Orange County

[garbon]

Isn't Hollywood kind of a ghetto these days?

[Caliga]

Today after my thing ends we're going to head down to San Juan Capistrano and Dana Point.

[derspiess]

So they moved this conference from Santa Barbara to Anaheim because it had 'outgrown' Santa Barbara and they wanted to accommodate even more clients.  But guess what?  It's EVEN MORE CROWDED THAN LAST YEAR.   Between sessions it can be impossible to get to your next session because of the crowds of people blocking the hallways and yapping.

They really need to do one of these conferences in Australia or somewhere in East Asia.  I've noticed way more Australian/NZ accents than last year, and know the company's client base has grown explosively in Singapore, HK, etc.

My company's conference this year was in: Tennessee

[Caliga]

This isn't a conference put on by my company, but rather by Yardi Systems, which is our ERP vendor.  They're based in Santa Barbara so usually the conferences are there, but Yardi's client base is so enormous now that SB can't accommodate everyone anymore.  I really hope they figure out some way to move it back there, though.  The conference this year has kind of sucked compared to years prior up there.

[katmai]

Did you see the Swallows?

[Caliga]

TODAY'S AAR:

I finished up at the conference around 9:30 AM, and then we hopped into the rental car and headed down to San Juan Capistrano on I-5 south.  The old mission was really neat and I took tons of pictures.  The central courtyard had lots of cacti covered with fruit, as well as flowers with butterflies flitting about everywhere.  In the center of the courtyard was a fountain with lotus plants and giant carp.  There's still an actual Catholic chapel there and there was a Mexican lady in there praying or meditating and silently crying, so I felt like kind of a jerk looking around and taking photos, but I did it anyway.

After that we stopped in at a Del Taco nearby for lunch.  Place is kind of like Taco Bell but marginally better.  The burrito thing I got was ENORMOUS, way bigger than any they have at Taco Bell and strangely it came with an order of fries.   It was so big that I actually couldn't finish it and for what I think might be the first time ever, threw out a portion of a fast food meal.

Then we hopped back in the car and drove to nearby Dana Point.  The beach here was oddly similar to the one in Santa Barbara, so much so that if I didn't know where I was, I would think I was back there--the coast looks virtually identical and there's a pier off to one side and then this big public lawn thingy with palm trees behind the beach.  There's also crazy homeless people camped out, just like in SB, except there were only two at this beach.  Also, the waves are much bigger than in SB, but those two things are like the only differences.

[katmai]

TODAY'S AAR:


After that we stopped in at a Del Taco nearby for lunch.  Place is kind of like Taco Bell but marginally better.  The burrito thing I got was ENORMOUS, way bigger than any they have at Taco Bell and strangely it came with an order of fries.

Quite common in taco shops in So Cal. My favorite hangout had the "California" Burrito which was Carne Asada, cheese and french fries in the burrito itself

[Caliga]

We stupidly forgot to bring our bathing suits so we didn't actually swim, but rather took our shoes off and walked through the surf instead.  After we got bored with that we couldn't really figure out what to do next so I suggested we drive up to Newport Beach because a) I remembered it being really neat, and b) hoped I might run into Peter North.

I wanted to take the PCH up the coast but Princesca's goddamn phone GPS kept trying to force us to take I-5 and eventually she gave in and let it direct her that way.  Somewhere south of Santa Ana we ran into the LA traffic wall, so the drive took well over an hour.   We finally got to Newport Beach and headed over to Balboa Pier, parked, and walked out on the pier.  The views of both the Pacific and then backward toward Newport Harbor were amazing.  There's a cute little diner at the end of the pier, too.  There were lots of dirty Mexican dudes fishing off the pier, and there was this bigass pelican sitting on it waiting for them to catch something so it could steal it.  People were stopping to pose for pictures with the pelican so we ended up doing that too.  Then some dumbass lady tried to pet the pelican and it flew away, but it eventually came back to the same exact spot.

After that, we drove around Newport Beach a bit looking for my homeboy Pete but couldn't find him, so we decided to head back to Anaheim.  We kept seeing signs for a toll road and were confused as to what road they were talking about, so, since I am morally opposed to toll roads, we got off the freeway in Costa Mesa and took Harbor Boulevard all the way back to Anaheim.  Doing this in rush hour traffic was probably not a good idea.

[Caliga]

One neat thing about that drive, though, was seeing that nearly every restaurant around there was either a taco joint, a sushi or chinese place, or a donut shop.  It's weird being a minority.  White people should get affirmative action stuff here.

Also, all of the FM stations seem to be easy listening stuff or Spanish, except for this one station we picked up for like a minute in Anaheim that seemed to be playing music from old Nintendo games.

For dinner we went to an Italian restaurant that had really good reviews on Trip Advisor.  Despite it still being in Anaheim we had to get on like 3 different freeways in order to get there, and the traffic was nightmarish.  I really don't know how people put up with that shit here, and it's not even in LA proper or anything.   The place was a little hard to find but we eventually located it in a little strip mall.  We split an order of caprese and I had lasagna with chianti for my meal, and Princesca had chicken and saffron risotto with pino grigio.  Because she couldn't decide between that and some pasta dish with gorgonzola cream and asparagus, the waiter brought her a small portion of the latter too, which we shared.   We had tiarmisu and coffee for dessert and agreed the place was fantastic.  It was definitely 'real' Italian food, which is hard to get back home, and the dudes who worked there were all Italian.

Then on the way back Princesca remembered that we had to return the rental car fully gassed up, and since we were at 1/4 of a tank, started looking for a gas station.  There are these weird gas stations called 'Arco' or something there that have cheap listed prices, but for some fucked up reason won't take credit cards without putting a massive surcharge on them, so we had to hunt till we found a Shell.

[The Brain]

And you were already full.

[Eddie Teach]

One neat thing about that drive, though, was seeing that nearly every restaurant around there was either a taco joint, a sushi or chinese place, or a donut shop.  It's weird being a minority.  White people should get affirmative action stuff here.

White people frequent all of those.

[garbon]

One neat thing about that drive, though, was seeing that nearly every restaurant around there was either a taco joint, a sushi or chinese place, or a donut shop.  It's weird being a minority.  White people should get affirmative action stuff here.

White people frequent all of those.

Seriously.

[Caliga]

 

[Ideologue]

Princesca drove to LA yesterday to go to Griffith Observatory and the Getty Museum.  When she was in Hollywood she stopped at a light and there was this random white dude standing on the corner with his weiner exposed, making motions like he was peeing on all the cars.

Sometimes it just won't go.

[Caliga]

Flew home thru Las Vegas.  I didn't leave the airport there, but was there long enough to eat at Sammy Hagar's restaurant, drink a beer, and take a beer, so I've now visited Nevada.  IT COUNTS, PEOPLE.

btw Las Vegas's airport SUCKS.  Don't connect through there if you can avoid it.  Ridiculously overcroweded with idiot tourists who don't know how to travel correctly, and the free amenities are nonexsitent.  I had to walk half the length of the airport to find a goddamn drinking fountain and there were practically no places to charge up devices--what few outlets there were available were constantly in use by other people charging up.