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A Couple of Weekends and WWDCBusy week. Heck, I have two weekends of stuff to catch up on. Fortunately, it's a little simpler because a few events span both weekends. For instance, Deb and I bought trip computers for our bicycles and got them installed. In fact, we both bought Enduro 2s from Cat Eye, which track our distance, speed and time pretty well. Last week we discovered that her computer was configured slightly wrong (off by about 7% from mine), so I fixed it up and on today's ride they were in almost perfect synch. We differed in distance by a maximum of about 4% of a mile - a little over 200 feet, which ain't a whole lot. I've also used the computer to find that it's about 8-3/4 miles to work, and I average a little under 15 MPH on the ride in, and about 16 MPH on the ride home (yes, it's more downhill in the evening than the morning). Incidentally, we have Monique to thank for this idea; Debbi saw Mo's trip computer when we biked with her a couple of months back, and wanted to look at them as soon as the Bicycle Outfitter next had a sale. Which is just what we did. We also discovered the Cold Stone Creamery, a chain of ice cream stores where you can mix in "toppings" from chocolate chips to Nestle Crunch to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to nuts to brownies. It's pretty reasonably priced for the serving size, and quite tasty. There's a branch right near me, which made Debbi remark that there are a lot of ice cream places near my house. Not a bad thing, really!
 Friday evening we had tickets to the Giants game, which someone at Deb's company had put together. Our seats were in the upper deck down the left field line - but, they were just around the bend, so we got to see the action in the infield without craning our heads to the right, thank goodness. The highlight of the evening was 21-year-old Giants pitcher Jerome Williams' domination of the Oakland A's, who only managed 7 hits and 1 walk off him in the evening. The Giants romped to a 6-0 win, and Williams threw only 96 pitches, which was 5 more than the Marlins threw to the Boston Red Sox in the first inning of their game. Williams threw 73 strikes - a terrific fraction of strikes to balls - and the A's were bouncing and lining out all night, since they were mostly swinging from behind in the count. Jose Cruz Jr. made a terrific catch of a seemingly-sure double by Miguel Tejada, and then spun and threw to first base and doubled up Scott Hatteberg. One of the best defensive plays I've ever seen! The A's committed several errors, the Giants turned a couple more nice double plays, and Barry Bonds hit a home run into the water (which I was off buying food during, so I still haven't seen a splash hit in person! Grr). But Williams was the true story. In some ways the most promising of the Giants' three top young starters heading into the season, he's seen Kurt Ainsworth go down with a nasty injury, and Jesse Foppert struggle after his first couple of months. No doubt Williams will be rocky during his first season or two, but if he keeps throwing strike one to nearly every hitter he faces, he'll be good more often than not. Oh yeah, and I think this is the first complete-game shutout I've seen in person. Fifty years ago these things were pretty common, but so few pitchers throw complete games today, this was something special.
Yesterday we drove down to Monterey to attend the engagement party for our friends Lisa and Michel. They and Debbi were the "three musketeers" at their country line dancing outings before Debbi and I started dating. And though the dynamics have shifted a bit (what with the addition of my smartass self, who doesn't have much interest in dancing - country line or otherwise) they're still close. It was a nice party mostly consisting of their families and a few close friends. Good food (and lots of it!) and some good conversations.
I finished Tim Powers' Last Call, which I reviewed through the link to the left. I also read on the train back from the game a short book entitled Beowulf: The Monster Maker, by comic book writer Bill Willingham (The Elementals, Coventry, Fables, Proposition Player). It's light, but a fun pulp-like romp through a branch of his Coventry fantasy world. Apparently there will be future installments from the Clockwork Storybook publisher, although since I can't access their Web site, I wonder if that plan has collapsed already?
Finally, other than the brutal heat which blanketed the Bay Area, this past week was notable for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, which was at the brand-new Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. As part of the Panther sneak preview, Apple unveiled Xcode, which is the product I work on. Reviews seem favorable out of the gate, so now we've got to work on making the final product as good as it can be. It's good to be working on a product with some visibility. And yeah, visibility has its drawbacks, sure, but it's definitely better than working on a product with no visibility. As for those new G5s, I hope to buy one as soon as they're made available to employees... I've been slogging along on my beige G3 and Mac OS 9 at home long enough. Time to join the new millennium.
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