Memoirs of a CPUNERD

And thus did the adventures of the nine interns start. Their journey began as one of separation, for their party was dispursed across the lands of the Valley of Silicon. The stalwart Ian and foolish Matt traveled back to the dwelling of the interns long before the other interns were freed from the curse of “work.” Six of the nine interns supped together in the area of freely acquirable food. Meanwhile, in the far away town of Sunnyvale, the brave and able Roma was competing in a tournament of bad mintons (whatever the heck a minton is…, but anyways, back to the story).

Thus did the resourceful Jeff, with his two squires (Dan and Fady) and the fair lady Vani make their way to the town of Sunnyvale. Upon coming to the tower where the lady Roma was in contest, one could see but a single entrance to the building. Also noticed by the master Jeff was that no beasts of burden were present. Taking this into account, Jeff dared the dreaded area known as “the back of the building” in search of the Lady Roma. Fortune smiled him, for upon vanquishing the evil monsters in “the back” he found his goal, the fair Lady Roma.

With the maidens fair accompanying them, Jeff and his squires continued onward to their final destination, the hall of billiards. The other knight Lee had already ventured forth to the dwelling of the interns to enlist the services of Ian, Matt, and the Rafel foreign one. There way was not paved with as much peril as that of the noble Jeff’s, hence their early arrival.

Upon entrance to the hall of billiards, Jeff, Lee, and the (now slightly intoxicated) Matt did battle with the dreaded “Clerk.” In the end, they were all forced to temporarily surrender papers of their bloodline in exchange for the services offered therein. Their six companions were asked for nothing, as the galliant trio had bartered the agreement as such.

Yeah, so if you couldn’t tell, I got bored trying to write about the night and went back and changed it to gibberish = p. We finished playing pool after three hours, then went home and crashed.

Softball is being overrun by interns! We had five of eighteen players show up this time. I even got to start this time, instead of being on rotation. We didn’t get any pictures from this game though, the photographers weren’t able to show up. I wish we would’ve, I have a nice looking cut on my knee from sliding into third base while wearing shorts (not the smartest idea).

After softball, we headed back home so Carl could throw his going away party. He mentioned to the intern’s list that they should each give a $1 donation to the buy-jeff-vodka-and-v8-splash foundation… yeah, it tastes good, but I had to work out the next morning!

Sam and Roop came by first, they actually showed up early (9:15 PM, started at 9:30 PM). The reason they came early is because they thought it started at 8:30 PM, and they were going to be “fashionably late.” Carl and I said goodbye to Roop, since she was to leave the next day. They hung around for awhile longer though.

Next to show up were the Waterloo guys. After them, Vani and Andrew showed up. They said that Roma was tired and didn’t want to come, so I had to go over there and convince her to show up. Once she got over there, people spent a little more time nursing their drinks, then somehow the group started playing ERF.

It didn’t take people long to get the hang of the game, and soon it was over, with Roma claiming her bragging rights. After the game was over, people went back to talking for awhile, trying to flick cards at one another, and eventually the party finally died down. Carl did laundry while some of the guys went swimming, then we called it a night and crashed.

Not much exciting today. Matt, one of the new Waterloo interns, went to Softball with Carl and I. The game was good. Several fun things happened: Carl actually got a hit! He made it second base, then made it to second base with the girl playing second base. He hasn’t been taught how to slide, so when he was running, he was pretty much on second, then started to slide. He took out the girl playing second base, and she landed pretty much right on top of him… It looked like they both took a thrashing. I had a nice hit right to the left fielder, I seriously think the fielder didn’t even move, he just put up his glove and it went right to him. Our team actually was down by so many runs that the opposing team had to forfeit their offensive round and let us go again.

I went to my first company softball game today, and I even got to play. Chris Malachowsky, one of the co-founders, is in charge of team. There were twenty people there, and he did a good job of getting everyone in the rotation. We lost the game, but oh well, it was a lot of fun.

After the game, Chris bought the group some pizza and beer/soda. Carl and I talked with some of the other guys, then went to play pool. Shortly into our game, two of his friends from South Africa called and told him they were coming up from San Jose (he knew they were in the Bay Area), so we finished our game and met them outside.

Carl and I each had a small amount of pizza at the softball place. Carl’s friends, Scott and Grant, had yet to eat, so we took it as a good time to go get something real to eat. Carl wasn’t sure, so I suggested something on El Camino, and then P. F. Chang’s. He was all for that, so we went there for dinner. While there, our order got sent to the wrong table, so we didn’t even get our food until fifteen minutes after the place closed. We stayed till 11:15 PM and had some laughs and free ice cream, then went home. Scott and Grant stayed with Carl, so we hung out at his place for half an hour or so, then I went to sleep.

I went to three sessions this time, instead of the usual five. All three were on OpenGL, and they were some what informative. The last session not so much, it just talked about how there is a fast track through the driver code down to the hardware, and that you should always program your applications to hit that fast track. The speakers were okay, the last one was extremely nervous, which made for an interesting talk. About the first presentation: It was primarily on new features in OpenGL for Mac OS X (which means three year old features for Windows and Linux). Alex Eddy, my usual contact at Apple made two really freaking cool demos, each supposedly in a day and a half.

We had a two hour break for lunch, so Ray and I went to one of the labs and just screwed around on some new macs. I got to mess around with FBOs, and then we ran out of time. After the third session, I went back to the labs to talk with some of the graphics guys, but they were really slammed with questions from developers, so I just split. I went back to NVIDIA, collected as many other badges as I could (we now had five) for the campus bash, then Sean, Ray, Carl, Chris, and I headed off to Cupertino for the Apple headquarters.

The bash was a blast. There was cool techno from a DJ with a nifty lights show, tons of free beer, and an insane amount of nerds wandering the Apple quad. I got to meet a few new people, including two interns from Florida A&M and UT, and the guy who wrote the O’Reilly firewalls book. After we finished up at the bash, we went to Murphy’s Ave. for a drink or two and some darts. I called it a night at 12:45AM, and took everyone back to NVIDIA.