Memoirs of a CPUNERD

My final day as a resident in Santa Clara, if only it had started out with a decent amount of sleep. Bei and I stayed up talking until 3:00 AM, then kept waking each other up whenever we fidgeted. See, when air mattresses are against walls, and you fidget in one, they rub and create a lot of noise. Hence, I pretty much didn’t sleep last night.

Bei went up to Palo Alto with a friend for lunch, so I hung out for a little bit at my place, then went up to Oakland to pick up Senor Carlos from the airport. I forgot that the Oakland airport sucks for picking people up. You pretty much can’t stop at the curb, so Carl had to walk with my car as he was putting his stuff in the truck and getting in. Kind of dangerous, and very stupid on behalf of the airport.

After Carl and I got back, I went home to start packing up my place. I can’t believe how much crap I ended up getting while in the Bay Area. My car was filled nearly to capacity. It took me almost two hours to pack up all my stuff when I thought it would’ve taken one.

Lee and Alden came down to Santa Clara to say goodbye around 2:00 PM. The Waterloo guys also came over to send me off. We hung out and talked for an hour or so, then Bei and I finished loading up my stuff and took off.

I made it quite a long way on the route, all the way past Auburn, before my (lack of) sleep caught up with me. I was starting to see doubles, so I had to pull over at a rest area. I took a nap for thirty minutes, then continued the journey onwards. We got back to Reno around 7:00 PM. I dropped Bei off to get her car, and met one of the three new UNR professors Eelke.

After I dropped Bei off, I went back to my parent’s place. I unloaded my car, then chatted for half an hour or so. I was getting pretty hungry, so my mom and I split some Bully’s wings and veggies. I then got online for a little bit to upload some pictures and talk to some friends. I started falling asleep while at the keyboard, so I took the hint and finally went to bed. Ah… back in a real bed in Reno.

I woke up and decided that I needed to get some “work” work done. Being as I stayed out kind of late last night, I slept in until 9:00 AM before finally getting up, hence I didn’t get into NVIDIA until noon. I stayed there working until roughly 4:30 PM when Lee came to get me to go out to lunch. We went to a salad buffet place near Lawrence and Walsh, it was really good, and it wasn’t that expensive.

After lunch/dinner, we went to GP to pick up Ian, then fueled up and headed to the show. We got to the arena half an hour before the show started, which was just about right. I was able to get rid of the fourth ticket for a little less than I paid (no big deal though). We then stood in line, talking about various things and laughing at some of the people standing in line (”Don’t be that guy!”).

We finally got into the arena and found a place to stand. Surprisingly, we were only about six rows of people from the front of the stage. We sat through the opening band, Is Is (actually, it’s Isis, but I want to call them Is Is cause they definitely weren’t, make sense?). They were good for what they were, which was an incendiary device to the audience. I seriously think that bands are getting crappy openers so they sound that much better by comparison.

After another hour or so, Tool made their way onto the stage. By this time, the crowd was getting packed in. So much so that I had to keep holding people away from me. When Tool actually started playing (they opened with “H”), as you can imagine, the place went nuts. However, due to the fact that the place was packed, pits didn’t erupt, the entire crowd was just jumping up and down and swaying all over the place.

It didn’t take more than a few songs before the place started heating up (literally) and people started sweating. It got worse as time went on, but I managed to stay a little cooler than most by keeping people away.

Throughout the show, I probably moved almost a mile, even though by the end of the show I ended up no more than five feet from where I started. Combine that with the massive amount of (other people’s) sweat on me, my near eye-gouging incident, and near-dehydration, and it made for a rather eventful (and tiresome) night.

Tool finished playing around 11:00 PM. They actually sat on the stage waiting for the crowd to convince them to play again. Luckily that didn’t take too long, and they finished off a few more songs, ending with their usual closer, AEnema.

We all had to ride without our shirts since they were so covered in other people’s sweat. We were all also really thirsty, so we stopped by a gas station. Of course, that meant putting our shirts back on, which was just completely nasty (I wouldn’t wish putting on a cold-sweat soaked shirt on anyone).
I dropped Lee off, then me and Ian got back to GP around midnight. I finished off my laundry around 2:00 AM, then headed to bed.