I'm in California (and have been here for two weeks now). Specifically San Francisco. I'm renting a house with some friends; the weather is bizarre and wonderful. The first thing about the weather is that it never rains. The second thing is that it's either completely clear and sunny, or there's a thick layer of fog at ground level. This is very consistent. Clouds are never "in the sky". On my commute home every day, I look out the window, and about half the time, there are these huge freaking clouds rolling over the hills on both sides of the train. You can't see the tops of the hills, but you can see the texture of the clouds billowing down the mountain.

Commute. I commute to NetApp every day via public transportation. It's a long commute from San Francisco to the south of the Bay (Sunnyvale), mainly because I have to change trains three times: SF Muni (that's the subway), change to another Muni, get on Caltrain (it's a comfortable express train and the longest part of the journey). Get off in Mountain View and get on the VTA, which is a light rail that gets me right outside the office. The whole shebang takes two hours each way, and (if you don't have a monthly pass) costs me over 15 dollars a day. Fortunately, I now have a monthly pass, which saves me both a lot of grief and a lot of money, because it happens to work on all three of the transportation systems I mentioned. It's very convenient.

San Francisco is definitely the most awesome place I've lived. It's just so rich in all the little cultural and technological stuff I love. For instance, there's this wonderful Chinese bakery up on Taraval St. -- they basically do rolls, but there's about 30 different kinds. I told the woman behind the counter to just pick me out four rolls, any kind. I had no idea what I ate for lunch that day, but it was very tasty, and it cost me a total of four bucks, including a drink.