Tag: event

The Expo

Today is the final day of the 2008 Macworld Expo in San Francisco. I did not attend Macworld this year, but I always find the expo exciting nonetheless.

In January 2001 I began working full time for Wolfram Research, where I was charged with porting Mathematica to the soon-to-be-released Mac OS X operating system. My 3rd week of work I was sent to attend a workshop at Apple‘s headquarters in Cupertino, where they were to provide me with assistance in this process.

The workshop took place the week following the 2001 Macworld Expo and it worked out that I was able travel to California a few days early to catch the tail end of it. This was my first trip to Apple/Cupertino/Macworld/San Francisco/California so it was a big deal to me at the time.

I toured the hundreds of vendor booths at the expo and saw lots of great technology demonstrations. I purchased a laptop bag which I still use to this day. I also purchased my first and shortest-lived digital camera. It was a real piece of crap, but I got what I paid for…

After the expo I did some sight seeing in San Francisco before taking the train down to Cupertino. I still remember walking downtown, taking my first trolley ride, running through Chinatown, seeing Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time.

I have been back to San Francisco on a number of occasions since then and every time I go there I discover something new. San Francisco has become one of my favorite places to explore, and the Macworld Expo is what brought me there.

The Comedian

My parents (in conjunction with my brother, who sells event tickets) were kind enough to give Melissa and I tickets to a Jerry Seinfeld performance for Christmas.  Being big fans of his former television program, we were relatively excited about the prospect of seeing him live.  The performance was last night and it didn’t disappoint.
Unfortunately, Seinfeld was clearly not feeling very well.  His voice was incredibly hoarse, he as coughing and blowing his nose.  At first the hoarse voice was distracting but I got used to it, and it even cleared up a little bit by the end.  He was a real trooper, though.  He performed for over an hour in front of a sold out 2000 person theater crowd in Peoria.
He was very good, perhaps too much so.  The person sitting behind us shouted “It’s true, it’s true” at least 10 times during the performance.  Seinfeld was very animated, much more so than I was expecting.  There was lots of gesturing and arm waving.  Apparently I was thinking that at 53 years of age he would be in a wheelchair or something.  I was wrong.

Tom Papa was the opener.  I had never actually heard of him before, but he was amusing.