– On August 15th, I went to a baseball game with my dad. The company he works at, Xenoport, was having a company outing at the San Jose Giants game, and the tickets were only $2. This was my first time going to a minor league game, and it was pretty cool. Very different from a major league game, from the $2 seats being about 10 rows behind home plate, to the announcers trying to get the crowd and kids involved between every inning, to the $2.50 beers. The game wasn’t amazing, as the Giants lost to the Stockton Ports, 3-2. Still, it was a fun game and definitely worth a return visit.
– I’ve since dropped by Cornerstone as well, to see some of the analysts and also some of my old managers. I also picked up my “tombstone”, commemorating the firm’s success on the big JDSU case where Cornerstone assisted with expert reports and trial testimony. The case went to trial in the fall of 2007, and a verdict in favor of the defense was returned after Thanksgiving.
The tombstone lists the company name, law firms, and Cornerstone on one side, along with the names of every Cornerstone employee who billed time to the set of JDSU cases.
Thanks are in order to Gil Lee for the idea and following through with the idea.
– Over the weekend, I visited Merced, to see the new house my brother and his wife bought a few months back. He’s an assistant professor at UC Merced now, and classes start pretty soon. The campus is miniscule compared to Berkeley, but they’re hoping to build it out and model the campus after Berkeley.
– My next tournament is coming up over Labor Day Weekend in San Francisco. It’s the annual CalChess Labor Day Tournament, which doubles as the official state championship. Somehow I’ve avoided playing in this tournament for years (the last time I played was in 1999), but as I’m making a return to the chess scene, this will serve as my first tournament anywhere in the Bay Area since 2005. The tournament is at the Golden Gateway Holiday Inn in San Francisco (corner of Van Ness and Pine) with rounds from Saturday through Monday.
– As a closing note, the other day I was on Expedia looking for plane tickets for one of my later tournaments (at the end of December in Las Vegas) and I got this amusing suggestion. Note that the airports are Oakland and Las Vegas …
It’s kind of sad that the cheapest way to Las Vegas from Oakland is to first fly a few thousand miles east.
There and Back Again 