Ryan Tabora

Its been an ENTIRE month without updates. I suck. Sorry about that.

So here are my updates of stuff I've done in the past month. I know most of you won't make it through the whole thing, but honestly this blog is more for me than you :P So, if you don't like the length sowwy!

May 25th, 2009: Winston Visit/Giants Game

Let's go all the way back to May. Somewhere in the middle of the month I got a call from one of my friends from Marquette University back home. He wanted to tell me that he was visiting his family that lived in the San Jose area for a couple of days. It just turned out they had an extra ticket to a Giants game! So, he invited me to come along and of course I accepted, I had heard the park was awesome and it was definitely on the list of things to do while I was here in San Francisco. We went, and it was AWESOME. We crushed the Dodgers. I'm sorry Milwaukee, the Brewers are fun and all, and I love to see Bernie Brewer sliding down the slide, but the Giants game was EPIC. I mean, look at the view! I'm not going to lie, ever since I've been itching to get me a Giants baseball cap ever since the game. I've turned against the Brewers, and all it took was one game. Oh well :P

So a big shout out to my homie Winston, thank you for the free game and awesome time. Oh and he also introduced me to his cousin, another student that goes to SFSU, which inevitably led to me going to an epic house warming party. He works at the local ABC station doing broadcast stuff and we get along so thats +1 to my friends list here in SF. Woot!

May 30th, 2009: Maker Faire

I got to go to Maker Faire which was frickin awesome. If you haven't heard of it, its basically a festival for do-it-yourself nerds where they show off all kinds of custom creations. There was a giant tesla coil, a lifesize recreation of the game Mousetrap, the diet coke and mentos guys were there, one of the mythbusters was there, etc. etc. It was awesome. I actually took a bunch of video, which I'll post on here at some point. For the meantime, here's what Make Magazine put up to cover Maker Faire :) Oh, and @grahamhancocks pictures that he took. He's another revision3 intern that went with me.

Me at the Maker Faire 2009

May 31st, 2009: Cali Lewis Meetup

So @calilewis from Geekbrief.tv (a pretty big gadget/technology news podcast based in Texas) tweeted out that she was having a meetup at In-and-Out burger at the Embarcadero so I met up with her and a bunch of other twitter nerds around the area. It was really awesome to meet yet another web celebrity and chat with other geeks like me about stuff I love. Its so funny because back home I only have a couple people who I can talk technology with, but here everyone lives it.

June 10th-16th: Cassie Visit!

So this was probably the best event so far that I've had here at San Francisco. I got to have my wonderful awesome girlfriend visit me for a week. We had a BLAST exploring the city together and doing all that mooshy stuff that I'll leave out for this post. But as for stuff that we did get through, I made a list!

Wax Museum

We wen't to the Wax Museum by Fisherman's Warf to get another item checked off on my little list (Posing with Arnie). Let me tell you, its a damn tourist trap haha. While it was REALLY fun for me to go through the horror section of the museum (featuring Jason, Freddy, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Michael, etc.), it wasn't worth the 14 dollars (EACH) to go. Plus Cassie was afraid that the wax people were going to start walking around and eat her, so I'm sure she wouldn't want to go back again :)

Pier 39

Of course we walked around Pier 39, did the standard stuff. Saw (and smelled) the sea lions laying on the dock, looked around through the touristy shops, looked out on the gorgeous bay. I even stole Cassie a big daisy. It was fun :)

Coit Tower

For some odd reason Cassie and I decided it would be a good idea to walk up to Coit tower. I guess we weren't anticipating the 60 degree slopes we had to climb on the way up. Haha, by the time we had reached the top, we were both pooped. But we did get a very perty picture!

Haight Street Festival

I had been wanting to go to the Haight/Ashbury area for a while because I knew there was some great shopping in the area as well as a few stores that I wanted to visit (Kid Robot, Giant Robot, Villains, Ameoba) so Cassie and I went there during the 32nd annual Haight Street Festival. It was pretty cool, lots of hippies walking around and a bunch of tents set up selling random hippie crap. The only thing that pissed me off was the corn on the cob. It tasted horrible. Honestly, people in Wisconsin, you don't realize the value of our corn on the cob. They don't have sweet corn here. Its just gross.

Golden Gate Park and Strybing Arboretum

This was probably my second favorite thing that Cassie and I did on her visit. Walking through Golden Gate Park was just like being back home. It was very very romantic and the park was beautiful. Few things can compare to an experience like that, sitting together next to a small pond, walking and talking, smelling the flowers. Yay. We spent at least a couple hours searching for the Strybing Arboretum (located inside of the park), but we couldn't find it (the park is huge) until we left and came back after the Haight Street Festival. Its basically a botanical gardens, and of course it was incredibly beautiful and smelled very nice as well. :)

Walk on the Bay/Palace of Fine Arts/Really Nice Houses

After grabbing a bite to eat on Chestnut street, Cassie and I took a walk along the bay on the north side of the peninsula. We sat on a little bench for a while with a beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge. And we just sat for a while, but it was incredible :) Then we walked over to the Palace of Fine Arts (which I later discovered that night was featured in the hilarious movie, So I Married an Axe Murderer), and played on some really big steps. We ended the day by walking through and admiring the BEAUTIFUL houses all around the Sunset area.

Sutro Bath Ruins and Camera Obscura (Kind of)

My favorite event was when Cassie and I went to the ocean side of San Francisco and stumbled upon the Sutro Bath Ruins. The view was breathtaking, well except for the rocks that Cassie pointed out had bird poop all over them. Everything but that was awesome :) We climbed around the ruins and sat looking at the ocean for a long while. And we eventually made it up to the Camera Obscura, but it was closed :( Boo hoo. Still an awesome and unforgettable moment in my life.

June 23rd: Boxee Event

Boxee was hosting an awards event to recognize the best Boxee apps. Veronica Belmont was hosting, with other celebs in the crowd like MG Seigler, Scott Beale, Ryan Block, and Cali Lewis. It was really cool to say hi to all of the people and just enjoy being in yet another tech event in San Francisco. It was just one of those moments where you go, holy crap I can't believe I'm here. Oh, and an awesome Revision3 fan, Mark Graham bought me a beer! That's always fun! :D

June 26th-29th: Sister Visit!

So along with my sister visiting, my cousin Hassan Alshar (dad's Nicaraguan side of the family) came and visited me too!

Scam School Live

On Friday, Brian Brushwood was coming in town to shoot a few episodes of Scam School. So we met them at The Ramp(a cool restaurant/bar right on the bay) and had a couple delicious beers and a very tasty burger. My sister luckily got scammed by Brian and she will eventually appear in an episode (damn her!) which I will eventually post on here. It was pretty awesome :D

Warped Tour

The main event when my sister was visiting was the Warped Tour. And dear god was it epic. Not only did the performances by artists such as Saosin, The Devil Wears Prada, Attack Attack!, Underoath, A Day To Remember, and ESPECIALLY innerpartysystem rock my socks off. I ended up walking away with a black eye and a pretty bad farmers tan, but it was one of the most excellent concerts of all time. Not to mention the whole thing took place on Pier 30/32, so we were literally at a concert ON the bay. Jeeze. I love San Francisco.

Golden Gate Bridge

I finally made my trip to the Golden Gate Bridge with my sister, and the view was magnificent. I could sit and stare at that bridge for hours in awe. It really is beautiful. It was also slightly scary, remembering the documentary called The Bridge that I had watch a few weeks earlier.

Castro Street/Pride Weekend

My sister saw some very funny things on Castro street while we walked through. Lets just say lots of leather and lots of nipples. I'll leave it at that. But there was some awesome places to shop there!

Haight Street

I visited Haight Street with my sister, this time without a festival, and spent a LOT more money. They have some of the best clothes shopping in San Francisco on this street. My wallet was hurting by the end of the day. But now I got me some sexy pants! Oh, not to mention the smoke shops, those were fun too :D

Revision3 Stuff

So pretty much the entire time here I've been working on their network monitoring system, trying to optimize the way it displays things and take advantage of all the different features the system has to offer. I've also been helping encode and upload the actual shows that we put out. I love all of it. Not only have I learned a lot of really cool stuff about unix and network monitoring, but I mean its frickin' Revision3! In my opinion, the best and most comfortable workplace to work of all time. I love it here :)

A couple of other special notes about what's been going on at work...

I went bowling with @camillastenmark, @jollyroger, @grahamhancock, @cam8 and @serafina. That was awesomely fun, and Camilla made a little video to commemorate our time there.

I had my photo/name dropped on Tekzilla. WOOT!

While the live Diggnation was going on in NYC, I was featured in a 'We Miss You' Rev3 video made by @maubrowncow

I appeared on the Brian Brushwoods live video podcast, BBLiveShow.

I think that pretty much covers everything! I'll try to keep this updated more often from now on...