the West Coast here, here, and here.

The Ferik wedding

Ain't they cute?
Originally uploaded by blankbaby.

This weekend was the wedding of my dear friend Owen to his lovely bride Jess. Check out all the pictures I took here.

I've known Owen for about 12 years now (has it really been that long?) and while I am pretty sucky about keeping in touch with people Owen has made the effort to say in touch with me (why, we might never know). Now that Thad is in Philly I make it out to Allentown more often for some quality Owen time, which is a good thing indeed.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed the wedding.

Jess and Owen, here's to many years of bliss.

My trip to the National Museum of the Marine Corps

What a handsome man!
Originally uploaded by blankbaby.

Since I am a good son, I went to visit my mother for Easter. Sure, I don't actually celebrate Easter myself but I love my mom and she wanted to see me... so VA bound I was.

I usually try to cajole my mother into doing something while I am there, which is met with varying degrees of success. She works hard, so when she has time off she would rather not go walking around Washington, DC (which is what I often suggest we do). This trip was no different, as I kept saying, 'Let's do something!'

Finally my mom said, 'Well, they did just open that new Marine museum that I wanted to visit.'

I'm a sucker for a museum (the topic really doesn't matter) so off we went to the Marine Museum. I took lots of pictures. As you might expect there was lots of Marine stuff in the museum (shocking, I know) and I do believe lots of the visitors were either currently enlisted Marines or retired Marines.

Now, I'm not the most manly of man at the best of times. Finding myself in a shrine to the kind of of macho man that John Wayne played (though these dudes were actually brave, they weren't play acting) made me feel a little insecure. I mean, I type behind a computer for most of my life, not that brave. However, to make matters worse my mother made me hold her purse in the lobby while she used the bathroom.

A computer geek holding his mommy's purse in the lobby of the Marine Museum... it really sums up my life, don't you think?

On the train to Mom's house

I love L.A.

This is the first time I have ever been in L.A., and I am just going to be in the airport for another 30 minutes or so. I can't say that LAX is impressing me.

Anyway, did you know that United Airlines charges $46 to sit in the emergency row? How do I know this? Because I just paid $46 to get my seat in the emergency row, though since that is all I paid for $46 ain't bad to get from L.A. to Philly.

Do I sound like Madonna?

At the moment I am still in San Francisco, sitting the hotel lobby using my computer thanks to the wonders of EVDO. I had lots of fun at Macworld this week, and did lots of work as well. One of our goals for this Macworld was to shoot lots of video, and I think we were partially successful. We shot lots of good stuff, but it is taking us a little longer than I would like to get it up on the site (though that is mostly due to a number of technical problems). Anyway, some video is up at TUAW, like this hands on with OWC's ModBook. I had fun doing this video, and I didn't think I was half bad interviewing folks. Leave it to TUAW commenters to crush my dreams:

scott, where are you from??? you've got that quasi british-madonna accent going on. passable job? stay away from cameras and stay in front of your computer. you just went down 10 steps in my book.

This marks the first time I have ever been compared to Madonna, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I don't think I have a 'quasi-british' accent at all, though I do enjoy speaking the Queen's English from time to time. At least I can console myself with the fact that this comment is from the small, but vocal, minority of people who read TUAW and think that everything we do sucks (though why they continue reading is anyone's guess).

Pip pip and all that.

The McNulty has landed

The Vienna Metro stop