Today was an in-service day at school, so Jeffrey had the day off. We decided to take the day off, too, and thought we’d do something different, so we headed to San Francisco via Caltrain.

Caltrain is slow, but it does take the worry out of parking — I guess that was a good tradeoff. It’d’ve been better if we’d brought something to read on the trip up; Jeffrey finished his book before we got out of Santa Clara County, and the scenery is less than wonderful. But in the end, we got to San Francisco and walked up in the direction of the Sony Metreon to have lunch.

The Metreon has a very nice food court, far better than that in most malls. And the restaurant we went to, Buckhorn Grill, was quite reasonably priced and tasty — I’m surprised the place wasn’t packed.

After lunch, we left the Metreon and went to Zeum, an interactive art and science center for 8-18 year-olds. I’d read a little bit about it and thought it might be worth a visit — it was! Their main attraction is called “Build It!” and offers many ways for visitors to make things — I tried building a house of cards, which didn’t get very far, while Jeffrey zoomed in on the Lego Wall. After a while, we went to look for Diane, who had gotten involved in making a clay character to use in making a stop-motion animation. In the meantime, Jeffrey made a structure in the Megaopolis room (under the direction of Spike and Jeff), then joined us in the Animation studio, where I was helping Diane with her masterpiece. We spent the rest of the afternoon there, making movies, and a good time was had by all (except, perhaps, the characters, who seemed to have a rough life after Jeffrey started to direct).

When we left Zeum, we went in search of a bookstore to stock up for the trip home — that turned out to be a harder task than I would have expected, but we found a small book department in the Virgin Megastore and made do. Dinner was back at the Metreon (Jeffrey and Diane tried the Firewood Restaurant; I hit the Buckhorn again), then we dashed to the station in time to make the 6pm express train south.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back on Caltrain, this time to PacBell Park. We had thought about staying overnight in San Francisco instead of commuting, but the hotel we wanted wasn’t able to guarantee a suitable room (and I had a hard time contemplating paying $35/night for parking, too), so we opted to spend tonight at home instead.

Shabbat Shalom!

I’m still trying to find a reasonable answer to the unreasonable remote control that came with my Yamaha RX-V800.

I took a closer look at the remote control programs for the Palm I mentioned on Tuesday and realized that I would be entering into dangerous territory — the programs aren’t actually tools, they’re toolkits for the hobbyist, and I already have enough hobbies, thank you very much.

So I dashed off to Fry’s and bought the $30 All-For-One Cinema 7, which got good reviews on the web. It’s easy to hold and use, except that it doesn’t seem to know how to turn the receiver on or off, just like the universal remote that came with my TV! But there may still be hope — this remote is supported by lots of folks on the web, and I’ve found instructions which may help me actually use it with my receiver (apparently the receiver has some interesting characteristics which make it difficult to use with normal remotes).

It’ll give me something to do this weekend — which we’re starting early, since there’s no school tomorrow. I can use a four-day weekend, and I bet Jeffrey really feels that way!

[Later:] Success! Most devices treat the power button on the remote control as a toggle — if it was on, pressing “Power” turns it off, and vice-versa. But Yamaha decided it would be better to have separate buttons for “on” and “off”, and they removed the toggle code from their new line of receivers, including the one I bought. So I have to define one key on the remote as “on” and one as “off”, and then I’ll be all set. I think.

But I probably won’t get to it for a while; we’re planning to take the train up to San Francisco tomorrow and poke around, probably taking a look at the Metreon and maybe visiting Chinatown.