Category: misc

I’m sure Leslie will cover the events well soon, but in the meantime you can read the bride’s commentary on the event.

So… I just ran 10 miles. Another week, another first. The thing was, 10 was much easier than 9 last week. It must have been the shock last week that made it so hard to finish. The pace was slow again, as I plan to keep it: 10 miles, 100 minutes. The first few miles I watched the US lose a world cup qualifying match to Mexico, played in Mexico city. It was strangely exhilirating. I felt kind of like I was running along with them. Now as everyone knows I’m not the biggest fan of sports, but I found myself, totally alone in the room, muttering at the players on the screen. “Get that ball out of there!” “No! No! No!” “That’s right, that’s the way we do it.” All of this kind of stuff. Pretty crazy. The game ended about 3.5 miles into the run, and I didn’t feel myself tiring at all. I took this as a good sign, and found Rounders on another channel. It had just started, so I figured I was set. At 5 miles I ate a cereal bar (I hadn’t thought to bring something to eat last week). At 6.67 I ate an energy bar, and started to feel a little tired. I took a couple of minutes walk between 7 and 8, then finished without any real trials.

I’ll admit I was kind of scared after last week–26.2 miles?–but I feel much better now. I’m creeping up on half of the distance, and I haven’t broken yet. Still… I’ve only done two long runs, and I’ve got 17 more plus the marathon. I’m really curious to see if I can pull this off.

The semester has worked it’s way up to a gallop. One of my classes, “computational geometry,” has been computationally kicking my ass. My current plan is to stop taking it for a grade for my sanity’s sake. Otherwise things are peachy, I need to restart my research engine after the long burn of SIGGRAPH. Cool things of note:

• I moved into an office with some other graphics folks. This is significantly better even than my already serendipitous office down the hall from the graphics people. I’m also right next to the communal Xbox, which seemed a reason for concern but hasn’t been a problem yet.
• Speaking of Xboxes, I have one now, though I’ve yet to play any Xbox games on it. What I have done is disassembled it, solder a chip in its innards, and put it back together. Why? Because now the Xbox will, at my whim, run any NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, Gameboy, and Arcade game ever. I’m not saying that I have copies of all these games–what blatant piracy that would be! Ok actually I do.
• Going to New York the day after tomorrow. No doubt much posting of pictures and events will be done
• Awesome Valentine’s dinner

I’ll probably write more about the whole process when I get to the end, but for now I give you this and this. Let it be Thursday soon.

snapshot of today’s events:

sleep until 9:30. 9-fucking-30.

hop on the train. actually enjoy the hour and a half commute because of kavelier and clay

feel at home on campus. meet with james’ grad students over free beer and bbq.

enjoy train ride home. ride home through playful, impotent drizzle. what passes in norcal as weather. smile the whole way.

i’ve arrived.

But I can’t resist. With this link, I shall offend (slightly more than) half the country. Thanks, Ali.

no excuses this time. we saw what he did, and we clearly want more. fuck. give the people what they want.

who’s coming with me to canada?

So, I’ve been excited about this new Grand Theft Auto game for a while now. Since February when it was announced, I’ve been patiently biding my time, pretending to be interested in working a job or getting a Ph.D., when in truth all I want to do is play the game. None of you suspected, did you?

The release date of the game is the 26 Oct. As it turns out, there was a leak of the game onto the internet a couple of days ago, and so inevitably I already have a copy. I would like to say I had moral qualms and heart palpitations before burning the DVD and popping it in last night–but that would be a lie. I would also like to say that I’ll run out and buy the game for $50 as soon as it’s available, but I’m afraid that might be a lie, too. Maybe Rockstar Games will find my web page and demand their just desserts–it would be only appropriate. But until that day perhaps I’ll just bask in the irony of having stolen Grand Theft Auto.

In truth, the sum of $50 is negligible when compared to the amount of enjoyment I derive from these games. I probably spent 80-90 hours playing each of the last two, and given that I spend $10 to see a two-hour movie or $65 for half on hour of go-karting, it seems like a true bargain. And I think that’s why in the end I’ll have to buy it. So much of what the giant evil media companies dole out is overpriced for what you get, it’s easy to forget sometimes where the value lies.

So, the video game companies can charge $50 for a game. I can accept that. But I’m holding fast to my upper limit of $7 for DVDs and CDs. Once they hit that mark, I’ll turn in my hook and peg-leg. I promise.

Let’s see… Leslie’s parents and sister arrive Wednesday. We relax, have a simple dinner and watch the debates. Thursday morning we head out early to Big Basin for a bit of hiking and crawling over fallen redwoods. We leave Big Basin and drive to Bonny Doon for wine tasting. From Bonny Doon we drive up highway 1 to Half Moon Bay, where we get a delicious lunch at the Flying Fish, a little hole-in-the-wall connected to a farmers’ market. Then we stroll around downtown Half Moon Bay for a couple of hours, then drive home to rest.

Friday morning Leslie heads to work, and I head to Berkeley along with parents and sister. We have a great tour of Berkeley, lunch at Intermezzo cafe, then drive back down to San Jose to see the last 15 minutes of Leslie’s Friday class, then hang out in her classroom for a while. Then we head to the Winchester Mystery House for what was a suprisingly interesting tour of a sprawling 100-year-old mansion built by a psychotic arthritic heiress. Finally, dinner is had in Santa Clara at Dasaprakash with the whole group + Johanna. We retire.

Saturday everyone else heads to San Francisco, but I stay at the apartment to try to catch up on some work. At noon Doug arrives, in town for the weekend for his Apple interview. We go kart racing in the afternoon with Phil, then hang out at Phil’s place for a while playing Katamari Damacy. Around 6 we head back home for the very end of the Aggie football game (what we were at Phil’s house to avoid), then share Aladdin over a bucket of fried chicken.

Sunday morning Leslie’s family heads out to the airport. Doug and I spend the morning cramming for the interview at Apple and discussing the relative merits of grad school and jobs. We take the train up to Berkeley for a short tour and a Delicious lunch at the Kurry Klub on Shattuck, drop by Amoeba, then ride home. Later we head to Phil’s for dinner–a wonderful coconut curry chicken followed by some sort of traditional Maylay dessert that I can’t remember how to pronounce.

I leave doug there and head home for sleep. As I type Doug is interviewing at Apple for my old job. Time to get cracking on all the work I’ve been ignoring since Wednesday…