Fourth of July happens to be my friend’s birthday, and seeing as it was his 25th he wanted to do something a bit out of the ordinary. We rented GoCars and drove around San Francisco. Go Cars are kinda like gokarts , except there’s only one wheel on the back, they have horrible acceleration, and a top speed of 30(we got them going at 38 max actually).

We arrived at the place 10 people deep, and the price of 5 GoCars for 2 hours was roughly 55 bucks per person. Overpriced, but definitely worth all the fun we had. These things arent as bad as they look, they have real GPS directions (you preset a tour before starting) and a cd player. We began along the wharf, drove up through the Presidio and got some beautiful views of the ocean, the Golden Gate bridge, and the old army base.

After pausing shortly to climb a huge tree and drink in the view of the ocean, we got back into our “cars” and drove off as fast as those little things could take us. Mind you, being in a non-car vehicle makes you feel a bit like regular rules don’t apply to you, but me and my friend who drove us were making sure to pay attention. So we’re pulling out of the parking lot, and our friends swerve left and cut around us, going over the middle line in the process. As soon as they do this 2 cops appear; one on a li’l 4 wheeler ATV, and another in a truck. They pull our friends over and give them a stern talking to, me and Al -not in the mood to get a lecture on 4th of july- keep driving and park at the bottom of the hill in the Ocean Beach parking lot.

Our two troublemaker compatriots pull up a few minutes later, it turns out the cop was really angry, and intended to write them a ticket. Upon further inspection he did not have a ticket book with him, and when he asked his friend in the truck that guy didn’t have one either. So they got off! No ticket! Nothing at all!

We continue our journey, pass up through Golden Gate Park and hit the Haight district. Along the way a girl with her father notices our large contingent of vehicles and turns to her father, asking.
“who are they daddy?”

We’re nobody special, but due to the size of our group, and our obvious Bay Area style it’s no surprise why they thought we were either some sort of celebrities, too bad that is not the case.

The rest of the evening is great, we get food at the horribly crowded (and overpriced) wharf, find a table at a local bar, and wait for the fireworks show. Here’s the problem with SF, it’s notorious for fog, so it was no surprise that on the one day where we had a special reason to look at the sky our view was obscured by the fog. This last picture demonstrates my point, but don’t let it fool you, we did manage to see at least half of the fireworks that were used that evening.

After the highly motivating disappearance of yesterday’s blog due to the false pretense of a “save & continue editing” button, that niether saved nor allowed to me continue editing my blog; I have decided to try this one more time.

Fry’s

So this weekend I went to Fry’s, now for me a place like this is comparable to KayBee Toys back when I was a kid: I want everything in the store, but most likely cannot afford it. I need a purpose to enter Fry’s, or else I will end up wandering aimlessly for hours on end. Skip this sentence if technical words hurt your head: its an ECS Geforce6100PM-M with an AMD 64 X2 5200+ CPU, great deal for $89.99, regardless of the fact that I plan to trash the mobo for a better one.

So I know exactly what I want, and after waiting 15 minutes for service at the computer components desk I finally manage to gain the attention of an associate. I tell him I am interested in purchasing the motherboard & cpu package, so I grab the board and he makes me a printout to take to the register.

I’m on my way out! I head off toward the register, and with more than 10 registers open the virtually nonexistent line moves quick and within a minute I’m at the counter.

The girl rings up my two boxes of “Koala March” just fine.

But when she gets to the piece of paper she confesses “Sorry, this is my first day.” Now I’m not mad, because she’s kinda cute, so she heads off toward the cage(where the processors are kept)

She’s gone for, say 10 minutes, and another associate tells me he’ll go try to help her. 5 minutes later they come back.
“It doesn’t give me anything from this number” she says. Uh oh, I think to myself, here we go. I tell them exactly what I’m looking for, so there’s no mistake.

By now I’ve been at the counter for 15 minutes, they go back to the cage again and return empty handed. The guy helping out my cashier goes off to get the supervisor of the components section. I’m a patient guy, when I experience bad service all I do is smile real big and hope for the best, as a former cashier I can attest to the fact that yelling at an associate NEVER gets the job done faster.

5 minutes later he returns with the supervisor, he tries to enter the number, he then tells me “This is the wrong item”
“No” I say, and repeat exactly which package I am referring to, the one that was in both friday’s and today’s(sunday) paper.

“Is this you?” He asks, pointing to the name and holding the paper out. Guess what, it was the wrong paper with a completely different name on it. I never expected that, mostly because my credit card was in my cashiers hand when I handed her my items, I never expected that to be an issue at all.

He disappears again to the components department, to print out the correct paperwork for me, apparently the associate who helped me didn’t read the pages on the printer, and had grabbed someone elses. Another 5 minutes pass and he’s back, apologizing profusely.

After one last trip to the cage they come back with the right item. I pay and take my mobo, cpu, and 2 boxes of Koala March and get the hell out of there.

And thus ends my story of my 45(or more?) minute wait at the register. Boring I know, but I need something to get the ball rolling on this blog.

I just wrote a wonderful post, and when i went to save it halfway to prevent me losing it, it turns out the save function doesn’t work.

So there it goes, one well spoken and thoughtful post disappears into the internets, I quit this blog before it even starts.