It just keeps getting better
Just when I think things can’t get any better… another fun night rolls around and a new experience completely knocks me off my feet with excitement. Tonight Shannon took us to a fabulous restaurant in San Jose. Straits is a restaurant/nightclub that offers tappas style eating, a bar, and fabulous dancing.
We were completely blown away with this place. The atmosphere was unlike any other. I felt like i was walking down the street to the restaurant with my mouth wide open…. it’s just breathtaking. Straits is right on Santanta Row which is an incredible shopping, eating, and living experience. High-end shops and restaurants line the street and a mass of people flock to the area every night of the week.
The dj was incredible and we ended our meal with some sweet dancing to work off all of the incredible food that we ate. I can’t wait to take our friends to this place to hang out when they come and visit…. You know you wanna go don’t you!!
Kevin Rose from Digg tried to steal my girlfriend.
Stephanie just posted about the Diggnation party that we headed out to last night at a night club in San Francisco. It was Stephanie’s first time venturing up to ‘the city’ and it was definitely an eye-opener for me as far as the level of diversity that a city such as San Francisco has - especially when compared to our last experiences with Indianapolis. Stephanie wrote an awesome post about how the night went, so I’m just going to post a few things that you all should be aware of and that I noticed throughout the night:
- Kevin Rose got me in a headlock and tried to steal my girlfriend. Ok, well he did get me in a headlock (see pics below)
- When we walked into the club, people were literally cheering while Kevin and Alex played Halo 3 on the big screens
- Mighty, the night club that hosted the event, is supposedly one of best new clubs in the nation, plays mostly techno and just hosted a party that was full of computer geeks like myself. Amazing.
- The place was crazy packed with people. Some who flew/drove pretty damn far just for this event.
- Stephanie’s step mom, Shannon is a dancing machine.
- Kevin and Alex literally took pictures with fans for about an hour straight
Here are a couple of the pics of the night - be sure to click the CRANK IT button in the bottom right-hand corner of the pic to view/add some Cranks!
I “Digg” Nerds!
One of my favorite parts about moving is experiencing all of the fun and exciting events and happenings of a new city. Lucky for us we are only a short 20 minute drive away from one of the coolest cities I have ever been to, San Francisco. It’s truly an incredible city and the options are endless for fun things to do.
Tonight we had the opportunity to go to one of the top-rated night clubs in the United States, Mighty in San Francisco. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht of diggnation.com hosted their live tech/web culture show at the club and wow was it an experience.
As you can imagine the show brought quite the crowd of nerds out to see the two digg guys talk all about techie stuff that I personally don’t understand a word of. 
Of course, Ryan and Abdo had a blast and felt right at home!
After the show was over we had a chance to meet both Kevin and Alex ( see above photo where they obviously wanted to leave Ryan out of the picture ) and then later show off some of our sweet dance moves!! I can’t wait to go to more of these awesome events and meet more and more incredible people in this great city. Have I mentioned recently how much I love California?? Well… I do… A LOT!! It keeps getting better and better!
Nerds Gone Wild! Photobucket party in San Fran
Last night me and my man Jeff headed up to the ‘big city’, aka San Francisco, to chat with a big time radio station about utilizing the awesomeness of PhotoCrank for their online properties. The meeting went awesome (another post here soon) and needless to say they were really diggin’ what we have going on with the product - which gives me a great feeling going forward. The opportunity is amazing out here in Palo Alto and it seems like with each day more and more doors are opened to me. It’s incredible, really.
After the awesome meeting Jeff and I decided that we needed to celebrate by heading over to an invite-only party that was thrown by the guys over at Photobucket (Wikipedia entry). This entire week San Fran is hosting the Web 2.0 Expo, so almost every cool, hip and rad Internet outfit are throwing parties to celebrate. Photobucket definitely has the means to throw a sweet bash (open bar, food, the works) considering that they were bought by FOX for $250 million about a year ago.
The party was an amazing time and I had the chance to meet some AMAZING people including the 8th guy to work at Napster, the 3rd guy at Photobucket and Jeff even met the guy who created AOL Instant Messenger. God bless that man, I think that me and all of my friends owe him a high five for what he’s given our generation. Like I said, awesome people…now I just need to get in touch with all of them.
Here are a few photos from the bash - click the Crank button in the bottom right-hand corner of each pic for my thoughts on each one and feel free to get your Crank on, too.
Thanks to my man, Jeff.
So the last piece of furniture that Stephanie and I needed to buy is probably the first one that most people get - a bed. We had some time to spare due to the fact that we have a couch that has a bed inside of it, but I think that both of us are pretty much over sleeping on a fold-out-bed in our living room.
Today was the day to go and get our bed and thankfully my man Jeff, whom I will be working with out here in Palo Alto, was up for the challenge of basically driving through the ghetto to go pick it up - not to mention he was taking time out of his day to do so. Well, after 4 hours, a strapped down mattress that would make any hillbilly proud and many, many stops in places Jeff wasn’t too excited to stop in, we had the mattress back at our cottage. It wasn’t really easy and definitely not the most efficient way to do it, but God knows that we all have a story to tell all of the newspapers and magazines once we are all millionaires a few months from now.
As a way to thank Jeff I felt like I needed to show my appreciation in a way that clearly showed how thankful I was for him helping us out today when I know he had many other better things to do. I also wanted to have some fun with his East Coast mindset when it comes to a guy from Indiana coming out to the ‘big city’. Watch the video below or check it out over here on YouTube.
Thanks again Jeff, Stephanie and I both truly appreciate your help today.
Getting settled in
I know that it’s barely been 3 days since we’ve been here in out new home in Palo Alto, but we have had to do so much and everything is so new that it seems like we’ve been here a month already. Between getting used to our new cottage(which is AWESOME), getting new furniture, meeting awesome new people and getting prepared for new jobs - there is definitely plenty to be done.
Yesterday Stephanie and I decided to take a trip to IKEA so that we could get a few pieces of furniture that would make our cottage feel a little more like home and make it a little more useful (check out pics from the adventure over here on Facebook). It’s pretty amazing how you never realize how important the things are in your life that you tend to get so used to, such as coffee tables, tables with chairs, beds, etc. You know, the things that everyone has to get at one time or another.
It’s also funny how this same feeling can be applied to some friends and family that I had to leave when I decided to take this crazy adventure out west. I think that I have officially talked to my brother more the last month than I have the last 3 years of my life due to the fact that we’re now 2,000+ miles away. It’s funny how when we were only 10 miles apart that we didn’t really chat much at all, but now that I’m in Palo Alto we feel like we need to talk more than ever. But hey, I’m not complaining and I could definitely get used to it.
I am hoping that this blog will help all of you keep up with everything that we’re doing out here in Palo Alto and I’m also hoping that it will also convince most of you to come out and visit us sometime soon. Very soon…
Also, since we rocked out IKEA yesterday, I figure that it’s only appropriate to post this video of Stephanie and I visiting the furniture paradise when we came out here last January. Have you ever been to IKEA? If not, you’re in for quite an experience.
Palo Alto adventures: Eating at Plutos
We have officially made it to our new home in Palo Alto, CA and in fact - I am typing this from the living room of our new cottage. I have a couple of videos to post from the last day and a half of driving, but I wanted to go ahead and give you all a glimpse of what Palo Alto is all about.
Stephanie and I headed to a place called Plutos today, which is located right on the main strip (University Avenue). Although they yelled at me a few times to put away my camera, I still somehow came away with some sweet footage of this awesome and very tasty place to get your grub on. Check out the video below or click here to enjoy it over here on YouTube
More videos coming soon and once we get settled in you’ll be hearing a lot more from us here on the Internets..enjoy!
Thanks, Craigslist! We finally found a place…
I am VERY happy to announce that after many, many hours of Craigslist, phone calls, emails, etc. we have officially nailed down a place to live out in the beautiful city of Palo Alto, CA. I think that it was well worth the wait considering that we snagged one of the best places that I could ever imagine us living in.
It’s a cottage that is literally 2 blocks away from the main strip in downtown Palo Alto and the landlords seem super cool to boot. I’m pretty sure that the interviewing process for this place was more intense than any job interview that I’ve ever had to go through in Indianapolis, but they were very adamant about getting the right type of people in there. Considering that the cottage is located directly behind their house who can really blame them, right?
Well, the good news is that after speaking to them on the phone several times and after sending them many of the videos from around Indy that Stephanie and I have been creating - we’re actually going to be moving into our new place in a little over a week! I can not wait to met our new landlords and their family, I think that they’re going to be a lot of fun and will soon become our Palo Alto foster parents before you know it.
This whole process has moved along very fast and it has been a little crazy, but it just seems like it has all worked out for the best. I think that the fact that Stephanie and I are going to be living in this cottage is yet another example of this and hopefully the trend of everything going our way will continue as we make our way out west. What an adventure…
Oh yeah, be sure to check out the video below or over here on YouTube to get a better idea of what it’s like trying to find a place to live out in Palo Alto, CA while still living in Indianapolis, IN. We repeated this same process about 60 times in less than 4 days. Good times.
Heading to Cali Series: Getting rid of Steph’s car
Wow, does it feel good to actually break the news to the world about Stephanie and I heading out to Palo Alto, California. I have held back until now for a few different reasons, but now it’s officially time to let everyone know that WE ARE MOVING TO CALIFORNIA!
Whew…there, I finally said it and in about a week I’ll be living it as we pack up and drive on out west to our new cottage out in the warm and beautifully sunny streets of the computer nerd capital of the world. I’m sure that I’ll fit in just fine, but there is plenty of nervousness going on even though this is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time now. I know that it will work out perfectly with Stephanie and I fitting in like we belonged there from the beginning. I guess it’s like I always say: ‘If you don’t get nervous about it, then it’s probably not even worth doing.’
So, as we move along the super accelerated schedule of moving out there we have a a type of ‘mental list’ of things that we need to take care of before we get out there. One of the first things we decided to take care of was what we are going to do with our cars. Stephanie drives a 2007 Civic si and I was driving a 2007 GMC Envoy Denali and we have decided that we need to not only get down to one car(with one cheaper payment), but we also needed to get into something a little more gas efficient.
But, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, the first thing we had to do was get rid of Stephanie’s ride. We were told to go get her car appraised at Carmax so that we could see what it was worth. It was my first Carmax experience, so of course I decided to make a video about it and you can check it out below or over here on YouTube. This is the first of many more Moving to Cali Series videos that we’ll be making, so come on along for the ride!
Open call, anyone?
A while back I met up with a friend of mine who works for an advertising agency called Hirons here in Indianapolis. At Hirons she is constantly in need of talent for all types of ad campaigns that are ran everywhere from TV commercials to billboards to websites and who knows where else. While we were chatting I brought up the fact that I have always thought that Stephanie should go test the waters at a telent/modeling agency here in Indy and I asked her who she used when finding talent for the many projects that she works on. The first group that she mentioned was The Helen Wells Agency, who is based in Carmel, IN. She said that they do a lot of work around the area and that they’d be a great place to start.
That conversation happened over a month ago and for some reason last night I decided to check out Helen Wells’ website and I quickly learned that they have open calls once a month and that the next one was actually the next morning(which was this morning). After a couple quick phone calls to Stephanie she quickly agreed on heading over to check it out and so that’s just what we did.
We arrived to the open call right before 10:00am and before you know it we were getting ready to hear how we can possibly become the next big talent here in the tri-state area. After listening to 25 minutes of the basics of what to expect from here on out we handed in our info, a few pictures(that I printed off of Facebook) and now all we can do is wait for the next step in our ambitious pursuit - the highly anticipated call back. We’ll get called back though, right? Maybe? Oh crap, keep your fingers crossed.