Solipsism Gradient

It’s been a memorable, tiring, interesting, productive week. My stay at The Mosser Hotel has been enjoyable; the service is excellent, the rooms are OK though a little cramped, and the location can’t be beat. Only a block from Moscone and even nearer to Market Street and the SFO Apple Store. Many thanks also to the Hyperjeff, my courteous and forgiving roommate.

I’m now back at the South Airport Travelodge, spent the morning day getting packed and lugging my brand new iMac G5 around; a heavy beast, but worth it! And in the afternoon visited my old haunts at Berkeley. So now that that’s done, I’ll have the Sunday to rest up, organize my writings, and get set for the trip back to Brazil around Monday noon. More anon.

Yesterday (Sunday) I registered, met some old and some new friends, and had an excellent dinner with one of them at the Persian Maykadeh Restaurant. I’d been there on my last visit to San Francisco, and it’s excellent. I even had Faludeh Shirazi again for dessert, one of the weirdest desserts I’ve ever tasted.

Now I’ll be off to leave my stuff at The Mosser, and get early into line for press registration, which will be very crowded. Soon we’ll know which (if any) of the rumors are true. I’ll try to be available on iChat while it’s going on.

Hey, and it’s my birthday! Let’s see what Uncle Steve will have for me…

Yesterday I had a fun but tiring day wandering around the downtown area and doing some shopping. I ended up buying a RAM expansion for the iBook (600MHz, dual USB) I’m typing this on, and a Belkin F8T041-B bluetooth mouse. This mouse has 4 buttons, a scrolll wheel and it’s quite larger than the mice I’m used to, but very comfortable. The included adapter is the F8T003v but without the cap for the USB connector; instead it comes with a small dock with 3 ft. of cable attached.

No software was needed to get it working; just some fumbling around with the control panel, as I’d never used anything bluetoothy before. The manual says that the 2 AA batteries should last for about 25 days “average use”. Let’s see what that means in practice; I suppose that’d mean about a week for me, and I’ll be looking into buying a couple of NiMH batteries with a recharger. About the only downside I’m seeing so far is that there’s no power-off switch on the mouse itself; hopefully it’ll give up trying to pair when the computer’s asleep, and enter a standby mode. If not, I’ve still got my soldering iron from the old days at home.

In practice, both my hopefully soon to-be-sold PowerBook and my new iMac G5 have built-in bluetooth, so the adapter will travel around with the iBook. I’ve never really gotten as precise with a trackpad as with a mouse, so this will be a great help. The list price is $109.99, but I got it for $30 less.

As for the RAM, it worked great, despite being a lesser-known brand. It was twice as expensive as current RAM, but being for a discontinued model, that was to be expected. If anyone at WWDC reading this needs a working RAM module for an old white iBook (256MB, SODIMM, PC133-333) please tell me. I’m asking about $90. I’ll also be selling a brand-new, never-used, 512MB RAM module for the new iMac G5; I believe it’s PC3200-400 DDR SDRAM, Apple RAM, and should be worth around $110.

I’ll stay at the hotel until after lunch, then I’ll take the BART over to Moscone Center to sign in; I’ll hang around there between 5 and 7 PM, if anyone wants to meet up.

I’m posting this from Apple’s San Francisco retail store, at the corner of Ellis and Market. Amazing; I’ve never been to an Apple Store before. The glass staircase alone is quite worth dropping in. Looks like 4-ply laminated glass on the stair itself.

Just chatted with a very nice Apple Genius called Diana; she’s French but I gathered her family lives in Buenos Aires. She exchanged 2 worn keys on my iBook and gave me 3 keys for the PowerBook 17″ I left at home. They don’t charge anything but on the other hand you need some luck; they have several busted keyboards in a huge drawer and it must be the exact model, as they swap suppliers quite frequently. Also, the keys I needed are the most requested ones: A, S, and E. Merci beaucoup, Diana!

So here I am at the South Airport Travelodge. Had lots of catching up to do, including on sleep, but from now on all should be well. The weather’s nice, sunny but with cold winds, around 18 Celsius. The free WiFi connection is excellent, I downloaded a large file yesterday at around 160 KB/s; 3 to 4 times what I get at home on my 512ADSL line. The hotel is just a walk away from BART and a huge supermarket/grocery, highly recommended!

The trip wasn’t as smooth as I had hoped but in the end, all is well. The first plane from Belo Horizonte to São Paulo was over 90 minutes late. In São Paulo I had to switch airports – from Congonhas (which is downtown) to Guarulhos (which is in a neighboring city) – and I mistakenly thought the airline’s van would do the transfer. After losing over half an hour in talking to several people I caught the regular bus, then spent an anxious time locked in downtown traffic. But later on it went better and I came in only 10 minutes after check-in had started.

The layover at Chicago was just over an hour. The queues at immigration were long but proceeded smoothly, no great hassles that I could see, and no extra procedures beyond fingerprinting. Amazingly, the United terminal still has very few electrical outlets – one or none per gate – and no WiFi at all. I saw several other people with laptops, so they should do something about that.

In San Francisco Airport they have a prominent charge-up station with Ethernet connections, but I didn’t stay to check the price. WiFi access starts at $6 an hour, quite expensive. The architectural changes since my last visit in 2000 are surprising and, in the case of the BART station, very useful.

Later in the morning I’ll go off into the city to do some shopping; I look forward to my first visit to a real Apple Store. More later…

Well, here I am at Belo Horizonte’s airport in Confins (CFG), testing out their WiFi access. There’re quite a lot of plans and providers to choose from, I found one that gives an one-time 24-hour trial access at zero cost. Strangely enough, they printed out a bank payment form for R$0,00… then they said, sorry, the maximum number of users has been reached… but the login worked anyway.

The plane’s late and I’ll have 3 or 4 hours layover at São Paulo airport, so I’ll seize the opportunity to do some work.

I got notice that my iMac G5 20″ has shipped! I look forward to getting my hands on it, which should happen on Sunday. Special thanks to Patti Miller of Apple’s US/Canada ADC hardware purchase program who helped me past some snags with my order!

More later as it happens!

I’ll be off to WWDC next Thursday, so the countdown has begun. I’m starting to make a pile of stuff to pack, double-checking reservations, getting my passport and spare dollar bills out from the proper archaeological layers on my desk, and setting up my trusty old iBook (600Mhz) for the trip.

A surprising number of people have expressed interest in getting together with me; I have more dinner invitations than evenings! A far cry from most of my previous WWDCs, when I knew almost no one, and worse, no one knew me. The last one I went to, in 2000, already was better, when I met several people I already knew from either MacHack or from the WASTE development list, the only place I was active at the time.

So far my schedule looks like this. I arrive at SFO International at 09:28 on Friday, June 3rd. I’ll be staying for 3 days at the San Francisco South Airport Travelodge; inexpensive, conveniently located near the airport and near a BART station, and with free WiFi in the rooms. The phone# is (650)697-7373.

Sunday afternoon I’ll be at the Moscone Center to do my early check-in, to avoid the crowds on Monday. On previous occasions they had a special get-together for international attendees; let’s see if they do it this time.

Monday at 10:00 is the SteveNote, and I’ll be checking into the The Mosser just a few blocks from Moscone. The phone there is (415)986-4400; I hear they have Internet access, but it’s paid separately. I should have access at the conference anyway, so that won’t be a problem.

Monday from 12:00 to 14:00 I’ll be at the MacSB list’s meetup, I think no definite place is set yet. In the evening, starting around 19:00, I’ll be at the Weblogger’s Dinner. As Monday June 6th is also my birthday (I’m turning 0x36) a good time should be guaranteed!

I’ll update this later with info on the other days. I’ll continue at the Mosser until the morning of the 11th, when I’ll probably be switching back to the Travelodge until I leave at 13:55 on the 13th.

If you, gentle reader, want to arrange a meeting, please e-mail me (click the e-mail button below this post) or watch for me on AIM (rainerbrockerhoff@mac.com). More as it happens!

Now some real news. Contrary to my own expectations, I’ll be able to make it to the US this year, after all. But it’ll be to WWDC, Apple’s worldwide developer’s conference, at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, from June 6 to 10.

I’ll actually fly into SFO early on June 2nd and leave on the 13th. So there’ll be time to meet with people, drive a little around the Bay Area, and visit the bookstores. It’s been 5 years since my last visit! So if you’re in SF during that time, feel free to set up a meeting.

Following a suggestion from Dori Smith (thanks Dori!), I’ve made reservations at the Mosser Hotel, where I’ll be splitting the room with HyperJeff, my co-author in a forthcoming ADHOC paper. Buzz Andersen of SciFiHiFi is setting up a Weblogger Dinner on June 6 and I’m attending. It’ll be my birthday too, so there’s a good excuse for partying!

Further details later…

WWDC ADHOC