- Friday, June 3rd
1:16 PDT - Tosj | 7.30 the alarm-clock of my mobile rings and makes an end to a perfect night of very necessary sleep. We both get up and take a shower, while the other one is chatting with his girlfriend via iChat or Scype. Our goal for today is Stanford University, where we will meet a 'collegue' of us: Charles Parnot. Charles is a fellow at Stanford in the group of Brian Kobilka and is not only a scientific 'collegue', but also a developer 'collegue' in the BioCocoa group. He gave a presentation about XGrid on the WWDC of last year, but at that time we thought other presentations were more interesting (sorry Charles, now we know better ;-) ).
So at 9 we set out for our croissants and cups of coffee and Jus 'd Orange (Orange Juice) at Boudaine after which we walked to the Caltrain station near SBC park (home of the San Francisco Giants, but more about that on saturday the 10th). On our way to the station we went by the Moscone West Centre and had a good look at the commercials that were on display on the inside. In contrast to last year when the posters with the teasing Redmond start your photocopiers and Redmond we have a problem quotes where anxiously hidden we could see all posters now, with texts in the Spotlight searchbar like "You next app" and a remark below it with "You'll find it with Tiger". Another one had "Longhorn" in the searchbar with the same remark below! We tried to make a picture of that one, but Apple security was just in time to cancel that :-( (more on that below).
The trip to Palo Alto was fine and we had a look at Palo Alto and visited the local Apple Store of course! At noon we had lunch in Palo Alto and decided not to take the shuttle bus to Stanford, but just walk. It was worth it: the great entrance, Palm Drive, and the main buildings. We called Charles and there he was, a person you've never seen before, but did have a lot of e-mail contact with. He was a good guide and showed us first the older building and later on the newer ones more biologically related. We had a swim at Stanford West and a very nice barbecue afterwards with some of his colleagues.
On the way back we had another look at Moscone West and of course we tried to get another try for our 'Longhorn' picture and this time we succeeded as you can see on this page! That was it for now, we are going to bed and prepare for our car rental day of tomorrow.