Jeff Stuart - Memoirs of a CPUNERD

Okay, seriously UC Davis officials, what the hell is wrong with you and your completely messed up idea of “Spring Break.” I’ll admit that I had it better than most. Because I’m a grad student, and the only (non-PE) class I took was a project course, I finished much earlier than most. This was apparent on Monday when I went to the ARC. I lifted weights as usual, and a lot of people were missing. No, not because they were out on break, but because they were at home studying. Luckily, Adrian was free, so I at least got to play racquetball with someone. This was also apparent on Tuesday when, as most people would have already left somewhere for a mini-vacation, all of the girls were still busy studying, so we didn’t even get a Girl’s Night.

Wednesday was the last official day for finals, so to celebrate, the international group (me, Shakeh, Franci, Anita, Sara, Sunny, Jeremy, Justin, Simon, and a few more) got together and went to the first Picnic In The Park. It was a lot of fun, as it was all last year. And of course, what was the best part… Buckhorn! Yes, I can finally satisfy my red-meat cravings at somewhere other than Applebee’s. Most of us were at the park until dark, and then we dispersed and went home.

On Thursday, Shakeh and I decided to actually try and let her enjoy her (four-days!!! Grrr at You, UC Davis) break. We checked out directions for the Jelly Belly Factory and the Budweiser brewery, then headed out. We got to the Jelly Belly factory absolutely starving, which was probably a bad idea. After the tour was over, we basically raided the place. Okay, get this: The store at the factory has a “taste-station” which consists of a ginormous line. We didn’t want to keep standing in line, and we definitely didn’t want to ask for ten-thousand free samples at once, since that would be unfair to those in line. So, what did we do? We just taste tested everything they had on the floor! Brilliant! After the Jelly Belly Factory, we made our quickly to the Budweiser Brewery. Holy crap was this place a disappointment. I went to the Brewery in St. Louis and I remember it being very cool. My parents and I got to see basically the entire place, and we were given a tour by a competent tour-guide. The one in Fairfield… It *started* with free tastings and twenty minutes of crap-tastic advertising videos. It ended with the most ludicrous, ten-minute tour of the facility, which didn’t include most of the process since this brewery was not really meant for tours (as indicated by the nice tour-guide). So Shakeh and I just took off. We were starving though, and about to pass out, so we stopped at Wendy’s in Dixon on the way home and got some (bleh) food. After that, we just relaxed at home. Shakeh had to leave for the Bay Area on Saturday morning, so we just relaxed at home on Friday. We did one small trip to Wal-Mart and Wendy’s again, but that was about it.

The weather on Saturday morning was nice and warm, so Shakeh and I went to the market in the morning. She had to leave right afterwards though, so I called up Tony. We went to go see TMNT at the F street theatres. I actually enjoyed the movie, even though it was geared towards pre-teens. It was well done I though, and the CGI was such that you weren’t trying to find flaws, but instead enjoying the movie. Afterwards, Tony and I went back to my place where I wowed him with my fettuccini alfredo. After eating, we played “Turtles In Time”, then met up with Philip and Verena at the Davis Commons. So what to do with the last day of my break… hmmm, how about beating a game I never was able to as a kid, “Gradius III”. My parents were coming to drop off my car in the morning, so when I woke up at 07:00, I just jumped straight on the emulator. My mom and I went to Ikeda’s real quick, then we drove up to Cisco Grove meet my Dad for lunch. I, of course, was not able to watch the last two games of the elite-eight, but I was able to listen to them on the radio. After I got back to Davis, I went to get my hair cut, then went home and played Battletoads and Chrono-Trigger.

As of Saturday night at 22:30 PM, I was completely done with the Winter quarter, w00t!

Monday: I had my final day of basketball (well, I’m operating the clock on Monday). We won our game by two points. I didn’t do much, I think I scored four points, but at the very end of the game, I did something cool. The opposing team was inbounding and trying to set up a play. They kicked it out top to the man I was guarding. I managed to deflect the inbounds pass and get a big deflection and a steal and send the ball all the way down to the other end of the court. I then just dribbled out what was left of the clock and we won! After that, I just worked all day. I have to get this project done by Saturday night.

Tuesday: I gave my final presentation for class. I was working all afternoon, with an hour break for a meeting, just to get some decent animations and some timings down. The talk went well, and it seemed well received. My grade will be available soon. We skipped dinner at Crepeville, and instead just went to ice cream. We had a lot of people join us this time, it was cool! I think in total we had ten or eleven.

Wednesday: I managed the clock for the basketball class. It was actually pretty easy, but I can see why there is some confusion with it getting reset sometimes. Afterwards, work work work!

Thursday: No more classes for me = (. Shakeh and I went to Hunan for lunch, then came home and she studied while I worked. We went to Woodstock’s for GSA pizza night, and it was remarkably dead and civil. I was shocked. After Woodstock’s, we went to the CS GSA game night, but that was dead as well. And we had just ate, so we didn’t bother sticking around for the raffle. We headed home and watched Casino Royale. Oh, I also watched a ton of basketball since it was the opening day of the NCAA tournament. Pulling for UCLA to win, Nevada to get a close win in the second round against Memphis, then for Coach Fox’s knowledge of Billy Gillespie to get the Pack past Texas A&M and then we eventually go to down to the National Runner-up, Ohio State.

Friday: Today is the day we die! Well, not really, but I just wanted to say that after watching 300. I did that, and watched a lot of Basketball inbetween working.
Saturday: I worked all day. I took two small breaks, one to get a Hot Link from the Farmer’s Market for lunch, and another to get a burrito from Chipotle for an afternoon snack. Rachel came over and watched basketball with me, then we went back to her place for dinner and dessert. After that, I came home, sent of an email to Kwan-Liu, and crashed.

Sunday: Free at last! I did nothing! And it felt great! My parents came to pick up my car in the morning, and Shakeh got back from the Bay Area. Besides that, I really didn’t do much of anything.

Lynch, as in Stephen Lynch. I got to see Stephen Lynch in concert, and even though the seats weren’t astounding, it was still an awesome show. I guess my next comedian to see live would be Eddie Izzard, if he ever decides to tour again. Apparently he is (co-)starring in a new TV show called Riche$. Not sure how it will do, let’s hope it either is a roaring success and propels is stage show even further, or it’s an utter disaster and he has to to lots of touring to re-establish himself = ).

Monday: Not a whole heck of a lot went on. I worked for most of the day, with a short interlude to meet Tony at the park and give him a DVD.

Tuesday: I finally got the correct hard drive enclosure! YAY! I went through a bunch of crap getting it to work. As it turns out, it was just my ignorance (see, user error again). The problem was that the 500GB hard drive I bought wasn’t even partitioned, let alone formatted. I didn’t know how to partition in Windows, so I got some help from Lee, and presto, change-o, I now have all my media on my enclosure for easy transport to the Bay Area in the summer. We went to Crepeville, but we ate before hand, so we just sat down and talked with everyone for awhile. We were going to get ice cream at Baskin Robbin’s, but there were too many people in the line and we were feeling lazy.

Wednesday: We covered two plays in basketball, an inbounding play and a normal play. The instructor figured he didn’t want to see a bunch of non-sense and hacking going on, so he wanted us to at least some plays to get the ball moving. After working through most of the day, I realized that my volume visualization project is almost done, pretty stoked about that.

Thursday: The Pack won. ‘nough said.

Friday: Went to the I-House for the Club-I event. Instead of watching a movie though, we just hung out for a few hours. Afterwards, we went back to my place and watched Mario Antoniette. Oh yeah… The Pack lost… bummer. But they should be good for an at-large bid.

Saturday: Shakeh was busy, so I went to the market for a shorter amount of time than usual. I went home and worked while she met up with a friend for a lunch. I got to a point where I couldn’t do much more at the current moment, so I went to the park with Rachel and played basketball for a bit.

Sunday: Today was the Stephen Lynch concert! It started out by Shakeh and I picking up Sara, then going to Noah’s Bagels for breakfast. We headed to Sausolito first, stopping at the Ice-Cream parlor and the rest of the small downtown area. We met up with Chief Justice and Ciderman, and just hung out for awhile longer. After Sausolito, we headed to the Warfield and parked one car, then went to the Tea Gardens. Lee and his man-purse met us there. After the Tea Gardens, we dropped the rest of our cars off at the Warfield and made our way to the Gordon-Biersch brewery. I watched the ESPN selection discussion, The Pack got an awful draw! They got a seven-seed, which wasn’t *too* surprising. But their first round opponent is Creighton, and their second round opponent is most likely Memphis! Yikes! Thing’s aren’t looking good for a Sweet-16 berth. After GB, we went back to the Warfield and awaited Mr. Lynch. The show was great! He did a lot of the favorites, including Priest, Craig, and She Got a Smile. He also did some lesser known songs, and he had a guest who did some of his own songs. All in all, it was awesome!

I had an interesting situation happen to me the other day. So I’m in this class with fifteen people. There’s one person from civil engineering who happens to be taking the class, a person from IDAV, me, and twelve others, all of whom are advised by the professor. The funny thing you ask? I’m the only one not sweating the final project apparently! So weird. I figured that I would get somewhat harsher treatment and less favoritism because I wouldn’t have the benefit of being on his good side all the time.

Monday: Shakeh and I watched the Labyrinth tonight. It was the first time she had ever seen it, and I hadn’t seen it in over ten years. I swear, even though it’s a total kid’s movie, there were some freaky parts. And no, not just David Bowie in tight leather pants *shudders*. I still really enjoyed the movie, though I think Shakeh kind of sat through it and humored me. She said it was good, but I don’t think she’ll ever have the appreciation for it that those who saw it as a child do.

Tuesday: Went to Girl’s night at Crepeville (the usual). This time, there were almost as many guys as girls. While there, Justin and Verena helped me convince Shakeh that Office Space was definitely worth watching. So with that, Shakeh and I watched Office Space, and of course, she enjoyed it.

Wednesday: Had the weekly meeting. Afterwards I helped Anna out for awhile with some problems she was having, then went home and read some more papers.

Thursday: I read more papers today. I also gave my second presentation, which didn’t go nearly as well as my first one. Afterwards I went to dinner at mu with Chris and Jim and Paulina. While there, we ran into shakeh and Sara, so we ate with them. After dinner, we met up with Simon, Philip, and Mely for the basketball game.

Friday: I worked all morning and saw Shakeh off to Bay Area. Later that night, I went over to Tony’s, where Tony, the Germans, and I watched Galaxy Quest. I forgot how great this movie actually is. I’m not saying it’s classic, but it is *really* funny if you’re in the right mood.

Saturday: I woke up late, much later than I would have liked actually. So I got up, got ready, and then headed out to drive the prospectives CS grad students around and show them some housing opportunities in Davis. Once we finished, I dropped them off at campus. then went to the lab and tried to work. I ended up running into John and Shubho, so we just talked until lunch-time instead of actually doing work. At noon, we went over to grab some food, courtesy of the CS department, then went back to IDAV to meet the graphics hopefuls. While there, I met a guy named Keenan. He seemed to be pretty cool, and Brian, him, and I talked for awhile. After he left, I worked a little more, then came home for a second to check my email and get stuff situated. I then set off right away to Caffe Italia and ended up scoring loads of free food. I dropped the food at home, then went to the first half of the last Davis men’s game. I went home and then watched the UNR game at home. People came over shortly thereafter to watch Team America. I didn’t realize how many American-only jokes were in that movie. People laughed, but there were times when I was the only one laughing (the theme song for example).

Sunday: I picked up Shakeh from her place once she got in from the Bay Area. We hung out for awhile, then went to P.F. Changs for our three-month anniversary dinner. Afterwards we got Haagen-Daaz for dessert.