So what have I been up to lately? Not all that much actually.
The public transportation system here is actually not all that bad. It’s pretty well done, and fairly reliable. CalTrain is excellent. It’s unfortunate that it takes $5 each way and an hour to get to San Francisco on CalTrain, but that’s actually about the same as driving through clear traffic and much better if there’s a jam somewhere along the way.
The Muni system is also quite good. Runs pretty frequently, and pretty fast too. They’ve also got this cool thing where you can buy a ticket and it’s good for an hour and half, so you can jump on just about any bus or shuttle, at least as far as I can tell. Not living in a city that has a subway system, I still get pretty excited about riding one 
The weak link in this whole system is with the VTA. CalTrain and Muni run until midnight under most circumstances, best as I can tell. VTA however, only runs from Cupertino to the Sunnyvale station until 9ish on weekdays, 8ish on Saturday, and 7ish on Sunday. This is terrible for actually trying to do anything late, as I would like to do. It’s a damn shame when I have to take a train really early just so I can catch an absurdly early bus, and thus missing out on all the late night shenanigans I could be engaging in. In their defense, Cupertino is boring as hell and on the couple later buses that I rode, there were hardly any people on it, so it’s probably not financially justifiable to keep that bus running late. Still, it sucks for me and isn’t that all that matters after all?
Castro Street ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Perhaps I missed something, but the interesting portions are actually quite small. There’s about two blocks of stores and then it’s just houses. Maybe I missed something. However, it’s quite nice to see everyone be very open and comfortable. While I was there, it was mostly older people out and about (relative to me; read: older than 30), though there were young people around too. Some of the stores I wouldn’t be especially interested in (such as the leather ones…), but whatever, it’s still a quaint little neighborhood that just happens to have rainbow flags everywhere!
The previous week has been an interesting one at Apple. Outstanding earnings for the quarter and year were announced on Tuesday, and thus the stock promptly drops 10% after hours. Of course, all of it’s gained back within two days, but it’s still just silly. Then on Wednesday we announce 3 major new products, including one that I’ve been working on for the past little while. Though honestly, some of the pizazz of a new product announcement is somewhat decreased when you know exactly what it is and have been using it for a little while already. It’s much more interesting watching from the outside and seeing everything for the very first time
Speaking of which, rumor sites are just funny and annoying now. It’s amazing how much of an obsession there is around Apple, how wrong things are sometimes, and then how right they get sometimes. Really makes you wonder where all their information comes from.
Since Cupertino remains an extremely boring town and I haven’t found a suitable remedy for this yet, I’ve been enjoying my Netflix subscription, which I highly recommend to everybody by the way. Seriously, Netflix is awesome. Here’s a short list of what I’ve been watching lately.
- Hotel Rwanda – Excellent film. Somewhat depressing but very well done
- Miss Congeniality 2 – Not very good. It’s not like I had high expectations going into it, but it was just weak overall. Why’d I watch it you ask? I saw the first one and it was pretty funny when it had its moments, so I thought I’d give it a chance.
- Super Size Me – Very well done. Not quite up to par of a Michael Moore film in terms of the art of a documentary (you know what it is, just something Moore does that makes his films so damn believable), but excellent nonetheless. On the surface it sounds like a stupid idea, but everything he does is pretty well justified and explained out. Even the common criticisms I hear of it are actually addressed briefly at the end of the film.
- Gone in 60 Seconds – Pure popcorn movie. Not bad though, was quite entertaining for the time I watched it.
- Sideways – Seemed kinda slow to me. I give it 3 stars out of 5 (equals “Liked it” on the netflix scale).
- Layer Cake – Starring Daniel Craig, or the new James Bond! I didn’t know this when I saw it, but after seeing it I could totally see him in the role. My personal choice for Bond is still Clive Owen though (see the Croupier if you don’t know why).
- Assault on Precinct 13 – Another pure popcorn movie. Entertaining for the action and not much else.
