General

Check out Soluna’s in San Francisco. Located right next to city hall and BART‘able with a little walking. Nice place to take a date for dinner and then off to catch the San Francisco Opera or San Francisco Symphony about a block or two away!

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Grilled Ahi from Soluna's in San Francisco

Chicken at Soluna's in San Francisco

Another day of Berkeley protestors marching down Shattuck Ave in Berkeley, CA, protesting the wars and/or occupation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Israel.

Berkeley protestors protesting the wars. Note the girl with the megaphone in the lower left corner

I highly recommend Fish Castle located in Berkeley, CA. It’s one of the few places you can actually get fish & chips! DELICIOUS!

Fish Castle Chicken Strips and Fries with ranch dressing

Update! Turns out the line are for new jobs at the Hotel Shattuck across the street.

Hotel Shattuck in construction

I took this picture of these line of people in downtown Shattuck in Berkeley of people waiting for job openings? I’m assuming they want jobs for this new unannounced store. I wonder what this store is going to be.

Downtown Shattuck - People looking for jobs?

Spent the 3-day Valentine’s weekend in rainy Monterey, California.

My girlfriend, Meagan, and I stayed at the Old Monterey Inn, which is a lovely bed and breakfast hidden in a little residential street located at 500 Martin St, Monterey, CA, which is not too far from downtown Monterey.  The inn provides a lobby with a grand piano that you can play, daily morning SF Chronicle newspaper delivered to your room, breakfast to your room or out in the dining area, public internet computer in the lobby, a nice garden in the back, cookies, coffee and a refrigerator with unlimited drinks of bottled water, Juice Squeeze, yogurt and Ocean Spray canned drinks.  I chose to stay in the Tattershall room pictured above for $275/night.  The room is just right for two people and has a nice little couch, which unfortunately is cut out from the picture.  The bathroom in the room contains a nice shower stall with amenities such as toothbrush, toothpaste, hair dryer, mouthwash, towels, toilet paper, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, as well as a nice make-up mirror.  The bed is very comfortable for two people and does not make any squeaks or noises.  The place is quiet and the walls can be a little thin, particularly when people are in the hallway walking and talking.  When it’s too quiet, you can hear your neighbors coughing next door. Other than that, the Old Monterey Inn was a delightful bed and breakfast place that I would highly recommend to people.  We definitely would love to stay again and check out another room.

Below are some of the great foods and places that we ate around in Monterey, CA:

Valentine cupcakes from Meagan's grandmother

Country Fried Steak at the Black Bear Diner in Monterey, CA

Had an unproductive Sunday. My girlfriend Meagan made me a delicious omelet with 6 strips of bacon.

YUM! Meagan's omelet

YUMMMMM

Finally got around to practicing my Dvorak Op. 26 Piano trio violin part after work today.

I’m still stumped about objected oriented programming in PHP. I understand the concepts, but not sure about how to put it into use. I’m meeting with the PHP guru on Wednesday and hopefully he’ll guide me in the right direction.

Chips, guac, and a steak burrito for dinner.

Another useless weekend of playing Left4Dead. I haven’t picked up my instrument in a week, nor have I done any web programming work as I planned. I’m a failure!!!

Chicken Fried Steak from Chili's

Devoured this Chicken Fried Steak from Chili’s with no problems after my MySQL+PHP course in Cupertino, CA.  I had to kill time to wait for the traffic on the 280-S and the 880-N to clear up.  I hate the South Bay.