Great America ...

... the amusement park was a fun time. I have to say that I think I enjoyed this park better than the Disneyland and California Adventure which was next to it. The rides here were definitely more thrill, which resulted in some nice adrenaline surges :D It was also nice to have half price discounted tickets, all you can eat BBQ and a day when the lines for the rides weren't ridiculous.

My favourite would have to be the drop zone tower thingy. The ride takes you straight up twenty-two storeys and then it drops you for some fun free fall action :D :D

The wooden roller coaster was also interesting, and I can see why people admire the charm of riding one. So in saying that, it had the longest line, and I managed to find someone whose mother didn't teach them to dress properly, tsk, tsk... heh (well I thought he looked ridiculous anyway...)

New Laptop :D

So this week I bought an R61 Thinkpad laptop. It's a bit of a brick, i.e. it's not a skinny laptop, but I'm not going to be taking it around many places, so the size isn't an issue for me. I chose the other specifications so that it is robust enough to last me a couple years. It however comes with Windows Vista. So, impressions so far - everything works and runs fine, but not that I have extensively tested it. One thing I have noticed is that logging into Windows takes a really long time.

I am planning to downgrade to XP, however the Aero interface is a nice change to the XP one. But I guess at this stage I'll stick with Vista a little longer, as the applications I'm thinking of running I don't need to use yet...

Fourth of July

This last weekend
been and gone was a three day long weekend. I took the opportunity to relax a little...

The Fourth of July, or Independence Day, is ritually the day that fireworks are set off. In addition to that, people have barbeques, relax, etc. So the day was spent doing pretty much nothing, as for the evening, we drove up to spend the night in San Francisco. I was invited to a going away/4th of July party, hosted by my fellow kiwi brethren.
The party was fun, as usual, but the fireworks were a bit of a disappointment (not that I care about fireworks anyway). It seems that here in the States, you have to get a permit to light fireworks, thus they are usually left to the big displays in the cities. Unfortunately, the notorious San Francisco fog rolled in, and nothing of the fireworks display was really visible.


The following day was spent strolling around San Francisco. There was some really bizzare modern sculpture near the ferry terminal... Oh, I finally took a photo of the "Full House" houses at Alamo Square :D - the painted ladies as they are known.