Jeff Stuart - Memoirs of a CPUNERD

For a detailed discussion of my X-Men 3 comments, please see me in person or via chat = p I’m sure everyone here has been snubbed by a friend before. Accidental or not, it still sucks. And all it does is create weirdness between the two of you. This happened to me recently, and the worst part is that I don’t know if I pissed the person off, or if the person just forgot about me. Either case sucks though. If I pissed this person off, I have no idea how. If they forgot about me, well, then they forgot about me. But it matters not, we are no longer children, and we should put childish things behind us. I guess that’s one of the benefits of being me, holding a grudge just isn’t in my nature.

Monday was interesting to say the least. I went to see my friend Rachel play IM football. She’s the captain of a women’s IM team. I’m watching them play, and as players on her team are being substituted, they are coming off the field a little upset. The score is tied at 0-0, so I ask what is going on. They simply point to a person on the field. That’s when I spot it, there’s a *guy* on the other team! WTF?!?! One of the referees then explained that a guy can play in the women’s league as long as he doesn’t “dominate” or be the best person on the team. As it turns out, the other team was simply a (wo)man down so the boyfriend of the captain filled in the gap. He wouldn’t take any shots, but he had no problem keeping the ball away from the ladies and blowing by them. At halftime, Rachel questions the refs and has, of all people, me come on to stop him. I thought it was a little weird, but I wanted to help out the team, and I did that by just playing defense by covering “him” the entire time. It didn’t help that I wasn’t allowed to wear my cleats since they have a toe spike and those aren’t allowed. All in all, a fun experience.
Tuesday wasn’t too eventful. Just work and such. I saw the new episode of Heroes, god am I loving that show.

Wednesday I was mad busy. After working out, I went home, cleaned up, and then went to lunch with Steve. I got in for my meeting right on time. After the meeting I hung out with Meike for a little bit, then got some caffeine from the Silo with Tony. We went to go see a panel from Google at 18:00. We showed up about fifteen minutes early (I’d been instructed as such by the coordinator), and we’re lucky we did. We got our food, then watched as the entire place just got SLAMMED. It was crazy, there must’ve been at least a hundred people there. The talk was entertaining, and I learned a few more things about the inner workings of Google. After the talk, I met with Hanah (the intern coordinator), Thunder (an engineer, and yes, his parents-given name), and Leann (another engineer). Justin and I then walked back to my place, where I just did some work and went to sleep.

Thursday I went out to Delta of Venus via Rachel and met up with Sarah, Sunny, Chiara, Dani, Abhi, Cameron, Luis, and more. Rachel and I walked back to my place around midnight and checked out some music before I drove her home.

Friday was the ClubI halloween party. Pictures are here. The party was a lot of fun, and my jack-o-lantern rocked.

Saturday was just one big day of work. I went to play football with the guys around 5, then came home, showered up, and headed to the corn maze. I forgot my camera, ARGH! Then, when I went to the bigger party (pictures here), I remembered my camera but forgot my battery, double ARGH!

Sunday, I went to Wally World with T-Dawg, worked, then went over to Tony’s place with Brian, Kim, and Francesca, to watch a lecture from Noam Chomsky on “The Supposed War on Terror.” We watched one of the two lectures, then popped in Glorious by Eddie Izzard.

I repeat my previous title

That is all, good night.

As a grad student, particularly in a research-intensive science major, do you ever question what you’re living for? Now let me be clear, I don’t mean why don’t you just kill yourself, that would be stupid, suicide is pointless (not painless, as the song suggests). I mean, you’re in this program, socially outcasted for four-to-six years, barely enough time to maintain pre-existing relationships, and in the end, you get to go into a job that leaves you socially outcasted (this time forever) with barely any free time. I’m not questioning what I’m doing, I like my field and I happen to be having a lot of fun, but that’s also because I’ve been devoting an unusual amount of time to being active and social (socially active).

Anyways, enough of my rant. As for goings on… Monday was fun, I got to meet two of Conny’s friends, Marcos and… damn, I can’t remember the girls name. Anyways, they were here to check out some UCs and CSUs for grad school. We met for lunch at the MU (finding them was a twenty-minute fiasco). I ended up running into the international crowd, but I was on a quest and couldn’t sit with them unfortunately. After we had lunch, we went to the WiCS social. Not a lot of people showed up, but it was good for me since I got a bunch of free sugar! Later that day I met Meike, a friend in the DA part of IDAV, for a (not-so) quick drink at the silo.

Tuesday… what the heck did I do on Tuesday??? Oh yeah! I watched the next episode of Heroes! I am starting to really like that show. It’s applying to the inner X-Men fan in me.

Wednesday I went to the market with Dan and Meike where we played frisbee with a really flimsy “Vote Yes On The Target Measure” disc. I don’t support the cause, but hey! Free frisbee!!! We then went to Sophia’s for dinner. We split the pad thai and the red curry, neither of which was as spicy as I thought it would be, but they were both good.

Thursday was a lot of fun, it was (one of the four) Sara’s birthday. Justin and I showed up early, as it was a surprise party. Man, I don’t know what it is, but people, when out of their element, love to party. Look at freshmen (first year away from home), me during the summer (first time away from everyone I knew), and international students (for some, first time out of Europe). It was awesome though, and the foreigners sure to do know how to make party food (none of this chips and PBR crap!).

Friday I played futbol. It rocked! We started out with just three on three. The teams were hard to even out though. We then recruited a bunch of people and played a full twenty-two person game, goalies and everything. Luis got hurt though, which sucked. He caught a ball square in the eye and couldn’t really see out of it. After futbol, I rode home, showered up, then Robert and I went to the MU games area for bowling with ClubI. That was a lot of fun, primarily because I won both games = D. That actually got me two free tickets to Oktoberfest. After bowling, we went to Ciocolat for some dessert, then I met my friend Cathy at Little Prague for drinks. We stayed there until 12:30 AM or so, when it started getting PACKED (it was crazy!).

Saturday was mostly work, work, work. I forgot to set my alarm for hiking in Napa, but that was probably a Freudian slip, and for the best. I went to the market and to the Homecoming BBQ around 11:00, then went home and continued working until 21:30 or so. I then went to Rawi’s place and then to Little Prague.

Sunday was more work. Meike, Amira, and I went to Oktoberfest, which turned out to be kind of a bust. Hannah, Harriet, and Vincent (from bowling) were there though, so the six of us bolted and went to the MU for billiards. After about five minutes though… the power died! Oh well, it would have been an anti-climactic end to an incredibly fun week. Meike, Amira, and I went back to their place, where Meike and I just hung out and watched a show on Comedy Central before I had to go and get some sleep.

So much to write about, so little time. Well, first off, if you couldn’t tell by the title, I’ve been listening to the new album by Evanescence. It is incredible! I didn’t like a lot of Fallen, and Origin wasn’t really an LP. I also got the new album, Sam’s Town, from The Killers, and it was okay. I personally think Hot Fuss is a better album, but that’s just my taste.

Badminton is actually a decently challenging sport, once you get into it. At first it seemed like a lazy man’s tennis, but you can do your fair share of running and hitting if your oppenent is good. And luckily, there are a few decent people in the class, so I’m not getting a complete cool-down from volleyball.

Speaking of volleyball, I’m having a really good time in that class. Tony is, unfortunately, temporarily unable to press himself, so I was forced to play with others = p. I ended up playing with some people who knew what they were doing, so again, it’s been a lot of fun.

Lacrosse has been good. I found out that the first two classes I was using a very bad stick for throwing (but a good stick for catching), hence why I couldn’t get the damn ball to do anything but go straight down. Once I switched sticks, I was all good. I ran into a small problem on Wednesday though. I was throwing a frisbee with Dave before Lacrosse started and rolled my ankle… It made shuttles a be-otch.

And of course, we have frisbee. I do so love frisbee, but shuttling in frisbee is *incredibly* draining with only one good leg. And plus, playing a game of Ultimate, I felt fairly useless. But it’s still so much fun! I can’t wait for Tuesday when I won’t be gimping it up anymore.

Before I get too carried away with sports, Wednesday was Yuan’s birthday! Seventeen of us went to Thai Nakorn for dinner, and then most of us went to Sophia’s for cake and drinks. Of course what happens? We specifically chose Sophia’s over Little Prague because of what happened last year with Till’s birthday. But Sophia’s got pissed and was going to charge us $15.00 to bring the cake in. We ended up just eating the cake outside of The Hotdogger and then going into Sophia’s. All in all, a fun night, but Yuan didn’t even get drunk, Le Sigh.

Friday was TGIF, and I somehow volunteered myself to be the responsible party. Not that many people showed up this time, but that was good because we all got to eat a crap-load of pizza. I went out with Club-I to Thai Nakron and later Little Prague. Justin and I went to a party later that night, which made for some truly interesting stories… but those are best shared in person.

Saturday was a *really* fun day. It started off with work (as usual), followed by meeting Justin at the market. We walked around for awhile, then met up with Anita and “Ze Geuhmuns” for the football game. Robert and Dan also met up with us. The football game was a lot of fun, Davis won (umm. Go Ags?). Matthias got handed one of the boxes of Steve’s Pizza, and I grabbed a free shirt from the crowd, so it was a good time. We *all* got totally burned on our faces. It was really funny though because we were facing east, so the sun burned people, but not evenly. Luckily, I played futbol later in the afternoon, so I got evenly burned throughout.

After futbol, I got ahold of Justin, picked up Dani, and the three of us headed over to a party on Anderson. This party was *huge* in terms of people. I met a really nice German girl named Simone that is researching female figures in Sci-Fi literature. Justin and I talked to her for quite some time, her work seems really interesting. I ran into a ton of other people, including Anna-Lucia’s friend Irina as the cops were busting up the party. But I’ve said too much already = )

Sunday was DavisFest! I got up at 8:00 AM after getting only five hours of sleep (four hours the previous night), and proceeded to shower and do laundry. I walked to Posh Bagel for breakfast, then headed home, finished up my laundry, and went to Safeway. I got home, did a little more work, napped for an hour, then got ahold of Angela and Meike and then went downtown for Davis Fest. It was a lot of fun. Justin met up with us, and I swear I found my (personality-wise) twin-sister in Meike’s roommate Amira. Angela, Jin, Ziv, and Montai (sp?) also ended up joining us. We wandered all over downtown, grabbing whatever free food and such we could, as well as running into various people.