Monday I slept in, then woke to a house mostly clear. John and I had waffles for breakfast. He went into Berkeley to work on his aluminum foundry, I decided to stay and try to get some work done before heading south on the Caltrain.

Unfortunately most of my computer time was spent trying to get my PowerBook to connect to the wi-fi. I had been connected for over a day, but it would no longer connect to the 2Wire from AT&T.

I blame them both: AT&T for using crappy products, and Apple for not interoperating with crappy products. I had the same problem at Bret’s, but it happened even sooner.

I couldn’t manage to resolve the problem after trying several possible solutions found on-line. Basically, the dynamic IP vending of the router was not succeeding and an automatic IP was being generated.

My guess is the newer b/g implementation and the older b implementation get into an untennable place after the computer sleeps while holding a DHCP value from the old router.

I eventually gave up.

I did enjoy a fabulous sushi lunch down the hill from John’s place on Mission.

I then cleaned up, took a BART south, then the Caltrain. Unfortunately, I wasn’t familiar with the Caltrain peculiarities and an express came a few minutes before the train I wanted.

The train didn’t stop at Mountain View and when it was stopped at Sunnyvale the stop was not marked at all. Once we were pulling out I realized I had gone too far, and the next stop was 4 stops down the line in San Jose.

Though my ride had gone astray, we left the heavily enfogged city for nicely sunny suburbs, the chill only barely noticable.

By random chance of luck I made the train back that would beat the return train from the closer station. Arriving only 30 minutes late, Dmitri thought I made good time. You’ve got to love a Russian’s scope of time passage.

He gave me a casual evening tour of Google and we ate outside and chatted and caught up. Then we went to the Tied House not too far away and had some hand crafted beers and more conversation.

Then he dropped me back at the Caltrain station for a ride back into the city. More confident I could figure out the trip back, I waited in the chill air with a few dozen other riders of the 9:47. This particular train would make every stop.