Memoirs of a CPUNERD

I actually slept in this morning! I woke up around seven, realized that I wasn’t going to the gym this morning, then went right back to sleep for two hours, and hory crap did it feel good. Of course though, as soon as I woke up, I had to go to the bathroom really bad, and my roommate was in the shower (now I remember why I wanted a place with two bathrooms).After dinner at work, I got a Rocket Arena server going at work. I have a really bad feeling that it’s going to lead to some unproductive nights, but oh well, gotta take a night off every now and then, don’t you? I got five other people to play, they were all new to Q3A, but it was still a lot of fun, can’t wait to get threewave going!

Eight of us went to go see Superman Returns at 9:15. I don’t know what the heck everyone was complaining about. I thought it was a decent movie. And for any one bitching about plotholes, HOW BOUT THE FACT THAT HE CAN FLY?! It’s a science fiction movie, you have to learn to accept plotholes people, I mean, c’mon. Now, on that same note, I’m not saying the movie was excellent, it had some fairly shoddy CG and the dialog was lacking in some cases, but it was very enjoyable to watch.

My mentor was gone all day, so I was on my own. Turns out that wasn’t such a good idea, as I had no real clue what I was doing. I ended up talking over iChat with another engineer who was very helpful. I tried to finish my job before I left, but what happens? I blow away the graphics driver on my development machine on accident. Go figure… Luckily, I did that at 6:45PM, so I just busied myself for another fifteen minutes, then took off for the cafe.Oh, today we also scored 13th row tickets to the Ozzfest! The tickets came with VIP passes, parking, and free food = ). Cider-man showed me something funny though, apparently Ozzy is closing the second stage six times this year, I’m not sure why. But the first time he will play on the second stage will be at Shoreline on Saturday. I guess that is good for us, we’ll get to see Ozzy in the afternoon, and then Disturbed and System of a Down will have longer sets, hw00t!!1!.

Five of us decided to go bar-hopping in San Jose… What a f***ing disappointment. The first place we went to, Britannia Arms, was alright, it had a decent number of people in it, but they were all pushing thirty five if not forty. We stayed there for awhile, had a few drinks, then headed over to Johnny V’s. That lasted all of two minutes. The place stank for some reason, and there were only two people in there. We promptly left there, and proceeded to The Vault. The Vault at least had a better atmosphere, but the crowd sucked. There weren’t that many people there, and the ones that were there were 95% men (ah hamburgers). We stayed there for a little bit while Cider-man proceeded to get smashed on Vodka. Once he was done, we took off and looked for Zoe. Turns out we found it, but there was a line, even though the place wasn’t even close to full. We figured it was just lame anyways, so we gave up and headed home. As I said before, what a f***ing disappointment.

We had yet another Mac meeting today. We got some interesting news, but of course, the damn NDAs keep me from disclosing any of it = |. We had the company’s benefit fair today during lunch. There were a whole bunch of places giving “free samples” of their goods. There was everything from five minute chair massages to grip strength tests to a rock climbing wall.Speaking of the rock climbing wall, Carl and I decided to do it, and so did John. I was about three quarters of the way up the wall when it started shaking very bad. I wasn’t going to wait and see if the wall tipped, so I just headed down right away, and it turns out it was just Carl or John repelling down the wall. Still, I wasn’t in the mood to see if the wall was stable.

We also had an intern’s lunch gathering. The coordinators basically asked all of the interns to come to the cafe for lunch and meet the other interns. I met a few new people, one from Stanford, one from CMU, one from Brown, one from Bulgaria, and I don’t remember where the other one was from.

After work, a bunch of us interns (twelve to be precise) headed to a place called the Prince of Wales Pub in San Mateo, home of the Century’s hottest habanero burger. They are having a corporate challenge all this week, what ever company has the most employees finish a habanero burger in that week gets a trophy and some other stuff. So for some reason, we all thought it would be fun to add to NVIDIA’s stock… boy was that a mistake. The burger didn’t even taste good, it didn’t taste like anything. That was the crappy part, the Habanero was so freaking hot that you couldn’t even enjoy the meal that you just spent ten bucks on. Besides the extreme pain in the mouth, it was really fun. We sat around afterwards, had a few drinks, and BS’ed about South Park and the Family Guy until 11PM.

Going to the gym was rough this morning. I woke up at 7:00 AM again, and this time got out of bed at 7:35 AM. I finally made it to the gym, and started working out. I’m upset that Gold’s doesn’t have a squat machine like the ARC. I have to switch to Leg Press instead, which doesn’t work out the same muscles in the same way. Also at the gym, I realized that my bike route was not enough to do me any good, so I pushed myself to do three miles on the bike machine in ten minutes. Holy crap was that hard. I wonder if turning up the level increases speed. I thought it would, but perhaps not.I talked to by my boss again today (first time since I started). We had our weekly driver meeting, and I was told what my primary assignment over the summer would be, squashing those pesky little roaches.

After the meeting, I didn’t quite have time to get something to eat, so I just grabbed something quick and brought it back to my cube. I then proceeded to reconfigure synergy to run from my PC instead of from my development machine. It works better for me since I like to code in Ultraedit and Ultraedit comes with SFTP support.

My mentor was really busy today, so I tried to find a solution to a problem without any guidance (harder than you’d think). I eventually had to give up at 5:30 PM so we would make the concert on time.

I met Carl, Ilan, and another intern named Steve Sean for the concert at 5:30. We went back home quickly to change, then headed out. We were originally going to go to dinner at Google, but those plans got scrapped and we decided to go to Quizno’s. Again what happens? We get last on the way there. Oh well, we didn’t get lost too badly, and it took virtually no time to correct the mistake.

After Quizno’s, we headed to Shoreline, parked, then walked into the amphitheatre. The concert was nice. The Goo Goo Dolls played second, and did a very good set. Most of their music is very soft on the album, but they spruce it up for live play. Of course, the vocals aren’t the same (inflections, tonal changes, etc.), which sucks because the way vocals sound is usually a primary selling point for me on a band. Another complaint I had is that the Goo Goo Dolls didn’t perform Long Way Down, which is my favorite song from them, but oh well.

The Counting Crows closed the show. They were good, not quite my taste, but I let myself relax and just enjoy the show, and a good time was had. The stupid people at Shoreline are still anal about tickets, but oh well, luckily we had reserved seating.

Our cable got installed today. I woke up around 7:00 AM, slept until 7:45 AM, then headed off to the gym. I figured by the time I got back, which was 9:15, the cable technician would have come and gone, but oh no, no one even showed up until 10:00 AM. sigh. It took the tech about forty minutes, so Ben and I made to to work right at 10:45.We had another scary meeting at work today. Of course, I can’t go into any details, but it was enough to make stir people. My boss’s boss I think is very direct, however he also seems to have to manipulate situations sometimes to get people to do what he knows they need to do. At least that is the feeling I get from talking to others who have been there longer than me. In spite of that, I still think he is a pretty cool guy, and he is very good at what he does. It also doesn’t hurt that he was still doing engineering (coding) until last year, when his management roles finally pushed out his coding job.

After work, Carl, Ilan, and I went to the Mission Ale House. It was a be-otch finding the place. Another intern named John met us there, and he gave us directions once we got lost (twice actually… woops). The place seemed cool, they had decent music going, and skateboarding videos playing. There weren’t that many people there when we showed up (only three or four, no cute girls unfortunately), so we just chilled at the bar and had our rounds. I had an amoretto sour, which I swear had a triple shot in it judging by the taste, mmm mmm good. Ilan got harassed for asking for cider. Apparently it is very normal in South Africa for folks to start off with two or three types of cider before they move onto beer.

Some time while we were there, six business guys, probalby 35-50, walked in. Apparently they were on the way to Reno and broke down. I wouldn’t mention it but for the obvious reason.

John took off around 9:45 PM, so Carl finished his beer, I finished my drink, and Ilan finished his long-island, then we left. Go figure though, that no more than five minutes before we leave, four or five mildly attractive young ladies came in. We then realized that we probably got to the bar a little too soon. Next time, we’ll have to remember to get somewhere at 10:00 PM, not leave there by 10:00 PM.

The official score for the place was a five, plus a bonus point. The bonus point being for what we think could have been a better time, had we arrived later.