Sometimes it’s nice to get home from a beautiful week in San Francisco to a beautiful warm Portland weekend, but it really doesn’t help if you’re running a 100°F fever and want to stay inside napping. In fact, rainy and cold is usually better because my bedroom gets hot when it’s 80°F outside. In the true spirit of last month’s sinus headaches, my head felt like it was going to split open once again. Advil and holding still made it possible for me to finish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, like everyone else on the planet.

My return to work today wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. There’s a lot to catch up on, but at least it’s not all on fire. Thank goodness for that.

Last night was the big WWDC bash, and the music was OK Go! I wish i could say the sound quality was good enough but it really sucked ass, sort of like the food this year. The sessions were very iPhone/iPad based and after seeing so many of them I think I really want one. But I’m still holding out for a video conferencing camera, even though I NEVER VIDEOCONFERENCE. It’s my weird hang-up, so I’ll have to deal with it. Anyway, the lunches were especially bad and we didn’t get as much loot this year. Usually we get a t-shirt mailed to us, a laptop bag of some sort, and a DVD with the latest OS on it. This year we got a nice American Apparel jacket which I’m sure I’ll use much more than the bags, but it still seemed like I should get more swag. I did score a “square” so I can take credit card payments. Not that I have anything to take payments for, but it’s still swag.

Anyway, I did get to spend some time drinking with an online friend from London who no longer seems like he’s 12, though he was born in the year I graduated from MIT. This morning it was tough staying awake at the WWDC sessions. After the conference ended at 2PM, I sat in the hotel lobby for the afternoon, feeling a little sick. I finally realized it was my allergies that were bothering me.

The worst part was trying to make it back home. I got on the Super Shuttle and they had no idea what they were doing. I scheduled a 6PM ride to the airport and they spent an hour driving around San Francisco picking up other people. Then they finally picked up two random people at a hotel and crammed nine of us in that van somehow. I got to my flight 10 minutes before boarding started and I was in a bad mood. At least I made it home.

So now that I’m here I have to move my data around my hard disks and do all the weird stuff I was thinking of doing at the conference. Or sleeping. I think I really ought to be doing the latter.

Megan wanted me to see that all of San Francisco hadn’t gone completely to hell, so she took me to the Mission Beach Cafe last night. I was reading yelp reviews and they’re supposed to have a great burger, and they do. It’s in the upper tier for me. From what I’ve heard, the top rated burgers down here seem to have hard buns, which is not my first choice, but it was quite nice. It came with tomato relish, lettuce, and I also had bacon. Why not? They’ll even cook it rare for you if you want. Spectacular.

(picture later)

So there you go. I told off some Germans at the conference since I’m getting cranky after sitting in these conference rooms  but whatever. It reminds me about my conversation with the Skype guys. I told them I don’t use Skype because:

• Phone calls on landlines are “free” for local calls.
• Cell phone calls are expensive but it’s the same price to call anyone in the United States.

So, basically this means the reason an American would use Skype is to call someone in another country, and since we’re American WE DON’T KNOW ANYONE IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. Nice logic there, huh?

So there you go. Still having some kind of fun here at WWDC in San Francisco and the weather is beautiful today. But I’m ready to be home soon.

I spent 30 minutes or so at the gym in my hotel and I’m pretty tired. I would have done a full “Kill me now” but my left knee hurts. I’m not sure if it’s the same one I hurt on Sunday when Megan and Nadeem drove me to the Union Street Fair and parked on a steep street, head in. I had to get in the back seat of Nadeem’s Jetta and he’d put Armor-All on it, making it quite slippery and I went ass over teakettle, sliding all the way to the other side. Today was even stupider. I saw an attractive woman at the developers conference and wasn’t looking where I was going and ran my knee into a chair. I’ve been limping ever since then. In any case, I did the renegade rows, push presses, sit ups, and just a few minutes on the stair climber while watching the end of the first quarter of the basketball game.

So far I’m falling out of love with San Francisco on this trip. The hotel is loud, the food is mediocre, and the crowd seems to be out-of-work aging hipsters who ditch their babies and continue drinking excessively. I think the women in Portland are better looking too. I went to Ristorante Ideale in North Beach tonight, a favorite of an Italian friend, and my breaded pork chop was tasty but over cooked. I’ve had better at mid-level restaurants like the Widmer Gasthaus. I went to a bar to see Nelson on his birthday and it was a weird crowd. I think I’m better off staying in Portland.

I’m so tired. I just realized it’s “tomorrow” and I should get some sleep. I didn’t sleep real well last night and I had to get up early to go to see Steve Jobs announce just about nothing at the keynote address. The new iPhone is pretty cool, but sheesh, I was expecting a little more than Farmville in the announcements.

The hotel room wasn’t all that comfortable last night and there sure are a lot of sirens in downtown San Francisco. And just now I heard some guy screaming in the hallway and he just stormed off saying someone was “damaged goods”. Whatever, aren’t we all? It’s 12:15AM. I hope these earplugs work well enough for this drama.

I made it to San Francisco and hung out with Megan and Nadeem all day, though Megan was feeling a little under the weather. I hope she’s feeling better soon. Even sick, Megan gets out out and about a lot more than I do. We checked out some shops in Bernal Heights, took some things in to donate to SF Smiles, went to a street fair in the Marina, and had dinner at the Fog City Diner just to see how that was lately. And check out the view from their new apartment!

Besides driving around for half an hour looking for parking at the street fair, which turned out to look like a giant frat party filled with people from the outer suburbs (which is what the people in the Marina look like, I’m told) it’s bee n a good time. Actually, the giant frat party was even fun because of all the people watching. It was sort of like Portland plus some Eurotrash and added extra Asians. And just like Portland, there sure weren’t many black people there. I was told that they don’t bother coming to the Marina much. Honestly, I don’t think they’re missing much.

Time to get some sleep before I have to get up early and stand in line to see the Steve tomorrow.

My usual boring life was pushed to the edge today. I had a plan, and it was simple. Go to the gym. If I didn’t get my laptop charger back, go buy a new one. Mow the lawn. Pack for my trip. Go help set up for movie night at the gym.

I got my charger back today! But instead of taking it easy and doing things at a normal pace, I went out for lunch with friends, let them convince me to see Get Him to the Greek, rush back home to talk to Jay the Contractor about fixing the bathroom downstairs, rush through mowing the lawn (leaving the cleanup for my mom), and then try to set up for the movie.

I’m usually pretty Boy Scout about overpacking everything I need for things like movie night, but this time I winged it and you could tell. I had to make a trip home to get a VGA cable and an outlet strip so we could see the movie, then I had to go home again to get a mini-stereo to double-phono adapter so we could hear the movie. I swear that stuff was all in the projector case the last time we borrowed a projector. Ah, well, it went over well anyway and at least the food was was squared away well by Tina.

Now I’m doing a half-assed job of packing for my trip to San Francisco, which is what I usually do. I figure as long as I have a credit card, I’ll be fine, but now I have other things to save for like a bathroom. Ah well.

The mini-Cindy from yesterday pretty much wiped me out for today, but I still did 33 birthday burpees for Kara, who did birthday burpees with me on my birthday. I’m not real sure why I do such things, but it’s better than eating 33 cupcakes. Unless of course they were spread out over a few days.

You know, other than that I got nothing. The rain just keeps pouring down and I think it’s sapping my energy. This is nap weather, sucka.

I wish I could tell you I was incensed and just plain tired of the craphole that my life seems to be right now, but it’s not that bad. My job is kind of stressful but I’d much rather be busy than bored. I’ve proved to myself that I get in the most trouble when I’m bored. And I looked at how AT&T is screwing me with the new data plan but a dude that pays for both DSL and WiMax really doesn’t use a lot of data bandwidth on his iPhone. And thinking about my lack of success in dating made me remember that I need to cancel my Match.com subscription. I’ve certainly spent $60 on stupider things but do I need to spend another $60?

Speaking of stupider things, I lent a guy my MacBook Pro power supply, which I really only need a couple of times a year and he never returned it. He even forgot and took it home to Sacramento with him. It was supposed to be in the mail months ago so we’ll see if it gets here before I leave for the Apple conference. If not, I get to spend $79 because I did a favor for a guy. Ah, well, that’s just life, right?

Oh, and speaking of Apple conference, I go to listen to talks about the MacOS, not about the iPhone and iPad. The conference topics were posted today and they’re mostly iPhone and iPad. Phooey. I know, still not something that actually makes me mad.

Huh. Maybe I’m just too beat down to be mad. Ain’t that the shit?

I sent out a message at work today, at 9:32AM, saying I was going home sick. My stomach was making all the sounds you don’t want to hear, the ones that tell you that you should be at home, close to the bathroom, preferably one that is yours and not shared. But I wanted to talk to someone about one of the things I’m working on. But I left phone calls, left emails, tried Instant Messenger, but no reply. The first day back after a 3-day weekend meant a lot of people out, and the sales guy was working at presentation until 8PM. So I was there until 3PM and fortunately my intestines didn’t explode. I just feel like I have a stomachache now.

I couldn’t sleep Sunday night because of a stomach ache and I felt OK yesterday. I hope this goes away soon because it’s quite annoying. It sort of made itself the focus of my day, and I really could use something better than a stomach ache to look forward to tomorrow. Perhaps this is all I deserve.

My sister said that yardwork makes her hate nature. I agree. I worked for my dad, a landscaper, for a while and he planted all sorts of weird shrubbery around the house that continues to grow and annoy me. When he was alive he used to hate it when I started hacking on the plant life, saying I had no skills. He was right, but someone needed to trim the jungle back.

The backyard continues to be a mess, but that doesn’t really give my neighbor the right to clean the ivy off his fence and then just leave it piled up back there. I went to ask him if he wanted me to take care of it. He wasn’t there and his wife said he’d come over and talk to me. Of course, he did not. It’s yard debris pickup tomorrow morning, so I put as much as I could fit into our garbage can. I figure he may or may not clean up the mess. If he doesn’t, that just means I’ll have to fill up the garbage can every other week, or get a friend with a pickup truck to help me. No biggie either way. I thought he liked the ivy, so I wasn’t poisoning it with the vengeance it deserved. Better living through chemistry!

I was planning on spending the whole day doing next to nothing, but I was unsuccessful in it. At some point I had to just go out and get light bulbs but I had to go to three stores before I found them. On the way my next door neighbor roped me into helping him move a water tank which did involve some weird weightlifting move to get it up to shoulder-level. In any case, if you saw a guy walking around with a bucket full of lightbulbs, it was likely me.

One thing struck me as I was walking around, I realized that some of my most adamant relationship advice was given to me by people who are qualified to tell me to do as they say, not as they do. I mean, one told me not to go out with anyone from the gym, and that person met his wife at the gym. And the other person who basically told me to give the hell up met a partner at work. If I had to choose, I think that being a complete tool at the gym probably makes more sense than doing the same thing at work,because it’s much easier to find a new gym than a new job in this economy. But whatever. I’ll stick to walking around with a bucket of lightbulbs.