Not all of the long nights have been because of work, though. On Wednesday night, I stayed even later to play a board game called Power Grid with people. Apparently people stay late playing games pretty frequently, but I already knew how to play Power Grid so the barrier to entry was pretty low. When my roommates in Boston and I moved into our apartment last year, we found this exact game that had been left by the previous tenants (who knows how long it's actually been left there). We saw it and decided to take a look and see what it was all about. It turns out that it's quite the challenge, as a normal game takes about 2-3 to complete. It is known as a "German-style" board game, although I'm not exactly sure why. It involves acquiring factories and resources in a dynamic economy to power cities on the board. If you're interested to learn more, Google it, otherwise I would be typing for a while to explain everything.
On Thursday night, a local start-up hosted an intern-meetup for people at other start-ups. One of my friends at work found out about it, and so a few of us went to check it out. We figured it would be a cool way to meet other people in the area, learn about other companies, etc. The company had just recently received tens of millions of dollars in venture capital, but had gotten some bad press lately. Their app on the iTunes store only has 2 stars, so my sense is they were just trying to create some good publicity. Upon arriving, we filled out a name tag with our company, and they gave us a sticker for over-21 to get drinks at the bar. I met lots of interns, including people from Facebook, Apple, Google, and some other smaller companies around here. I also met 2 girls from Sweden and Norway who were here on a summer internship program while also taking classes at UC Berkeley. I was amazed that people came from so far away to work in this area, and how the even found out about stuff like this.
After schmoozing for a while, we were given a tour of the building by the company's Founder and CEO. Overall, I really did not like the guy or how he presented himself. He tried to impress everyone with how "cool and open" their design space was, and the mere fact that they had a tiny half-pipe in their basement was somehow supposed to put them over the top. Instead it just made me appreciate even more everything my job has (and realize how spoiled I really am). He also insisted on cursing in every little speech he gave, thinking it meant he was hilarious. We get it - you're young, you've made a LOT of money with start-ups since some even sold to Apple, and you shout expletives in your jokes because society can't contain you (credit to Ian for that last part). After putting up with his antics for a while, he sat down with an intern at his company for an "interview," which was basically positively-phrased questions about the company and himself. Despite everything I've just said, he did have some interesting insights about entrepreneurship, VC, and how you really only need one breakthrough idea to have a major impact. At the same time, though, he said he measures success by "the number of 0's in your bank account." Good luck with success after promising returns in the double-digit billions with an app that, in my mind, drastically increases the creepy factor of social networking.
On Saturday, I went into San Francisco with a friend who was going to buy a MIDI controller. He was going there because he was getting a great deal, and I decided to tag along and we could make a day out of it. First thing we did was meet him at a nearby Starbucks, and then headed out. We passed by a discount retail store and browsed for a while. My only purchase was a $30 pair of jeans that retail for over $60 online, so that was enough for me. We started to get hungry as it was already around 2pm, so we headed to Chinatown for some food. A woman handed us a flyer for a nearby place that had a coupon so we figured that was as good as any. We ended up ordering a giant meal for $20 each, the best part of which was the Green Tea Ice Cream at the end.
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| Beef Lo Mien |
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| Fortune: Someone close to you has good advice to offer - listen! |
There were still a couple hours left in the day, so we took a roundabout way back to the train station. This involved climbing some giant hills, resulting in some awesome pictures. I saw some things that reminded me of when my family and I visited the area a few years ago. This mostly happened when I saw Powell Street and the street cars rattling down it.
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| Street car doesn't car, it'll stop traffic in the middle of the road |
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| Powell Street! |
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| Vertigo |
Tomorrow, I'm tentatively planning to go back to San Francisco for the day with some friends to do more exploring. Then we'll find a place to watch the fireworks and finagle our way home. We're currently going to take the BART (like the subway) to Berkeley where one of my roommates will have parked his car, and then drive back from there. Since the trains to Palo Alto run on a Sunday schedule, the last one leaves San Francisco at 9pm, but the fireworks don't even start until 9:30pm. We'll see how it goes...
Also, I finally got to add some more pictures to my Photostream since a new month just started. I've used about 95% of my limit, so I'll only be able to add some more to it for the next few weeks. I'll still keep posting the best ones here, though.
