Freeways in California

… are really cool! They have a “carpool lane”. Only cars with two or more people can drive on this lane, so, in the US, it’s usually empty :). But it’s a great idea! We should do that too.

They also have two-story freeways :). Probably a big waste of money:

Or even more:

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Wow, LBL and Bereley is really cool. It’s basically at a large mountain. You can see San Francisco really well and the nature is great. I guess it’s really expensive :). My talk went very good and the listeners were very interested (we had many discussions).
Here the view from the Lab to San Francisco:

I’m now at Livermore. The hotel had a free wine hour today ;). But I missed it (had a fully-planned day). Ah, anyway, I’m here to work. The visit at the lab was very productive! I hope to work with some of those people soon ;).

I’ll proceed to the HOTI conference tomorrow ;).

Arrived in California

Ah, I made it to San Jose, the fligth was rather ok (Northwest), and the
hotel that Cisco booked for me is really great (Hyatt, ridiculously
expensive). The breakfast is awesome (you have people who cook you
omeletts on demand ;)). I also have a very nice rental, a Ford Fusion
with MP3 player and a nice car stereo ;). I didn’t like Ford too much,
but I think I have to change my opinion (after the Mustang and now the
nice Fusion). And it has two exhaust pipes ;).

My nerdlunch talk at Cisco went ok and apparently broadcasted worldwide (they had
very very professional camera equipment). CR means Cisco Research ;). I’ll leave to LBL tomorrow.

The crazy trip starts …

Oh man, the big and crazy trip starts … I’ll leave tomorrow for San Jose, California to give a Nerd Lunch talk at the headquarter of Cisco Systems, a talk at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, another talk at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab and to attend The Hot Interconnects Conference. After that I’ll leave to Dresden, stay for (nearly) one day at home and then leave to Dublin.

I got a neat looking rental. But it’s driving pretty badly actually – ah, let me cite my boss: “it’s shiny”. No, it’s a Dodge, not an Apple.

We’ll see how it goes tomorrow …