Last Friday I took a day in San Francisco. Went to visit my friend Simon that does Product Management over at Groundworks Open Source, then went to visit another potential partner, and then on to GBs. GBs is one of the places along the Embarcadero in SF that holds many memories. Used to be I worked 50 feet from GBs for this small clothing company that’s there. Way back when, I worked for Ed there and we would meet on a Friday, have some cold Marzen, eat Hoisun Ribs. Times would move on and we both moved to this rather interesting start-up called Linuxcare and then we left that and actually did some technology consulting together up around Chico and Paradise, worked together again at Levanta, and somehow managed to last through that as well. Its amazing how the technology landscape manages to create networking sites that keep us together and I’m really glad to spend my bit of time primarily on Llinkedin. Its a great value and it lets me find people I somehow lost in all the shuffles. Thanks to the folks there!
But the real thing is it occurred to me after all the shuffling and career paths and dead ends; that GBs really had not changed. It still serves up great cold beer. The menu has changed and the peopel have in a major way. The MIS/IT staff at GAP would meet many Fridays and we would do team meetings as well. We used to sit out and jeer the Critical Mess bike rides last Friday of the month. Not because we hated bikes but because it was the lazy thing to do. We were sitting swilling micro-brewed beer and they were busy trying to run over pedestrians while staying away from cops and cars. After a few trips on the last Friday of the month, the name changed naturally from its regular “Mass” to our anointed name “Mess”. It did mess up traffic big time and it got people really pissed off. I never saw the value in something that was supposed to unite being so factious. But hey! We all gotta create our messes.
GBs was fun though and come to think of it it was the last Friday of the month! Hey!! I did not notice it because I rode BART that day. BART does rule in many ways and one of them is getting me into SF. At a lower level, I am always reminded of the DaveR when I go there unfortunately; but this time I felt I finally lost some of that memory. It takes a long time to get over someone’s passing I think and I will never truly get over it. I’ll learn some acceptance but I’ll always visit his blog and read the old posts.
Anyways, it was a good time and I felt really good after 3 hefeweizens there. I don’t eat the food because I strive for some moderation these days with my 90 pounds or so of weight loss. Food and beer are not my friends any more unfortunately. They can really mess me up if I don’t exercise due care and caution.
So that was my Friday and it was good. I’m planning a month long international business trip to Singapore and India next. Sidetrips will definitely occur.
