School is creeping up on me fast. Three weeks from tomorrow will be my first day of my last year of school. At least it will be if I don’t go beyond a master’s degree. Work is coming to an end and I am working on a couple feature requests that would be good to finish before I leave. I’ve also got a presentation to give next week on what I’ve done this summer.
Over the weekend I saw the new Bourne movie. Despite going to the 11 AM showing, the place was packed. I would say it was the best movie I’ve seen this summer. The action sequences were intense and much more involved than in Die Hard. Bourne seems to take a lesson from the earlier Bond movies and beats the crap out of his assailants using objects that are lying around in plain sight (books, towels). This started in the first movie and continued through to this one. I would say that the first movie was the best, followed by this one, and then the second. The car chase in this movie wasn’t as good as the first and my only other complaint was the overuse of really shaky cameras zoomed in too close to everything. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was going on. Of course, by this point the movie was nothing at all like the book of the same name, but I guess that was to be expected considering what happened in the second movie. I liked the tie-ins to the earlier movies and also that some kind of closure was reached in the end, which was very similar to what happened in the first book.
Following Bourne, I drove to Rancho San Antonio Park to do my run. I had planned to do my long run there, but wound up cutting it short. I just didn’t feel right and my achilles started to bother me. I can tell when something is going to be a problem, and the achilles was definitely giving me its warning signs. Of course, the part of the park I had gone into last weekend was the only flat part and everything else was straight up into the mountains again. This did not help the achilles, and was probably the main reason it really started bothering me. It was also really hot despite being 10 minutes away from the much cooler Moffett. Still, as I climbed up the mountains, the views of the bay were awesome. The trail eventually got too steep to run at a reasonable pace, so I turned around and went back down.
I went by Trader Joe’s and the grocery store on the way back but didn’t get that much since I’ve got a bunch of stuff lying around and in the freezer that I should probably use before I leave.
I decided not to run on Sunday because of the achilles. I thought about biking, but decided not to. In the afternoon I headed to San Jose and the Winchester Mystery House. I had been there when I was little, but don’t remember too much about it. There were a ton of people there and it took awhile before my tour started so I walked around the gardens surrounding the house. The house in its current environment is weird enough to begin with. It’s right in the middle of Downtown San Jose. There is a parking garage and skyscraper across the street, a movie theater next door, and a freeway on the other side. Then, right in the middle, is this giant victorian-era mansion with an elaborate garden surrounding it. It’s way out of place.
The tour was pretty good, but didn’t cover too much that I hadn’t already read on Wikipedia before I went. The guide seemed to be younger than I was — it was probably his summer job, but he seemed pretty enthusiastic about everything.
Most of the house was unfurnished save for a few of the more important rooms, and many of the rooms weren’t even coated in plaster, still damaged from the 1906 earthquake. The house looked exactly like you would think a house would look when rooms and floors were spontaneously and continuously added for 38 years. There were windows in the floor, windows that looked into other rooms, doors that led to a three story drop, and a staircase that went right into the ceiling. There were all kinds of tiny passageways and secret doors. Since Sarah Winchester had an obsession with the number 13, there were often 13 windows in various rooms, 13 colors in the stained glass of the windows, 13 steps between floors, 13 gas candles in the chandeliers, and even 13 overflow drain holes in one of the sinks. Many of the rooms were nearly pitch black while others were completely covered in glass windows and were very bright. Since Sarah Winchester wasn’t very tall and had arthritis, many of the staircases were replaced with small one-inch steps that snaked their way up to the next floor. This wound up being good for me because of the achilles.
On the way back I stopped at an REI and got some OTC orthotics/shoe inserts for my shoes since the custom ones I have now are shot. I had never been to an REI before since there aren’t any near home, but it turned out to be nothing more than I could find at a Dick’s. They had some good stuff on sale but of course it was way too big.
On Monday I decided to take another day off since I still felt my achilles some during the night. The day seemed much shorter going straight in to work. I also felt really weird, just not myself. I also made the good decision of wearing my trail shoes instead of the loafers that I normally wear to work. It’s a lot more comfortable to walk in those and as I have noticed, wearing jeans is about as dressy as it gets around here. I see people in shorts occasionally.
Through the night and morning my achilles felt pretty good, so I got up early and ran about six miles. There was definitely some tightness, but not the feeling I had on Saturday. I’ll have to see how it goes the next few days. I may actually have to get on the bike depending on what happens.
I decided to cancel my web hosting since I hadn’t been keeping up with maintenance and nobody really used the site anyways. Everything seems like it’s winding to an end. I like the weather out here a lot as well as the general atmosphere of everything that is going on, but it is kind of lonely being out here by myself. I’ve met a few people, but it’s always hard for me to be proactive in forming relationships. Sometimes on the team it would take me a month and a half to match the names and faces of the new freshmen despite spending several hours a day with them. In some ways I want to go back home and to school just to be in familiar surroundings again and to see people I know, but a lot of those that I know have graduated and moved on. At the same time I enjoy having cool weather to run in since it’s oppressive at home and interesting places to visit every weekend. I also like the feeling that I’m right in the middle of what’s up and coming in terms of the computer science field instead of in Williamsburg, where everything big seems so far away.
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