Universal Fun

Went out last night to Universal Studios. It was the PDC05 party and we had the place to ourselves (although there were quite a few of ourselves there). We went on a number of rides. The Terminator one was even better than I remembered, I reckon that they must have jazzed it up a bit recently. However, the scariest part of the evening was hearing the Windows startup sound from all the speakers around the park. It was really strange to suddenly hear a very familiar sound in a totally different context. Who would have thought that the theme park ran windows?

I promised Andy that I'd put this picture in the blog. I took a couple of other photographs which kind of came out ok:

The boardwork at universal.

Artistic Fountains.

The Best Gadget yet?

My chum from Microsoft, Andy, has just pulled off what I thought was impossible and found a way to get me one of the Imate devices. What a dude! The device itself is lovely to behold. I've been too busy doing things like going to sessions and writing blog posts to do much with it yet, but first impressions are very good. The machine is actually the first Microsoft based 3G phone. Of course it works as a 2G phone as well. The big screen is well pretty and the overall finish of the device is lovely. Not particularly shiny as such, but I can live with that. It alslo runs the latest Windows 5 moble operating system (it is the first device ever with that as well) and I'm really looking forward to writing code for it.

I'll have a more detailed review, with pictures, when I can get around to having a proper play. I popped the SIM from my UK Orange phone into the device and it found a mobile network, but I'm too mean to make any calls. The only slight problem is that I managed to use my well developed stupidity skills to stop Outlook from synching with my new toy. This means that I can't make it my main mobile phone just yet, as I can't get my address book into it.

Burgers for Tea

Went to an authentic burger joint for tea. You'll probably guess the name from the below..

They even had the jukebox things on each table

I had a plain (!) burger. This was around two inches thick and packed with beef and lots of other stuff, a large amount of which ended up down my shirt. Paul ate his burger with complete elegance and in record time. Mine ended up looking as if it had been savagely beaten. Tasted nice though.

A Day at the Beach

Another day out today. (I'm feeling a bit guilty about this, but the conference, and thus the work, start tomorrow - and we have been talking about Slide 6 and a number of other work related things, honest. Anyhoo, we thought we would go and dip our toes into the Pacific, an ocean I've never seen before. So we did. After a taxi ride through Beverley Hills we made it to Santa Monica pier.

I love taking pictures through cab windows. When we got to the pier we saw a sign which basically made the whole day worthwhile there and then....

I wish I'd been around to see him in his prime. The view from the pier was superb, but we decided not to dip our toes in the water.

On the pier they had an amusement arcade, where we were able to continue the pinball thread that we started earlier.

Then we went for a walk along the front. Some of the hotels looked really neat.

Then the lure of the shops overcame us and we spent a happy couple of hours bending plastic. My favourite place in all the world is probably now Circuit City....

Then it was onto the bus for the trip home. An LA tip, use the public transport. The trip back from the beach took a little longer, but cost a huge amount less. And the slice of LA that you see is amazing. My favourite bit was when a huge bunch of schoolkids got on and packed us out, one of them clutching a huge book marked "Geometry". I'm sure the bus nearly fell over as it went round the corner. You get to see all the sites, and do a quiz on the in-flight mass transit TV. Great fun and amazing value. YOu can get a weekly pass which lets you do this all round LA LA, for 16 dollars. A snip.

Hollywood Bowling

Just next to the hotel is an underground bowling alley. We were invited there tonight. Free beer and food. Count me in. Now, I'm no great bowler (perhaps I shouldn't do it left handed). John, who heads up the Visual Studio team at Microsoft, is though. Very impressive. The ball goes where he sends it. Whereas when I bowled it seemed to have a strange affinity with the gutters. Never mind.

The beer bottles were shaped like bowling pins, which I thought was well cool. And the food was ace, I had the best hotdogs I've ever tasted..

Down these mean lanes a man must bowl. Note that they were not actually at an angle like this, but for me they might as well have been....

The balls came in different flavours. I tried blackcurrent and melon, but neither worked for me... The place also had a very old pinball table. Andy and I gave it a bit of a thrashing.

If only I was a pinball wizard. I particularly liked the way that the zeros on the score displays were just fixed in place so that the lowest score was always ten. This indicates a degree of pinball score inflation over the years....

I thought the signs for the bowling alley were cool.

I wasn't, and I didn't. But it didn't matter. I was having too much of a good time to care. Thank you Mr. Microsoft for a great night out.