So... Monday we visited IBM's Almaden Research Center. It was... ok. We got an update on how computer storage can be done in a few years, from hard drives like today, only larger, and some plans they had on using holograms and some rather intelligent way of moving single atoms around. They gave us a rather small box with Interesting Bread 'n Meat for lunch, before we were guided through the building and given a lot of details about all the architectonic bummers done there. Good enough. IBM had no Internet strategy at the time, so when we were given a lecture on Internet related topics, all we got was a walkthrough in the internal Web pages of IBM. And we were under no circumstances whatsoever allowed to take pictures of them.
Having observed how IBM people dress, I went and bought myself some clothes I could be seen in. A pair of jeans, a sleeveless shirt and a pair of shoes for under 40 dollars later, I was ready for looking serious. And that really came in handy, as on Tuesday we visited Ascent Logic Corporation, which is a very, very, very serious company making uhm... software. I don't want to get technical here. And they had infinite amounts of pizza. Nice place.
So... Having done our system engineering for the day, Trond, the person responsible for arranging a party for the group that evening, persuaded me into helping him out. Which lead to me using my very own Visa card to pay for some 20-30 pounds of meat, so that we could have a grill-party by the pool. It went very well, and after a refreshing swim I slept until now. On my way to the next company visit: Parcplace.
Palo Alto Research Center. Used to be famous. They merged with Digitalk the very same day we visited, so the briefing of the company's activities, Smalltalk-stuff, was very hectic. Not too impressive really. Oh well. It was short, which made it possible for me to go to San Francisco and wander about in this nicest of cities. I ended up at the beach, where the water was even colder than back home. Uhah. Bus 38 back downtown, dinner at Denny's and now this very pleasant bath. *slide under the surface*
Yesterday's main event was a visit at Silicon Graphics' building 6 (of 24 rather big ones). It was... like large and impressive. Typical SGI-colours everywhere. They even have some small garages for the employees bicycles, shaped and coloured like the Indy, Onyx and other Silicon Graphics computers. Interesting touch. They also treated us with a very nice veggie-breakfast, where I got to taste at least a couple of new edibles that grow on trees. And the lecturers weren't all bad either. #:D)
In the afternoon we went to Apple's Infinity Loop in Cupertino, where about 5000 people run around in corridors to make up new wonderful stuff with the Apple logo on it. For some peculiar reason they were prepared to receive about 20 of us, and we were 50, so there was not at all enough food for us. Still, we got a preview of the next Apple OS, Copland, System 8. Copland does NOT imply that the operating system will act like an environment with a lot of small guardians punishing you severely if you do something wrong. They claimed.
Anyway, when we came back from Apple, I was totally starved. A perfect occasion for trying something I hadn't tried yet, namely eating at a McDonalds "restaurant". The problem was that the restaurant part was closed. Bummer. But the Drive-in part was open. So... We lined up between the cars, and had a Walk-in dinner. The Americans stared. One Big Mac costs $2.21, while two Big Macs cost $2.00, go figure.
Next morning, that is today, I got up at 6:45, as we were going to Berkeley, which is on the opposite side of the San Francisco Bay, and we should be there at 9:00. I am here now, actually. At ICSI, which is uhm... the International Computer Science Institute, or something. They have a lot of Germans and Italians with monotonous accents, lecturing about topics that might be interesting, if you can hear through the accent-barrier. The only thing that keeps me awake is daydreaming about going to Wal-Mart on the way back to the motel. This is the last day of the common field trip. Back to backpacking tomorrow. Yaaaay!