Jeff Stuart - Memoirs of a CPUNERD

What a commentary on what’s wrong with people these days. I was at the basketball game before going to the picture night at Franci’s. Franci calls me and asks me if I’m still coming, and I tell her of course. She asked me to bring something to hookup a laptop to the TV. I asked her if her TV had any S-Video inlets or something like that. We talked it out and got it resolved, and I had an idea of what I needed to bring. There was some guy sitting in front of me who overheard some of the conversation. He asked me how I get compensated for helping people. The fact that he was eavesdropping wasn’t that surprising, it was a women’s basketball game and I had to speak kinda loud. It was the fact it seems like more and more people nowadays are looking to “get paid.” Apparently it’s just not enough to do something to be helpful, whether it be for a friend, a client, or a stranger. No, you have to “get paid” for everything.

I just paid my taxes, and I owed about twice as much as I figured. So needless to say, I’ve been a little strapped for cash, hence the reason why I didn’t do much this week until all the free stuff started. Monday was a holiday, so Shakeh and I just hung out together for the day.

Tuesday we didn’t have a girls night out, everyone was either busy, broke, or both. I met with Brian and talked some more about doing a project for Vis. The idea was to use the system we made for performing global illumination to do out-of-core volume rendering.

Wednesday I actually got a long period of time to sit down with Brian. He introduced me to some of the intricacies of CUDA, and we talked about intelligent ways to partition the data. Afterwards, I went home and started hammering out some of the details.

Thursday I gave my presentation for Volume Visualization. It actually went really well. I was worried about most people wondering why I was covering more of the parallel aspects instead of the visualization aspects. Luckily, that didn’t happen. After class I just
Friday was Meike’s going away party. We met up at Little Prague around 20:00… no Meike! She was a little late, just like everyone else. We ate at the restaurant until 22:30 or so. More and more people kept showing up, even though we told them to be there at 20:00. It was actually becoming a hassle since there wasn’t any room left in our part of the restaurant. After dinner, we transferred to the bar and met up with Sara, Justin, Ro, Amira, and some more of Meike’s friends. Shakeh and I hung out there until midnight, then headed home and went to sleep.

Saturday, Shakeh and I started out the day by playing squash for an hour and a half. We then went home, showered and dropped by the Farmer’s Market for lunch and some produce. After that, we worked until 18:15, then headed to Dairy Queen for blizzards, and then the women’s basketball game. We met up with Vincent, Sara, Hannah, and Harriet. After the game, we headed back to my place to grab some S-Video cables, and then went to Franci’s. As it turns out, her TV only had RCA cable inlets. So I headed back to my place to pick up an S-Video to RCA Video converter. I got back, and then we realized that the TV was just bbbbbbbaaaaaaaaaaddddddddddd. So we ended up viewing the photos on a laptop anyways.

Sunday was pretty much the same as Saturday. We worked all day until about 18:00 when we went to the I-House to watch the Academy Awards. We stayed there until 20:30, then went home and finished watching the awards. After that, we watched Man of the Year. I must say, I was disappointed. The movie was decent, but it wasn’t particularly funny or engaging, and was just lackluster.

No, not flipping out, flipping! As in gymnastics people, geez, c’mon! Anywho, we started doing front flips and front handsprings in my tumbling class. It’s a lot of fun so far. Apparently we have to do a routine at the end of the quarter, but being as everyone is at different skill levels, it’s no big deal. I can basically stumble around as my goofy and unbalanced self and no one will care… mwuhahaha!

We had the usual girls night at Crepeville on Tuesday. This time Justin couldn’t make it, so it was just me and the girls. Giovanni did show up, but he didn’t stay. Afterwards, Shakeh and I went back to my place and just worked more.

As you all were probably aware (like it or not), Wednesday was Valentine’s Day. Shakeh got me a few cute things, and I gave her a candlelit dinner and some flowers. It was really fun, though I did manage to burn myself pretty badly, which sucked. After dinner, we watched GATTACA. I seriously, seriously, seriously, must recommend this for everyone. I’ve seen it a few times, and it rocks! The movie is very well done, and it seems more and more prevalent as time goes by.

Thursday we actually got out of class early! It was so cool. I still hate staying in class late, even now. So the fact that we didn’t have to stay until 18:00 was great. Shakeh, Rachel, Philip, Simon, and I went to the Women’s basketball game. It’s weird, for UNR’s men’s team being so good, the women are horrible in comparison to Davis’. Now, I still prefer Men’s ball to Women’s, but this wasn’t as bad as UNR’s.

Friday we went to the gymnastics meet, but we didn’t get to stay for long. When we got home, we watched The Fifth Element. Oh did I forget how fun this movie is! Shakeh hadn’t seen it before, so watching it with her was cool. I also find it funny how much more I picked up watching it this time. I hadn’t seen it since a year or two after it came out, so I noticed a lot more.

Saturday was basketball day! I went to the market with Shakeh in the morning, then with Rachel in the afternoon. After that, I came home and worked/watched bball all day. I watched UNR (go pack!) lay down a second-half ass-whoopin’ to Northern Iowa. Take that MVC = p ! Rachel and I went to the Women’s bball later that night. Afterwards, Tony, Falcon, Sara, and I went back to my place and watched Locked, Stocked and Two Smoking Barrels. It was pretty good, though I think Snatch was better.

Sunday I didn’t really do much. I worked for most of the morning, then tried to get Rachel or Dan to go with me to Winters. When that failed, I just said screw it and rode my back around Davis for forty-five minutes. I then came home, showered, and worked in my underwear and slippers for the rest of the day. It was great! I didn’t have to wear pants, and I didn’t put any socks on until I went to bed. Ahhhh, so nice = )

Unfortunately, thanks to some wonderful memory limitations in 32-bit Linux, and NVIDIA’s extreme stance on not supporting 64-bit Linux for CUDA, we missed the Eurographics deadline as well. Fret not though, now we’re going to “talk” and perhaps try for Viz. Really, right now, I just want this thing to be published in a good conference, it doesn’t matter where. I’ve worked with quite possibly three of the smartest people in IDAV on this project for months, and I know that the work is very high-quality and the end-product is great. I just hope we can show others what we’ve accomplished.

In other news, Franci’s birthday party was a lot of fun. I also tried Donkey-Konga at Tony’s place, and was quite entertained. I do wish that the drum-signals were animated vertically (like DDR) instead of horizontally. I think I might just be better with shape recognition as opposed to color and symbol recognition. It was still really cool though. OH OH OH!!! We also beat Gunstar Heroes finally. Well, I should say that Tony beat Gunstar Heroes, I did my best not to die on him. I also realize now how long it’s been since I really played video games seriously. I can tell how out of practice I am. Oh well…

Not much really went on this week. A few fun things of note: Went to the Old Spaghetti Factory with Shakeh on Saturday, decided to go for the Eurographics deadline instead of the SIGGRAPH deadline, and I had a lovely Super-bowl party at my place. Twenty-or-so people showed up, most of them being not from the U.S.A. It was actually quite fun having that many people over. We moved my TV out to the living room, and had people bring plenty of refreshments. Hey, even Cider-man showed up! After half-time, most people lost interest in the game and the commercials and were just hanging out and chatting, but it was still fun.