Life: August 2004 Archives

So far, my Pacific Northwest trip is going pretty well. I hung out with Chee Wai, Hong Eng, Fredrik and Monica Tuesday and Wednesday (with some support from Rushabh, Kristen, Justin, and Sarah). Today I picked up Bill and Jim from SeaTac airport, and we drove up to Bellingham. After getting some lunch at a really good bagel place, Chris took us on a tour of Bellingham. The only problem was, Chris isn't from Bellingham, and I don't think that he has been out here for all of that long, so he had some obvious handicaps when it came to tourguidery. But, we persevered, and we got to see some good views of the bay, and the city in general.

For dinner, Tanya and her mother made us all an extremely good meal over at their house. Fresh samon, chicken, and steak, all cooked just right. My dad would have been quite jealous.

-Andy.

While driving on Interstate 5 through downtown Seattle this morning, I saw a car with Montana personalized license plates that said "GO CUBS". This reminded me that when Suzie and I were in Berkeley last Sunday, I struck up a conversation with a father and Cubs-hat-wearing-son pair. They were apparently from L.A., but the father said that he grew up in Chicago, and passed the "support the cubs" impulse on to his son.

Last year, when the Cubs nearly made it to the world series, a co-worker of mine asked why there were still any Cubs fans left, seeing as how the (almost) always lose. Well, now I have a definitive answer. Being a Cubs fan is generational, and once you are a Cubs fan, it appears to stick for life, no matter what state your license plates have on them.

-Andy.

Last Sunday was a little bit of a surreal experience for me. I had Laura's little sister, Suzie Schornack, staying with me for the week. She is going to be a freshman at UC Berkeley in the fall (i.e., next week), and managed to arrive in town a wee-bit early -- like over a week before the dorms opened. So, she spent a week of that time at my place, just chillin' (and occasionally illiin'). And then on Sunday, I drove her up to Berkeley, helped her get her stuff out of storage (which thankfully, was far less stuff than what I took when I first moved to college), and then got her all moved into her dorm room in Ida Sproull.

The last time that I had lived in a dorm was about 5 years ago exactly (I spent the summer of '99 in Storrs, so that is why it is just about exact), and after seeing Suzie's living situation -- man -- I don't think you could pay me to go back to that life. She has a triple room, no not triple size, 3 person (her plus two roommates). Not only that, the size of the room is about the size of a CWRU double. Amazing. There are three beds (two bunks, one loft), 3 desks (2 shoved under the loft, one free-standing), small bookshelves, drawers, and closets. There is really no way to re-arrange the furniture -- there is exactly one way that it can all fit in there, and UCB Housing has figured out that way. One of Suzie's roommates was planning on bringing a mini-fridge, but nixed that idea upon seeing the room -- there really is no space for it. The only way to live there is to be young, I think, which I am no longer.

Suzie seemed to be remarkably unstressed out by the whole process. Admitedly, she had been to the campus a number of times since coming out for her orientation in July, and I will give UCB props for making the move-in process as painless as they could, given the circumstances of their environment. The UC had plenty of helpful people wearing "move-in day '04" shirts, so there were many targets for my questions. They also bequeathed a free parking permit, and cleared out some lots for move-in only parking. The only annoying part was the loading/unloading zone -- but the real problem is that Berkeley is located in a city type environment, so they really don't have that much space to facilitate the parents trundling up with their mini-vans and SUVs full of stuff.

Which gets the another thing that was surreal for me -- I was basically Suzies's designated "father for the day" (or at least, that is what it felt like to me). I think that parents have a certain role to play on move-in day, and I kindof got to play that role well ahead of the game (for me). Suzie was probably one of the easiest kids that you could wish for, move-in wise. But still, it was stressful, and after it was over, I had a goodly sweat going on. I don't know how really old people do it.

Which leads me to the last way in which things were surreal -- I was exposed to college students again. And not just any sort of student, but freshmen. And not just any sort of freshmen -- 18-year-old freshmen! I mean, I'm 10 years older than these people! I marveled out the random girl talking about an Incubus concert, the slackers already busting out with the pirated DVDs on the HP Media Center laptop, the jock-types going around to meet all of the new, naive, freshmen women (shudder), etc. And I was just left with the since of how this whole phase of my life is over, and it is so not a bad thing. I have done my time in the college gulags, and now I am out of there, a much better man for the experience, to be sure, but out of there just the same.

Suzie and I capped off this wonderful memory-lane-type experience (for me) by having dinner at none-other than... (wait for it...) -- the dorm cafeteria! Yes kids, I had dorm food on Sunday night! As Suzie's designated parental unit, I was treated to a free meal at the caf for my hard work, and as a thank-you for all of the bucks that I am (not) going to send down into the UCB sinkhole. The food was pretty decent (for college cafeteria food), but I'm sure they were putting on "the show" for the visiting parents. I'll have to ask Suzie in about a month what she thinks of the food.

So, in conclusion, college is great, and Suzie is going to have a wonderful time at UC Berkeley. But for me, college was great, and while it's interesting to see how much I have changed in 10 years, I'm glad that I have grown as an individual, and moved on with myself.

At least, until my midlife crisis, anyway. :)

-Andy.

The subject reminds me of a Homerism -- "Hey, how come I can't get no Tang 'round here no more?". Anyways, my family was out in the bay area last week for a visit, and that was fun, but kindof busy. And it didn't exactly leave a lot of time for the computer. I got some new toys that I need to post about, and of course there have been doins-a-transpirin'.

The primary of which, right after my parents left, I went and picked up Suzie Schornack, Laura's (of Mark and Laura fame) little sister, from Kevin's place, and she has been my house-guest here in Sunnyvale ever since. Suzie is going to be a freshman at UC Berkeley in the fall, but the dorms aren't quite open yet. She caught a ride out to the Bay Area with her dad, but he had to go back to work a couple of states away, and so she needs to bridge the gap. And that's where "old reliable" Andy comes in...

Anyways, it's been fun having her here -- I kindof get to be tour guide of the bay area. I don't really know what I'm talking about, which makes sense, since I've only lived here a little more than a year... But what's to know, really? Drive, work, drive, eat, sleep, repeat.

Duh!

-Andy.

Since I was last able to blog, I done been on several trips. For the 4th of July weekend, I was out in Chicago. I had yet another good visit out there -- I didn't accomplish everything that I wanted to do (Sara and I had 3 movies that we wanted to see, but we only made it to one), but still, it was good.

I went directly to Detroit, MI from Chicago, for my first business trip with EDS. The company has signed a big outsourcing deal with DaimlerChrysler, and I was tasked (along with a number of other EDS folks) with being on-site for the build-out of our monitoring and management infrastructure. As business trips go, I suppose that this one was okay -- I worked some killer hours (like 12/day), but I got to do it using my Mac, which made things better. Also, I blundered into some first-class seats on the way back from Detroit to S.F. (I had to go via Dallas -- ug), which is the first time that I've ever flown first class anywhere. It was pretty nice to fly first class, especially after my grueling trip to detroit.

After that, I had a little less than two weeks of non-travel (because a semi-planned L.A. trip didn't pan out), before it was off to O'Reilly's Open Source Conference in Portland, OR, with Mike. In general, the conference was a lot of fun. Perl rocks, python didn't impress me, and Linux continues to make strides (especially wine -- I actually saw Jeremy White demo iTunes running on Linux. Stunning). I was really hoping to blog more about this conference while I was there, but it didn't work out that way. I may try and post some more later.

But, I'm back from OSCON now. My parents & Sara come out to S.F. for a visit for a week starting on Saturday. Then I have a week of 'normalcy', and I am off to the Seattle/Bellingham, WA area for Chris and Tanya's wedding.

-Andy.

A lot of things have been messed up ever since I moved, not the least of which being my schedule. I have been traveling, working, going into S.F. -- you name it. For example, right now I'm oncall, and dealing with a page that I got at like 12:30 AM Pacific. It is now 3:30, and I'm still waiting for this Sun box to be back up so that I can verify it.

So, my sleep schedule is messed up. My work schedule is messed up (I probably won't be getting to work before 11:00 AM tomorrow, that is for sure). My workout schedule is messed up.

On the plus side, it looks like I only have to hold out until September for things to get back to normal... (or whatever passes for normal around here, anyway).

-Andy.