Jordan Visits the Bay Area!
Last week my good friend Jordan was in the Bay Area for the JavaOne conference being held in the Moscone center up in San Francisco. I remember talking with Jordan all the way back during finalist weekend for the Park Scholarships. In his four years at NC State he picked up a bachelor’s in CS, a bachelor’s in political science, and a Master’s in CS. He been at RedHat since graduating. We were both studying overseas in the fall of 2005 — Jordan was in Cork, Ireland — and shared an apartment in the spring semester after our return.
On Wednesday he joined Martin — one of his good friends and colleagues from Dr. Rappa’s lab — on the train down the peninsula for dinner in South Bay. Things didn’t go exactly to plan — apparently someone jumped into the train and they stopped it on the tracks. I asked where they were, and they said they had just left Menlo Park. “No problem,” I remarked, “you’re in my backyard. I’ll come get ya!” I discover minutes later that my car is completely dead. Wonderful. An hour later, Jordan and Martin finally make it off the train at Palo Alto, and I biked over to meet up with them. Martin’s finance, Melanie, joined us minutes later. I’ve met with Melanie more than I’ve had with Martin — especially I was living with Jordan. I failed to keep up with them after coming here, and after the evening I really regretted having done so.
We found an outdoor table at University Cafe for dinner. I found out that Martin had spent a year at Stanford actually before taking a leave of absence — he’s working for a startup in SF now. I also discovered that Martin helped create the Google Maps mashup campus map for Stanford — which is the default map I use and a vast improvement over the ‘official’ map. Cool! We followed up dinner with “froyo” at the new self-serve place on University Avenue, the same place that I went to with Greg and Kelly. Two thumbs up from everyone. We had to give Jordan a taste of the frozen yogurt craze that grips Palo Alto. We also took a ride and walked the Quad a bit before Jordan caught the train back up the City.
Sorry I couldn’t head back up into the City to hang out with you more, Jordan. Learn some UX skills and get out here. :)