This trip was motivated by my desire to attend the Opsware annual meeting held in Sunnyvale, California. When I learned that the Cluster World Conference and Expo was happening at the same time in neighboring San Jose, I decided to visit Silicon Valley.
During Spring of 2003, I visited Foothill College in Los Altos Hills and flew in and out of San Jose. The one day trip worked well so I decided to enter Silicon Valley via the San Jose airport.
Once the trip was a go, I expanded it to include visiting some of the people, cities and companies that are Silicon Valley.
I am happy to be a computer professional and Silicon Valley is cool.
Those of us who live in the Valley of the Sun are fortunate to have Sky Harbor for an airport. It is an excellent resource and I enjoy being there. Ironically, since 911, I have been a happy and loyal America West customer and shareholder. The power of the Internet example; I observed that e-ticket usage was gaining in popularity. America West corporate headquarters are in Tempe, Arizona -- my home town and state, respectively.
For some reason I like to take pictures from 30,000 feet. The flight to San Jose was done on a sunny and bright Monday morning. Power of water example: farm lands surrounded by desolate desert. There were clouds over southern California.
It was an on-time arrival at San Jose and I had to take a shuttle bus to the rental car facility. I enjoyed the Ford Taurus that I rented from Budget.
First stop on the trip was a visit to VA Software. VA Software is located in Fremont, which is on the east-side of the bay. San Jose and Fremont are connected by I-880.
These days VA Software is responsible for resources such as SourceForge, OSDN, Slashdot, ThinkGeek, NewsForge, Linux.com, and so on. VA Software went public as VA Linux Systems and it was one of the most explosive IPOs ever.
The lobby at VA Software was empty (i.e. there was no receptionist). I examined a phone list that was left at the front-desk to see if there were any familiar names, but I didn't find any; thus, I called the CEO/President and ended up getting his answering machine.
I left VA Software and headed off to the Intel Museum. The Intel Museum is free and you are allowed to take pictures. Many of the exhibits are interactive and do a nice job teaching about chips and how they are made. Many of the exhibits present the history of Intel chips. The first Intel chip -- the 8800 -- powered the Altair computer. I enjoyed the Intel Museum located in Santa Clara.
The next stop was Transmeta where they create chips to support efficient computing. Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system, is a Fellow at Transmeta and he is currently on leave to work full-time on Linux at the Open Source Development Lab in Beaverton, Oregon. I think Linus will like it there -- expect good things. I thought about going in to see if Torvalds would sign my printed copy of the Transmeta homepage, but I decided not to bother him. Instead, I lunched at the deli that was next door separated by an explosion of color. Silicon Valley was full of color.
The deli was huge. Transmeta is located on the Freedom Circle in Santa Clara. The Freedom Circle is lined with business buildings. The deli was there to feed the people who worked (or use to work) in these buildings. There were others eating in the deli, but most of the seats were empty. There were mostly groups -- two guys here and there, small groups of women and then a couple mixed groups of six or seven. I sat alone and enjoyed by bake potato that was topped with too much stuff to mention.
The next stop was Entrisphere in Santa Clara to see if Phil Winterbottom (CTO and Founder of Entrisphere) would sign a printed copy of their homepage. Winterbottom was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs and is now a Bell Labs Fellow. Winterbottom was out of the office so I asked the receptionist if Ken Thompson ever dropped in. I knew Thompson was an Entrisphere Fellow, but I assumed he was in New Jersey. The receptionist said he was there and she fetched him for me. It was a true honor to shake hands with Ken Thompson. This is strange, but Thompson and I have a similar look. Thompson graciously autographed my printed copy of the Entrisphere homepage. In Thompson's case, I was spam in human form, yet he thanked me for stopping by.
The next stop was Yahoo! located in Sunnyvale. Yahoo has a campus-like facility and I was not allowed access without a contact. This was okay -- I have been a Yahoo fan for a long time and I found Yahoo Maps a vital resource for helping me navigate around Silicon Valley. Yahoo is located near a street named Java Drive.
The next stop was downtown Mountain View to walk up and down their main street. I encountered this cool mural, but had to go into an alley to get a decent shot. My destination was Google, but I did not have a Yahoo Map and I had difficulty finding it. At one point I stopped at a bar and asked the bartender "Where is Google?" He didn't know -- and neither did his handful of customers. I navigated by instinct and found SGI. I'd like to have a SGI Altix 3000 cluster. I visited the lobby to seek directions to Google. I almost took a picture of a collection of SGI bikes that employees can use to bike from one building to another. SGI is located in a scenic location.
Finally, I make it to Google. I started telling students about the Google search engine when its URL was
http://google.stanford.edu. Google is good and I am excited about Google's future. A couple of weeks prior to the trip I sent Rob Pike (r at google dot com) an email message asking him if I could visit Google and have him sign my copies of The Unix Programming Environment and The Practice of Programming, which are books that Pike co-authored with Brian Kernighan. Pike worked with Thompson and Winterbottom at Bell Labs.I went past Palo Alto to drive Sand Hill Road to Menlo Park to visit Steve Bourne at El Dorado Ventures, but he was out of the office. El Dorado Ventures is a venture capital firm and they have invested in Entrisphere. Steve Bourne is considered the father of the Unix shell and he is the CTO of El Dorado Ventures. On Linux systems, Bourne's shell was re-born and it is named
bash(Bourne-Again SHell). For some reason I forgot to take a picture of El Dorado Ventures scenic location.It was about a 20 minute drive from El Dorado Ventures in Menlo Park to Palo Alto and the Hotel California.
It was around the 5:00pm hour so I decided to walk to Stanford University. I encountered this mural while walking along Palo Alto's California Avenue. Stanford University is about a mile from the Hotel California. It is a grand and glorious campus that offers numerous picture taking opportunities.
Stanford campus pictures: {#1} {#2} {#3} {#4} {#5} {#6} {#7} {#8}
I returned to California Avenue for night number one in the Hotel California.
The plan for Day two was simple: attend the Opsware shareholders meeting and then go to San Jose for the Cluster World Conference and Expo. Recall, these were the two reasons for this trip. I considered blowing off the Cluster World to do some road tripping and hiking, but decided I would go to the Cluster World and stay for just a short period of time.
The Opsware meeting was being held in Sunnyvale about 20 minutes away. I left early so that I could stop at PGP Corp. on my way out of Palo Alto. I wanted to meet Phil Zimmermann. It was about 8:45am and there were only a couple of cars in the parking lot; therefore, I knew the chances of meeting Zimmermann were slim. The lobby door was open, but there was nobody in the lobby. I decided to leave because I didn't want to be late for the Opsware meeting.
The Opsware meeting started at 9:30am and I am glad to have attended.
Opsware put on a good meeting and it was a honor to meet Marc Andreessen. Andreessen is my summer addition to my computing Dream Team. He kindly signed a copy of the Opsware homepage.
After the meeting I drove to Opsware corporate headquarters to get a picture of the Opsware sign.
I left Sunnyvale and drove to San Jose and was immediately taken by the buildings and color. I'm glad that I decided to attend the Cluster World Conference and Expo and the San Jose Civic Center. I'd sure would like to have a Linux-based SGI Altix 3000. The conference had numerous exhibits and it appeared to be well attended. I brought home some good cluster-related reading materials from both SGI and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
I left Cluster World around 2:00pm and headed for Neil Young country. Left San Jose driving through Campbell and Saratoga to Skyline Blvd (CA Hwy-35) via Red Basin Way. Stopped at did a short country walk. This is a picture of a bee. I understand why Neil Young likes this land. I decided to visit the Portola Redwoods State Park to see some wide and tall trees.
Portola Redwoods State Park is reached via Alpine Road. Alpine road is a two-way road, but in many places it is only a single lane wide. It is curvey and hilly. Continued Alpine Road to La Honda and then caught CA Hwy-84 and returned to the Skyline Highway. Returned to the Hotel California by taking Skyline south to Page Mill Road. A stop along the Skyline Highway allowed me to stop and take a picture of Silicon Valley.
The plan for this day was to drive 100 miles north to visit O'Reilly and Associates in Sebastopol, California.
Before leaving Palo Alto for the day, I walked almost four miles (round trip) to visit the Birthplace of Silicon Valley and the Hewlett Packard garage.
I decided to drive north up the east-side of the bay and crossed over the east-side via the Dumbarton Bridge. The east end of the bridge ends in Fremont (home of VA Software) and has the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. It was full of animals and plants. It had some watery salt beds.
The drive up the east-side of the bay was made easy by I-680. I stopped quickly in Pleasanton because it is home of PeopleSoft which is under hostile takeover attempt by Oracle. PeopleSoft and Oracle were big news in the bay area newspapers and the local television news shows.
The drive up I-680 takes you through a sequence of towns: Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon, Danville, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, Concord, Martinez and Benicia. In Benicia jump from I-680 to I-780 and head west to Most of the route was marked scenic view, but thin roads and traffic made it difficult to appreciate the drive through wine country.
Sebastopol is about 65 miles north of San Francisco and 7 miles west of Santa Rosa. Sebastopol's population approximates 8,000; therefore, I did not think directions to O'Reilly and Associates were necessary -- I was wrong. After spending almost 30 minutes driving around Sebastopol looking for O'Reilly I finally found it.
The trip back to Palo Alto was via CA Hwy-101 via San Francisco. I was hungry and it was mid-afternoon. I was craving salad bar, but none was to be found. At 4:00pm I encountered a Sizzler about 20 miles outside of San Francisco. I ate a good meal and headed for the Golden Gate Bridge. For some reason, a young couple asked me if I wanted my picture taken. Here is a picture taken under the Golden Gate Bridge. I had to go under the bridge in order to get from the west side of the bridge to the east side for a walk to the middle. The sun was shining brightly on the city of San Francisco. There were numerous people playing in the bay. Get the middle and head back to the car. After crossing the Golden Gate Bridge I turned west on Geary and headed for the CA Hwy-1 to drive some of the coast. Here is a picture taken at a San Francisco beach. I drove about 30 miles on the coast highway before transitioning onto I-280 south. The final picture of the trip was taken at the Sawyer Camp Trail vista point which was about 30 miles from Palo Alto.
I arrived in Palo Alto around 8:00pm and decided to have a liquid dinner at a Mexican food place across from the Hotel California. With the exception of getting home tomorrow, the Silicon Valley road trip was over.
Day #3 miles: 239
Before leaving Palo Alto I drove to PGP Corporation to see if Phil Zimmermann was there. It was after 9:00am and there were cars in the parking lot and a receptionist in the lobby. Zimmermann wasn't there because his office is in Menlo Park. Oh well, maybe I'll meet Phil on my next visit to Silicon Valley. [I missed attending a Nanotech forum that was held at the Palo Alto City Hall from 8:30am to 9:30am. One of the participants was Palo Alto-based Nanosys Inc.]
The drive to San Jose via the 101 was non-stop and I arrived at the airport two hours before my flight time of 11:55am. While standing in line to check my bag I noticed that the flight to Phoenix had been cancelled and that the next flight out was at 3:00pm. I was preparing myself to a long wait at the airport. When it was my turn to check-in, I discussed my options with the America West employee. A decision was made to taxi me along with three other flyers to San Francisco for an 11:50am flight to Phoenix. It was 10:30am and when I asked the clerk if it was doable, she replied that it should be. I told her that should was not the word I wanted to hear, but we did it anyway. The ride to SF was north up the busy 101 and it was done mostly at high speeds (80 to 85). We arrived at the SF airport at around 11:00am. The check-in line was not too long and the process went quickly; however, the line to get to the gate was like the lines at Six Flags (i.e. long and winding). By the time I got to the gate the door to the ramp was closed, but I was allowed onto the plane. America West gave me a $25 coupon for my next America West flight. I was in the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport around 1:30pm -- 20 minutes early.
I took the city bus home (Red Line east to Mill and University in Tempe and then switch to bus #66).
For me, America West is doing a good job of its mission to "build a winning airline by taking care of our customers."
While in Silicon Valley I listened mostly to 107.7FM -- The Bone and sometimes KFOG, 104.5FM.
I spent three nights in the Hotel California. Next time in Palo Alto I want to walk around Professorville. I did not go to downtown Palo Alto, nor did I have any significant eating adventures.
I observed lots of litter this trip, but USLitter.org did not do any litter pick-ups.
Total Miles Driven: 457
Author: G.D.Thurman
[gdt@deru.com]
Created: 30 June 2003
Bell Labs: Ritchie and Thompson Receive National Medal of Technology
Tempe, Arizona, Sky Harbor, Phoenix, America West, San Jose, California, Silicon Valley, Fremont, VA Software, Intel Museum, Santa Clara, Transmeta, Sunnyvale, Yahoo, Mountain View, Entrisphere, Winterbottom, Thompson, SGI, Altrix 3000, Google, Pike, Kernighan, PGP Corporation, Zimmermann, El Dorado Ventures, Bourne, bash, Palo Alto, Hotel California, Stanford University, Opsware, Andreessen, Cluster World, Sky Line Boulevard, Sebastopol, O'Reilly, San Francisco, Golden Gate Bridge, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Linux, Unix, Ritchie, Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, La Honda, Neil Young, Page Mill Road, Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Pleasanton, HP, Bell Labs
