2000.05.27 - The Final Move

And once again we reach another end. Spring 2000 has come and gone, and I can only hope that it has made me stronger. If anything, it has lowered my sleep threshold, such that I can function on two hours of sleep. This was the semester where I proved just how on crack I can be by taking both CS150 and EE141, leaving little time for anything else in my life. Yet I managed to accumulate and pile up so much junk into that tiny little room of mine...

...which brings me to the next point: moving. Ted and I can finally officially wash ourselves clean of that stinky skanky house on Scenic & Rose. After the initial move-out which wasn't nearly enough, both of us had to return one last time (a week later) to get the last of our stuff (because only so much fits in one car at one time, right?)

And so we get there, and what's left to do? In a nutshell: more than we thought. Food had to be packed and shipped to the apartment, ted's desk and bed had to be disassembled for transport (and reassembled at the apartment), and I had to get the last of my crap (the fridge being the most annoying). In the end though, we finally cleaned out our rooms (amid some not-really-loud music from Steve's room...which was surprising), swept up random rats of lint, and discovered that the vacuum shouldn't be used...

Here we have (above) Ted sweeping up his room for the first (and last) time, and (below) my closet of a room left exactly as I found it - small, and furnished only with a halogen and a twin sized bed (no, your eyes do not deceive you - that twin bed takes up most the room)

So after clearing out the house, there was still the issue of moving everything up to the fourth floor apartment complex. Thank god for the elevator...and for that parking lot for KFC right next to the complex.

Here Ted takes advantage of the sloped nature of the parking lot to slide around on his chair. Yeah, this camera of mine only takes stills, so you'll have to take my word that he actually was sliding into oncoming traffic...

Actually, unloading was pretty quick work, since there were so many of us -- Ted, his parents, Tracy, me, and Theresa too (she just likes helping people move or something...I don't get it...or maybe she's really trying to prove to Eric Lui that she can indeed carry things like an iMac). After that, Ted's parents, being the cool people that they are, took us all to a late lunch at Barney's (they've got the best curly fries in the state) since we were all pretty darn hungry from all the moving.

So Ted got to drive a minivan full of people (there were six of us), leading to his unofficial anointment as "Ted the soccer mommy!"

Here Tracy eyes that little bit of ranch on the curly fry she's about to eat. Being allergic to dairy, I had to spite her by ordering a big phat three-cheese burger; and we eventually talked her into eating this little bit of ranch dressing too (she caved!)

Then we get to that little slice of orange that came on the plate. It was yummy...though sometimes you have to wonder if I can tell the difference between an orange and a retainer...

From there, the hard work was about to begin. Tracy had brought up her machine, and I brought moochka up to see what kind of wonders can be worked on Tracy's machine. Ted and I suspected a head crash of some sorts; whatever it was (perhaps the heat from moving it out last saturday caused some of the non-volatile memory elements to fail?), it wasn't happy. In any event, Theresa (once a rescommie, always a rescommie) took the brunt of the busy work, finding out that indeed, Something Really Bad had happened and painstakingly backing things up to floppies (ugh) in DOS. Ted and Tracy were figuring out how to reassemble the futon and desk that used to be in Ted's room at the house, and I was trying to hook the live phone line up to all rooms in the apartment.

Here's a brief snapshot of the wires behind a panel in the closet. Amazing that only two of these correspond to the working phone line...

After much trouble, everything got done. Eventually. The desk and futon got put together, the phone wiring got figured out, and after many many hours, the tag-team trio of Theresa, me, and Ted got Tracy's machine into a happier state. In the meantime, I had remembered that Melissa was still in Berkeley, so she eventually came over too to drool at the apartment (again, another person I'd described the apartment to who hadn't yet seen it). And so while Ted was feverishly working to restore Tracy's machine, I was just slacking with Melissa...hehehe.

Above is Theresa with the new hair. However, her characteristic "tchen camera smile" (the one that says "haha..there's a cow on your forehead!") is still quite the same...

Here we have Melissa who needed exactly 0.5 seconds to whip off her glasses and assume this pose after I whipped out the camera and said "smile!" How does she do that? Weird...

Anyhow, looking back on the spring semester, it was...its own. The semester of "the apartment;" the semester of hardware labs up the a$$; the semester of ice cream disappearances and running noses; and most of all, the semester of anticipation. Ok, this is symbolic. I don't really know what it means.

• This is a polaroid of Melissa with her hair in braids. For those of you who have been slacking on stalking me, Melissa is the first non-suitemate I met in Berkeley way back in August 1997. Since hooking her up with 'net that one time I met her, I have been stalking her via e-mail ever since. Of late, she has been known to throw insanely huge parties at her house, and now that she turned 21 this past February, watch out!



• Yeah, a picture of a cat. This is She-Ra again. Here she sniffs the porch for food. There was that one time when we trapped her in the house and she started wailing with unnatural cat sounds. Toward the end, this black cat seemed to be stalking her, and as moving out approached, there were the repeated (but unsuccessful) attempts to get her in a cage to be transported to Pat's sister's. Then there was that one time Ted and I went to pull the dsl splitter and we discovered that She-Ra is susceptible to classical learning theories - extinction and shaping were the most prevalent ones.



• This is Larry turning off the heater when he still lived in the house on Scenic. He then moved to the apartment. He now sublets from me, thus saving me money because I'm cheap like that. The thing you should know about Larry is that he voluntarily asked for Linux on his machine, even though he knows very little UNIX. This is a good thing...



• Here we have Cynthia asleep. Ok, so she woke up when the flash went off. I like to think of her as a good friend of mine that I just don't spend enough time with...which explains why we're no longer officially "together" (whatever that means). Why is this a picture of her sleeping then (dude, you have to see that bear she's holding in the picture)? Well, she fears cameras more than I fear failure. As such, the only way to get a picture of her that's in focus is to get them while she sleeps. Just ask Nam (also camera shy)...



• One of the things about spring is that the sun starts to come out earlier in the day and sometimes, it's just a beautiful walk to my morning classes (after all, I did live in the boonies on north side). One day, I caught this sight on Arch St. It's a shame that two weeks later, all the flowers had been snipped and killed and weren't there anymore.



• And of course, Ted&Tracy (it's one name). Ted actually took this shot himself (he's got impressive aim, no?). I will be eternally grateful to Ted for nabbing the apartment so I have housing next spring (though from what I have seen around here in San Jose, the market in Berkeley is nothing compared to what it is down here), and eternally grateful to Tracy for making the apartment smell all girly and Bath & Body Works and nice and all that.



• And here's the tlchen (also known as "the tchen" or "Theresa") who, like the ericlui, has a heart bigger than the size of her own self. She spent the semester in Washington DC as part of the UCB Washington Program. There, she "discovered herself" and came back a different person. Just look at her - she isn't pale anymore! So she didn't come back as Britney, but hey, good enough...(so this shot was taken right before she got her hair cut again)

• Salter the worst housemate ever. I can say this now that I am no longer in the same city as he. He is the laziest person I know, refuses to wash his dog (poor Woody), and doesn't know how to wash dishes properly. He steals food (without realizing that if he just asked, I'd probably let him have some), steals the Playboys that come for Chris (who used to live in the house) and operates on a foolish consistency. What is this consistency? Well, he sleeps essentially all day. Around 2am, he wakes up, walks into the bathroom to blow his nose really loudly with toilet paper (since he's too cheap to use kleenex). The he turns on the heater to 70 degrees, even if it is currently 80 degrees in the house. Then around 6:30am, he does that again, without regard for the fact that others in the house are still trying to sleep. Other annoyances include the loud music during (normal) sleeping hours, and an uncanny ability to use about one roll of toilet paper all to himself in two days. Additionally, there's "the funk" which eminated from his room. It was initially a blend of dog and candle wax; but it still remained even when the dog wasn't there. And correspondingly, the gallons of cologne he wore if he ever went out anywhere....needless to say, I'm happy to be out of there. I agree with Larry.
  
  
• On to happier things, there was the ericlui, my cs150 lab partner and rescomp "rootie-pie." He's just incredible in his faith and beliefs, not only religiously, but with everything in his life. There isn't a single thing that he does that he doesn't truly believe in. Like being a TA for CS3 or simulating a MIDI parser. And he was even cool enough to explain to me what Paul week was all about without trying to brainwash me.
  
  
• And on the lab tangent, there were Andy, Muffy, Alex, Crazy, and Sput in 141 lab who suffered through horrible CAD tools and an even more erratic project TA who wasn't exactly a people-person.