the stuff of legends

Two of my uncle Yeh-Wei's friends came over today. However, George and Andy are no ordinary guests: the duo are doing a 6,000 km bike ride across the continental United States, all the way from the West Coast to the East Coast!

Of note is that their entire three-month trek to New York City will be improvised. For example, they prefer get directions from locals and book hotels directly instead of making reservations. Yeh-Wei knew we lived near their starting point and asked us to give them a send-off. George and Andy also accompanied us to San Francisco in the evening to meet my classmates. :-)

This was a neat experience as we usually only hear about these people in the news. In any case, all of us are incredibly honored to know these guys!

In other news...

I went to the Cloud Connect expo with Dad yesterday afternoon. This event was much smaller than the RSA Conference two weeks ago, but the swag was nice. :D

RSA Conference report

"But... can it run Crysis at maximum settings?" -- me to IBM representative

I went to the RSA Conference in San Francisco with my parents yesterday afternoon. That was lots of fun even though we only attended the Security Expo.

The event was reminiscent of our trip to Las Vegas for the CES two years ago. While the RSA Conference was smaller, the lower number of attendees allowed us to breeze through registration. The vendors were also much more generous when it came to promotional items.

The expo had a greater focus on software and services than gadgets. I imagine it's because security is an intangible concept. There were nonetheless some hardware products, such as mainframes and video cards. I jokingly asked the IBM representative if the System z10 mainframe could run Crysis at maximum settings, to which she said it probably couldn't. :P

I saw only a couple of booth babes at the expo, and they weren't as hot as the ladies at the CES. On the other hand, the ones I talked to were far nicer than the bitch that turned me down for a photo in Vegas. Go figure.

The three of us didn't stay too long as I had to go class. However, that's not a problem as we're planning to go back to the conference tomorrow. In the meantime, feel free to check out the pictures I took at the expo so far.

March 4 update: Dad took us to the RSA Conference again. He thought it would be a good idea to come back on the last day as many exhibitors prefer to get rid of their promotional crap. This was a good call because we bagged a ton of loot this time, including several T-shirts and tote bags. Score!

Despite the shorter hours, I got to spend more time at the expo today as we arrived in San Francisco a few hours earlier than usual. After the conference ended, my family had a short break and an early dinner at Mel's Drive-In before I headed to class.

The Flickr album has also been updated.

Currently playing: Narcolyxii