My hotel, in the Union Square area. I always used to stay
in this neighborhood when I attended JavaOne regularly.
San Francisco is a strange and wonderful place. I used to travel there fairly regularly to attend the JavaOne conference and always found it interesting, so it seemed like an ideal destination. Outside of a few things I wanted to see, I let my fancy guide me. The end result, of course, was lots of exotic food (although I did make it to Aquarium of the Bay).
An unexpected high point was riding in a Waymo self-driving taxi. I swear that thing drives better than I do, and I had no fear or worry at all in the car (which, by the way, was a Jaguar). It was about the same price as a regular taxi, which was amazing. I would become Waymo's lowliest coffee boy if we could only have this back home in Milwaukee. Here are a few short videos I shot during the three drives I took:
The first one shows the car yielding to a pedestrian (you can see "Yielding to pedestrian" on the display).
The second one shows the car overtaking the car ahead of it, then stopping for a motorcycle ("Waiting for intersection to clear" appears briefly on the display).
The third one shows the car yielding to a pedestrian scooting across against the light.
The fourth one shows the car going up some of San Francisco's infamous hills.
The last one shows the car pulling up to an intersection next to a garbage truck.
