The Facebook Visit

Scott and Audrey at Facebook

My good friend Ashley lined up a contact with an ex collegue Scott who now works for Facebook. Scott kindly offered to host us on a visit to Facebook's Menlo Park campus headquarters. It was very strange walking into the "brain" of the organisation that has partly defined and is redefining the way we communicate online.

Facebook have "Hack'ed" into Sun Campus

The Menlo Park campus was built for Sun Microsystems who sold it in 2011 as part of the "synergy" resulting from the Oracle buy out of Sun. I recognise many similarities in the late 1980 versions of the Sun Microsystems and Hewlett Packard (HP) as both were developing hardware and operating systems around this time. This is "Silicone Valley" near Palo Alto and Cupertino .. the very epicentre and ground zero of the computer industry.

An old HP crane replanted at the Sun Campus.

It is somewhat insulting (maybe only to me?) to have such a young company remove an old HP work crane from yet another site that Facebook outgrew to plant it in the courtyard of the Sun's own global discarded heart because it had become a cool meeting point?

What lies beneath?

My understanding is that the big "Like" icon on the main road campus entry sign is just mounted on the back of the old Sun logo turned around backwards. There is a sense of "temporary residence" about all of this. I am guessing this site too will soon be discarded as Facebook are already building a new campus over the road from this one!

Yep Thats Fast!

Back to our visit...We could not resist signing into Facebook.. on Facebook. The guest wifi in reception had 50meg down and 40 meg up... to my iPhone.

Audrey and I have debated that there are now over 6000 Facebook employees on site and they don't actually "make" anything. Of course this is true of all software companies. Facebook does make money however! Something in the order of $12 billion (12,000 million) dollars per year in revenue from advertising to people like you and me (1.5 billion of us). Facebook is a new media ad agency.

We saw (yes we did) Mark Zuckerburg working in his open plan "fish bowl" office looking out onto the busy lunch time main street campus crusade of employees and visitors. I caught his eye for a brief second and he looked like a man worth $30 billion... that is, pretty much just like you and just like me (although younger and fitter than me)! Owning around 28% of Facebook ( try this http://whoownsfacebook.com ) he is the largest single shareholder. That must make Facebook worth around $150 billion, smaller than Apple and Microsoft, similar to IBM and Oracle.

On Site Pro Bikeshop

There is a pro bike shop... Facebook employs full time bike technicians to look after employees bikes. Only parts are charged for.

The nice man will fix your Mac

The bike shop was next to one of the site IT help desks where employees can get free service, repairs and updates to all of their personal PCs and phones etc.














Add to this an army of chefs producing themed free lunches dinner choices from around 15 restaurants for around 6000 employees and you can see that the cost of all of this would appear to be... irrelevant. The raw materials of this company are its people and pretty much nothing else (ok, a site, a few desks, IT systems and a bike shop). $12 billion revenue has to be spent on something after all!

"Hack", "Move Fast" and "Break Things". Facebook is littered with graphical propaganda suggesting the best way forward is to make something work "fast and dirty" and make it elegant later. This is the "just do it" kind of mentality that is supposedly at the root of the software engineering teams.

Behind the Disney World vibe of Facebook's copy of "Main Street" Palo Alto you start to see some scary organisation. A company that takes 600 interns per year on a 3 month rotation, paying them in full (and handsomely, $6000 per month) and housing them locally.. for free.

Facebook employees are the best you will find anywhere. You can smell bright, young happy energy everywhere.

There is such a thing as a free lunch!

Beer Can Racing from the Corinthian Yacht Club

The Corinthinan Yacht Club, Tiburon

Audrey and I were lucky to meet pro sailor Michael Johnson who did some tutoring with us on the San Francisco waters as part of our development programme with the Modern Sailing School.

I think because I generally have a bit of a "race attitude" when cruising on yachts Mike noticed and asked if I would be interested in being hooked up with a Friday Night "Beer Can" race from The Corinthian Yacht Club, the oldest club in the Bay Area (of course I was bloody interested... don't ask me twice!).

Robert Long's "Mimicat". Hinckley 38.

As often happens with sailors of all types ;-) we were drinking later in the bar and Michael introduced me to Robert Long, the owner and skipper of "Mimicat", a Hinckley 38 yacht. Robert graciously invited me to join and Audrey and I excitingly turned up at the Corinthian (CYC ) on Friday to set out for the evening race.

Audrey makes herself comfortable!

Mimicat sails out of Sausalito and we had mistakingly turned up CYC (assumptions!) around the bay at Tiburon where the actual race start was. A quick apology and phone call later and Robert came alongside to pick me up off of the CYC dock. Audrey was only too pleased as to our location as the observation deck and bar at the race hosting CYC overlooked the start line, the start cannon was blowing off over Audrey's head!

The Boys Pick me up

I joined skipper and helm Robert with Mike on main trim and acting as strategy no2. Roberts's long term Mimicat expert race partner and friend Gary was on port genoa grinding and looked after all forward stuff. I settled into the starboard side trim and grinding role.

I have raced dinghies since I was a kid and I am a reasonably proficient and intuitive race crew but big yacht are very scary. In 20 knots of wind there so much power in everything and these boys slam 6 tonne yachts at each other on the start line like a dinghy race on the local gravel pit.

Mimicat positioning herself for the start

Robert and Mike agreed on a port start (oh shit!... this is the one where you run the advantage gauntlet with no sailing right of way...... its a big risky payoff.... or death. I'm thinking 'oh grief these boys have "balls"!'. 

In a field of around 30 boats (an overall handicap race) we started in our group of 6 yachts with what looked like, for about 15 seconds, to be a stroke of genius.... but which ... suddenly became .... death!.... All the boats had opted for the port start and we were squeezed out downwind... We could not make the start buoy and had to re-round. This put us 20 boat lengths behind one of Robert's key nemesis competitors by the name of John Arndt  (Associate Publisher of "Latitude 38" the Bay Area yacht racing mag). John was racing "Summer Sailstice" a smaller but beautiful light blue hulled Ranger 33 with an identical racing handicap to Mimicat. Now the recovery was on!

The fleet rounding the upwind mark

We were racing upwind against a flood tide with the water pouring into The Bay under the Golden Gate. Robert with a stroke of genius decided to stay closer inland on a prolonged port tack only just making the point between Tiburon and Saulsolito. Our tack onto starboard out towards The Slot (an area of higher wind pressure building under The Golden Gate) did not initially look like it was going to allow us to make the windward mark but we were being constantly and progressively lifted up and up to our target.

"Summer Sailstice" was way ahead (too far ahead?) but gradually disappeared from view under our sails downwind. We were making the mark! She was falling off on the current and had to tack. Our loss became gain and we rounded the windward mark with a healthy 60 second lead.

'Summer' had decided to reef the main from the get-go for the upwind leg but Robert had decided to sail Mimicat slightly overpowered here using full canvas while Mike engaged in dumping mainsail power as required to compensate. On rounding the upwind mark, our power advantage was clear: Downwind we had more sail area to optimise Mimicats's hull speed. Gary ran forward to pole out the Genoa (this was a 'no spinnaker' race') while I worked on the forward sail trim.

At this point I was thinking the job was done but with great match racing craft skipper Robert made sure 'Summer' was "covered off" matching John's rearward course of to avoid any disappointment as we made for the penultimate downwind mark.

Mimicat boatspeed!

In an effort to claw back boat speed, 'Summer' shook out her reef in an attempt to catch up... but the race with Mimicat had been run at this point, Summer was beat! Our goal had now become victory in the overall handicap standings. A first place was possible!

We had some issues as wind shifts occurred and we lost boat speed caused by the need to gybe to maintain sail set. As one of the larger boats, the falling late evening wind was now dispropotionalely hurting us and the final run to the line saw us crossing in an overall (and brilliant) third place!

Home in 3rd Place at CYC

In the fading light we came alongside at CYC and Audrey joined us onboard for a celebration beer. This was followed by much yacht racing banter as we enjoyed an evening barbque with the other sailors and guests on the Corinthian club deck.

Winning!

I want to thank Robert Long for his grace and hospitality and for gifting me with Mimicat's Corinthian Yacht Club 3rd Place Trophy! much respect to Gary for being the "real crew" and Michael for the introduction. I can't think of a more beautiful place to race boats!

Robert Long:
http://robertlonglighting.com


Mark

Being a tourist and visiting friends.

The Streets of San Francisco

So last Friday we decided to bite the bullet and do the tourist thing and visit the Fisherman's Wharf Pier 39 area of San Francisco.

Audrey Buying Pearls (the cheap kind!) on Fisherman's Wharf

Lots of fun, busy with people taking ferries to Alcatraz and Sausalito., hiring bikes to cycle over the Golden Gate Bridge and generally being tourists. Some retail therapy was had and ice cream brought from Coldstone that was far to large, and we only had the medium ones.

Pier 39 Selfie

Shopping with Jane near Rocklin CA

At the weekend we had dinner with some lovely friends (Zach and Charna) that we made on one of our club sailing days.














Then headed off to Sacramento, about 2 hours away from the bay area, to visit our long term friends Mitch and Jane for a couple of days. They are now the proud owners of 2 teenagers and all that life brings with this. We always love visiting with them when we are over and are always welcomed with open arms and hearts.  Special people.

Joey likes Big Screens

 Yes Simon Payne... Joey has an Xbox One... whatever that is!

Coffee machine running V3.01.11x Beta

We need to get with the times. Mitch has a coffee machine (bean to cup) that has a USB port so you can give it firmware upgrades..... Really? A coffee machine with an op sys? We saw one in the shop reduced from $3100 to $2700 .... bargain!

Passed our check out.... we can now charter.

To be honest we were not too bothered about this but today we passed our "check out" exam with the Modern Sailing Club so Audrey and I can charter in The Bay Area in California. 

Our UK RYA skippers qualifications are not recognised in the USA but with the MSC club you can "challenge" based on relevant experience and ability providing you pass the check out exam. This turned out to be a 4 hour practical grilling on the boat.

We were not in a hurry to do the American ASA 102 and 103 courses as it would have been a bunch of stuff we know and do already. We opted to do a club sail as crew with the club and then take a basic "start to charter" one day course which was a bunch of basic stuff with some marina park up and boat bumping practice that we always like doing.

So we arrived at 11AM and went through boat kit and safety inventory. We were then tested and had some value added on our local knowledge of weather and tides in The Bay. Our examiner (Stefan) was a very precise German racing skipper. He was shit hot!

We then had to leave the tight marina in our Catalina 36, prove we could manage all points of sail, show our tack and gybes off (Audrey and I are short handed, Sefan only watched). Finally this bit ended as we proved we could take reefs in on both sails... by now we we were nosing out into the Golden Gate "slot" and we had a good 15 knots of wind.

Then  came the man overboard test that has to be done under sail only.... I missed the bloody thing on first approach and gave us too much to do upwind. I had to bail and go around for a second go. This time my second approach was too biased down wind (we needed to nail it this time) but Audrey was great on dumping power and I finessed a J turn into wind to kill off the speed and Audrey hooked her in. Nice one.

We did ok on all the hidden rules of the road questions being fired at us all the time. 

No time for boat shots

On the way back Stefan forced us into the "narrow marina from hell" to make sure we could prop kick spin the boat. It all ended with a return our actual marina birth for a clean approach and park in a nasty side wind (thank you Jesus!). Final knot tests and boat tidy and we were done.

Audrey was exhausted as she had done most of the sail control and grinding and we did way more manoeuvres in 3 hours than we would normally do in a full day. I was knackered from the mental energy of trying to be spot on all the time.

We passed! "Stay humble and reef early" was Stefan's parting advice.

So next week we have a Catalina 30 for a few days..... 

Finally a picture from our celebration early dinner spot at Salito's. This was not really a photo op day ... too much stress and concentration! 

Audrey's Kind of Cycle Tour!

For the last few days we have been north of the bay at Healdsburg in wine country. 

We stayed at the local Healdsburg Best Western on a good deal ( www.drycreekinn.com ).

Nice room... cheesy american "Tuscan" styling.. just don't eat the breakfast! (Out to local Starbucks).

Healdsburg is lovely in a scary Stepford Wives kind of way and well worth a visit. Remember we are from good working class stock.... we don't actually go _into_ shops that advertise "Champagne and Shopping" ... we just stand outside and take pics.

We cycled the Dry Creek wineries with www.winecountrybikes.com  what is not to like?
We were encourage to "spit" as the California alcohol rules for bikes are the same as cars... So we did that (yeh right.....). I would reccomend this trip. Its more about wine than it is cycling... great bikes BTW... but we did around 18 miles tops in the day... no biggie.

Basically you pay $10 for a tasting of 4-5 wines and that gets refunded if you buy a bottle. These are the winery's "signature" or high end wines at $20 to $60 (of course they are....). We did a few at the lower end. We liked the Zinfandels and of course the Sauvignon Blancs.... None of this is coming home! ;-)

Sailing in the Bay

We did not quite know how this was going to work out but there are some small dreams coming true here.

We arranged to join the Modern Sailing School and Club in Sausalito ( www.modernsailing.com ).
They allowed us to joint for a month and kindly also reduced the one off joining fee.

Billy No Mates at Jazz by The Bay

Last Friday we attended the Jazz By The Bay social in Sausalito which is a local free gig held on the grassy area near the ferry jetty. The club sponsors a table at the event and we hoped to meet other bay area sailors... Ha... turned out we were the only MSC members that turned up that night!

Guests at the Sausalito Yacht Club. Thanks to Mark and Cheryl

Not being backward in coming forward we introduced ourselves to the group on the next table from the Sausalito Yacht Club (very nice thank you very much!)... What followed was a great night out with local sailors Mark and Cheryl. We ended up in the yacht club bar overlooking the bay to The City. Many stories were swapped! Audrey drove home ;-)

The thing is.... Sausalito is a very very expensive place but you take sailors that are managing to scrape some dosh together to charter or even own 34ish foot yachts and we are all the same! Damp campers!

Yesterday (Sunday) we attended our first club sail and joined with a diverse group of US sailors for a circumnavigation of Alcatraz and Angel Island. It got very windy in "The Slot" which is the corridoor under and through the Golden Gate bridge that sucks cold air in from the Ocean as the heat of the bay forms thermal rise.

Finally a video crossing the slot: I'm helming one handed in 30 knots of wind while holding an iPhone in the other hand. We had two hankercheifs up and the boat was still doing 7 knots to windward. 

The Script, Sunshine & a Quick Escape.

So Saturday early evening we ventured out of San Francisco to the Concord Pavillion, an outdoor gig venue about 40 miles away. We had brought tickets as we wanted to see The Script who were supporting One Republic.

We arrived at 6.30 and it was still very sunny and about 26 degrees. The venue was what they call a 'shed' here. An outdoor bowl shaped venue that holds about 12,000 people part covered by a roof, no sides.






There was a great atmosphere at the gig, very family friendly and the temperature soon dropped a bit as the sun set but it stayed warm.

It was a great gig in the outdoors under a stary sky singing along to the songs we knew. Everyone knew all the Script songs but One Republic, an american MOR band, were the main act most people came to see. They are big out here and everyone knew the songs off by heart (except us). We really enjoyed their set. They are a group of very accomplished musicians and not just a boy band.

We must confess we did leave a little before the end of the gig to avoid sitting in a que of 4000 cars trying to leave.

As we drove home over Bay Bridge the view of San Francisco by night as we returned was beautiful... we love it here.

Audrey

Mark Update:

The PA was d&b Jseries with J out hangs. Jsub was flown with Jinfra on the ground (4 per side).
It sounded okish... I would have mixed the vocal up for The Script and pushed the instrumentation a bit more. It was a bit of a drum show. One Republic.... the guy is a genius piano player so lets hear him... Also make the cello stronger. Actually on reflection the support band (American Authors) were mixed better than the headliners. Go figure.

Lots of family and fan teen/girls in the audience. All singing the words. Nice to see that the song writing of bands like Script and One Republic is getting into the minds of the kids. Really positive experience.

Butano State Park Visit

Oh yes we like Redwoods.

We took a drive out on Highway 1 along the coast heading south from The City through Half Moon Bay destined for Butano State Park. A long time ago we had visited the Big Basin state park and Butano was listed as being a smaller/quieter area.



The place was fundamentally beautiful. It has a campsite that we may return to for a couple of nights so we can do more walking. Have to buy a tent! We saw 5 people in the 4 hours we were in the park.

A walk up the hill to Bernal Heights

Audrey on Bernal Heights

Bernal Heights is a residential district just across to the east of where we are in Noe Valley. We can see this "hill" from our garden deck so we figured we should walk over and up it for a look see. 

As it turned out we had fantastic views of the whole city scape from up here.

The View down Mission to Downtown SF

Noe Valley

This is our neighbourhood. Noe Valley. Find the twin spired church and look one block right and down and our place is hidden in here. This is the church (St Pauls) that was used to film Sister Act I with Whoppi Goldberg

Finally a video (sorry about the wind) with me trying to talk through the SF districts we can see from here.