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Last weekend was great. On Saturday we spent eight hours at the Maker Faire. I had really wanted to go to it last year but I think we were on vacation. This year I decided I would make it and it was worth the effort. I wish I brought my camera because I could have taken thousands of pictures. The San Mateo Fairgrounds were packed with hundreds of booths of inventions and free crafts for kids and adults to make. Jace made lots of art projects and enjoyed the huge Lego train set and the inflatable whale to run around inside of.

I made a ybox which is a device you connect to the TV and the Internet and it will display things like weather or news or whatever you program it to do. I was really intimidated to solder (especially because we were being filmed for some kind of documentary) but I found it to be really easy and I only burned myself once :) Only a few participants were allowed because it was a long project and they give everyone a free ybox kit worth ~$100.

Other fun things:

• Human-powered amusement park rides.
• Fire trucks that shoot flames.
• Lots of electric cars, scooters, motorcycles, skateboards...
• Steve Wozniak was there (I couldn't make his speech).
• A variety of crazy welded-together bicycles for anybody to try to ride (a few people were bleeding afterwards but they didn't care).
• Huge robots battling each other in a steel cage.
• Multiple self-playing drum and guitar bands.

The next time it comes around I will consider going to it both days so I can see everything. It's too much to do in one day.

Right after the Maker Faire I hurried back across the Bay to Tracy to play poker. Since it was in Tracy we stopped at Sonic Drive-In which is a nice treat. There were fourteen people playing poker and I got fifth place which is okay but didn't pay out any money. The more people that play, the worse I tend to do.

Yesterday Samantha attended a Mother's Day luncheon with her Mother's Of Brentwood (M.O.B.) group. They went to Cap's and it sounded like it was a good time. So I took Jace and Rez to the Brentwood Aquatic Family Complex and Jace swam around for a couple hours. He was only supposed to be in the shallow end with all the little kids but once he swam under the rope over to the medium-depth pool. I had to run over there with Rez in the stroller. Jace was actually swimming and wasn't touching the ground (a first). However, some kids started splashing around and getting water in his face so he panicked a little and swam to the edge and I pulled him out. The lifeguards didn't move during this so maybe they knew he'd be ok... but I'm not trusting his life to some high school kids working on their tans.

Yesterday afternoon we went to the park to try to help Jace learn how to play baseball since he seems interested in that. We had tried doing this a week earlier but when I was showing him how to use the bat I shattered the cheap plastic ball. So we had to go to the store to get some whiffle balls. He actually hit the ball a few times yesterday and when he throws it usually goes straight :)

Needless to say, Jace slept very well both nights this weekends.

We are art-sitting for some of Raj's paintings. It's nice to have something made by someone you know in your house.

It's interesting that my last post was about the tragedy at Virginia Tech because I just spent two weeks in Virginia for the first time in twenty two years. My last trip there was a fun motor home adventure around the country and this time there was an arduous business trip.

I was staying in the town of Vienna, VA which is about a 30 minute drive from Washington D.C. However, since the traffic in that area is horrible and I didn't have a car I might as well have been hundreds of miles away.

I was there for training on two different subject matters. The first week's training was for Project Management skills. It was a lightweight class on the basics and I was hoping for something more in-depth so I'm not sure it was worth it. The second week's training was on a risk-management software product. The class was very technical and we had to memorize a lot of information. I was worried because the last day of class involved a four hour long test with 160 questions that required a 90% passing grade to be certified on the product.

I stayed in a Residence Inn which is a nice hotel brand. My room was the size of a nice studio apartment and was comfortable. The only problem was they didn't provide conditioner! Anybody who knows how curly my hair is can understand how conditioner is important to me. I don't use it in the shower, I use it after showering as a leave-in conditioner to hold my hair together. If I don't use it I look like Phil Specter.



Since I'm not picky about the brand I just go with whatever the hotel has. This was the first hotel in at least 10 years that didn't have it. They had shampoo but no conditioner. So, since I didn't have a car I had to have a taxi take me to a grocery store which was 20 minutes away. The taxi driver refused to wait for me so I had to get the conditioner and call another taxi. They didn't have small sizes so I had to get a big one (and then throw it away because it's too big for the plane). The second taxi took 30 minutes to show up so that means I spent $26 ($20 for round trip taxi drive, $6 for conditioner) and 70 minutes to get some conditioner. For a place that is supposed to recreate living at home the Residence Inn didn't help me out there.

I actually did manage to go to D.C. one night. I didn't have any plans but I wanted to at least go there once. I went straight to the White House and stumbled upon some protesters who were responding to George Bush's veto of the Iraq timetable bill. There were about 5 Democrats and 3 Republicans yelling at each other. I decided to speak with both of them. The lady leading the Democrats was in her late fifties, seemed inebriated, carried a frying pan (for protection from the Republicans?), and had a piece of duct tape on her neck. She rambled on to me about the Nazis and other conspiracies. Her group left because they were afraid of the Republican demonstrators who were yelling at them. The Republicans had signs that said "Democrats = Terrorists" and were hurling elementary school insults towards the Democrats. They were yelling that the United States has never lost a war. I tried to debate that with them but then they started calling me a Communist so I left. Someone from their side was pointing a video camera at me so maybe I wound up on one of their websites.

After that I walked to the Washington Monument (doesn't seem tall at first till you get close to it), the Reflection Pool, the Lincoln Memorial (crawling with field trip kids), and the Vietnam Memorial. I then headed to Georgetown because The Mall becomes empty at night. I thought Georgetown would be a cool college town but it was just a trendy shopping area. I had a decent dinner of ribs at the Old Glory.

By the end of the second week I had fully succumbed to some sort of flu/cold hybrid. I was weak and nauseous and alternated between hot and cold. Since I was sick I couldn't go out and do anything so all I did was study. When the test came around I ended up finishing in 90 minutes with a perfect score. That was the highlight of the trip I guess. Now I am thankful to be home and I don't want to travel anytime soon.