More and more the whole new iPhone thing sounds like a huge headache. Ah, well, that’s what I get for not buying one in the first place. I guess if you’re not eligible for a new phone, the iPhone is going to cost a boatload. That’s the cell phone biz for you.

I had to make a presentation at work today and I think it went OK. I was afraid that the two guys who actually knew the topic but who didn’t want to create the Powerpoint slides were going to bail on me, but they showed up. It sure beat having me stand up front and wing it. My part was over pretty quickly and I was afraid it would be a big mess. Fortunately the charts and graphs generated lots of questions, and the guy who created the charts and graphs was the one who answered them all. I guess I didn’t look too silly after all and I might be able to keep my job. I’ll need the money to pay for my new iPhone.

Made it back to a crowded gym today. For some reason they had the two old dudes using the same weight as the yoots. It was fun, though, and I’m glad to be back. Maybe I won’t feel as lethargic as I did when I got home today. I thought about just going inside and sitting in the La-Z-Boy and reading a book. I suppose I can still do that, even though it’s my bed time.

My horrible diet of last week led to some stomach problems. I thought I was fine until I ate at the fine cafeteria and also had the audacity to eat too much fruit. I was in an all-day meeting and I ate a little of what was there, an apple in the morning and a banana in the afternoon. I guess that was too much for my stomach, which probably just wanted a deep-fried Twinkie or something. Needless to say, I missed going to the gym today.

I have two more days of meetings this week and even have a presentation to make tomorrow. My Powerpoint slides look weak compared to everyone else’s and I’m counting on just bluffing my way through them. It’s really just me presenting other people’s material anyway. We’ll see how it goes.

I got home late, I suppose, after watching the basketball game with some people from the gym. The Celtics fans (also known as “Portlanders who would like to see anyone but the Lakers win”) were few, but that was OK.

Earlier in the day I went out to the Dixie Mountain Strawberry Festival where lots of strawberry shortcake is sold. I made it home in time to mow the lawn. It’s not that all the dirt roads and greenery made me want to chop up the grass and it wasn’t that the rather large rural population (large in terms of weight, not numbers) made me want to work off some of the shortcake. It was just that the lawn was too long to let me take a nap instead.

And now I’m up late because my stupid sister made me edit code on her stupid blog. It’s in Movable Type, which I hate with a passion. Whatever. I guess she’s not using her local gallery any more so I can delete all of that. Hooray for deleting things.

My last morning in San Francisco, I hid out in my room. That week of trashy lunches and overindulgent dinners did a number on my stomach and I was unable to eat much of anything for most of today. So I finished the book I bought on Wednesday and took it easy. I barely made it in time for the plane because I was trying to back up my hard drive. Stupid, since the backup didn’t work at all.

I got home in time to deliver some presents from Megan, eat some dinner with my mom, and go off to the Apple Store to get my keyboard fixed. Fortunately they had an extra “Return” key laying around and I was good to go. I also bought a wireless mouse since my buddies were telling me how I was no longer cool without one. It’s actually pretty nice. I also went to REI to buy a new pair of shoes, since I realized just before I left that my Keens were worn out.

Currently the rest of my unexciting evening is consisting of trying to back up my laptop. Of course it’s not exciting, but it’s something I need to do.

One of the biggest secrets of the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, even bigger than what Steve Jobs is going to reveal at the keynote, is what band is playing at the WWDC bash. Last year it was Ozomatli. While my LA Mexican buddies (or at least my buddies who think they’re Mexican) really wished they could have been there to see Ozomatli, I’d never heard of them. This year, however, the band was the Barenaked Ladies, a band that I thought was more fitting and a band I’ve wanted to see. Basically, a much geekier band as well.

So I got to see some live Barenaked Ladies. I suppose that’s as good as it gets for me.

After two months and two days and I finally caved and had a cheeseburger. And not just any cheeseburger, but a double-double animal style at In-N-Out burger. I even walked the whole route of the cable car to get to In-N-Out at Fisherman’s Wharf.

I walked back to work it off, but I had to make a pit stop and In-N-Out didn’t have a rest room. Some clown told me to just use the one in Hooters. (He really was a clown; he had a red rubber nose and floppy clown shoes and was juggling flaming pins while riding a unicycle.) The waitresses at Hooters all looked like they were in high school and it made me feel kind of creepy to be there. Fortunately, I just used the bathroom and got the heck out of Dodge.

I was going to have dinner with my friend Megan again, but it was probably for the best that I didn’t. Monday night was Suppenküche with Megan, Thuy, and JG.

Tuesday was Conduit with Megan and Vivian, super fancy.

And super fancy desserts.

So when Megan couldn’t make it back in time to meet for dinner, it was time for me to go for the cheeseburger. I’m on vacation, after all, and most times I’m in California I make it to In-N-Out. I even hit the drug store for some bandaids and the book store for another book to read. I’m all set.

My room at the Hilton pretty much sucks. It’s big but it’s really a living room and I was sleeping on a sofa bed until a woman from housekeeping told me to just get the roll-away bed. The mattress on the roll-away bed is a lot smaller, but it’s thicker.

Not only that, but I had a bunch of yahoos next door (like I said already) who were having a party when I got back last night at around midnight. I called the front desk and they make a lot of noise leaving. Lucky me, they came back around 2AM and I had to call the front desk again. They were making lots of noise for at least half-an-hour and I wasn’t able to get back to sleep. I finally gave up and read the book I brought down with me until 4:30 or so. The worst part about that is I’m not going to have anything to read on the way home unless I hit a bookstore. Or steal a book from one of my friends.

There is an advantage to the room, and that’s the view. I’m not spending a lot of time in the room so that’s that great an advantage for me, but it’s still a nice view.

The big disadvantage is the yahoos. I sure hope they’re gone tonight.

The problem with something like the Apple WWDC is that they usually give you something experimental that can destroy your computer. And that’s just what I did. Fortunately, I spent yesterday night making a backup. Tonight I accidentally erased everything. Fortunately, the backup got me most of the stuff back.

I’m up right now, at 4AM, because I’ve been up since 2AM. The people next door have been partying off and on since I got back around midnight and I can’t get back to sleep. I’ll probably nod off when I shouldn’t, in the middle of a presentation tomorrow sometime. That’s just the way it goes.

Oh, and I’ve been getting back late because I’ve been out having dinner with my friend Megan, and yesterday with Megan and Thuy and Thuy’s husband JG. I have pictures of the things I ate because, really, the meals were tasty enough that they deserved to have their pictures taken. I’ll have to do that when I’m really supposed to be up, not at 4:11AM.

I even went to San Francisco Crossfit and had my ass handed to me because I felt like such a pig. I think they wanted me to get reacquainted with my lunch, but I didn’t like seeing it the first time.

P.S. I really like San Francisco, if it weren’t evident already.

I’m writing this from a living room suite in the San Francisco Hilton Hotel. Somehow the travel agency didn’t confirm my non-smoking room, and this was the only thing they had left. I first looked at the smoking room, but I could tell it was smelly as soon as I opened the door. Since that would have done nothing for my allergies, I’m now sleeping on a sofa bed. Most likely a $300+/night sofa bed. It’s a big room with no desk, but it does have a dining room table of sorts. Unfortunately, the internet connection (another $15/night) is across the room from the table so I’m standing at a counter, typing. At least there’s a bathroom scale in the uncomfortable-looking bathroom.

I did go to a pre-WWDC barbecue, which only took three hours to get to. I had more beer than I did all last month (I think I only had four beers last month) and a gigantic hamburger and lots of chips. Of course, after all that we had apple pie and ice cream. I think I had my calories for the week.

In any case, I’m supposed to try to get up early to stand in line for the conference tomorrow, but I’m not going to kill myself to get into the keynote.

This is the week of the Apple Worldwide Developer conference and tomorrow is rumored to be the announcement of the new iPhone. It kicks off today with a barbecue that I crashed last year and turned out to be the run by a director at Apple. With all the abuse he was giving us on the intarweb, I thought he was just a “regular guy.”

Well, let’s see if I’m awake enough to report my travels this week. I’m guessing that I’m not going to maintain my low weight of 166# (as reported by my mega-accurate bathroom scale).

So this week I thought I’d miss going to the gym on Tuesday because of a massage, but I just made it. I thought I’d miss Wednesday because of a late work meeting. But Thursday I ended up talking to a contractor about (finally) doing something to the house. We’ll see what all we start doing and when.

It was a weird day. Went to the dentist (“Your teeth look fine.”) and the doctor (“Your bloodwork looks fine.”) and then met with the contractor (“Oh, honey, what have they done to your mortar?”) OK, so the contractor doesn’t sound like that but it makes for a better story. But other than waiting around a lot reading a book that I remembered to carry around with me, there really wasn’t much going on. Life’s kind of been on the boring track. Like when I’m in a room and an attractive woman comes in, she’ll sit right behind me so I can’t see her. Where’s the fun in that? I suppose there isn’t all that much fun if you just go around eating salads all the time. At least they haven’t worn my teeth down to nubbins yet.

All day I was walking around stiff-legged because my legs are SORE from taking too much time off from the gym. I was having all sorts of trouble getting up and down the stairs, but I still did it because I’m still subscribing to the “work out the lactic acid” thing even though it never seems to work for me. And now, using the power of the intarweb, I found out that it isn’t lactic acid but damaged muscle fibers. I guess the new thing is that I’m supposed to just take it easy. Huh. Who woulda thunk it?

Of course I’m too foolish to follow my own advice here, and I went for another hard workout at the gym. We were doing pullups with a 40-pound weight vest, which is doing pullups with 20 pounds more than I weighed when I started at the gym. How do I know it was hard, besides finishing DFL? We did four rounds of 250m rowing, 15 wall-ball (which I hate), and a sprint to the corner and even Mark the yoot was lying on the floor between rounds.

I didn’t feel so bad physically afterwards, but I felt kind of bummed out. Like I just realized that I haven’t done anything worthwhile with my life lately. Well, I know I haven’t done anything that worthwhile EVER, so it wasn’t a big surprise. I then had the idea that it might just be my blood sugar level because I’ve been rather hungry all day.

I’m now really bad at being depressed because all it took was eating dinner and then trying to put my USB-to-Morse-Code adapter back together to cheer me up. I dropped one of the screws (never to be found in my mess of a basement) and that completely distracted me from any efforts at being a gloomy Gus. That’s even though I probably should have been more depressed that I have a USB-to-Morse-Code adapter in the first place. At least I know what a tapir looks like, even though I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.