Journal cyranoVR's Journal: My trip to San Diego 4
Summary
Day One - Fly there
Day Two - Fencing/"Whopper X-treme"/Manga
Day Three - More fencing / Linux / Tivo
Day Four - Point Loma
Day Five - Fly home
Day One
Got up at crack of dawn, drove to Newark for 9AM flight. In-flight movie: Stewart Little 2.
Once in San Diego, got rental car: Chevy Malibu. Ugh.
Hotel r0x0rd for a change. The last two tournaments we stayed in crappy hotels.
Had crappy "Mexican" food. Blah you know about that.
Day 2
MrsVR fences. Even though we are in San Diego, the competition venue is for some reason 60 degrees. I could handle this if we were in Montreal but in California it is unexpected. I have to go fetch our winter coats out of the car.
Somehow I ended up on armory duty for all the girls from our club that were there. I am a sucker.
MrsVR isn't able to warm up properly due to the cold and messes up, going out in the first round. I am crushed, especially after she did so well at the last circuit. Argh.
After going back to the hotel, we go out for lunch. I get a "Bacon Whopper X-Treme" because it is pitched by Homer - Mmmmmmm...only cheese has more cheese. It is disgusting and I regret having it when I am done. Ah eat because I'm unhappy. Ahnd ah'm unhappy because ah eat.
Then it's off shopping in downtown San Diego. We make our way to a mall called Horton Plaza(?). MrsVR buys Sees candy for her mother and some clothes from JCrew.
Meanwhile, I find a Sun Coast Video store and decide to go gaze longingly at anime I can't afford. You know those tv ads for Sun Coast where the nerd who's into action movies hooks up with the nerdette sales clerk yeah, we've got that Well, they must be training their staff or something, because as soon as I started looking at the manga rack this little nerdy sales clerk girl started talking to me about anime (btw, I fit the bill as a nerdy guy). She kept recommending weird fantasy/horror/goth anime and seemed disappointed when I was looking at Gundam Wing, Cowboy Bebop, etc. Frankly, she was weirding me out. MrsVR was getting her hair cut at the time, btw.
Anyway, there was a buy-one-get-one-half-off sale on manga, and I wanted to get Love Hina Vols 1 and 2. However, I can never bring myself stuff, esp. stuff like manga/anime (b/c it's a "waste of money"), so I left. When I saw MrsVR, I told her about the sale, and she suggested that I should go ahead and buy the manga if I really wanted it.
Well, as soon as I walked back into that Sun Coast with MrsVR, friggin anime-nerdette clerk was standing behind the counter, and she blurted out "SHE GAVE YOU PERMISSION, HUH?" Well, suffice to say I was embarrassed. On top of that, I got carded for purchasing Love Hina vol 1 and Video Girl Ai vol 4 (they didn't have Love Hina vol 2). Ok, I understand an age restriction on these titles because they have sexual content (about as much as an average episode of Dawson's Creek with a smidgen of gratuitous nudity) - but was carding really necessary? I don't even get carded at bars any more! It was irritating. My suspicion is that she disapproved of my taste in manga and was trying to embarrass me further...
Day 3 part I
Fencing competition. In the first round I go 5-1. I manage to beat a Hungarian kid who trains at my club and was Under-17 World Champion. I am under no illusions that he was trying to win - he could have cared less. I was happy to have the victory, so I didn't care either. My one loss was against somebody I didn't thing much of - a big mistake. He hit me on the hand a bunch of times because I didn't give him any respect and attcked him blindly. D'oh.
In my first bout, actually, this fucking guy somehow got his point inside the sleeve of my jacket. He left a colorful scratch on the inside of my arm. It was scary, as I could have been seriously injured.
I was having some difficulty concentrating in the first round, and by the second round it all fell apart. I couldn't focus at all. My equipment and the soring equipment of the strip I was on BOTH were having difficulties, and as a result I lost my first bout 3-2 when the time ran out. From there it was downhill. I had one match against a US World Team member where I was leading 3-1...and then proceeded to impale myself on his point 4 times to loose 5-4. It was unbelievable. I was finally able to win my last bout 5-2, but that was my only victory so I was out. It was crushing. Last weekend I fucking WON a tournament, and in December I finished in the round of 16...and here I am placing somewhere between 70 and 100. Un-MUTHAPHUQIN believable. Unacceptable. Unforgivable.
Day 3 part II
MrsVR and I immediately left for the hotel so I could take a shower, and then it was off to visit out friends that live in San Diego. Finding them was rather easy, and after some margaritas was went for dinner at Jimmy Carter's Mexican. Not the president Jimmy Carter, btw, the proprietor's brother-in-law is named JC (something like that).
It turns out my friend (let's call him [K] from here on) is a Linux geek. He has a custom built PC dual booting to WinXP (which he never uses) and Mandrake. [K] is a grad student and has worked for the US gov't, so working with unix operating systems and the command line is more natural for him then windows point-and-click.
I got the whole story about how it took him three weeks just to get the display working in the GUI environment (he only had command line during that time) - and likewise for the dial-up, printer, etc etc. A lot of searching through message boards and tweaking text files. I wouldn't have the patience.
Anyway, [K] also uses Latex (pronounced Lay-tek?) for editing his articles. For editing he uses emacs, and for browsing/email he uses Mozilla. Not much else going on. It was an interesting demonstration on the utility of Linux (I guess I should change my bio).
[K] is a economic grad student at UC-SD, so he gave me a lecture on his current area of study - Utility Theory and Indifference Curves. Long story short, the more you work, you make more money but have less time to enjoy it -- and the less you work, the more free time you have but the less money you have to enjoy it with. He is studying how this theory applies to welfare policy. ANYWAY I reciprocated with a lecture on XML - which he may find useful since he is currently using LateX to compose his articles/papers and may end up working with some XML technologies at some point (docbook anyone?).
The other technology I was introduced to was TIVO. [K] kept repeating this mantra over and over: "it's the best consumer product I've ever owned." I have to admit it was pretty cool, and MrsVR and I decided that we would buy one sometime in the next 2-3 years, when the price comes down. The best feature, by far, was the pause-rewind live TV. Otherwise, it is a really cool VCR. The feature where it guesses which programs to tape for you seems pretty neat too, although [K] and his wife didn't seem to care about that one too much. I had fun giving spanish variety shows "three thumbs up" when they weren't looking ^_^
Day 4
Ok, I have typed a lot, so I will just cover the high point - literally. We went up to Point Loma (sp?) for a great view of all of San Diego. It turns out there is a big military installation / navy base in San Diego. According to [K], war with Iraq is going to happen, because they have been mobilizing thousands of troops out of SD. They wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't serious.
During WWII they had giant 16-inch guns with at 28-mile range that guarded the coast from atop the Point. We checked out a small museum they had. It was cool.
On the beach, I saw this really interesting bird with a long thin bill. I wonder what species it was?
Day 5 (today)
Up at the crack of dawn. Got to the plane on time despite getting lost on the way to the airport.
Ran into one of our friends at the airport. She informed us that some of our other friends had gone to Tiajuanna for the day, but one of them couldn't get back in and was being detained by INS!!! He's not a US citizen but is married to one, so he never bothered to get the paper work done. He and his american wife are probably still trapped down there. I've heard horror stories about people being held by INS for months...hopefully this will turn out fine (they were pretty stupid to get in trouble like this, though).
The flight back was uneventful (in-flight movie: The Tuxedo) and I read By the Sword.
When we got to the parking lot to retrieve our car, it turned out that they had decided to raise the parking rates by $5 a day while we were gone GEE thanks for the warning.
After retrieving DoggyVR from MrsVR's parents, it was off for home to do laundry and write this
So that's it. Tomorrow night I am going to do a Journal Entry about my fencing goals for the future.
Re: Nerd Girl @ Suncoast (Score:2)
A horrible assemblage of spazzes.
On why it is Lay (or Lah) Tek (Score:2)
[snip][/snip]
If I remember correctly TeX is actually Tau, Epsilon, Chi which stands for something in Greek. To read? To write? Something like that. Anyway it is a document/formatting meta-language (like hypertext but instead of making it interactive and worldbound, it is making it typeset for printers).
No one ever listens.... (Score:1)
Damnit CVR, I could have made your stay more enjoyable if you had taken my advice.
Heh. Just kidding dude. Sorry you both didn't fence as well as you'd like to, but all in all sounded like a pretty good time.
Re:No one ever listens.... (Score:2)
I had an okay time...after fencing poorly I was rather depressed so that put a damper on things