Blizzcon 2009 Day -1: In Anaheim

I have successfully made the 395 mile trip south from Santa Clara, CA to Anaheim, CA. This is my first time down in the LA area. Coming into LA on I-5 you cross a small mountain range, and head to Angeles National Forest, which is more of a National Scrub Brush Area than a forest. Once we hit the Los Angeles side of the mountains I almost thought I was in the Seattle area except the mountains had deciduous trees instead of evergreens. That changed shortly as we headed towards Pasadena as that’s when I noticed the horrible smog haze which seems to have settled itself over LA. Back in the bay we’ve had a couple of days where they suggested people with asthma not go running outside, but even on those days I didn’t see such a brown haze as I saw today.

The other outstanding thing out here was the traffic. Traffic was jam packed especially as we were coming into LA around 5PM. It took us a couple of hours to navigate our way around the worst of the LA traffic through Pasadena to Anaheim. Once we got checked into the hotel we walked over the the Anaheim convention center to pick up our Blizzcon registration info and our goody bags. I got a little Raynor marine statue, and a key to get a murloc pet in World of Warcraft. The one item the bag was missing that I really wanted was a Beta key for Diablo III. Sadly there wasn’t one included in the bag. But I did get some official Blizzcon hand sanitizer. Since I left home without my USB camera cable, I’ll post a few pics of the line (long, but it moved fast) and the goodies once I get back to the Bay area.

Travel Time

Tomorrow morning at 9:05am I fly out of SFO on my way to a 10 days in Rome and Venice, Italy. If you couldn’t tell from my lack of blog updates I’ve been pretty much just working long hours, sleeping, and occasionally studying Japanese since my last post. I’ve also taken up playing Dungeon’s and Dragons every other weekend which is suprisingly fun, and not too nerdy (I hope).

So right now I’m looking forward to the trip and spending time away from computers and work! (Sorry I doubt I’ll blog while there, but I might bring a notebook!) Even so I’m not going totally tech free on this trip, while the laptop will stay at home, I picked up 32GB of CF cards for my dSLR  and 4GB of cards for my point and shoot camera so I should be taking lots of pictures. I’m also bringing my PSP for some entertainment while on the airplane. Hopefully, I’ll have some fun photos or stories to share about my trip when I get back. I also might actually beat more than 2 mission in Final Fantasy: Tactics.

Also besides this big trip to Italy tomorrow I have a few other exciting trips planned. I’m going to a friend’s wedding back in WI in the middle of July, and in August I’m taking a couple days off to go to Blizzcon!