Memoirs of a CPUNERD

As you can tell by the title, I was actually busy today. If you’ve been reading these in order, you would know that I got to sleep last night (this morning) at 3:00 AM. Not only is that a bit of a problem in and of itself, but it is phenomenally hot in the Bay Area right now. This caused me to wake up at 7:00 with a slight sweat. Of course, it was way too hot for me to be comfortable in bed (and therefore get more sleep), so I just got up and took a shower. I proceeded to get ready for paintball. NVIDIA scheduled a big day versus Google, we had over sixty people showing up for this.

I was supposed to meet Aaron and Simon at my place at 10:45, but they both decided to sleep in, so I waited for them for ten more minutes. Johnson found me and told me that he was going to head to NVIDIA to round up the troops, and that Aaron and Simon were on the way. Long story short: twenty minutes later Simon and Aaron and I were on our way to NVIDIA. We get to NVIDIA, filled up some water bottles, waited for everyone to get there, then headed out to Santa Clara.

Here’s a tip for you: never caravan with Johnson. He got lost twice on the way to the place. We did make it though, so I have to give him that. Once we got there, we took an incredibly long time to get our gear, went over some basic safety and training, then headed to the field.

Unfortunately for us, we had to play on dirt with obstacles. The obstacles were alright, mostly inflatables, but it was really hot, and they provide virtually no shade (or cover for that matter). The first game, all sixty of us played. However, most of us had never played before, so the vast majority of people just sat behind under cover and played “run down the timer.” NVIDIA lost that game.

We played one more large game on that field, which we won (w00t!), then Lee, Ray, and I took a break from the heat for two rounds. NVIDIA won both of those rounds as well. The three of us went back in after that and raised some hell. The first game back, there were thirty two players, and it came down to Matt versus four Googlers. Somehow he advanced half way down the field and proceeded to stealthily take out all four of them, it was quite an entertaining end of the round.

The next round, it was eight on eight, and NVIDIA cleaned up, the game ended and we had only lost one person. The round after that, which was the last I played, NVIDIA won again, this time losing eight of sixteen players. All in all, I think NVIDIA reclaimed its fallen pride from Google. However, on the same note, we didn’t absolutely crush Google, perhaps next time. One thing that everyone agreed on is that we were all freaking beat and way too hot.

After paintball, Lee, Aaron, Simon, Johnson, and I headed back to GP to shower off and try to cool down. Of course, it was way too hot to cool down at GP, so Aaron got us (Sam joined us) into Google. This time, we had no shame. We first proceeded to raid their ice cream supply. We would’ve also raided their cafe for dinner, but it was a weekend and the cafe wasn’t open. We hung out for forty-five minutes eating ice cream in the nice, air conditioned cafe. Once Simon finished his ice cream, he loaded up his backpack with forty pounds of soft drinks, courtesy of Google again.

Once out of the cafe, we headed to the main building (building 41 I believe), and proceeded to raid the kitchens. It’s not actually as bad as I make it sound, I took a few small bags of chips, some gummy bears, and filled a cup with Reese’s pieces and hot tamales. We met up with Sean and his two friends. Aaron showed them around the plex, and then we headed to Mountain View for dinner.

From my last experience in Mountain View, I knew that Castro Street was pretty much it. Mountain View itself is fairly boring, but Castro Street tends to have some decent food along the way. Being as Sean’s friends were in from out of town, we let them pick the place. They did a decent job as we ended up going to a Japanese noodle house. I unfortunately didn’t eat though… I was just a little bit too full on candy.

After we got done eating, we headed back home. Simon, Aaron, and Johnson were beat, so they went home. I went back to Sam’s place to give Roop the candy I stole… er, yeah, whatever. Roop brought up her shoes again, which reminded me of RvB (what, you mean like a Puma?). I downloaded the whole first season, and then we watched ten minutes of it, then Sam called it a night.

Roop and I were still wide awake, so we decided to head out. Roop had no idea where she wanted to go, just that she wanted to get out of the hot apartment and into an air conditioned area. With that, we jumped in my car and headed over to D&B. When we got there, we showed our IDs and got in the door, but there was a line for some reason. I thought it was to get seating at the tables, so I ducked under the rope. Right away though, a small security just looked at me and told me I needed to get back in line. Apparently the line was for cover (sigh). I guess we got there a little too late.

We payed our cover and then got a game card. We played a few shoot ‘em ups and racing games, and some ticketed games. We finished the night with some rounds of skee-ball, then headed home. We had meant to only stay for thirty or forty-five minutes, but we accidentally stayed about two hours, being as we got home at 1:15 AM, not 12:00 AM… woops.

I was still looking to purchase a digital camera, so I went to Circuit City with Sam and Roop. Afterwards, Roop needed to look for shoes, so we went to the Great Mall in Milpitas. We got there at 2:00 PM, and we didn’t leave until the mall closed 8:00PM, and we only made it through two-thirds of the place! They hit up a lot of the usual stores, and all of the shoe stores. I was in luck though, because Roop was picky with her shoe selection, so we never stayed in one store long enough for me to get bored. They were also both a lot of fun to hang out with and talk too, so while one was busy perusing the aisles of a store, the other would keep me entertained = ).

Not much else happened. I did laundry in the morning, and after we got back from the mall, my place was a sauna for some reason, so we walked to a Taco Bell, bought food, walked back to our complex, then ate outside (~11PM) and came up with plans for day trips before the summer’s over.

“Alas my children, fear not the feelings you hold, for with his departure are we saved.”

As spoken by the prophet Hultquist

“Dude this freakin’ sucks. Now who’re we going to make fun of?”

As spoken by the prophet Stuart

“I hate you, and you, and you”

As spoken by the great one, Cider-man

Yes, today was Cider-man’s last day in the states. His intern tenure is complete, and his visa just ran out. He would’ve liked to stay in the U.S. longer, but he didn’t have the means. So with that in mind, he had a few last things he wanted to put together. First, we had to rent a U-Haul to move his bed and the rest of his stuff into storage. He and I walked to the U-Haul, then Carl and Lee helped us load/unload the truck. The whole process went really fast, it took us less than an hour to finish.

After we were done returning the truck, we went to Denny’s for food. Carl and Lee were both slightly hung-over, and Cider-man was still drunk (he had way more to drink than us, and he didn’t have enough time to metabolize all the alchohol). Eventually everyone found something they thought they could stomach, so we ordered. Cider-man apparently had the hardest time, because virtually everything in Denny’s breakfasts has pork.

After Denny’s, we went to the Great Mall in Milpitas (a.k.a. The Bog of Eternal Stench [what movie!?]) looking for just general stuff. I ended up buying a Disturbed shirt and a pair of black pants, and Carl got two pairs of shorts, after experiencing the stupidity and arbitrary-ness of the State’s measurement system for clothes. We also went looking for a Jamba Juice, but we ended up having to settle for Surf City Squeeze.

After the mall, Lee had to split, and Carl needed to go home to take care of some stuff. Ray met Cider-man and I at GP, then we headed out to take Cider-man to the airport. His flight was scheduled for 7:00 PM, so we made sure we got him to the airport by 5:00 PM. After we dropped him off, Ray and I headed to San Francisco for the Pearl Jam Concert. We ended up circling around the auditorium for awhile before we were comfortable with the location. We then proceeded to park. We got a place about two blocks from the auditorium, it worked very well.

We headed over to the auditorium right away, being as we saw a huge line in front of the place. When we got there though, we learned that the line was for Pearl Jam fan club members only. Once we saw that, we said screw it and went looking for food. We stopped by some chinese place that reminded me for the world of The Flaming Wok in the Meadowwood Mall Food Court.

Once we finished eating, we headed back to the venue and waited in line for an hour in the non fan club line. We realized once we got there that it wasn’t really necessary, because it was an entirely open floor, and we could have gone all the way up to the front if we wanted.

Eddy Vedder actually opened the show with a ten minute solo performance. Sonic Youthfollowed. I guess they were alright, but they were completely not my taste in music. Once Pearl Jam came out, the crowd started getting into it… but no pit! I like Pearl Jam, but I don’t know enough of their songs to sit there and listen to it without doing something else. Ray and I kept looking around for about thirty minutes before we found a few people who looked itchy as well. We went over to them and tried to start something, but it wasn’t working. Eventually, one of the guys motioned to a spot nearer the front of the stage. A big group of guys were jumping all over the place, so Ray and I didn’t hesitate. On the next fast song, we finally got a pit started = ). The rest of the night flew by fairly quickly. Pearl Jam did two encores, I had to bail during the first one for a quick break. I was pretty much soaked from head to belt-line, so I needed some water and some cool air. Once I got back, we were in the pit for a little while longer, then they stopped playing their faster songs. They ended the night with a tribute to ‘Uncle Neil’ (Young) by playing ‘Rocking in the Free World.’

Last night, after dinner, I went to sleep fairly early, 10:30 PM I think. And what time did I wake up you ask? Nope, not 7:00 AM… 4:30 AM!!! Oh, I was livid, I basically caught five minute glimpses of sleep until 7:45 AM, when I rolled out of bed and went to the gym. Speaking of which, I don’t know if I like the sudden change in temperature of the mornings. The first few days I was here, the ride to the gym was fine, it was a little warm, and I was perfectly fine with that. Now though, it’s under sixty degrees in the morning, which makes for an extremely chilly ride.I dropped my roommate and his girlfriend off in Cupertino, then I headed out to pick up a few items, including a new shower head, since our current one sucks for water pressure. After I picked up that stuff, I headed to the Great Mall in Milpitas. And to my extreme disliking, Milpitas still smelled bad. I was really hoping what I smelled a few weeks ago was from a car ahead of me, or something else temporary.

After I walked the Great Mall for a few hours, I headed home, hung out with the guys for a few hours, then went to go hang out with Yuan and Shang. In case you didn’t know, Shang is interning at Google, but she is staying on the NASA Ames campus (Google gets some sort of discount from what I hear). I took several wrong turns, upset a security guard, and called Shang several times before I finally made it to her place.

From there, we went over to pick up Yuan and find something to do. We went to downtown Mountain View (Castro Street), and ended up having Pho. It was good, but not great. Perhaps it will be better in Davis, we’ll see. After Pho, we went for Gelato, now that was good. I don’t know why I never tried it before, perhaps because Reno doesn’t exactly have a varied mix of restaurants and such.

After dinner, we were going to go bar hopping but Shang is under twenty-one, but as it turned out, she was also tired, so we dropped her off and then headed back to Mountain View (don’t ask me why, we just did). We stopped by the first club on our list, and it turned out to be a Karaoke bar… yeah, we didn’t even bother going in. We crawled up and down Castro until 11:00 PM, stopping at the occasional bar. Oh oh oh, we went to this Irish Pub that had a Pride Fight going on, it was basically two guys dry humping each other, it was funny for a while, then it was just kind of disturbing, so we took off.

We settled on this place called the Buddha lounge around 11:00PM. It was fairly dead, but we figured we’d at least go in and see if anything was going on. Long story short, we saw one thing that made us grimace and laugh at the same time, and then we left after Yuan finished her pear cider (shout out to Cider-man!).

We finished the night at some bar in Palo Alto that was actually busy (I know, weird!). It took us forever to get a drink, and it was hot and crowded, but it was a good change. Oh, another funny story. When we were walking to the bar, some random (somewhat attractive) asian girl came running to Yuan with her arms outstretched, then gave Yuan a hug. I thought it was someone that Yuan knew, but apparently it was just some arbitrary drunk college chick… I told Yuan that she should have just said something and I would have been her blocker = ). Yuan’s reaction was funny, it was a mix between shocked and appalled.

That was pretty much the end of the day, got home around 1:00 AM, then went to sleep almost right away.

I woke up today around 7:00 AM and jumped in the shower. I had to be to a suburb of Scaramento by noon for a family get-together. I ended up dragging though, and didn’t leave Santa Clara until a little after 8:00 AM (though, in my defense, I did have to stop for gas first). On the way to Sac, I realized that I lost my directions, so I now had an excuse to stop in Davis, yay! I dropped by IDAV to print out some directions. I was hoping to see at least someone there, but no, they were all asleep, enjoying their first Saturday sleep-in of the summer (then again it was only 9:45, most of them probably weren’t even up that early during the school year).After I got done at the lab, I headed to the farmer’s market for some breakfast. The peach place wasn’t selling apples, much to my chagrin. I settled for a soft, but not perfectly ripe white peach (still good though). I also grabbed some apple juice and a sticky bun (another first, I’d never had one until today).

Hmmm, well all the excitement, and it was still only 10:45 AM. Well, I had time to kill, so there was only one thing to do… Frye’s. Let me say, I was thoroughly disappointed. I guess I’ve outgrown my huge desire to wander a nerd store, either that or Frye’s is just sub-par. I walked around for a while, looking for things to inspect, seeing if there was any miscellaneous equipment I was missing, and I couldn’t find much. I checked out the new gaming mice (overpriced for what they did it would seem), then I checked out the head phones (way overpriced, must go check out Radio Shack), then I perused laptops and computers. All in all, not too exciting, perhaps I need a fellow nerd to go with me, that way we can keep each other interested in products longer. Oh, I also saw an AC unit at Frye’s, though it was four-hundred and thirty bucks, so I think I am going to have to keep looking.

Despite the apparent failure of my visit, I did accomplish my goal, it was 11:30 AM. So with that, I headed off to the ‘burbs to reacquaint myself with second, third, fourth, and probably some fifth cousins. I had to make one quick stop at a surf and skate shop, and then I arrived. When I got there, I was one of the first ones there. My parents were already there, so they re-introduced me to a few people. I checked out my mom and dads new Spyder, then helped put a bunch of soda and beer on ice (it was so hot outside, I would’ve had any of the three right then and there).

The event was fun. I met some new people, re-met some people, saw some people I remembered but hadn’t seen in a while, and had some good BBQ food. I stuck around for about four hours, then headed back to Davis. I was going to hang out with my friend Tony, but he was really busy trying to finish something up before he left for the summer.

I called up my friend Yuan, and she said she would like to do something. She is staying in Palo Alto over the summer for her internship, so I figured I would just pick her up on the way to my place. Turns out that would have been a good idea, had I decided to take the 880 through Oakland, or if I had taken the 680 a few miles further south than I needed. See, I saw a road sign that said to exit for the Dumbarton bridge. Only problem, it was forty five minutes of surface streets! It’s only ten minutes of freeway if I had gone to the intersection of 680 and 880 and then back up to 84. Oh well, I got to see some beautiful mountain sides and experience first-hand the horror of California state highways.

Once I finally got to Yuan’s, we called up our friend Dan, who happened to be in San Jose, and forced him to go hang out with us. We didn’t know any cool places to go, so he suggested Dave & Buster’s. He gave Yuan directions over the phone, and we were on our way. Just two minor hitches: 1) Yuan didn’t remember the directions, and 2) Those that she did remember were antiquated. The map system told us to get off of the 237 at Pharoah… there is no Pharoah! We drove around for an extra forty-five minutes looking for the place. We called Anna, but she was in the middle of Chicago and thus couldn’t give us any help. Luckily, Jimbo was free, so he guided us to safety and made us laugh with his description of the actions the map system was taking.

We finally made it to D&B, then walked right through because we were hungry, and I was all jittery from too much caffeine because I was getting into a food coma on the way back and needed a quick fix so I stopped at a Shell station I had been to previously on the way to Santa Cruz (wooh! trying say that bad boy without needing an extra breath). Anyways, we walked through the Great Mall in Milpitas, and went all the way to the other side to go eat at Johnny Rocket’s. We just ordered a bunch of appetizers and split them all, then navigated our way through the closed mall back to D&B. It was after nine, so D&B was making everyone over twenty-one check-in up front and wear wristbands.

Once we got back in the place, we bought some cards and headed to the shooter games. Yuan and I beat Time Crisis II while Dan played House of the Dead IV with two guns. After that, Yuan and I went to the bar to get something to drink, then headed over to the Trivia machine. I don’t know how, but we stayed there for two hours. It is apparently more addicting than I would’ve thought. We finally were able to pull ourselves away from the machine. We went over to the redemption counter and counted our tickets, over eleven-hundred.

We didn’t find anything we wanted, so we wandered around and looked for some more games to blow our remaining credits on. I found an old school Space Invaders and Qix! I sucked at both, but it was fun playing them again. That about did it for our time at D&B, we took one last stroll through the redemption center with no luck, then took off.

Getting Yuan home was just as fun as getting to D&B. We weren’t quite sure how we got to D&B, so we just followed some random guy for awhile and luckily the SUV happened to get back to 237. We took the 237 to the 101, then navigated surface streets until we got back to Yuan’s place. Of course, she forgot her keys, so she woke someone up to get back into her house. After that, I took off, headed home, and crashed hard.