December 16th, 2003

Posted on 15th December @ 8:59pm @ Melanies house.

Yesterday (14th December) we got up early and drove to Portland. Its about 2 hours (maybe a bit more then that) away form where Melanies house is. Its also in another completley different state – Oregan. That means ive been to a total of 4 states in America! woooohhooooo!

So yeah, Mels dad drove and we got there pretty early. First stop was a shopping mall in Portland. Portland doesnt have any tax, so whereas Wasington adds on a tax when you go to buy stuff, in portland the price shown is what it costs. Anyway i didnt find anything to buy, we spent about 2 hours at the shopping place and it was pretty cool.

From there we went and had some lunch. I had a really tasty Club sandwich – it was really really good. We all finished eating and wouldnt fit dessert in so we jsut went onto the next stop.

Powells book shop was the reason we went to Portland. It is a HUGE bookshop abd ahs a techincal book section in a completely different building. I never thought id say it but there where too many books. Yup – too many. I mean in the techincal section there is jsut too much to choose from. You really gotta research the books and jsut go there to buy them. There are shelves upon shelves of anything cpmuter related you could think of – it was very cool. I ended up buying an Applescript book – ive always wanted an applescript reference type book and the new version for pantehr has jsut been released.

After the techincal section i went back to the main book building and got lost in there for an hour or so. Theres books on everything you could ever want. Its somewhat exhausting….

From there – it was back in the car and hit the road. We stopped over at another shopping mall on the way for a look but didnt stay that long. We also stopped at a restarant for somthing to eat on the way back – about 1.5 hours away from Melanies house.. I didnt get much cause i was pretty full.

So yeah, thats about it for Sunday. Powells is amazing – so big! But like i said, unless you live nearby and are jsut using it as a library – your probably betetr off researching what you want on their website. *shrugs*

Today (15th) we went to SEA-TAC mall – i got Melanie to ask one of her old students to suggest some music that i should get. Anyway he got back to ehr and i lashed out and got some cds – thought id broaden my musical horizon As yet i havnt listened to then cause i had to fix up my iPod cause i wanted to load them on it. So yeah thats all done and they are all loaded, i might listen to them a bit tomorrow – depending on what we are doing.

Also finished the Linus Torvalds book today – its not a bad read but thinking about it now its more of a ‘Im Linus, you should use linux and stuff should be opensource’ rant. *shrugs* The history behind Linux though was interesting and there area few cool insights into Linus that are interesting.

So yeah – thats about it. My stuff i ordered off the net came today. Whilst in america do as the americans do – so i bought melanies christmas present online and got it shipped here – cool huh?!

Righto – im done for now. If i think of anything else ill add it later.