Geek’s gobbledygook gets the girl (plus PC)
Wake up and smell the halitosis!
Computer geeks faced off at PCExpo this week in the America’s Fastest Geek competition, sponsored by ExtremeTech webzine.
To win, you had to build a working computer in the fastest time possible.
That’s right, those pasty boys in the back of the computer store who install your stupid memory upgrade have fun, too.
Contestants raced to assemble an AMD Athlon PC -adding three PC cards and three drives, booting up and getting on the Web.
Champion geek was Nutley, New Jersey’s own Nelson Abreu, who won a computer and ten grand to donate to charity, plus a PC for himself.
His winning time was 6 minutes, 26 seconds.
Abreu, 24, says, “I’ve been ripping apart PCs since I was 12.” He skipped college to strike out as a $40-an-hour consultant, building “white box machines,” whatever they are.
His biggest job? “At 18, I directed the global migration of AT&T corporate mail users to Lucent,” he says breathlessly. Toughest challenge today is what he calls “The five nines” -i.e., keeping computers up and running 99.999 percent of the time. “It used to be a goal, now it’s an expectation,” he sighs.
At home he relaxes by studying home networking; he has 7 PCs wired together -no Macs -and spends about 40 hours a week online.
He’s no mere mouth-breathing nerd, though.
Nelson off-roads with a Jeep club (rock climbing, not sand or mud -it’s easier on the environment), and he loves blowout meals in the city. Spending $200 a head is not out of the question for him.
Did we say he likes Manhattan? “I like the hip fast pace of Manhattan.”
Girls, you can often find him ([email protected]) with his friends at the Peculiar Pub in the West Village, but be warned -he was a winner in more ways than one at PC Expo.
“I got there early and met a girl working one of the booths.”
And is she, y’know, the pocket-protector type?
“She’s technically proficient, yes. We’ve spent some time together.”
It’s lonely at the top
AT Penn State football games against archival Pittsburgh, Nittany Lions fans chant a dirty rhyme, “S… on Pitt.”
Harvey Pitt, the lawyer tapped by George Bush to be the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, can be excused if he thinks the chant applies to him.
A spokesman for Paul Sarbanes (D.-Md.), the newly installed chairman of the Senate banking committee, said that the Pitt nomination has not yet been sent to Capital Hill. Dubya is still sitting on it -pending a review by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sarbanes’ team cannot set a nomination hearing until Bush and the FBI sign off on their reviews.
With the interminable delay in Pitt’s nomination -and the unexpected death of SEC commissioner Paul R. Carey last month -the SEC is short three of five commissioners to run the shop. And the situation is worsening.
The remaining two commissioners -acting Chairman Laura Unger and Isaac Hunt, Jr. – are serving on borrowed time. Unger’s term expires this month and Hunt’s term expired last June. Commissioner’s terms can be extended up to 18 months after expiration, an SEC spokesperson confirmed, and commissioners can be reappointed. But it doesn’t look like the situation will be resolved anytime too soon.
And the SEC faces huge issues like shepherding Regulation Fair Disclosure through implementation and complicated investigations into analysts conflict of interest and securities firm’s alleged improprieties in IPO allocations, putting a glaring light on Wall Street. It makes one wonder who’s running the show.
But that’s not the only place the post-Jeffords-switch government is dragging its feet. It’s a full five months after Bush’s inauguration, but fewer than 25 percent of his appointees have been confirmed in their jobs. The more you pay attention, the more it looks like politics as usual.
Rudy says, ‘Ask the Pope’
WHEN the big cheese of the Big Apple has a big problem, he turns to the big guy himself: the Pope.
Rudy Guiliani, the main speaker at the American Stock Exchange’s 80th Anniversary celebration last week, spoke to a gathering of senior management, floor governors and reporters about some of the hardships of being mayor of the Big Apple.
He recalled that early in his mayorality, he spoke of New York as the financial capital of the world. Well, he said, surprisingly, he received cards and letters from other mayors and governors from across the nation. They all said the same thing: Who says New York is the financial capital of the world? What support do you have for that statement?
Guiliani said it was tough on him until 1995 when the Pope came to town. At the Pope’s mass in Central Park, before a million congregates and millions more watching on television, the mayor recalled, the Pope said in the middle of his homily that “we are here in the business capital of the world.”
Guiliani mimicked the Pope’s polish accent and the crowd laughed.
Guiliani explained that he found prayer cards with the Pope’s picture on them and sent them to all his detractors who had plagued him for proof. He wrote on the back of each card, he said: Take it up with the Pope.
Mag article led to hit film, but no bonus for writer
KENNETH Li, a reporter whose story eventually inspired the new smash hit move, “The Fast and the Furious” is not reaping any extra bucks now that the drag racing flick has become the hottest box office hit in America.
“Oh God no,” said Li, reached on vacation in Toronto when asked if he was getting any extra money. “That’s the most asked question of the past two weeks.”
Li, now a staff writer at The Industry Standard, had written a freelance article for Vibe magazine about the illegal craze of drag racing on the streets of New York when he was still working his day job as an editorial assistant on the business desk of the New York Daily News.
He sold the option for the film to Universal and then when the company actually pressed ahead and made the film, he ended up with an estimated $250,000.
And he seems fine with that.
“In my mind, maybe Tom Cruise or the director gets points.” Even though he is listed as the writer, he says his New York-based piece did not have much relation to the Los Angeles-based movie, he says.
“The only work I did was a little consulting on the first draft -which was pretty bad,” said Li. “After I took the guy out on the street, they got it and they did a lot of research after that.”