UC Tech
Scott's Diner for breakfast is a pretty rustic little place, food is nothing special, but they are friendly, fast, and quite affordable. Sausage, hash browns, eggs, biscuits, and gravy, were all pretty much definition of utility, although I wished I had stomach space for the steak salad (not a taco salad...?). Their back area on the way to the restrooms also has some fun memorabilia, including quite a bit of aerospace related stuff, which I did not expect.
UC Merced is nearly 8 miles from town, and is a very lengthy bus ride via public transit. Driving is about 15 minutes, much more reasonable, and includes a pair of roundabouts (!) on the way. Despite the various signs advertising new housing tracts going up, it's very clear this is still a farming area, as you literally pass by fields and orchards on the drive to campus. Get to campus proper and it has a decidedly small feel, complete with some dirt lots still within spitting distance of the UC Merced sign, although as of the past few years there's now enough scale that it does feel like a proper CSU or UC; California State University San Bernardino is perhaps the closest analog in my recent experience.
With UC Tech having been shorted from two full, an intro day, and one half day the final day a few years ago (was it UC Davis who did that? Thanks...) to now just an intro day, one full day, and one half day, the schedule at UC Tech feels very packed, like too much content crammed into too little time for the new format. Birds of a Feather occupy two hours the afternoon of day 0, then the opening reception, so it's decidedly a day 0 rather than even a true half day. However this also makes it difficult to attend more than one BoF unless you only go for a few minutes to each one, which is decidedly sub-optimal.
The e-mail security BoF was very sparsely attended, which was a bit of a shame as as Jeff Williams (UC Berkeley) is an expert on it, driving things with a deep understanding of DNS, AI, and other ways to make the experience better in the never-ending deluge of spam and phishing we all see. With UC Berkeley deep into Google for e-mail, much of the discussion was there, but much also was on building AI tools to give more detail/assistance to the technical end user who cares about tinking with their spam filter. Stayed longer at that than I had planned, which meant I caught less of the UC-UX BoF than I liked, and none at all for the Amazon AWS BoF.
The UC-UX BoF was very, very well attended, then it was time for the welcome reception. Was still rather toasty in the evening, but with the sun starting to angle lower, wasn't quite as hot, and the menu, with both appetizers as well as some small hot food items (roast beef, potatoes, and cauliflower) was actually pretty good by campus catering standards.