Monthly Archive for August, 1999

No Time For Songs

Published
by
Benjy
on Sunday August 29, 1999
in Berkeley: School, Busy and Kvetch
. Closed

Okay, to say that I've been just a little bit busy would be an understatement. The first thing that you need to know is that I have worked 123 hours (including the 40 hours of training) (You do the math) since August 9. That would be 6.5 hours a day, if I had worked every day, but I have had about 3 days where I didn't work at all. I also have that 16 units of class thing... Anyway, I'll just run through the glaring details of the last three weeks as I remember them, though I'll probably tend a little towards chronological order.

So when I got here August 8, housing had no clue who I was, because for whatever reason my name slipped through the cracks, and so I ended up living in an Cheney for a week, with all of my stuff in boxes, which was a total pain in the ass. If I wanted to take a shower or read a book or anything, I had to dig through boxes. Then I had to spend Saturday the 14th moving all of my stuff down Cheney and then back up Deutsch, and then piling things in my room in a nice way so that Seth wouldn't see a mess when he got there early the next day. And of course I was totally unable to get the beds bunked, so a lot of my things STILL stayed in boxes once I was in my real room. Which was annoying.

So for the week of August 9th, I had ResComp training, which on the whole, actually wasn't that bad. From Self Defense to Diversity training to the Obstacle Course, it wasn't nearly as bad as one would have expected. And frankly, in retrospect, I would far rather be doing that training than suffering the monotony of fixing yet another Ethernet problem.

So after a week of diverse training, and a day off which I spent moving my stuff, I got up bright and early, and proceeded to talk for something like 8 hours straight, giving a "spiel" about ResComp about 80 billion times. Monday I didn't have anything to do until 2, at which point, I began fixing problems.

They're all a blur. I remember Michelle, the first person I helped, whose computer was a total mess inside, and it took me like two hours to get her card put in and working. I remember something like three different iMacs not working, all because of a phone cords. I remember countless instances of "I'm on the internet, now what?" And that's really it. I don't remember very many other names or faces.

And then the next day I started also working at the Cal Connect workshops, giving more spiels. They were tedious and I got tired of talking, and I actually would have preferred to have been fixing a computer than signing people up for their IRC's. I remember numerous laptops which were brought in to the workshop, expecting us to fix them.

Huge lists from hell by saturday. Each of us with 20+ people we were supposed to help on Saturday alone. The nice happy transition to the helpdesk appointments, because now I have times when I'm supposed to go fix something, and the resident is almost always there, so I don't hike around for nothing anymore...

Hell Week is going on its third week, now, and it doesn't seem like we can help as many people as quickly with the helpdesk model, but I think that at the same time it is keeping most of the RCC's more sane, even if the office is getting a lot of phone calls.

I've fallen even more in love with the PowerBook G3, and use Core, which is ResComp's PBG3, when on my appointments as often as possible. They're really awesome machines, and I really want one. I've even been idly considering looking at selling my PCPCP210 after I clean all of my data off of it. I don't know if I will, though.

So then, after another day off on the Sunday before classes, classes began.

Oh yeah, Seth, my roommate. Nice guy, we get along, no feuds developing. Beds happilly bunked, he likes Man of La Mancha too, happy happy. It'll work out, even though we don't have that much in common. I won't spend nearly as much time with him as I did with Keith and Michael last year, but that's actually a good thing. I haven't had much time to spend with anyone yet, but as time goes by I'll probably spend more time with ResCompers.

ResComp is cool, I like it a lot, after working with them I have more incentive to stay with them, and I really hope I'll be able to advance after this year.

So classes.

Monday I had class from 10 to 2, though the 10 o'clock class didn't meet. Since I had already walked all the way to Cory hall, I ended up sitting down and reading for an hour and a half, then I went to lunch in Foothill, which was all nostalgic and stuff, and then I went to my Math Discussion and then my EE42 lecture. Math discussion will be annoying, because my TA is not an english speaking native. EE42 lecture shouldn't be too bad. The professor is a bit monotonic, but not dull, though I don't care for 100 Lewis as a room. Then, that evening, I had appointments. Surprise.

Tuesday was pretty nice. Art History 10 at 11, Math 55 at 1230, and then English 1A at 2. The first thing to note is that ArtHist is in Dwinelle, and Math is in Haas, meaning it takes about 15 minutes to walk there at a normal pace, meaning I have to mildly jog up that hill, and I still don't get a seat. Art History lecture won't be too bad. It's neat because it combines History and Art, which is the best way to do it, and so I find it interesting, even if the last half an hour drags, as it does in any hour and a half lecture. And the ArtHist professor isn't bad, either. Math isn't bad, though again with the dragging, and the professor is lecturing pretty much straight out of the book (example for example). And then English 1A. I was looking forward to this class the most, and so far I'm still liking it. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'll enjoy it.

I'm running out of steam.

On Wednesday I spent an hour looking for 104 Moffit, which was fine, because the class in 104 Moffit doesn't meet until next week. Then again with the Math Discussion and EE Lecture. And there was no EE lab the first week. And then an interesting thing to note was that, despite not having any appointments scheduled, I still did ResComp stuff for about three hours that night...

This is pretty poor writing.. I'm just rambling. Sorry.

Thursday: See Tuesday. It's all the same.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which brings us up to today. Those three days were all identical. I have no classes on Friday, which will be nice later, but for now, that meant that I had appointments to attend to all day. And the weekend went by totally quick because I just basically worked through it. Saturday night I went and saw Clerks at UC Theater wth Alert. It was pretty cool to see Clerks on such a big screen.

Yeah, I've been totally busy. I'm not sure how expressively I related that in the above, but I'm tuckered out. In a month or so things should settle down, but in the meantime, I can just remind myself how much money I'm making. As long as I don't remind myself that the money is paying for school, I'm fine.

I know I left out a ton of details. I'm sorry. That was basically a totally lifeless retelling of what has happened to me. I didn't put into it any of the details which make it seem interesting.

I'm sure I've mentioned that ResComp is cool. I'm totally happy with it.

I think that that is the Thesis of this all so far. No matter how much work it is, and no matter how tired I'm getting, ResComp is cool all the same.

What A Weird Concert

Published
by
Benjy
on Saturday August 28, 1999
in Music and Synchronicity
. Closed

Before the concert, Galatea and I played with the program Yoda on my Palm III while we waited for my brother. It completely slipped my mind, until the encore, or course, that Yoda is a Weird Al song.

Every wednesday I have a rescomp Unit meeting. The Wednesday before the Weird Al concert, we had a joint meeting with the Unit 5 RCC's, and we had bagels there. The introductions we gave were "your name and your favorite shmeer." Then, of course, at the concert, Weird Al played "Pretty Fly For a Rabbi," which has a line which goes "He'll bring you lots of cheer and maybe bagels with some shmeer"

Steve’s Misfortune

Published
by
Benjy
on Saturday August 7, 1999
in Berkeley: School and Friends
. Closed

So just yesterday (Friday), Steve messaged me asking me when I'd be getting to Berkeley. And after telling him that I'd be there Sunday, he let me know that the person he was to be subletting from (Subletting during the school year? What the hey? Whatever... Maybe the person was going to study abroad?) had just lost their apartment, so Steve was thus out of a place to live. So if you know of anywhere Steve can live in Berkeley, email him and help him out. Or, if you're too lazy to go look up his email address in my People Pages, email me and I'll forward it to him.

Bakurii, T-Minus

Published
by
Benjy
on Saturday August 7, 1999
in Berkeley: School
. Closed

Approximately 14 hours until departure for Berkeley. And in that time, I will be going to Pi's birthday party, sleeping, and packing those last few things. I'm running loads of laundry through the washing machine, and I'm packing my bathroom supplies. And other then that, I'm set to go pretty much, except for hex, which is the only computer that I haven't packed up yet. That leaves my room a pretty bare place. There's piles all over it, of course, but it's bare all the same. It's pretty strange. There are the odds and ends I haven't packed yet, like trophies or pictures on the walls, but my parents will handle those when they actually move out.

Seth St. Martin

Published
by
Benjy
on Saturday August 7, 1999
in Berkeley: School and People
. Closed

Yesterday (still Friday), I got the information from Housing telling me who my roommate is to be for the next year. I didn't call him immediately, as I was doing various things, and my dad kept using the phone. Eventually he called me. His name is Seth, he's from Sacramento, he's in the College of Chemistry, and he seems like a plenty nice guy. Conveniently enough, he said he had a Microwave he could bring, but we've decided to hold off and see if there is a Microwave we can leach off of there, first. But he has a compaq... And I sort of kind of offered to make it work before I knew that. Oh boy. But I'll do it, because, if nothing else, it's my job =)

Weird Al and They Might Be Giants, Oh My!

Published
by
Benjy
on Saturday August 7, 1999
in Music and They Might Be Giants
. Closed

So Weird Al is playing at the Kern County Fair on September 24, and so I've already got my tickets to go see that, and I'll be back in Bakersfield that weekend. Since I've got no classes on Friday, I might even come down on Thursday Evening. I'm looking forward to the Concert a fair amount, though, as some people in alt.music.tmbg said they recently saw an Al concert, and that it was very good. And TMBG fans know a good concert when they see it, because TMBG shows are notoriously enjoyable.

The tricky part is this: TMBG is scheduled to be touring nationally in "September and October". The dates of the tour have yet to be fully announced, but I have a bad feeling that they will be hitting California very near to the weekend of September 25.

But since dates haven't been announced yet, I can't make my travel plans yet. As long as they're not playing ON September 24, there won't be a problem. And if I try hard enough, I might even be able to catch two concerts... One in the LA area while I'm in Bakersfield, then a second in the Bay Area. That's what I'd really like to do, but we'll see how things work out. And if I managed that, I suspect I'd be a little overloaded on good concerts for the month =)

I'll post further details here, and if anyone is interested in getting in touch with me at any of these concerts, or wants to go, or whatever, let me know.

A Cordless Phone

Published
by
Benjy
on Saturday August 7, 1999
in Berkeley: School and Gadgets
. Closed

So Seth said he has a phone he can bring, but he doesn't have an answering machine. And while, granted, I don't get very many phone calls, let alone very many people leaving messages, an answering machine is all the same something that I want to have, "just in case". And upon further reflection, I realize that I won't be spending as much time in my room as I did last year, so a call is more likely to go unanswered.

So the point is, I spent this afternoon going at three different stores, searching out a cordless phone with a built-in answering machine with mailboxes that I liked. And I found a really nice Sony phone the first place we went, but they were out of stock. And the second place we went was pretty useless. And at the third place, I found a phone which was acceptable, though not as nice as the Sony. Oh well. The phone I got is still rather nice, and it'll do. And it was cheaper than the Sony I wanted in the first place, so I can't complain too much. It has two sub mailboxes, and a general message center. It's nice.

And on this trip a pretty unusual thing happened. While waiting in line at the first store, Mrs. Chalupa, a mother of Amy Chalupa, who I graduated with and who I knew through band, was in line behind me. So she and I got into a pretty long conversation about various things (I knew Mrs. Chalupa because she was a "band-mom", and all three years I was in band, I was on her bus, and so I talked to her a lot before). Eventually we both left, and after a stop at PetSMart to get Crickets for my brothers lizard, we ended up at the second place, where, as I was getting out of the car, I saw Mrs. Chalupa walking through the parking lot. Small world, huh? Anyway, she was going to Computer Renaissance to look for a computer for Amy, and I was going into Office Whatever, but it was still weird.

And the reason I called them "the first store" and "the second store" was because they were both "Office Something", and I just don't know which one was which. The third store I know was Circuit City, but I felt like keeping up the theme, and called it "the third place".

Mystery Men

Published
by
Benjy
on Saturday August 7, 1999
in Movies and Reviews
. Closed

Last night (still Friday. I'm writing this in the middle of the day for once, meaning "yesterday" isn't suddenly changing meaning as I write) we all went and saw "Mystery Men", and I enjoyed it well enough. My only real complaint is probably that it was just overly corny, but I can't complain about that too much, because it was SUPPOSED to be corny. Maybe the problem was that the corny-ness was a little forced. I can't quite put my finger on what bothered me about it. All the same, I liked it, and the theme was really great: A bunch of losers aspiring to do something great. It's worth seeing, I think, but you can't say that I haven't warned you that it's corny.

And after that, we all went to Lyon's and ate. I had a "Great Lyon, with bacon ($0.79 extra)" and it was incredibly good. A huge hunk of beef with grilled onions and cheese (and bacon) on some sort of non-standard bun, but it was great. Several people asked me what it was when it was served, and I calmly informed them "A heart-attack... On a toothpick" as I took a bite. As stated, it was good. Lyon's always has great food. I like the place. You should try it if you haven't before. And if you don't know what it is, it's like Denny's, but better.

The Status of Operation: Pack Room

Published
by
Benjy
on Tuesday August 3, 1999
in Bakersfield and Berkeley
. Closed

To date, I have packed 23 boxes, and have 15 empty boxes to place things into. All of my books are packed, and much of my shelf closet is packed. And that took up 23 boxes. I have a lot of books. I'm perfectly on schedule to get it all packed up in time to leave at an ungodly hour Sunday morning. It's so soon, yet it still seems a long way away. If nothing else, I look forward to being able to ditch this damnable modem and use a real Internet connection again.

Cool and Not Cool

Published
by
Benjy
on Tuesday August 3, 1999
in Banality
. Closed

Aberrant is cool, yet tragic. Super Smash Bros. is Cool, and the best multiplayer fun I've seen. Quake II for N64 is not cool. Diddy Kong Racing is reasonably cool. Stellar Frontiers is cool. My two new alarm clocks are cool. Bomberman 64 is average. Guard Rails are cool, and yet not cool at the same time. Funny how that works.