When making a reservation at a restaurant, I’ve always given my real name to the person taking my name down. In my head, of course, I’m always thinking to myself, “Hmm… what name should I use this time? MacGyver?” Up until today, I’ve never really had the gumption or chutzpah to bring myself to use a pseudonym. This morning, I was making a reservation for 7:45 pm tonight at Max’s in Redwood City, where I’ll be meeting up with Jeremy Henrickson for dinner. When the person on the line asked me for a name to hold the reservation, I paused for a second and rather shyly said, “Uh, MacGyver?” The person obviously had never heard that name before, so I spelled it out to him, “That’s M-A-C-G-Y-V-E-R.” I laughed a little bit when I said it, since it’s something that I’ve been meaning to do for sooo long!

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I rode my bike to work, the fourth day in a week that I’ve been on the saddle. I am starting to ride for a number of reasons, the largest being I need to get back in shape after becoming a gelatinous tub of fat over the past few months. I was slow on my ride to work, and I was even passed by another cyclist when crossing Carribbean Drive and Lawrence Expressway! I tried to keep up with him, but he was too strong, too dominating. That must have been what Jan Ullrich felt when Armstrong powered away from him after looking at him straight in the face.

After getting back home, I quickly changed from my cycling clothes to my civvies and went over to Lucy’s Teahouse, where I spent the next few hours talking philosophy of life with Amabelle and Steven. John and Bill were also there, along with some of John and Steven’s high school friends (and their friends).

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Rae invited me to this free Greek play happening in Berkeley last week. Since my Saturday schedule was open, I decided to go. I haven’t been to a play like this in a long time, if ever. The only memories I have of watching anything remotely similar were when I was living and studying in Paris, France. That quarter, I took a class on French theatre, a class which required us to go to a number of plays running in and around Paris. One fond memory I had was taking an SNCF train to the burbs of Paris with Supriya and a couple of other students to see a play. On the way back, I didn’t have the money to pay for the train ticket, so I hid at the bottom of the seats to avoid the dreaded, “controlleurs de billets!” Those guys are like fierce hounds if you don’t have a ticket! They aren’t quite like Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade — No ticket! — but they are pretty close! Luckily, they never appeared on our train and I was spared!

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I woke up early as is customary on the weekends even though I hadn’t slept that much over the past few days. On Thursday, I was in hung hanging out with a friend. We saw Startup.com, the real-life documentary of govWorks.com. Overall, I thought that the film was pretty good, though a bit too focused on the relationship between the two main characters. I didn’t feel that there was a good sense of the startup life beyond the two characters, Tom and Kaleil. Apparently, the directors combed through 400 hours of footage to fit into the 1.5 hour running time of the movie.

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On the fourth Tuesday of every month, there is a small contigent of Newton users that convenes at the Printer’s Inc. Cafe in Palo Alto. We’ve been doing this thing since the Newton came out, the first meeting being in January, 1994. I remember the first time I went to a SNUG meeting. The people there scared me soooo much with their technical knowledge that I didn’t return until months later, when I had sufficiently learned the power of NewtonScript and programming for the Newton.

Many years later and far past the official “death” of the Newton at the end of February, 1998, at the hands of Steve Jobs and Apple Computer, we’re still meeting at Printer’s Inc. The group has outlasted the Printer’s Inc. Bookstore, which recently went out of business in both the Palo Alto and Mountain View locations. Over the past few years, friendships have developed between the attendees, so much so that it really isn’t about Newton anymore as it is about what’s been happening in our lives lately.

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I was IM’ing with Amabelle this morning as I was working on my Vienna Teng recap from Saturday night. She asked me what I was planning on doing today other than the web site. I replied, “To be honest, nothing. I have been on a whirlwind of activities for the past three days. Unless someone comes down to my area to hang out, I’m staying at home.”

Around 1:30 pm, I was getting hungry, so I decided to make myself some yummy fried rice. 30 minutes later, I was sitting down at my desk, stuffing my latest creation in my mouth when the phone rang. Earlier in the day, I noticed that Eric’s IM Presence said that he was in the South Bay, so I naturally assumed it was him. When I looked at the CallerID, however, I realized that it was a different number, one I didn’t recognize. I picked up the phone and said my typical, “Adam here…”

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I spent Saturday morning with Eric, Rita, Amabelle, Dardy, and Bill over at Koi Palace, where we gorged on dim sum and took pictures like a pack of tourists. Afterwards, I went to fix my glasses and check out DV equipment in Palo Alto before returning home. I left my house a little after 5:00 pm, after having furiously worked on two photojournals. I first drove over to Dardy’s place in Palo Alto. Stuffing my face with brownies from his housewarming party the other night, I picked Mr. Choccobo up and drove over to Stanford campus, where we met up with Domi Le, a musical acquaintance of Eric’s who was coming to the recital.

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I went to sleep around 2:00 am on Saturday morning, after getting back late from Dardy’s housewarming party in Palo Alto. We arranged to call each other at 9:00 am to see if we’d all like to go have dim sum at Koi Palace in Daly City. As usual, I woke up early on the weekend, around 7:30 am. I worked on the web site for the housewarming party until 9:00, when Eric called me to see if I would go.

At the end of the night, I wasn’t thinking that I would go, but in the morning, I had a change of heart. After all, Dardy said that he would happily drive to Daly City, obviating the need for me to drive. So, I told Eric that I’d call Dardy and head on over to his place. I packed up my camera equipment and my computer. I figured that on the 30 minute or so drive to Daly City, I could work on the web site. Dardy was conscious, thankfully, after his visit with the drinking demons last night. The drive up to Daly City was uneventful, though I did tell him to go on the wrong road when we neared our destination. I got a fair amount of work done on the web site, which was fortunate. These things do take a long time to produce… but the future ones will be better as I use more PHP and Javascript on my pages.

Being Recognized

Eric, Rita, and Amabelle were already at Koi Palace when we arrived. We were shuffling around looking for our spot to sit when I heard a voice from behind me say something like, “Adam Tow! So nice to meet you!” I turned around to see two people that I didn’t recognize anywhere in my memory banks. Who were these people, I was thinking to myself? The answer was quickly found, as Al and Olwen told me that they recognized my face from my web site. They were readers of my site!

This made my day. I couldn’t believe that someone out of the blue recognized me from my web site! Turns out Al found out about my site while doing a search for Palm programming information. He came across the personal section of my site and was intrigued. Apparently, he and his wife, Owen, are regular readers. They told me that my adventures and stories gave them inspiration to branch off and do things outside of the Silicon Valley cubicle life. This was very rewarding to hear, and I am glad that there are people around the world who enjoy reading my stories and adventures.

As Eric, Amabelle, Rita, and Dardy filed by, I asked them, “Do you recognize these people?” Al and Olwen nodded their heads, saying, “Yeah, we read about them from your web site! This was soooo cool to hear.

Devouring Food

I think it was Dardy who mentioned that watching people eat is pretty disgusting. Well, it is, especially if you have proof of the digusting digestive deeds! Here are a couple of pictures that I took of Bill, Eric, and me eating various dim sum dishes. Well, at least the food was good, if the pictures of us eating were not!

Rita mentioned that whenever her family goes out to dim sum, they order the exact same thing everytime. That’s the same with my family! I’m pretty particular about what I eat for dim sum; it’s almost always the same, never straying too far from the norm of sui mai’s ha gao’s, cha siu bao’s, and bbq rice noodles to name a few. There were little octopi that I thankfully did not eat. Eric speared one of them on his chopstick, providing a humorous photographic moment to the lunch.

As for Dardy? He was trying to hold what little food he ate in his stomach. Apparently, he drank just a wee bit too much last night, pushing him over the edge for much coherent talk this morning!

Random People

There were a lot of people eating at Koi Palace; it’s certainly a happening place on the weekends. Going to dim sum reminded me of the times when my family went to Emerald or Jasmine Restaurant on Convoy Street in San Diego. Long lines, steaming plates, and happy faces abounded in those restaurants and they were present today at Koi Palace.

Our waiter was very helpful today, working with our poor knowledge of Chinese dessert names to find the dish that Amabelle craved for. I don’t know the phonetic spelling of the dish, but it ended up being, “Lai Wan Beng,” what she was looking for. We ordered three dishes for the six of us, devouring the sweet dessert in minutes. It was a cross between a mochi ice cream ball and a Lai Wan Bao. Yummy!

There were a number of cute kids and babies at the restaurant, as there always are.

Fixing Glasses and Checking DV Cameras

After Dardy dropped me off at his apartment, I drove down to happening Palo Alto to the Site for Sore Eyes shop. I gave them my busted up glasses and asked if they could replace the rubber grommets. They told me that it would take about 30 minutes, so I left the shop and went over to the Borders bookstore next door. Without my glasses, I’m pretty blind, so I spent most of the time with the books and magazines pushed up to my face!

The thirty minutes passed by really quickly, and before I knew it, I was sighted again! They even cleaned my dirty lenses for me. Thanks! I drove down to California Avenue in Palo Alto to stop by the Keeble and Shucat Photography store. I wanted to take a look at the Canon GL-1 and the Sony DCR-VX2000 DV cameras; I didn’t know that the GL-1 was so small compared to the VX2000! After asking a few questions to Fred, the salesperson, I left the store empty-handed. This was strictly a window shopping, reconnaissance mission. The actual mission? TBD!

Now, it’s 17:05 and time to prepare to go to Vienna Teng’s concert at Eric’s place in the City. I’m off to pick up Dardy and another person from Stanford. Watch for a recap of that event in the next day or so!

Thursday night started an eventful set of get togethers and parties that’ll end with Saturday’s Vienna Teng concert at Eric’s place in San Francisco. On Friday night, Dardy Chang held a housewarming party at Leghorn, his new residence in Palo Alto. Dardy, for those readers who don’t know, assigns a name to all of the places that he’s lived in the past, such as Lennox and Brenton.

There were plenty of events that happened on Friday afternoon and early evening before the Party at Dardy and Jay’s that are worth mentioning, however.

Splurging At Palm?

This morning, when I woke up, I noticed that the rubber grommet on my glasses had fallen off. It made the left side of my glasses very loose. I played around with some of my co-workers by taking off the left-side and wearing only the right-side. Freaky! I was talking with Carl Chen and Leo Parker, two co-workers at Palm, the other day about Lasik surgery, since the two of them got it within the past year. It’s certainly something that I’ve thought about getting, but I don’t know if my eyes have stabilized yet enough to go under the laser. Also, I’ve kind of grown use to me with glasses, such that seeing me without them is strange!

On Friday afternoon, my team at Palm held a quickly organized All Hands meeting to introduce one of the new VP’s in our organization. This event was a welcome change of pace from the past few weeks of battening down the hatches and being fiscally conscious. Although this was certainly no Billion Dollar Bash (the name given to the supposed grand party held shortly after Palm’s IPO in 2000), it was extravagant by Palm’s new standards: yummy pizza, cold brewskies, and sodas.

The Web Services group hung out, questioned the incoming VP, and generally hung out on a quiet Friday afternoon. Like I said, it was a definite welcome relief from the past few weeks of working to the bone on projects. Here are some additional pictures from the Web Services All Hands meeting on Friday:

Quick Dinner At Home

After the day at Palm, I raced back to the house to work a little bit on the new people section of my web site. At the time of this writing, it’s still not done yet, but it’s getting closer to completion. Automated and dynamically driven, it’s going to make tracking down all the people that I’ve come across in my life easier. More to come when I complete that!

A little over an hour before the start of Dardy’s party, Rita and Eric dropped by from San Francisco. Remember, the night before we passed silently in the night at the Rengstorff Avenue exit on Highway 101? What a difference a few minutes could have made then! This time, however, we had more than enough time to chill at the house, take some pictures, and chat about the people in our lives from college that have come and gone. Rita had eaten earlier in the night, but Eric hadn’t, so I made him a quick dinner of spicy eggplant and tofu. I donned the tradtional Teahouse garb and got busy stir frying a quick dinner for Eric, which the two of us scarfed down while Rita took pictures.

Rita’s getting the hang of the D30, but she’s wary not to use it too much lest she get jealous because she doesn’t have one. I say keep on shooting with it, so you’re compelled to purchase one! Besides, in a few years, the technology will get to the point where these cameras are accessible to the general populace. When that happens, expect a great deluge of creative work coming out of the woodwork. It’s beginning to happen right now with Digital Video. Independent filmmakers are coming out with some very intriguing work on the Net. Makes me want to plunk down a few thousand dollars on some DV equipment and become an independent filmmaker myself! Heh, we’ll see…

Dardy’s Housewarming In Palo Alto

A little after 9:00 pm, we all drove in Eric’s car to Dardy’s. We were some of the first people at his place. We met his roommate, Jay, whom I remember from the days working at the Teahouse. I managed Jay during Lambda nights… wasn’t he the cashier back then?

The party seemed to be comprised of people from three main groups:

• Taiko People: The Taiko players from Dardy’s past and present.
• Gavilan People: These were people from Dardy and Jay’s freshman year house at Stanford.
• Online Journalists: Rita, Eric, and me comprised the online contigent of the party.

Eric mentioned that it’s a small world when you meet people who you’re connected to by some small degree of separation. At the housewarming, I ran into a bunch of people that I used to know from my Stanford days, including Lan Phan and Dave Li. Dave was the original Mr. Teahouse, being the first manager of the newly revived Teahouse during my freshman year at Stanford. Dave was also a Taiko player back in the days, but has since retired from active duty. He works over at PayPal and lives on the same street that I do. How strange is that?!? I also ran into Jamie, a friend of Sonya (Taiko connection). I met Jamie about a year ago at Joanie’s Cafe in Palo Alto, where she was having brunch with Chase Thompson; Chase, who hails from Lake Oswego, Portland, lived in my freshman and sophomore year residences at Stanford.

There was this guy at the party, Lou, who stopped me during the evening and asked, “Were you at Stanford graduation with that camera and a big lens?” Indeed I was, and it turned out that I spoke to his uncle at graduation about digital cameras, since he was using a Nikon Coolpix 990. Indeed, it is, as Eric puts it, a small, small world!

One of the neat things about going to Dardy’s housewarming was that I connected a lot of faces to the names I’ve been reading on his journal. I met up with Dishi, Carolyn and Dave, and Jay, to name a few.

Photography: Hiding Behind The Camera?

I am both a social and outgoing as well as a quiet and introspective. Usually at parties, I’m either one or the other, but on Friday night, I was a little of both. I think that Rita and Eric thought I was more of the introvert, preferring to hide behind the camera instead of interacting with the others. The fact is, I was interacting with the others through the camera. It’s a great tool for inviting and kick-starting a conversation. That being said, I have been relying on it just a bit too much in my social interactions. It’s as if the camera has been grafted to my body! I realized that my normal social skills were a little rusty, so at one point in the evening, I put the camera away and conversed with the others the traditional way.

I didn’t stay that way too long, since there were soo many interesting scenes and people to shoot. I only took the 17-35mm f/2.8L lens with me to the party, so I wasn’t able to get many close-up shots without making the subjects look all distorted from the wide-angle effect. My flash was conking out on me later in the evening; have to get some of those rechargeables that Rita had brought, the PowerX that Eric recommends to everyone he meets.

• MAHA MH-C204F-4AA170DC “smart” CHARGER Combo Kit

Drinking and Koi Palace

As Dardy mentioned in his journal, he drank up a storm, downing jello shot after jello shot, among other alcoholic beverages. Near the end of the night, Dardy had become quite happy and disoriented, babbling about Viagra and reciting the alphabet backwards (a trick he learned from while driving from Las Vegas to Texas with his parents). We were planning on going to Koi Palace in Daly City for dim sum Saturday morning and were a little worried that Dardy wouldn’t be feeling up to it after his night of inebriation. I actually was thinking of not going too, but I told the others to give me a call Saturday morning to confirm. That, however, is a topic for another photojournal.

Pictures

Here are the rest of the pictures that I took at Dardy and Jay’s Housewarming Party in Palo Alto:

On Thursday, July 19, 2001, I drove up to the City of San Francisco to meet up with one of my best friends from high school, the exalted Jared and his loyal subjects, David Simon and Howard Ouyang. We convened at Jared’s hotel, the San Francisco Hyatt Regency, located at 5 Embarcadero Center. Traffic was a bear getting up to the City, as it was stop and go from Redwood City into SF! We met in the lobby to the Hyatt, right in front of this large

It’s been almost two years since I last saw Jared in person at Stanford University. He’s been continuing his successful entrepreneurial ventures alongside his busy political career on the Colorado State Board of Education. Jared has always amazed me by the amount of information and work that he can process in his mind at any one given time. From AIS to Blue Mountain to Proflowers to Frog Magic, Jared has done and seen it all.

Jared and David are friends that, no matter how much time has passed, it seems like yesterday when we last met. There’s such a wealth of history behind our friendships that transcends time. Today, David is fast becoming a doctor, knowing all the ins and outs of delivering babies and performing sutures. Jared is still the consummate businessman and politician. All we needed to complete our little circle was Jerry, who’s back in San Diego. The three of us gave him a call after dinner from the Waterfront Cafe, a semi-upscale restaurant along the piers of San Francisco Bay, but General Chang was nowhere to be found. Through the power of technology and answering machines, however, we were able to leave him a message from the three of us.

And Howard? He was recovering from a mediocre round at the British Open… oops… that was Tiger Woods, not Howard. I still think that he could pass as Tiger Woods’ double on the links. Jared didn’t think so, but David concurred with my assessment. It was interesting to note that Howard knew Jerry when he was in elementary school, certainly longer in terms of years than all of us.

Where Have All The Children Gone?

Over dinner, we talked about the political struggles that Jared is facing being one of the few elected Democrats in the State of Colorado. We joked about the Congressman Condit debacle, laughing when David related the sound bite that Condit gave rebuking Clinton and urging him to come clean about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. “Congressman Condit, what in the world were you thinking when you said that?!?” In other conversation, we chatted about the people from high school that we’ve seen recently or hadn’t heard from in ages. I learned that Marc Newburger is now Marc Dare and is continuing to “star” in a variety of B-Grade movies. We pondered about the present situation of people like Faye Liu and Thad (little Thad). Our waiter incidentally was also called Thaddeus, though Dave preferred to call him Thad.

All of these people had a small effect on our lives growing up, but now they’ve faded away from our consciousness. In the years that have passed since last we saw them, they’ve presumably gone to school, gotten a degree, started working, and created and/or broken relationships. So many events, yet they are for all intents and purposes, lost to us. That is, of course, unless they have maintained a personal web site chronicling their lives!

Additional pictures

Here are some more pictures from my night out in San Francisco.

Passing Through The Night

Dardy, Amabelle, Eric, and Rita were down in Mountain View this evening. As I was leaving, I gave Eric a call to tell him that I was heading back towards Mountain View. Alas, once I hit Redwood City, they had decided to head back up to the City, Rita, Eric, and Amabelle. I had an interesting thought when I was nearing Mountain View. I called up Eric on his cell phone and told him to look for my flashing lights! I was driving in the fast lane heading south on 101 and Rita was driving her new Subaru Imprezia on 101 North. As we approached the Rengstorff Avenue exits, I flashed my lights. Unfortunately, they didn’t see me, though the car in front of me certainly did and got out of the way quickly. And, just like that, we were gone.

If you think about it, there are soooo many things that pass us by everyday without us noticing. The possibilities for connecting with people come and go throughout the day. Without some way of communication, like our cell phones, we would have never have known that we were that close to each other on the freeway. We didn’t see each other, but I felt a tinge of recognition as we passed each other at the Rengstorff Avenue exit. However fleeting, it was a moment worth cherishing, as were the moments that I spent earlier in the evening with Jared, David, and Howard.

Additional Links Of Interest

• Eric’s recap of events tonight