Weekend Report: Welcome Home (Vacation)
After a vexing finals week, I have returned to the parents house to rest and relax...after I finish my last project for Comp Arch, that is. Nevertheless, I found ways to amuse myself this past weekend, since working on MPI projects is for people who still care about that class.
Thursday:
I had my early final, then I packed and went about cleaning up stuff in the apmt. The Philosopher King called asking if I wanted to go to Popscene that evening, but I said I could not because I didn't want to spend more money today. He called while I was in the bathroom, and I was so busy packing my gear that I did not return his call until I was driving thru Benicia.
Not going to Popscene was a great idea, because my mom said that Cousin Frances's birthday party was that evening, and my parents were going to leave for the party an hour after I got home. So I spent the evening chatting with family and playing a teensy bit of SSBM at the very end. While chatting I mentioned that I wanted to read the sixth Harry Potter book, and Cousin Frances procured the book for me from her library. And I didn't do well in SSBM because we were playing Time Matches and I was out of shape.
Friday:
The big event of the day was going to the Sharks game with Gabe. Gabe had his wisdom teeth extracted two days prior, and he was so doped up on painkillers that he could not drive us to the Shark Tank in his new Corolla. We left for San Jose around 4:45, but not after he had a thrilling dinner of Mashed Potatoes while I ate a sandwich from Subway at his house. Even though we left almost 3 hours before the game started, we only hit traffic after merging from I-680 to I-880, and even then we got to the Tank 30 minutes before the game. Jeremy called me while we were walking to the Tank, and he spoke of possible gigs at the Britannia Arms and other band-related stuff. By a wierd coincidence, just after he called Gabe pointed out the sports bar that he passes by on the way to Sharks games, and it was another Britannia Arms! They even had a live band playing on our way back to the car after the game, so I guess the Brit is known for sports and music no matter where you are in Santa Clara County.
The game itself was awesome. The Sharks had a 5-day break before the game, so their first period was really rocky and they kept missing the puck or slipping on the ice. By the third period they were getting good power plays and putting Joe Thornton out on the ice to kick some serious ass. Their opponents, the Washington Capitols, only got one goal compared to the Sharks' 4, and just kept beating up the Sharks at the end of the game cuz they knew they were going to lose. Some of the highlights of the game included me getting nachos cuz Gabe couldn't eat them and we needed to keep the tradition alive, Gabe getting a huge soda because that would be his only sustinence, me talking about how the Supreme Court acted as the Capitols' referees, and our chat about the future of computing. I seriously think you could make a RAID of flash ROM disks if you could find a way to make those flash ROMs for a cheap price.
Saturday:
Because I rushed while packing I forgot a couple of things at the apmt, namely my dress shirts. I also wanted to spray my apartment with ant poison, so I hitched a ride with my parents and houseguest Benjamin to on a trip to visit Old Sac and the Train musuem until Danny was done with finals. We first walked around Old Sac and took in the sights of an old town with a disproportionate amount of candy stores per capita, and got lunch at Round Table Pizza while I quizzed Danny on various elements of the C programming language. The coolest thing I saw was the Wells Fargo museum, which had relics of the stagecoach days right next to a talking Wells Fargo ATM that I supposed has been there since 1851. Our next stop was the train museum, and I had not been there in so long I basically forgot what was inside. In addition to a fuckload of old train engines and train cars, they had dioramas of the construction of railways, a station that quizzed you on the many types of cars and engines, and a huge second floor filled to the brim with toy trains. There were so many kids playing in the toy train area, I thought it was a pre-school.
It was raining on the drive back to Davis, and I got all the stuff I needed while my dad sprayed the ants dead. On the way to Danny's dorm we stopped at the U-Mall so I could get an XMas gift and so my parents could get some coffee, so we had coffees and hidden XMas gifts when we helped Danny clean up his dorm room. The drive back home was horible; it was raining so hard that traffic slowed to a crawl, and it took us 2 hours to get home. Picture this: it takes me 80 minutes on average travelling in the afternoon. I was not happy about being stuck in the back of an uncomfortable Camry for 2 hours, but finishing the Harry Potter book that night cheered me up.
Sunday:
Band Practice! Oh, the sweetest laments, for our equipment kept breaking throughout the whole practice. I swear, if anything of Jeremy's breaks again, I'm gonna put my guitar away, cuz he's bad luck!
Well, practice was the usual: set up, rehearse them songs, and then deal with broken equipment. It's been a while since our last practice, so the songs sounded wobbly. My star moment was unplugging my guitar cable when I stepped on it, and all I missed was one verse. Then came the problems: first the Philosopher King broke a piece in his mic stand, and my dad took a couple of minutes to fix it. After a couple more songs I realized that my guitar was not working AGAIN, and when I opened up the back panel to inspect it, the input jack fell off in my hand. See, the jack was not screwed in properly, so it kept falling down and would cause hissing and other bad tones. I tried screwing it back in manually, but all I really did was weaken the solder that held the damn thing together. Thus my dad went back to work on band stuff: this time he helped me solder the jack to the output wires, and used a wrench to make sure the input jack did not rotate. After that I was all "fuck this shit, let's close up shop before something else breaks".
While waiting for my mom's pork ribs to finish baking in the oven, Jeremy and I went to the comics shop. He got a stack of Robotech back issues, and I got everything I wanted: the first 2 JMS issues of The Other, and the Penny Arcade 25 cent comic. To and fro we listened to my Metallica guitar riff CD and talked about the differences between "rock" and "Devil-Land". Apparently playing classic rock licks in a guitar solo with a 4-on-the-floor drumbeat is no longer in vogue, and my listening tastes belong in the Jurassic period. Anyways, my mom's ribs were still not done by the time we got back, so we watched the last bit of Disc 3 of Arrested Development Season One while we waited and then while we ate.
Thursday:
I had my early final, then I packed and went about cleaning up stuff in the apmt. The Philosopher King called asking if I wanted to go to Popscene that evening, but I said I could not because I didn't want to spend more money today. He called while I was in the bathroom, and I was so busy packing my gear that I did not return his call until I was driving thru Benicia.
Not going to Popscene was a great idea, because my mom said that Cousin Frances's birthday party was that evening, and my parents were going to leave for the party an hour after I got home. So I spent the evening chatting with family and playing a teensy bit of SSBM at the very end. While chatting I mentioned that I wanted to read the sixth Harry Potter book, and Cousin Frances procured the book for me from her library. And I didn't do well in SSBM because we were playing Time Matches and I was out of shape.
Friday:
The big event of the day was going to the Sharks game with Gabe. Gabe had his wisdom teeth extracted two days prior, and he was so doped up on painkillers that he could not drive us to the Shark Tank in his new Corolla. We left for San Jose around 4:45, but not after he had a thrilling dinner of Mashed Potatoes while I ate a sandwich from Subway at his house. Even though we left almost 3 hours before the game started, we only hit traffic after merging from I-680 to I-880, and even then we got to the Tank 30 minutes before the game. Jeremy called me while we were walking to the Tank, and he spoke of possible gigs at the Britannia Arms and other band-related stuff. By a wierd coincidence, just after he called Gabe pointed out the sports bar that he passes by on the way to Sharks games, and it was another Britannia Arms! They even had a live band playing on our way back to the car after the game, so I guess the Brit is known for sports and music no matter where you are in Santa Clara County.
The game itself was awesome. The Sharks had a 5-day break before the game, so their first period was really rocky and they kept missing the puck or slipping on the ice. By the third period they were getting good power plays and putting Joe Thornton out on the ice to kick some serious ass. Their opponents, the Washington Capitols, only got one goal compared to the Sharks' 4, and just kept beating up the Sharks at the end of the game cuz they knew they were going to lose. Some of the highlights of the game included me getting nachos cuz Gabe couldn't eat them and we needed to keep the tradition alive, Gabe getting a huge soda because that would be his only sustinence, me talking about how the Supreme Court acted as the Capitols' referees, and our chat about the future of computing. I seriously think you could make a RAID of flash ROM disks if you could find a way to make those flash ROMs for a cheap price.
Saturday:
Because I rushed while packing I forgot a couple of things at the apmt, namely my dress shirts. I also wanted to spray my apartment with ant poison, so I hitched a ride with my parents and houseguest Benjamin to on a trip to visit Old Sac and the Train musuem until Danny was done with finals. We first walked around Old Sac and took in the sights of an old town with a disproportionate amount of candy stores per capita, and got lunch at Round Table Pizza while I quizzed Danny on various elements of the C programming language. The coolest thing I saw was the Wells Fargo museum, which had relics of the stagecoach days right next to a talking Wells Fargo ATM that I supposed has been there since 1851. Our next stop was the train museum, and I had not been there in so long I basically forgot what was inside. In addition to a fuckload of old train engines and train cars, they had dioramas of the construction of railways, a station that quizzed you on the many types of cars and engines, and a huge second floor filled to the brim with toy trains. There were so many kids playing in the toy train area, I thought it was a pre-school.
It was raining on the drive back to Davis, and I got all the stuff I needed while my dad sprayed the ants dead. On the way to Danny's dorm we stopped at the U-Mall so I could get an XMas gift and so my parents could get some coffee, so we had coffees and hidden XMas gifts when we helped Danny clean up his dorm room. The drive back home was horible; it was raining so hard that traffic slowed to a crawl, and it took us 2 hours to get home. Picture this: it takes me 80 minutes on average travelling in the afternoon. I was not happy about being stuck in the back of an uncomfortable Camry for 2 hours, but finishing the Harry Potter book that night cheered me up.
Sunday:
Band Practice! Oh, the sweetest laments, for our equipment kept breaking throughout the whole practice. I swear, if anything of Jeremy's breaks again, I'm gonna put my guitar away, cuz he's bad luck!
Well, practice was the usual: set up, rehearse them songs, and then deal with broken equipment. It's been a while since our last practice, so the songs sounded wobbly. My star moment was unplugging my guitar cable when I stepped on it, and all I missed was one verse. Then came the problems: first the Philosopher King broke a piece in his mic stand, and my dad took a couple of minutes to fix it. After a couple more songs I realized that my guitar was not working AGAIN, and when I opened up the back panel to inspect it, the input jack fell off in my hand. See, the jack was not screwed in properly, so it kept falling down and would cause hissing and other bad tones. I tried screwing it back in manually, but all I really did was weaken the solder that held the damn thing together. Thus my dad went back to work on band stuff: this time he helped me solder the jack to the output wires, and used a wrench to make sure the input jack did not rotate. After that I was all "fuck this shit, let's close up shop before something else breaks".
While waiting for my mom's pork ribs to finish baking in the oven, Jeremy and I went to the comics shop. He got a stack of Robotech back issues, and I got everything I wanted: the first 2 JMS issues of The Other, and the Penny Arcade 25 cent comic. To and fro we listened to my Metallica guitar riff CD and talked about the differences between "rock" and "Devil-Land". Apparently playing classic rock licks in a guitar solo with a 4-on-the-floor drumbeat is no longer in vogue, and my listening tastes belong in the Jurassic period. Anyways, my mom's ribs were still not done by the time we got back, so we watched the last bit of Disc 3 of Arrested Development Season One while we waited and then while we ate.