First Beer Bash and Dinner

Every 3-5 weeks Apple has a Beer Bash on our main campus. Now, while the invite posting always says "Badged Personnel Only", I still never felt comfortable as a contractor going down there, even though technically I was a "badged personnel" person. So tonight was a New Products Beer Bash, where they toted out the new MacBook Air and also showed off the updated Apple TV. First off, let me say the the MacBook Air kicks major ass. It's tiny, it's light, yet it's a fully functional laptop. The whole "full-size keyboard" thing doesn't sink in until you pick it up. You sit there and realize, 'Yes it weighs 3 pounds, yes it's tiny as hell, but holy crap, I'm not missing anything I've come to expect from a laptop.' I'm totally getting one.

The updated Apple TV looked pretty sweet. My initial reaction to the product almost a year ago was 'ho-hum' but now it looks pretty nice with the whole HD thing and the beginnings of streaming movies through it. Now, I have no insider knowledge leading me to this conclusion, but I would say it's a safe bet that within the next year or two this product will support you ripping all of your DVDs to your Mac and streaming them through it.

The overall Beer Bash experience was very cool. It was packed in Caffe Macs (where they held it) but not to the point of uncomfortableness. They were serving ice cold kegs of Marzen, Guinness, Harp and Heineken, along with wine, water and soft drinks. There was some decent-looking finger food, of which I only sampled the pizza bread (tasty enough). They also gave out MacBook Air posters, and if I can find an image of it I will post it. I heard from other employees that the poster thing is not the norm, but I hope it may be going forward because it's a neat memento.

My parents offered to take me to dinner to celebrate my new job and I picked The Counter on Santana Row. It's an "upscale" burger joint where you can custom order your burger down to the type of lettuce. It was very tasty and all of us were highly pleased with the food. I'll have to give it one more try before I toot its horn too much; suffice to say it was gooooood. I've decided next time I'll try a chicken "burger" with peanut sauce, scallions and shredded carrots for a Thai experience.