Present Perfect

So, after PyCon, I went to town. I had gotten a Washington guide and found some places that might interest me. Saturday I wanted to shop for music, books and comics. I went to Big Planet comics in Georgetown, which from the sound of it you'd expect it to be a huge comic book store. In reality it was really small, and for every comic it only had about six back issues. A missed opportunity.

As for music, same thing - something called CDepot seemed to promise lots of choice, but it was as small as your average Barcelona indie record store.

Books was better. After visits to Borders, Barnes and Noble, and some scientific book store I can't remember the name of I ended up with over 20 books. Ouch. But the $ is soooooo low, and the numbers are lower too than when ordering, so I thought it'd make sense to stock up. I bought a bunch of fiction, some programming-related books (Joel on Software, for example), and some work-related books. I think all of them together weigh in at over 10 kg.

I also went to BestBuy. How any Americans can live close to one without buying up half the stuff is beyond me. Sadly, I couldn't find any of the Ogg Vorbis players I was planning on buying. They had 10 types of I-pods, and none of the good stuff. Apparently all of the good stuff is available through mail-order only. Next time I'll order before I come.
Oh, and apparently, Napster still lives. Who'dathunk ?

Washington is not as big on silly signs as Boston was, sadly. I only got about five or so. Mainly most of the signs are duplicates.

Saturday night I was going to see Interpol play at the 9:30 club. The only problem was I couldn't reach Donald (and I had his ticket), and I had to miss the opener, Blonde Redhead. I went in at 9, and came back out twice to check if he was there. Apparently he was there at 9:10, they didn't let him in to come look for me, and he went away.

The concert was excellent - the sound was great, they played my faves, ... He still has problems keeping tune when singing though, and the guitarist was terrible at it. But their keyboard player did great backups, and at least the guitarist is damn good at doing what he's supposed to do.

On Sunday I went to the Smithsonian (the Flight and Space museum, to be precise) and the Mall, and walked around downtown. Washington is pretty boring actually during the day. I don't know what I expected, but there just was not that much going on. I did catch a family unit on
Segways ! I wish I had time to try it.

I also tried to find grits for Andy, which he blackmailed me into. It took seven stores to find them, and everyone seemed to find it very funny that a European was looking for grits. Got a real American burger (or so I think) at Fuddruckers - they don't even have quarterpounders, they start at 1/3. So I got a halfpounder.

By Monday I was getting pretty bored of being in Washington - there really is not that much to see if you don't feel very American. I was glad to get on the plane and go back home. No business class this time, couldn't get any sleep at all, arrived around 12.30 in the afternoon and went home for a joyous reunion with my lovely girl. Then hit the sack for six hours, woke up for an hour, then back to sleep for eight more. Time to get back to hacking !

So, after PyCon, I went to town. I had gotten a Washington guide and found some places that might interest me. Saturday I wanted to shop for music, books and...