Jeff Stuart - Memoirs of a CPUNERD

Just For Fun, the auto-biography of Linus Torvalds, ghost-written by David Diamond, was all in all a good read. There is not much technical background required, and even parts that require such knowledge can be skipped without missing the point of the book. In the very beginning of the book, an interview is printed that shows how Linus would only do the book because he thinks it will be “just for fun.” The book lives up to that, being light-hearted and primarily anecdotal. There is a lot in the book about his technical achievements, but so much more of it is about his struggles as a nerd in general.

I found something in the book that didn’t sit well with me. There is one quoted line from Linus that is so unlike anything else said. Due to it’s difference, it stuck with me, and now I have a hard time discerning which voice is actually his; that single quotation I found, or the rest of the book. Yes, the book has a ghost-writer, and I’m sure much of the voice is dictated by the ghost-writer, but still. A ghost-writer, should by nature, strive to make the work appear to be in the voice of the subject. Now, we’ll never know. Then again, not knowing wouldn’t be such a huge loss, as this whole experience was “just for fun.”

As of Monday, I was still sick. Luckily my fever was drastically reduced, but it was still there, as well as the general soreness and cough. Shakeh and I went to Chipotle for lunch, since I actually had my appetite back. We watched The Nanny Diaries that night, and it was surprisingly decent. The production company did something that is often done with movies of this kind. They tried to advertise as something it was not. It was not a chick-flick, yet the main point I got from the commercials was that it would be a romantic comedy. Again, it was not. After the movie, Shakeh and I watched Serena Williams lose to Jelena Jankovic. Come on now, was anyone else aware that Serena has never defended a grand-slam title? When she repeats, it’s never the next year. And besides that, Jankovic is just bloody (I’m using that in place of a more American word) annoying. Boy do I hope she loses. After tennis, I finished reading Just For Fun.

Holy crap was it raining bad on Tuesday. I don’t know if I was still weak from the cold or what, but I was not doing good during the morning. I went to the MU for lunch, then joined Justin and visited the health center. The nurse said a  virus was going around and I probably had that. Then again, she also told Justin the exact same thing, so I am doubtful they do anything but say “There’s a virus going around, you probably got it from someone.” For dinner, I grabbed some El Mariachi to go and ate with Shakeh at her place. I went to Salsa solo since the lady was not feeling well, though Justin also showed up. Speaking of others who showed up, Marilena was there. I hadn’t seen her in such a long time (my birthday or Halloween I think). I also ran into Anna, Nina, and Andrea, all of whom were in the intermediate class being held afterwards. I didn’t get to chat much though, as I was trying to leave.

Racquetball on Wednesday was fun. I played three matches. The first match, I owned someone. Then, as karma would have it, I got owned by Andy with the exact same score. I played Chris in my third match and it was really close. I managed to pull it out though and won 16-14. I met up with Shakeh for lunch at Raja’s and then walked her to work afterwards. I thought I saw Cathy there, and it turns out I actually did, though I didn’t know until later. I picked Shakeh up from her appointment at the health center around 1630, then dropped her off at her place. I then picked up Bill around 1800 and went to Ita’s to wait for everyone. For Dave’s birthday, he chose to go to Wendy’s. His name is Dave after all. We left there around 1930, and I ran to Pluto’s to get some actual dinner. I headed to Shakeh’s, and we watched the Hantuchova-Ivanovic match. We saw the first set and a half, then I headed home and watched the rest of the match. Even though Hantuchova won the first set 6-0, she lost the match. Come on woman, what the heck?!

There were a ton of people on the cardio machines on Thursday morning. All of the exercise bikes were taken. As such, Justin and I played squash for a bit instead of biking. In gymnastics, we had a substitute. He let us do significantly more than we usually do, which was great. After I got home and showered, I went to Woodstock’s with Javi, Martyn, and Alex for lunch. Around 1600, I headed to the ARC for IMs via a ride with Javi (thanks again). The coed indoor-football game didn’t go very well. In fact, it went quite badly. We got shut out 0-7. Martyn and I decided to go upstairs and blow off some steam by playing squash. After our match, I went and signed in for racquetball, then headed down to the lobby to wait for my opponent to show up. My match started promptly at 2000. Before the match, I asked my opponent how long he’d been playing. His response was something along the lines of “I’m rusty, but I played for eight years.” Needless to say I was a bit worried. I was suddenly very glad that all my supporters had said they would turn up to watch. And luckily, chance would have it that I didn’t have a need to be worried. I ended up winning 15-3, 15-5. The points I dropped were all off of serves I chose to use to go a little easy on the poor guy. On top of the good score, I also made good time. The match finished in about ten minutes or so. Thus, I was able to go downstairs and join in on the men’s indoor action only five minutes late. Regardless of my presence, we still lost that match 2-6. After I showered, Justin gave Bill and me a ride back to my place, and then I dropped Bill off and headed to pick up Shakeh from school. We dropped her bike off, then went to Crepeville for dinner. I was fairly exhausted so we didnt stay long. After I dropped Shakeh off, I headed home and longed for some blissful rest. I fell asleep to the fourth game of the Federer-Djokovic match. Turns out I should’ve stayed up, as Djokovic won in straight sets.

Let me repeat, early Friday morning on the west-coast, Federer lost in straight sets! Damn, what is happening to the world? Luckily it was to Djokovic, who I can be quoted as saying he would be great after since the first time I saw him in July of 2007. I drove Shakeh to the health center since she was late for her appointment. Later that day, Javi, Tony, Shakeh, and I met up for lunch at Ali Baba. Even later that day I picked Shakeh up from school as it was absolutely pouring outside. We went to Sophia’s for dinner, then to the Yogurt Shack for dessert. We then went back to my place and watched the Women’s final, which Sharapova won in straight sets. After the match, we turned on the movie Mr. Woodcock, which was pretty bad. I wasn’t expecting much, and boy did it fulfill that promise of non-deliverance.

For some weird reason, when I woke up at 0700 on Saturday I was really tired. Nonetheless, I jumped in the shower, got dressed, and then headed out. I made a quick stopoff at Posh Bagel for breakfast, then drove to NASA Ames to pick up Paul. We drove to Google to print out directions, but Paul forgot his laptop so we went back to Ames one more time. Then we drove back to Google, printed directions, and proceeded in to the city. The first place we visited was in Nob Hill. Paul had to run all over the block since he didn’t have an address and the contact’s cell phone number wasn’t working. Go figure. After that, we went to a shady area in the mission to check out a flat. Luckily the owner didn’t answer the door, so Paul was able to just check that one off and say “No way in Hell.” We drove back to the south bay and checked out North Park again. Turns out that the plans to bulldoze the place and make condos went under, so Lyon sold the property to Prometheus. That means that Lyon couldn’t do leases anymore since Prometheus would take over right away, and might require a twelve-month lease. After North Park, we headed to Castro Street and stopped at the Roadhouse Bar and Grill. The food was alright. The BBQ sauce used by the restaurant wasn’t that great though, and being as the meat was covered in it, the meal was somewhat ruined. After lunch, Paul and I went to Google and watched football (the original kind) and basketball for awhile. This involved poking fun at Len Elmore and the Oklahoma State coach for a bit. At the halftime of the WVU game, I dropped Paul off and headed back to Davis. Shakeh and I got ready for Javi’s dinner and then we went off to Crepeville. An absolute TON of people showed up. Our party took up the majority of the tables at the restaurant. After dinner, Shakeh wasn’t feeling well so we went home. We tried to just go to sleep but she was having such bad fits that she was in physical pain and I was forced to stay awake. Eventually we were able to get her cough to subside so we could both sleep.

Sunday morning brought the results of the Australian Open, Djokovic beat Tsonga. He did drop a set in this game, something Federer couldn’t make happen, but his win was rather convincing. The match was really good though. We saw some highlights and a few games from it. A lot of people are saying now that Federer finally met his match and won’t win much more, but I doubt that. I think Djokovic and Tsonga will now do really well, but I bet Federer still wins three more majors and breaks the mark set by Sampras. Shakeh and I dared to try Quizno’s for lunch. The flatbread sandwiches have gotten small and not that good. After lunch, we saw 27 dresses. The movie was somewhat blah. The Devil Wears Prada was funny, entertaining, and thus obviously had an appeal to both men and women. 27 Dresses was pretty much a chick-flick with another usual story. After the movie, we went home and got some work done, then went to Giovanni’s goodbye dinner for about half an hour. We picked up some food and went home to eat, then tried to get some sleep. Shakeh was still having coughing fits though, so it took a long while for either of us to be comfortable enough to sleep.

By plans, I’m talking spring break plans. I came up with two brilliant ideas. Both involved multiple locations. One was a left-coast trip involving Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. The other was an east-coast road trip covering Boston, Providence, Hartford, NYC, Philly, a random city in New Jersey, Arlington, DC, and Baltimore. Yes, they both seem a bit daunting, and there isn’t much time to do stuff in any single place with either plan. I liked the west-coast trip because those three cities, I’ve wanted to visit (and I still have never left the country). The east-coast trip would be great because I get to more than double my number of visited states (I’ve been to seven). However, despite my (self-perceived) brilliance, no one really seems interested in either. Le sigh…

On Monday, Shakeh and I went to lunch at Ali Baba. Before dinner, I took Martyn and Alex to Best Buy. This time, the laptop that Alex so craved was in, and she bought it promptly. Martyn spent some time looking at prices for a new laptop, then we took off and headed home. When I got back, I picked up Shakeh and we went to dinner with at Thai Recipes. The food was goo, as it was last time, but the location is unfortunate. If the place was more visible, I think that it would be doing just as good if not better than Sophia’s or Thai2K.

Tuesday brought another lunch at the MU followed by some more reading at the lounge. Shakeh and I went to Crepeville for dinner with a few friends. It was supposed to be a guy’s night tonight, as Shakeh was going to have a girl’s night with Ita, Laura, and a few others. For some reason though, the girls decided to join up with the guys. Lucky us. After dinner, Shakeh and I headed to the dance studio for our first “Advanced Beginning” Salsa lesson. Once we got done there, we went to Peet’s and then Baskin Robbins.

During volleyball on Wednesday, I majorly tweaked my shoulder. It was starting to feel better within five minutes, but I decided not to serve or hit after that point. I had to play cut-throat (again). Grrrr! Shakeh and I went to Chipotle for lunch. Afterwards, I went home and worked on the paper, but it was in such disarray that it was hard to start anywhere. I went to Burgers & Brew with Brian, Kim, and Tony for dinner. I got back home and watched the UNC-GT game. GT almost won, 82-83. It was a really close game. I would like to say now that I hate Tyler Hansbrough. I recognize that he is good (though not that good). However, I also recognize that he is over-hyped and over-emphatic. His facial expressions and his flailing are just downright annoying. Okay, enough of that.

Thursday morning brought another backroll in gymnastics, w00t! It was on a mat and going down though. I’m still nervous about doing one on the floor. I was going to go to lunch at the MU, but Paula flaked out so I went to the airport with Verena. We dropped his stuff off at Verena’s place, then went to Pluto’s for lunch around 1400. After lunch, I left Verena and the G-Man and went to get my haircut. I had two meetings later in the afternoon, so I went to both of those and then went to Kabul for Wijnand’s going away dinner. After dinner, Shakeh, Daniel and I went to see Blazing Saddles in the theatre.

I dropped Shakeh off at school on Friday morning, and decided to stop by coffee and bagel day. No one I knew was present though, so I just grabbed two donuts and left. I went to the MU for lunch and then to Cafe Mediteranee for dinner and an Armenian lesson. We went to theatre after dinner, but it was way packed. We went home and watched Becoming Jane, which I found not so becoming. It wasn’t slow per se, but it was pretty monotonous and not very interesting.

Shakeh and I watched the last two sets of the Hewitt-Bahgdatis match on Saturday morning. We drove around for awhile, and eventually went to Baker’s Square for breakfast. We met up with Gio at my place for an hour or so after breakfast. I was feeling sick, so we didn’t do much for the rest of the day. We ran to Pluto’s around 1900 to get some food, then came home and waited for people to show up. We proceeded to watch Office Space with Abhi, Pieter, Javi, and Anita. Ita, Ophelie, and Aisling showed up a bit later and joined us. After the movie, we watched half an hour of tennis, then everyone left. I took some fever reducing Advil and slept.

Sunday was a dead day. I was sick, Shakeh was sick, and we both were just feeling crappy. Besides going to Safeway, we didn’t go out at all.

Not just laptops, but computers in general. Do you do it? I know I do with my laptops. I don’t know why. I think my übergeek friend Thoren did it for me the first time I installed Linux, and since then, it’s just been a harmless habit. However, when I asked some friends what they named their laptops, they just looked at me weird. Admittedly, none of them were from the US, and most of them were non-technical. But still, is this something only done in the nerd-dom of the US? Say it isn’t so…

For those who have never named a computer before, but would like to now, it is fairly easy. If you run Windows (the Linux instructions are easy, just change your hostname, most likely in /etc/hostname), just right click on “My Computer”, select properties, then click on the “Computer Name” tab. Enter a name at your discretion.

“But what shall I name it? I’m at a loss!” you say.

Don’t worry, naming a computer is not as complicated as naming a child. Well, in one case it is, since you have to decide if your computer is a boy or girl (new computers are not old enough to be a woman or man). Obviously with people that’s an easy distinction (and please, no flames about trans-gendered people here). So, once you come up with a sex for your computer (besides “yes please”), then you have to decide an appropriate name. This is where your search gets cut. One often names his or her computer with a name that shares the first letter with the make or model. For example, if one owns a female Dell computer, one might choose to go with Daria as the name (obscure MTV cartoon reference anyone?). However, if one falls short on names that begin with the letter ‘D’, one could look and see that their Dell is an Inspiron, and thus choose to name their computer Inya.

Now that the instructions have been laid out, get to it!

Ah, the first Monday morning back at the gym. I lost some momentum from the weeks I took off. Being as it was the first day, none of the classes were actually doing anything. Chris was there though, and he brought his racquet. Martyn and Emma came back so I played a little bit of squash with them. After I got home, I took off my shoe and found out that the left one was cutting my foot! What the heck?! After lunch, I took down the Christmas tree, did some shopping and laundry, then went with Alex and Javi to Best Buy. Alex didn’t find quite what she was looking for, so she delayed her purchase and we headed back to Davis. We went to In & Out with a bunch of other people to say goodbye (again) to Matthias.

The coach (Dwayne) let us play on Tuesday in indoor. It was incredibly exhausting, I forgot how much running is involved.  I went to gymnastics and messed around a bit there. I went to the MU for lunch and met up with Justin and Franci. I sat in the Griffin Lounge and read for a bit, then headed to my 1500 research meeting. After the meeting, I went to get some food from Subway with Javi, then went to the bookstore to pick something up. Javi, Shakeh, and I ate at my place while watching some basketball. During that time, I burnt Javi a DVD he needed. After he left, Shakeh worked and I finished reading The Subtle Knife.

Due to the number of people that showed up for racquetball on Wednesday, I had to play cut-throat (which I hate). I started on The Amber Spyglass, then met up with Shakeh at the MU around 1700. After we left there, we went to Pluto’s for dinner.

Thursday brought my first (non-serious) injury of the quarter. I took a football to the face. This time I wasn’t jumping though, so it didn’t knock me backwards. After lunch, I read some in the lounge, then went bowling and met a few new international students. After bowling, I headed home, then went to dinner with Shakeh at Round Table before going to see Team America with everyone. It was great! I saw it in the theatres originally, and it was awesome to see it again. Martyn, Shakeh, and I were all singing along with the songs, and at most parts we were laughing before things actually happened. During the first scene, virtually everyone in our group was watching the horror on Emma’s face as Paris was getting totalled. Later, Bill would recall her saying over and over “That’s not funny!” But Emma dear, for us, it was, and you only made it more so = ) Oh, and Ish laughing at all the dead chickens during the bombing of the Panama Canal… Priceless.

I went to lunch with Tina, Abhi, and Bill at the MU on Friday. Not many people were around at school, probably because the weather was turning to crap. For dinner, Shakeh and I went to Cafe Mediteranee. I received some Armenian lessons from her while there, and I’m hoping it’s something that wills tick. We wanted to go to the gymnastics meet, but didn’t get a chance. So instead, we went to the Yogurt Shack. After dessert, we went home and watched Good Luck Chuck, which was just terrible. The movie tried to be both raunchy and heart-warming at the same time. And because it tried to do both, it accomplished neither.

Another Saturday, another trip to the Farmer’s Market. I got my usual treat, then Shakeh and I walked home. We checked movie times, then headed right away to watch The Bucket List.

On Sunday, Shakeh and I went to Posh Bagel and Starbucks for breakfast. We went home and worked for a few hours, then went to Pluto’swith Verena, Lee, Lindsay, and Jenny. When we got home, we worked while watching some of the Australian Open (yay! Tennis season in back!). For dinner, we went to Applebee’s. We got home pretty late, so just watched a bunch of American Dad before going to sleep.

I usually don’t do New Year resolutions, simply because I’m too unoriginal and always come up with “lose weight” or “exercise more” or some other crap like that. Well, I’ve been losing weight (minus the several I gained back from the break of course) consistenly and I exercise twenty or more hours a week, so this time there would be none of that. I did have two things I really wanted to do, and I just didn’t see myself accomplishing either without a big (and not necessarily logical) push. So, for the New Year, I have resolved to visit Europe, whether for work, pleasure, or both. I also resolved to read at least twelve novels (at least one a month). I have His Dark Materials series, which is three, and The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit,  which makes seven. The other five will have to come randomly. Just For Fun and I Am America will probably work their way in there.

As for revelations, I had two large ones. The first, the female athletes sponsored by Davis are no more immune to the image of the typical jock than a typical human is to Ebola-Zaire. This was shown by the New Year’s Eve party, where half of the UC Davis Women’s Basketball team showed up, already drunk and stoned. They proceeded to act like stuck-up and self-righteous bitches to some of my friends. Sigh, I thought with Davis only recently transitioning to Division I we would still have some actual students among our athletes. Apparently not the case with the women’s team. The other revelation was that at one point, Shakeh and I had seen every film in the Davis theatres (Except AVP which doesn’t even count anyways).

Monday was a lazy day (like any day since school got out wasn’t…). We worked on the puzzle and watched another season of The Family Guy before we got ready. For dinner, we had reservations at Seasons. After dinner, we picked up Amy and headed to the New Year’s Eve party at Matthias’ place. There were a bunch of people there, but most were American and friends of Matthias’ and Frederic’s recently moved-back roommates. They were already drunk and high when they arrived, so loud, obnoxious behavior ensued. Shakeh and I weren’t having that great of a time so we left around 0030.

Being as we didn’t get to bed until amost 0200, we slept in until close to 915 on Tuesday. We finished the puzzle and watching Family Guy early in the day. I started watching the Rose Bowl game, but it wasn’t very competitive so we took off and headed down town. We went to Jamba Juice, and then Shakeh dragged me to see P.S. I Love You (which was very bad to put it nicely). After the movie, we went to Pasta for dinner and split some really good garlic red-sauce pasta.

For Wednesday, we decided to go to SF, so we woke and got out the door by 0830. Our first destination was the Exploratorium. We drove through some of the nicer neighborhoods off of Lombard Street on the way there, and actually had to go on Highway 1 for a mile before we could turn around and actually turn into the place! We stayed there for about two and a half hours, checking out all the nifty things and trying to be patient with unwatched children. After we got out, we checked out the Palace of Fine Arts. The place is very impressive. I’m constantly amazed at home something like that could be constructed. After admiring the building, we headed back to Chestnut Street to get some lunch from a local cafe. We chose a place called Belluchi’s which was superb. After lunch, we walked down Chestnut for half an hour or so, then headed to the Castro and the Mission to look at the neighborhoods and figure out why everything was so damned expensive. To kill the rest of the day, we headed to Pier 39 and wandered around. We still had at least an hour to kill, so we went on the “4D” motion rides for forty-five minutes. After that, we headed back to the parking garage and then to the south bay. Lee’s plane was a bit late, so to kill more time (and to see a friend) we stopped by Google and hung out with tibbets for half an hour or so. During that time, he told me how Google is paying for all of its employees to go to Disneyland for two days. By paying, I mean full airfare, two nights in an open bar hotel room, and the park is being rented out for one full day to just Google, as well as buying everyone a second day’s pass. Once we were thoroughly jealous of Andrew, we headed to Castro Street in Mountain View to meet up with Chief Justice and Lee at Shiva’s for dinner.  By the time we all got there, it was close to 2045, and as you can imagine, we didn’t get back to Davis until close to midnight.

Thursday was a very lazy day indeed. We had tons of leftovers, so we didn’t even need to leave the house! We did though, to get some ingredients. We made tiramisu. I would like to say it was great, but it tasted so heavily of rum. It was still good though. We watched Eastern Promises (mostly without subtitles because I’m a moron) while having some tiramisu, then went to bed.

Curse that Friday, the day the electrons were halted. Yes, that ginormous arctic storm knocked our power out. Luckily there was still enough daylight to read. We did that for about two hours, then drove downtown and went to lunch at Zia’s (most of downtown still had power). After lunch, we headed to the theatres to watch The Water Horse. After that, we went home and read some more, then went to Common Grounds to read once it got too dark and we required candlelight. After another hour of reading there, we headed to Burgers & Brew for dinner. I got Shakeh to try the turkey melt, which she of course loved. After dinner we headed to Frederic’s goodbye party. We hung out there just long enough to say goodbye, which took a little while because Frederic was playing beer pong and the game was taking forever. The same problem with the NewYear’s Eve party happened, and when combined with the whole no-power thing, our stay was significantly shortened.

While I was in the shower on Saturday morning, the power came back on (woohoo!). We didn’t change our plans much though. I worked for a bit, and we found out through three tripped breakers that Shakeh’s space heater is a huge power-hog.

Sunday brought one last stand against the coming of school and thus responsibility. I played squash with Matthias and Martyn at the ARC for an hour and a half. We stopped by Borders on the way to drop off Martyn and I picked up a copy of the final Harry Potter book for Shakeh. I went over to her place to say hi, then went home and changed before we headed to Sophia’s. Our party of six turned into a party of twenty, so we had to ditch Sophia’s and go to Kathmandu Kitchen.