Welcome to the home page of Kurt Pires
My Public PGP Key and Thawte Freemail Certificate are available for private and/or authenticated communication.
My resume is available in several formats.
Stories & Videos
Lists and Points of Interest
- The Phoenix Temple: An art project for Burning Man 2003
- Berkeley/SF Weather by:
The Weather Channel,
AccuWeather,
Intellicast,
CNN,
KPIX/LHS/SMC,
WUnderground,
SF Gate,
Yahoo
and NOAA.
- Wulfram II -- My friend's game -- Play it; it is very fun!
- Haiku Movie Reviews from dimspace.com
- Acupressure -- especially Jin Shin Do (learned at the Acupressure Institute in Berkeley, CA)
- Acupressure Institute in Berkeley
- Metronome Ballroom in San Francisco
- I dance at Intermediate Level: West Coast Swing
- I dance at Beginning Level: Cha Cha, Foxtrot, Rumba, Tango, Waltz
- I forgot (but could pick back up): Salsa, Samba, Viennese Waltz, Lindy Hop/East Coast Swing/City Swing
- Other places to dance:
- Nearby places to relax:
- Dave Barry's story about Roger and Elaine.
- San Francisco Bay Area Transit Information includes maps, schedules and other information for the 8 major transit systems in the SF Bay Area (BART, SF Muni, AC Transit, etc) as well as many minor services throughout the region.
- Main USGS Earthquake Site and USGS's "Did you feel it?" Site
(Note: The regional USGS centers get overwelmed after a 4+ magnitude urban event.)
- topozone.com -- Interactive topo map of the entire US!
- The Daily Feed -- Radio's Satire Column
- My custom hyper-linked copy of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (S.652).
- Weather at Empire, NV (Closest weather station to Black Rock City (13 miles SSW of "The Man")).
- A lot more to come...
Recommended Less Well-Known Movies and TV Series
I could list hundreds of movies and TV series that I enjoy,
but here is a small list of off-the-beaten-path movies and
TV series that I recommend:
Movie/show links from the Internet Movie Database -- my favorite heavily inter-linked database on the net!
Music
- Pink Floyd (both with and without Roger Waters)
- Wish You Were Here
- Dark Side of the Moon
- Meddle
- The London Philharmonic Orchestra does Pink Floyd in:
Us And Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd
- Suzanne Vega
- Luka
- Tom's Diner
- Small Blue Thing
- The Tommy Castro Band -- a SF Bay Blues Band -- Tommy's
lives shows are killer. His energy builds as the night goes on. By the third set, he's the
best I've ever seen. Since they've gone national, I rarely get to listen to them live (and
their recordings just aren't as good). Don't miss them if you can hear them live.
- The Fatt-Back Bluesman -- I heard Brother Yusef
play at Blues on the Bay on Treasure Island for Labor Day in 1998.
His acoustical one-man show was excellent!
He's based in LA and so the only time I get to hear him is on the tape I bought that day,
but if you're in LA and like Blues, I recommend checking his schedule on his web page
and catching a show.
Random Facts
- Internet User since 1983: Use to telnet to MIT from UC Berkeley
- UC Berkeley EECS Cad Group System Administrator from February 1984 until September 1988.
The CAD Group had the largest computer budget of any group I knew on the campus.
This meant I got a lot of experience with all the new toys as they became available.
Those were the days...
- UC Berkeley Organizations & Clubs (between 1982 and 1990):
- A founder and second Chairman/Director of the Experimental Computing Facility (XCF)
- Secretary and President of the Computer Science Undergraduate Association (CSUA)
- Chairman of the Undergraduate Computing Facility (UCF)
- SUPERB Member and organizer of a two-screen all-night sci-fi film festival:
Feburary 20, 1987, "Dusk-to-Dawn" we showed movies
back-to-back in each of Wheeler and Dwinelle.
In Wheeler Aud. we showed: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (6:00pm),
2001: A Space Odyssey (8:35pm), The Quiet Earth (11:30pm),
Android (1:20am), and Star Wars (3:00am).
In 155 Dwinelle, we showed: Clockwork Orange (6:00pm),
A Boy and His Dog (8:35pm), Dark Star (11:30pm),
Wizards (1:20am) and Rollerball (3:00am).
All-night passes were $8 for students and $10 for general admission.
We also sold individual tickets, but I can't remember how much they were.
It was a success, but it required so much effort and risk that the SUPERB director
decided not to do it again -- can't blame him.
I found a copy of our flyer!
History and Old Projects Still On-line
Observations
- Interesting Technology Information:
And so, in my State of the -- my State of the Union -- or State -- my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation -- I asked Americans to give four thousand years -- four thousand hours over the next -- the rest of your life -- of service to America.
[President George W. Bush as quoted in "The Back Page" by Paul Slansky in The New Yorker Magazine, June 17/24, 2002]
- Voodoo Economics beget Fuzzy Math...
- The term "compassionate liberalism" seems awkward...
Old E-mail Addresses I historically used (that are no longer valid):
- kjpires@berkeley.edu
- kjpires@ic.berkeley.edu
- kjpires@cad.berkeley.edu
