{"id":376,"date":"2005-03-11T02:07:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-11T02:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=376"},"modified":"2005-03-11T02:07:00","modified_gmt":"2005-03-11T02:07:00","slug":"happy-donuts-eases-the-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2005\/03\/11\/happy-donuts-eases-the-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Donuts Eases the Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m blasting through the San Francisco Bay Area for the Game Developers’ Conference<\/a>, my annual pilgrimage to the place where artificial intelligence is really used by people to really make things that people really care about. While out here I’ve seen a lot of good friends, including Victor and Steve and Neil — and especially including the Rubrick, one of my Edge buddies from high school and college.<\/p>\n

As we were chilling after great dinner at E&O; Trading Company in the City, Derek was horrified to learn that I planned to track down to Menlo Park and hit Kepler’s Bookstore and Barrone’s coffeehouse. “Dude! Don’t go down to the peninsula. Find something new in the city!” And I did — I took half a day finding bookstores in the City like Stacey’s and MacDonalds Books, digging through Rasputin’s used record store, and scouring leather shops like Stormy Leather, Mr. S and Madame S looking for new clubwear.<\/p>\n

But then it was time to go down to my old haunts … Menlo Park. Palo Alto. Mountain View. It was too late to scour the Stanford Bookstore, so I hit NOLA’s New Orleans restaurant just off University Avenue instead, then trolled up to Megabooks (alas, also just closed) and the mega-Borders (mmm, good philosophy bookness) instead. But this, too, must close.<\/p>\n

But not Happy Donuts.<\/p>\n

An incredible congregation of donuts, students, and WiFi, Happy Donuts has slowly evolved from a quiet little donut shop (circa 1997 when I lived here) into the premiere place in the Peninsula for late night information exchange. The donuts are good. The Wi-Fi is free. And they’re always open — 24\/7. You tell me where the studious (and, from the conversation at the table across from me, some not-so-studious) college kids are.<\/p>\n

And here, at last, I begin to catch up on my blog. Even with my camera’s power down I can still document the experience because I carry a phone with me. Yes, Mister Christian, it’s the 21st century: we may not be on the Moon, but I just took a picture with a dang phone<\/i>: <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

If you’re too young to have taken apart your parents’ AT&T-standard; T phone and then put it back together by hand, you may not understand, but I just took a picture with a handheld phone that looks an awful lot like a Star Trek communicator! Captain Kirk never had it so good! <\/p>\n

Mmmm … rich creamery technology goodness. As Homer Simpson might say: Happy Donuts eases the pain.<\/p>\n

-the Centaur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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