Jeff Stuart - Memoirs of a CPUNERD

I’m very proud to say that my brother just received his B.A. degree. I’d be lying if I said I was sure it would happen. Anyone who has met my brother knows how smart he is, how determined he can be, and also how easy he can lose sight of what is important. This time though, he was able to focus and just get done what needed to be done. So now, it’s a race between me and him over who can get their Doctorate degree first. I want a Ph.D., he’s going for his J.D. Ready… Set… Go!

I went to PIC with Daniel and his cube-mates on Monday. For dinner, the Canadians showed up and did their usually scheming. After they left, I played volleyball for a bit, then went home and worked on my GMail notifier. Before I went to sleep, I checked out our Eurographics paper… yikes, it needs some major work.

On Tuesday, I went to lunch with Katie, Rachel, and Chris at Moma. I’m beginning to work with someone else’s code, and no, I’m not really liking it = \ I had a late dinner at Pintxo with Ray, Philip, Daniel, Falcon, and Chris. I watched the B5 movie A Call to Arms, and now I’m pissed that the series about The Rangers didn’t last. I would’ve liked to see the story roll out.

Eleven weeks. It took me eleven weeks to realize that I had a near unlimited supply of CDs via the Mountain View Librarie’s bookmobile. I went looking there on Wednesday for some Euro-pop because I remembered how popular it was at the international parties. I couldn’t find any, but I did get a bunch of foreign CDs. I had dinner with Usman, Chris, Falcon, Daniel, and Chief Justice. After that, we all went to see Balls of Fury. The first half was really good, though throughout the entire first half, in-between my laughter, I was yelling “Reno isn’t really like that!”

On Thursday, I had lunch with Chris, Tibbets (Maaatt… Damon), Philip, and Ray at PIC. We got to ride on the conference bike! I went back to work after that until 1500, then ran home real quick to grab my stuff and drop off my car. After I got back to work, I finished some stuff, then went to dinner with Rachel, Falcon, Daniel, and Chris. I said my good-bye to Rachel (Katie decided not to come), got a ride to the airport from Falcon, and then flew home to Reno.

Mother-dearest and I went shopping for a bit on Friday morning. I got dropped off at UNR around 11:30 and met up with Kenyon and Chad. We talked for a bit, then headed to Claim Jumper. We ate lunch with Dr. Harris and Bill, then Kenyon gave me a ride home. When I got back, I worked on a new Pidgin-plugin for a while, and went shopping with my Mom for some supplies for the party.
Saturday was Mike’s graduation party. There were a ton of people there. I saw Jack and Brian again, two friends of Mike with whom I used to be acquainted. I talked with a lot of my family and ate like a pig. Later that night, once the party died down, I continued working on the Pidgin-plugin and began screwing around with the Google-calendar API.

On Sunday, Frank, Mother, Grandmother, and I went to Bully’s for lunch. I had the wings of course. On the plane, I sat next to this rather attractive Chinese girl. The problem you ask? Until she spoke at the end of the flight, I couldn’t tell if she was sixteen or thirty. Falcon picked me up from the airport. I went home, grabbed laundry, then headed to Google. I played ping-pong with Ciderman (won a game!). After I got home, the wings I ate started making me feel really bad. Shakeh drove down and took care of me for a bit. After she left, I watched The Legend of the Rangers. It was alright. The story was good, but there were certain parts that could’ve been done much better.

Seriously people, when you have to make a turn to stay on the same street, there’s a problem! Case in point, check out this. Look specifically at how, if one is heading north, one must turn west to stay on Rengstorff. Then, go North just slightly and see how Charleston, without actually crossing the freeway, is on BOTH sides of the freeway! Don’t even get me started on Highway 84 through Fremont…
I discovered through unfortunate circumstances that cold showers absolutely suck. The hot water in gym was busted on Monday, so everyone was forced to tough it out and take cold showers. I’m getting short of breath and chest pains just remember it. I had lunch at the reopening of Cafe 150. Everything had bacon! After lunch, I did a user study but didn’t get a shirt (dab nabbit!), then went back to my cube and worked for a bit. Wyclef Jean did an improptu appearance and performance at Charlie’s. His presence was very humorous, and I even enjoyed the music a bit. He jokingly threatened the sound guy because the sound kept screwing up, then performed some live songs (Gone Till November, If I Were President, and a few more). He even managed to get into a push-up match with some random guy in the audience. It was all really entertaining. After his performance, he talked some more about Haiti and answered some questions from the audience. Someone asked him to rap in Creole, another person was forced by Wyclef to freestyle on the spot. All in all a very entertaining day.

Chris and Katie joined me in the gym on Tuesday morning. They were about twenty minutes later than they said they would be, but oh well. We did some cardio together, then I finished up and took off. For lunch, Falcon and i biked to Crittendon to meet up with some business interns for lunch. As luck would have it, Katie was the only one who showed up. We ate at Pure Ingredients then went into 1400 to check out the gym and 1500 to nab some gummy bears. After work, Sean, Ciderman, and Lee came up for dinner at No Name. We ate with Andrew and Michael, talked for a little while, then left. I gave Reva a ride back to Ames, then talked with her for almost an hour before leaving.

Per Katie’s request, I went to the gym in Crittendon on Wednesday. Chris and Katie met me again, and again they were significantly later than they said they would be. After lifting, Katie and I rode on some weird bikes with computer-generated scenery. We then proceeded to workout on an interesting machine that somewhat simulates a surfboard. After that, the three of us went for a jog around the area. Chris and I finished up, then got breakfast with Rachel at Fourteen. I ended up having lunch with michael, Falcon, and Andrew at Cafe 7, then went back to work for a bit. i went to a talk given by an engineer about how business people can get along with and deal with engineers. Daniel accompanied me, as we both thought it was just going to be a slew of stereotypes getting tossed around left and right. The talk was interesting, but not as funny as we thought it would be. It even gave some business interns the wrong idea about engineers. So much so that they immediately developed an active disdain for us… After the talk, I went back to my building for a meeting, then headed to the shuttles for the boat cruise. The busses got into SF around 1830. After that, we boarded the boat, then grabbed some food in the dining hall. Once dinner was over and the boat had set sail, we went out and around the deck, checking out all the cool sites. The boat went past Alcatraz, Sausolito, into the middle of the bay, and then back to Pier 3 over the course of three hours. We danced for almost two hours during the cruise, then at the end watched a summer intern slideshow. It was all really fun. We didn’t get back to Google until 2300 though, so I got to sleep really late.

Thursday morning Katie and Chris joined me in the gym, and yep, they were late again. After the gym, Chris and I grabbed food at No Name, then got to our desks around 915. We worked for two hours, then boarded the busses for the Engineering Picnic. The picnic rocked! There was (of course) free food and alcohol, and tons of game. Everything from ping-pong to an inflatable gauntlet to human fooz-ball to ultimate. We started with some frisbee, then progressed to ping-pong for awhile. After we were done with that, we got some food and (for others) yummy cocktails. Andrew and I then raced each other at the inflatable gauntlet. I won, but only because Andrew slipped up and hurt his foot. I also had a rather bad dismount. (Tipsy) Michael and Inga then raced each other, but Inga got lost really quick so Michael won with no problems. After that, we just wandered around some more, then eventually settled into the line for henna tattoos and caricatures.

On Firday, I finished up the initial version of a project (finally). I tried to check it in but got blocked on a few fronts. After struggling to fix the problem, I went to my host for some help. That turned out to be a bad idea, as he insisted upon fixing a ton of stuff right there, and thus I had to skip TGIF. After work was over, I gave Chris a ride to Caltrain, then went back to Google to play ping-pong with Daniel. I was originally going to go see Superbad, but I felt like crap so I decided to just go home. Falcon brought Kim, Dan, and Brian over to our place, so we watched some Youtube videos (Planet Unicorn Heyyy!!!), and by the end of that it was late enough that everyone left and I just went to bed.

Luckily, when I woke up on Saturday, I was feeling better. I watched some B5 until Matt and Ray showed up at my place. Once they did, we took off to Google to get some supplies. We then met Reva at the Caltrain in Mountain View so I could give her a ticket to Rock the Bells. Once done with that, we took 280 up to SF and proceeded to downtown. We parked at this little lot at Second and Howard, then walked to Third Street and crossed the bridge to get to the parking lot. I’m not going to lie, I paid ninety dollars to see Rage Against The Machine. Everything else was just fluff for me. As it turns out, it really was just fluff. Mos Def, The Roots, Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, and Wu-Tang Clan all played before Rage. For the most part, I wasn’t really digging any of it. There were a few Cypress Hill songs that I liked, but that was it. Oh well, Rage rocked, and so did the crowd, so that’s all I cared about. And as it turns out, walking back to the car was about as fun as the rest of the concert. You haven’t seen crazy until you see eighty-thousand people walking up Third Street at 2200, screaming randomly and blocking traffic because there are simply too many people for the sidewalks. And I don’t know why, but everyone and their mother was driving on Saturday night on the 101. It took us an hour and half to get back to Mountain View.

I did two major things on Sunday: 1) I finished B5, and 2) I slept in until 900, which I haven’t done since last summer. I was planning on a bike ride, but due to the doubling of expected duration (the bike ride was supposed to be two hours, but then two hours of driving got added), those plans were cancelled. I ended up playing ping-pong and doing laundry with Daniel, Lee, and Ciderman. In the middle of it all, Lee and I biked to Crittendon and scoured the buildings for gummy bears, but they were all gone. We looked through eight micro-kitchens to no avail. After dropping my laundry off at home, we headed to Shoreline Grille for dinner. We couldn’t find the place though, so instead we just went to Chipotle. Apparently my hunger from the last two days was catching up with me, because I was freaking starving! If someone had put several burritos in front of me, I think I would have ate at least three. After Chipotle, we headed to Google to kill some time, then went to the movie theatres to see Stardust. I highly recommend this movie. The acting was a bit cheesy at times, but it was still funny and very good.

Really! Why?! This is an awesome idea! Can you imagine how nice it would be to be able to live in Sacramento and be able to hop a train to LA and have a total travel time roughly equivalent to that of flying? Wait, I guess that says it right there. Too many politicians have their hands in the airline industry’s pockets, and thus something like this will take forever to massage through the state congress. Triple hamburgers.

Monday sucked for work. More than half of my day was gone to meetings and such, and the meetings were at times that made it impossible for me to get much work done. I had an early lunch at Pure Ingredients with Daniel, Inga, Andrew, and Michael. I then met up with Alden for an hour or so on the patio. After I walked with Alden to his former boss’ office, I went back to even more meetings… yay! I had dinner at 1800 with Alden, Inga, Andrew, and Rachel. Alden came back to my place, and we watched some B5. Thayer showed up for a bit. We had a heck of a time opening a bottle of Riesling that Alden brought with him from Europe.

I had a late lunch on Tuesday, primarily because I didn’t want to take the reins so someone else had to. Around noon, Inga messaged me. We ended up going to Pintxo. The weather was pretty crappy, but since we got there so late, there was no room at any of the tables to eat. Hence, we had to sit outside in the cold and breeze (actually, it turned out to be quite nice). I got at 1800 with the Canucks (except ian). We ate and BS’ed for a few hours, then I went home and finished the fourth season of B5.

On Wednesday, a bunch of us ate at Cafe 7. Michael told us about his late night and his hangover which made us all laugh. I learned some more about Java generics, though just enough to not want to use them.

Shakeh joined us for dinner on Thursday. We ate with Andrew and Inga, then went to watch the Intern Talent Show (Scott tied for first place). We just went home after that.

I had breakfast on Friday with Shakeh and Andrew. After breakfast, I helped out Andrew with some applescript stuff. I worked as much as possible, but had meetings from 1030-1145. I bailed early on my last meeting (it was supposed to go until noon). I ran to the main campus, scarfed down some food at Charlie’s, then took off for LA. The drive was really nice. We stopped three times; once for the heck of it, once for gas, and once more for food at some random place in Santa Barbara. We got into LA around 2130, and Andrew dropped me off in North Hills shortly after that.

I woke up fairly early on Saturday. Gregg and Adrienne were both still sleeping though, so I watched two movies on TV. The first was The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. If you mute the speakers, the movie is actually pretty nice. A bunch of hot women dancing around, and some fairly impressive car stunts. After the movie was over, I tip-toed down the stairs, and sure enough, they were both still sleeping. I went back upstairs and watched The Rock for awhile, until they woke up. After that, we just had a nice, lazy day. We went swimming for a bit (including the dog), then went back in and talked for a few hours while watching tennis. We had dinner together, then talked some more before going to bed.

I got up early again on Sunday and watched some Sportscenter. Once Gregg and Adrienne were up, I went downstairs and had breakfast with them. Andrew showed up half an hour late (so I get to keep “Awailable”). We had a long, boring drive back to the Bay Area. We got in around 1600. I got home, convinced Tony to play ping-pong, then went to Google to do laundry and wait for T-Dawg to show up. After I was done with my laundry, I met up with Lee, Ciderman and Sean on Castro St. in Mountain View. We went to a nice Indian place called Shiva’s. I just got naan and enough daal to kill a horse. Afterwards, we got gelato (of course, how could we not?!).

I noticed something peculiar the other day. Many people, myself included, will tell others that the best way to lose weight is to get off your butt and actually exercise. Lifting weights won’t cut it either, one needs to do cardiovascular exercise to get some calories burning and your heart rate going. Of course, since I can no longer work out five hours a day, I decided instead to take my own advice and actually start doing really cardio work. For some reason though, I still haven’t lost any weight. I figured that it might not come off all at once, but after a month, I should’ve lost at least something. I figured there was only one explanation, my diet. Hence, as of Monday, I decided no more greasy meat or an over-abundance of fruit for breakfast, and no more Google-red items from the menus. I’m sure this means more than I realize, but for now, I’m sticking with it.

On Monday, I made a decision to stop eating red items from the Google cafes, and to try and eat healthy when on my own. So, for breakfast, I got a meat-free, cheese-free omelet, and only a small amount of fruit. For lunch, Rachel, Katie, Paul, Andrew, Nathan, Sam, and I had lunch at American Table. I’ve determined I don’t really like the place. Hopefully I won’t ever go back. Andrew and I were set to play tennis at 18:45 at Rengstorff Park, so we set up to have dinner at 18:00. He was half an hour late though (work-related), so we didn’t get to the park until 19:15. I also ended up eating alone because he was late. We played tennis until 20:00 or so, then I showered off and watched some more B5 (episodes 1×11-1×13).

Rachel had never been to Pintxo, so on Tuesday we ate lunch there. It was really good (like last time), but it wasn’t very filling. I blame that both on the serving sizes and on the fact that all the truly filling dishes are typically red, not green or orange. Oh, and all the desserts were red! Double ARGH! In the afternoon, I spent a decent amount of time guiding Adrienne and Lisa from Reno to Mountain View. They decided to go through San Francisco, so I had to take them the long way down 280. The finally showed up here (after missing several turns) at 18:00. They got their visitor badges, then we went to dinner at Charlie’s and No Name. We ate with Falcon, then i showed them around the place. Adrienne admitted later she had no idea why I wanted to show her around an office, but after the tour she was very excited and definitely digging all of the free stuff. After the tour, I said goodbye, then went home and watched some more B5 (episodes 1×14-1×16).

The first rain of the summer came on Wednesday. Though, I wouldn’t even really call it rain, more of a slight drizzle. For lunch, I went with Inga, Katie, and Rachel to Oasis. I ate an enormous amount of food, but I think most of it was vegetables, because I was still hungry. It’s only been three days and I can already tell that finding beef that is non-red will be impossible. After dinner, I went home and did the usual B5 watching.

The Ozzfest was Thursday, and boy was it ever apparent! Daniel and I went to lunch at No Name, then went to a tech-talk on Linux Telephony at 13:00. The talk was really boring though, so we went upstairs, distracted ourselves for a little while, then went in to the Partners Matter demo at 14:00. We get there a little early, which turned out to be a great idea. A lot of other interns got turned away because the demo was supposed to be for full-timers only. After getting two-shirts (which was non-trivial), I headed back to my building and basked in my triumph where other interns had failed.

We had an interesting TGIF on Friday. As you can imagine, there was some discussion about the stock price falling because of missed revenue prediction by The Wall Street Journal. After TGIF, I played ping-pong with Andrew for a while, then played volleyball with some guys. Funny enough, Sergey (as in Brinn) was actually playing as well. It was decent fun, but I got a little sandy and very sweaty, so I had to run home and shower. After the shower, I headed to Castro St. to meet Jeff Wu and Falcon for dinner. We ate at a Thai place called The Bangkok Spoon. It was alright, but I miss Sophia’s…

I had the most relaxing Saturday I had in a long time. I got up at 7:00, out of bed at 7:20, and started watching B5 at 7:30. I didn’t stop watching until 18:30. In that time, I consumed literally no food. I guess my body is finally learning to not tell me it’s hungry when it doesn’t need any full. After I got showered, I headed to Redwood Shores to pick up Shakeh. We headed to Palo Alto to meet up with Lee and Andrew for dinner. Our original plan was to go to Bucca di Bepo, but the place had an hour wait. So instead we went across the street to The Gordon Biersch Brewery. After dinner, Shakeh and I hung out at my place for an hour or so, then I took her back to Redwood Shores.

Sunday was another lazy day. I watched a lot of B5. Around noon, Daniel and I went to Google to do laundry and play ping-pong. Remember that scene in Forrest Gump when Forrest is playing ping-pong against that Chinese guy? Remember how far back they were standing? Daniel and I got into several rallies like that, it was quite cool. After laundry, I went back home and watched a little more B5, then headed to Dave Shreiner’s place for a nice braai. After that, I went back home, watched some more B5 with Falcon, then went to sleep.

Maybe something is missing in my life now. Something big, yet something I can’t place. I’m saying this, because as I write it’s Christmas Eve. Yet… something just isn’t right. Maybe it’s the lack of snow on the ground, or the indifference I have towards receiving gifts, but it doesn’t feel like Christmas is coming in just a few more minutes. Something hit me though, this isn’t the first old feeling that is missing. I thought that the quarter ending would bring a familiar sense to me, but it didn’t. Now Christmas Eve… Is it just a coincidence, or is something truly missing now? I guess time will tell. Perhaps New Years Eve will bring in a familiar feeling, though I doubt that, being that the bringing of a New Year is nothing special to me, and it never was.

Monday Lee and I recovered wonderfully from our weekend. After we cleaned ourselves up, we went to lunch at the MU with Verena, Miles, Gwen, and Simon. Lee walked back with Verena to drop her off while I ran by the bank. When I got home, I started packing up my stuff and got ready to hit the road. I got into Reno around 17:30, then spent the entire night working and restoring my mom’s computer.

Tuesday I worked basically all day, except for a few hours I took off to go out to lunch with some old IGT friends, lift weights, play racquetball, and go out to Bully’s. I lifted in a different way and still did not feel sore from it… I need to find something that will make my muscles tremble again, otherwise I’m afraid my body will start to stagnate.

Wednesday I went out to lunch with Brian from IGT. After that I went home and worked basically for the rest of the night. I was going to cook dinner for my parents, but my mom had an appointment and thus wouldn’t have been able to make it anyways.

Thursday was a lot of fun. After working all day, my mom, dad, cousin, and uncle all went out to go look at Christmas lights. While the light display this year was definitely inferior to previous years, it was still a lot of fun. Pictures are up in the usual place, I’m too tired to paste them into this post. We stopped by a Starbucks and I overdosed on sugar from the venti caramel apple cider with quintuple caramel that I ordered. After we got back from the lights, Jon and I headed out to meet Sebastian for martinis at Roxie’s. While there, we ran into Tunya and Alicia. Being as Roxie’s was on last call, we headed to the Little Waldorf Saloon (The Wal) and hung out there until 03:00.

Friday I worked again all day. At night, Bei and Kenyon came over, then Shane, Sinead, and Vicki showed up. With my parents, we played Scene it, had some dinner (I cooked!), and then hung out. Bei was leaving for China, so I would’ve liked to hang out with her more. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even keep my eyes open, so I called it a night early.

Saturday I (you guessed it) worked again. We went over to my aunt Lisa’s place at 14:00 for some games and food, and stayed there until 16:00 or so. I had to get back home to try and finish up some work. Shane, Jon, and I eventually left for downtown again around 21:30. We hit up the Brew Brothers’ at the Eldorado, then went to West Second Street to watch some wonderful karaoke. After that, I took off while Randy, Jon, and Shane stuck around. I got to sleep around 03:00…

Sunday I woke up, got ready, then called Jon and Shane to figure out what happened. Jon was home, while Shane apparently crashed at Randy’s. I went to do a little bit of shopping (spent a bit too much…) and then went to Randy’s. We played the 360 for awhile, then went out to Bully’s for lunch. After lunch, we went bowling, then to an arcade (DDR!!!!). We then went to pick up dinner and drop Randy off. When Shane and I got home, everyone was waiting for us. We ate, then watched Max open some presents. After Max was done, we did our gift exchange, then I called it a night and went to bed around midnight. Pictures of our gift exchange are up in the usual place.