missing the 🏓

Tue, 10 Nov 2026 15:55:00 -0800

I used to play ping pong as part of my 1:1s at Isilon. The table was in the basement near the server racks, so it worked well to have private conversations. I eventually secured my place at the top of the ladder (perhaps because we laid off the #1 guy. 🫣)

Afterwards, for about 10 years, my only play was with Zack at his home.

2005-11-11

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:47:31 +0000

I woke up at 6 today, despite going to bed close to midnight. I was tired, but I had to get some work done early – Isilon is going to be at Supercomputing 2005 and it is a big deal, and I had promised to do a few tweaks before the show. I got out of bed, ate breakfast, read some email, and was ready to move out (in fact, I was already putting on my shoes) when I couldn’t find my wallet. I came back into the house, looked in various places, and as a last ditch effort, went outside to check the Jetta. At first, I found nothing, and thought that all was lost – without the wallet, I didn’t have my keycard, so I couldn’t get to work. Then, wedged between the driver seat and the center console, was my wallet. Whew! I went into work and began wrestling with my changes. I made solid progress and was only interrupted by a trip to Larry’s with Jane (for donuts) and our usual team meeting. I came home for lunch and Eriko popped out of bed when I arrived and brought out the meal she had fixed. It was yummy. We concluded the lunch hour by watching some TV and chatting. Back at work, I rushed to complete the tasks I had before 3 o’clock – which was the time for an engineering meeting. With only seconds to spare, I think I made it. (Verification will come later). After the meeting (where Zack won a ticket to see Sheryl Crow) there was a planned party at Jillians. Zack, Kaya, and I went up and picked up Eriko who I had called in advance. We found a convenient parking space and for the next several hours, we ate, we drank, and we played lots of ping pong. The Kirsch Brothers had many victories and only a few defeats. It was fun. Eriko looked a little bored at times, but in general she seemed to enjoy herself. She and I played ping pong quite a bit and Zack played with her a bit too. We returned to the house, said bye to Zack, and relaxed on the couch for an hour or so.

2005-10-30

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 06:58:24 +0000

I slowly awoke from my dream, in which the MG had been converted into a hybrid vehicle, to find Eriko waking up. I then rolled out of bed and joined her in the living room (being sure to make noise so that I wouldn’t scare her.) The clock read 7 o’clock, but we had yet to turn back out clocks – so we woke up at 6 AM! That was great. ;) I went around the house changing most of the clocks and Eriko started eating some food. I made us both bowls of “Toasted Oats” (Cheerios clone) and we ate. Eriko thought the cereal could use a little sugar, but it tasted fine to me. ;P Soon after eating, she became tired and went back to bed. I worked on the computer, completely the migration I had begun the night before – now my finances database is in the debit/credit accounting format as taught by my accounting textbook. Most of my tools are now broken and I haven’t wrapped my head exactly around the method I will need to conveniently track bills & the budget (besides my current setup, which are separate tables and not what I want). Seeking to avoid too much noise, I moved to the couch and finished watching (via my handheld media player) a CSE colloquia. This one was pretty good, although the presenter wasn’t very eloquent and that made it difficult to listen. Eventually I was able to get past that and I enjoyed the end, especially since the presenter was so passionate (and frustrated) – the talk was about electronic voting presented by Andrew Neff of VoteHere.com. Eriko emerged from the bedroom and made herself some ramen for lunch; I ate some leftover pizza. Eriko watched this anime we had downloaded (via bittorrent, which took 3 days.) We did some channel surfing and some couch sitting before Eriko decided she was bored. She decided she wanted to play some ping pong, so we left for Jillian’s (billards/sports bar) where I knew there were some tables. Eriko called Zack while we were in the car and we invited him and Katie to join us (they would be delayed due to existing plans, but thought they could). We got a great parking space, traded my id for some paddles and balls, and headed upstairs – to find a bunch of excited football fans congratulating themselves and shouting ‘Raiders!’ were the ping pong tables were supposed to be! Sure enough, they had been moved out of the way. We returned the equipment and tried to play some air hockey, but the puck was stuck. The service was really bad and by the time the attendant got around to helping us (she told me to wait) I had already started kicking the table to see if it was stuck. Sure enough (it popped out), but now we looked like fools and all of our time was used up. Eriko and I were dissappointed. Eriko decided she was hungry and we went in search of food. The front desk-lady (whose service was poor) directed us to the downstairs sportsbar, the downstairs sportsbar directed us upstairs, and finally I decided we should just leave (since Eriko wanted chips). We headed back to Queen Anne (my intended destination was Blue Water Taco) and parked when Eriko decided she wanted popcorn instead. Luckily, we were in front of Blockbuster, so we retrieved some popcorn and an anime she really liked. We also stopped off at Safeway and purchased some groceries (including potato chips). Back at home, Eriko began watching her movie and eating popcorn while I worked on modifying my financial tools so I could enter the daily receipts. Zack called and announced that he was unable to find any ping pong joints in the area and we both decided that we’d have to try again some other time. ;P After the movie, Eriko decided to take a nap and I started watching a new lecture. Soon I noticed I was having trouble following and decided to “rest” instead. An hour or so later, I woke up to some drool. ;P I recieved a phone call from Aaron who passed on the phone number of his in-laws, who have a 1993 Jetta (which has a few issues, but has four doors and is an automatic) that they are willing to give away. It turns out the vehicle needs a new alternator and is currently at the shop – which wants it out of there by Tuesday. I called and left a message for Jean and explained to Eriko the situation. I called Katrina and wished her a happy birthday; we had a nice conversation (for about 10 minutes) until her cellphone battery ran out. Jean called back and explained a few more caveats about the vehicle – the driver’s side lock doesn’t work, the instrument panel is out, the air conditioning is disconnected… and of course, we need to decide by tomorrow since the car has to be out of there by Tuesday. I made plans with Eriko to drive out to Redmond during lunch to check out the vehicle. For $500, it could be a great deal – or a waste of $500. I wish dad were around to help me out. Eriko slowly woke up on the couch and I watched episode 47 of Gundam Seed Destiny (which was lame). As soon as I got up from the computer, Eriko sat down and called her mom. They talked for about one hour and I finished up watching another lecture. This one was about Hancock, a programming language developed at AT&T research lab for dealing with large volumes of very specific data. The lecture was quite boring; there wasn’t enough time to convey exactly why a new language needed to be created rather than a set of libraries developed and as such, I didn’t enjoy it very much. I read a little in my Japanese book, I picked out my clothes for tomorrow (and placed them in the living room, so I can dress without waking Eriko), and I began writing this journal entry (on dad’s old Sony Viao, as Eriko was still talking to mom). I realized that taking notes and entering journal entries later is very difficult and procrastinating just makes me not want to do it. I would much rather make the entry at the end of each day, but that is going to take some discipline. After Eriko’s phone call, I ate some Toasted Oats and she ate some Tongari Corn (General Mills Japanese corn cones). We spent some time on the couch together, enjoying a lazy Sunday night, and then it was time for showers.

sore hand

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 14:18:50 +0000

i’m not sure if the 3 hours of ping pong, the 30 quarters of shoot-em-up, or the five games of foosball did it – i woke up with a throbbing pain in my right hand. i think it got worn out from too much fun! last night was our big “good work” party for last year’s major software release. as a token of gratitude, the company bought all the engineers mini ipods. as we all lined up to receive our gifts, everybody was thinking the same thing: “here comes another isilon t-shirt.” the awe and glee was obvious after the ipods had been handed out. tonight is a co-worker’s 30th birthday party, so i’ll be hard-pressed to get some studying done this weekend.

Ping Pong on Nick Kirsch

missing the 🏓

2005-11-11

2005-10-30

sore hand