I like the Computer History Museum in Mountain View: http://www.computerhistory.org/ http://www.computerhistory.org/ They do a very nice 2 hour tour, and have

I like the Computer History Museum in Mountain View: http://www.computerhistory.org/ http://www.computerhistory.org/ They do a very nice 2 hour tour, and have a lot of cool artifacts from the early days of computing. Anything from a panel of ENIAC to PDP's to one of the first Space Wars arcade games to CRAY 1, 2 + 3's. It's inspiring to see the fruits of all the startups that have come and gone before. Really, if you're a geek, and you're in the area, you need to go. Yeah, there's a lot of office buildings and office parks, but you'll come across cool names that you recognize pretty frequently. Also, perhaps check in to going to meetups. Chances are, there's a meetup for the language/technology of your choice going on. Also, there's things like Bay Piggies, which is a Python user group meeting that occurs the 2nd Thursday of every month at GOOG. And, if you're coming in to town, post a note on Hacker news, and see if anyone wants to get together for coffee or something. You might be surprised at who takes you up. Oh, if you do visit, get GPS. It helps a lot.