John D Was my roommate in Webster in the early 90s and the first resident of my house in the Houston Heights (I was living out of town when I bought it.)

He now resides in the San Francisco area and has tempted me with the Maker Faire to bypass Los Angeles.

I called up Amtrak to finalize the California part of my trip. Unfortunately the 5 minutes of connection time between the Sunset Limited and the Coast Starlight is not feasible. So without enough time to go south and visit another friend, I plan to make a day of it in central Los Angeles. Currently my plans include checking out Japan Town and perhaps a beer bar or two.

It ended up that all my previous bookings had been canceled because they were set to have the tickets picked up over a week ago. But it was no problem, they were all on file and have been rebooked.

I have also connected with Dmitri, a previous co-worker who is now at Google. He and I had a very intense software design relationship and it will be great to see him again. He’s gonna show me around the Google campus: should be fun.