My brother and I met with one of the folks at Mplayer.com at 8 am for breakfast. We passed by the Netscape buildings, I was in awe of how many buildings Netscape has in San Jose. I saw just about 9 or 10 of them in one area, they seemed to all be on the same street. Another place we passed by was Moffet Airfield and the Intel Building. Moffet Airfield has a Ames Research Center there, with all of the satellite dishes, which is the home of things like NASA’s Mars Missions.
After entering the Mplayer.com building, it was much larger than I anticipated. Right after you pass the front entrance, there’s a long hallway with game box covers hanging on the wall. Sort of like how someone would line-up and hang pictures on the wall. It gave the hall a fun gaming atmosphere.
After talking with Tim ‘Cajunlanding’ Weaver for a bit, Nathan gave us a tour of the place. I saw everything from Tim’s Office, QA Lab, Customer Support Area, a big Breakroom, Boardroom and the Engineering area. The Breakroom had a lot of coke machines, and other food vending machines. In one of the corners of the room, there was a sofa with a Nintendo 64 console system. The Engineering area had purple walls and other cool decorations.
I met Hilary after talking with her for almost two years online, she is a very sweet person. She almost looks like one of my cousins. Another person I was really happy to see was Sean Butcher. I have only talked to him on the phone so seeing him and finally getting a chance to shake his hand in person was really nice. He still had his cute European accent too. I used to work with Sean Butcher with an older Classics and Casino site. I updated it daily with Classic Puzzle and other Card gaming news. The Classics and Casino site later on moved to Mplayer’s new Card and Board Games site.
Right after the tour, we had an Xtreme Network meeting in one of the Conference rooms. We focused a lot on some details about the network. By then, Tim Weaver told us all it was about time for some lunch. We all drove out to a Mexican restaurant called Pedros. It wasn’t too bad of food, they had some really good green sauce and red salsa with chips.
When we returned to the office, I went to the QA Lab to update some of my sites. The room was a bit dark and very chilly. At times I thought I should walk back to Nathan’s office and grab my coat, but I knew I would get lost. The building was almost like a Labyrinth maze, I would easily get lost for being there my first time. I guess walking around out there would have warmed me up but it was better that I got in a few posts at the sites while I could. Even if my hands were to cold to type at times. It was sort of odd, at one point I would be freezing cold and then it would be fine. Then 5 minutes later, it was extremely col again. I guess the air conditioning in the room was set at a particular temperature for all of the computers. Which is ok, I just learned my lesson: “Always wear my Jacket in rooms that are dark with tons of computers in them.”
After getting settled in our Hotel, my brother and I walked down to Starbucks. I was getting a little sleepy and it was only almost 3pm. I haven’t actually had Starbucks coffee before. Yes, they are all stretched through-out California and other states but I just never took the time to actually walk in any of them. I have tried their Ice Cream that is available in the grocery stores. I enjoy their Javachip flavor the most but I haven’t tried all of their flavors yet.
Walking inside was pretty cool, I felt right at home. The only thing, I was hot from walking the distance from the hotel to Starbucks that I was sort of looking for some ice cream instead of hot mocha. They didn’t carry ice cream at all there. After buying Jacob and I some iced mochas, I realized that Jacob never tried an Iced Mocha. In fact, I believe he isn’t into hot Mocha either so his first sip was a disgusted look about the taste right off. He made me laugh when I saw him do that. I have tried other Iced Mochas and I am not a fan of them but I was hot so I thought it would be alright. Starbucks has the best flavor of an Iced Mocha I have ever tried but it is extremely strong. I am not into strong types of coffee flavors, I tend to enjoying soothing yet mellow coffee, that is why I put lots of cream in my regular hot coffees.
That evening was really nice. Nathan and Jeff (Software Engineer for Mplayer.com) picked us up, then drove over to pick up Joan. We had met Jeff briefly before we left the Mplayer building earlier that day. Nathan’s wife, Joan was very sweet. She looked like she was in her mid 20s with short brown hair up to her shoulders. In fact, when I first looked at her, she looked exactly like a friend I grew up with.
We all drove out to Palo Alto and ate at California Pizza Kitchen (CPK). They have awesome Spinach dip. It was like some type of cheese in it but it wasn’t a strong spinach flavor at all. CPK also had some great tasting Iced Tea.
We walked through Mountain View downtown. I glanced over and saw a white guy banging his drum and singing reggae. Later on when we were headed back, he had a friend with him singing and banging on her own drum. She was a bit more off tune but it was cool to see someone join in.