New Friends and Paintballing - It's the Weekend, Right? - 02/17/2007 - 10:02 PM:

I spent part of the day wandering around San Francisco, because it's a holiday weekend and not much is going to happen in terms of business until Tuesday. So I decided to take up an invitation for lunch with some new friends, specifically, Robert Scoble, his son Patrick, and Dave Winer (who I met in passing). It was a lot of fun - and Robert bought me a water, which was really nice of him!

We met up at the Apple Store, which has a strong symbolic meaning to me, because I've been an Apple fan since playing Sierra's Gold Rush on my Mac Classic. I recognized the large glass staircase in the center from pictures I've seen of Apple Stores in the past, which always gives you sort of a nifty feeling.

And on the way into San Francisco, I nearly got lost and was kept from wandering aimlessly by Jan and Colleen, who were kind enough to teach me how the BART works in this town. Jan (on the right) is studying photography and has promised to send me one of her pictures, and Colleen (on the left) used to run an art gallery with historical paintings. They saved me not only from getting lost, but from having a dull 30-minute BART ride.

Then, I was recognized by five different people while on the streets of San Francisco: Three people stopped to wish me luck, and two people honked at me and waved while driving by. And then I was pulled off the street by an actual psychic who told me she had big news to tell me for only $10. Big news! Well, I couldn't take the chance that it was something really important while on a trip like this, right? The good news is, I've got good fortunes in my future. Bad news is, I have a black cloud! Seriously, apparently I have a black cloud - she also called them shadows - that follows me around and keeps me from making success lasting in my life. Wow. Well, turns out it's $250 to get rid of that cloud by soaking some stones in your bathtub, and I don't have that; I figure the e-mails I'm getting are better than that, anyway. :)

Plus, I've been invited by yet more new friends to go play Paintball tomorrow (Feb. 18th, 2007) at Midway Paintball Extreme in Vacaville, and if you're in town you should come, too. I'm serious. If you live in the area and want to come shoot some paintballs back and forth, the more the merrier. It'd be really cool if someone actually showed up. :) Here's a map, if you're interested. There's some downtime while the weekend passes, so have a good one. I'll see if I can get a video up tomorrow or the next day. Cheers.