

Homeless by choice (during grad school) - ramchip
http://www.glowingfaceman.com/2009/01/homeless-by-choice.html

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jballanc
When in High School I once, in the middle of history class, reached into my
backpack and pulled out a stapler and computer mouse. This had the intended
effect of distracting the teacher. He turned to me and asked, "What, exactly,
are you doing?" I replied, "I'm being spontaneous."

His reply was pure gold, and sticks with me to this day. He said, "No you're
not. You had to plan to put that stapler in your bag to be able to pull it out
in the middle of class. That's anything _but_ spontaneous!"

...this guy and his "choosing" to be eccentric reminds me of that experience.

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drinian
It would be more interesting if he talked about the details of his lifestyle,
for instance showers, etc.

Also, it seems like sneaking into youth hostels without paying crosses some
kind of ethical line; sleeping in your office at university is a different
situation altogether.

~~~
Gonsalu
He mentions that he'll write those 'details' in another blog post, but I agree
that it would've been more interesting if he said how he handled that.

Yeah, the part of not paying for the youth hostels just for the sake of not
paying comes across as a cheap person and not really as a things-just-own-you
kind of guy.

Anyway, after reading some more of his posts, he just sounds like someone who
is full of himself really, with all the stuff about attending underground
groups, 'urban exploration' and ninja stealth/lock-picking -- that just reeks
elitism...

~~~
ewiethoff
Reminds me of how I felt reading Kim Stanley Robinson last year. Robinson
creates a homeless-by-choice scientist (Frank) in his Washington DC climate
trilogy: _Forty Days of Rain_ , _Fifty..._ , _Sixty..._ Frank lives in a
little tent high up in a tree in the city park and joins a gym for the
showers. He meets up with dumpster-diving Freegans and traditional homeless
people. Well, I won't go into the whole story, of course. But I think Robinson
did a good job of making Frank a sympathetic character I rooted for. I kind of
wondered, though, about the author himself showing off an a ability to write
about "underground" living.

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RK
When I was in physics grad school, we'd sometimes amuse ourselves with the
game "grad student or homeless", which involved guessing the circumstances of
a given person we might come across. It was surprising how often we were
wrong... :) There was one guy who I had seen at the weekly colloquia for
almost a year, who I had always assumed was a homeless, probably mentally ill
guy, who was just there for the food. Then one day he asked an incredibly
technical question in the middle of a lecture. I think he was actually from
the math department.

~~~
Rod
One similarity between grad students and homeless people is that both seem to
greatly esteem free food ;-)

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MaysonL
A friend of mine did this rather less obnoxiously for a couple of semesters at
college. He used his girlfriend's dorm room for storage, did laundry in the
dorms, showered in the gym after phys ed, spent a lot of time in the library,
and slept in the woods (small, well-hidden leanto with sleeping bag) on
campus. He's also a much better writer than this guy.

~~~
potatolicious
See, I can appreciate that. He was able to go homeless without being a
freeloader (he had the right to use the gym showers, library, laundry, etc...)
and didn't hoodwink anyone to do it.

Good for him. If only the author did the same.

------
ewiethoff
I can't help picturing one of the characters from an old Val Kilmer movie
called _Real Genius_. This computer geek character had graduated--finished
grad school, too--years earlier. He had ensconced himself in a secret hallway
behind a closet in one of the freshman dorms. Every once in awhile he'd go
creeping in and out of the closet of whatever guy happened to live in that
dorm room at the time. No one minded much because he had such a reputation for
accomplishment. I got the impression he was supposed to be Richard Stallman.
Anyway, it's a fun movie, and various characters reminded me of people I knew
in school.

~~~
Rod
I like _Real Genius_. It's not exactly a good movie, and yet, it has attained
a certain cult status. The movie is based on Caltech and some of the pranks
featured in the movie actually happened in the 1960s and 1970s.

That character who lived in the tunnels, _Lazlo Hollyfeld_ , was also based on
a Caltech student who once lived a few weeks in the campus underground tunnels
because he needed temporary accommodation or something like that...

~~~
ewiethoff
Ah, yes, Lazlo was the name. Thanks for the Caltech scoop. (I was RPI ages
ago.)

~~~
Rod
Remember that scene where _Lazlo_ comes up with a way of hacking some
sweepstakes? That was based on a real event:
[http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Caltech_Sweeps...](http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Caltech_Sweepstakes_Caper)

More info on the actual stories portrayed in the movie:
<http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~erich/real_genius_refs.html>

~~~
ewiethoff
Nope, sorry, but thanks for the links. At the moment, I'm chuckling to myself
about the hyper gal who knits sweaters for everyone at night because she
_never_ sleeps. Oh, and the ice covered hallway. And here I am awake all
night...

------
wheels
As most have said, this is very cargo cult. The effects were copied but not
the causes behind them. The planes don't land.

A more authentic case of eccentric homelessness was Richard Stallman's period
of living in his MIT office.

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catch404
Would be more interesting if he didn't just 'bum' around campus. Was hoping to
read of a more interesting homeless lifestyle.

------
Rod
Some eccentric people are very cool, but this guy seems a bit of a poser. A
cheap poser, in fact. Sneaking into dorms does not sound very noble to me. The
other students pay the rent, and this guy thinks he's too smart, so he lives
off the others. That's being an opportunistic parasite, IMHO.

Paul Erdös was eccentric, for sure. But he was a genius, so he could afford to
be eccentric. Some people try to do the opposite: act eccentric, so they will
be perceived as geniuses (Caltech undergrads are a prime example).

~~~
potatolicious
Not to mention Erdos was crashing at people's places with their express
permission, and "paid" his rent by working with the people involved, which I
gather was a big professional boost at the time. He was not, by the author's
description, a parasite.

The author himself, though, does seem like a freeloading parasite. The lounge
he sleeps is for work, and on most campuses I've been to there are rules about
sleeping and squatting in student lounges. It makes for poor hygiene and
disrupts other students' access to the facilities.

If you have to _break into_ a building, odds are you do not have the building
owners' tacit permission to sleep there.

~~~
Rod
Exactly. Paul Erdős was a guest at people's places, not a freeloader. He never
sneaked into anyone's living room as far as I know.

Maybe I am judging that dude too harshly, but I think his essay is a good
example of how people sometimes do less noble things invoking noble
intentions. You see, he's not a parasite, he's _eccentric_. He's not a nutcase
who adopted a parasitic lifestyle because the great Erdős himself was homeless
too.

I pay 50% of my grad student salary in rent. It's the way it is. I do resent
smart-asses who think they know better.

~~~
potatolicious
Well, if he figured out a way to go apartment-less without being a
freeloading, lock-picking drain on society, then good for him, my hat is off
to him.

Reading the other stuff on his blog, he comes off as a bunch of people I
actually know in college - people who have no social lives, spend their
existence on the internet, sleep on couches in the buildings, all the while
lording their "non-conformity" over the rest of us regular folk who bathe, go
out with friends, and God forbid, have our own apartment.

I hate to be judgmental, but if you have to write a blog post about how a trip
to Japan and your deep, philosophical introspection and meditation resulted in
you realizing that pickup lines and nightclubs are not the best place to get
real "love an affection", you're probably doing it wrong.

[edit] I notice there are a lot of people here from the University of
Waterloo. Seriously, this guy is like the scores of people who constantly
crash in the comfy lounge. They raised your student dues just to clean up that
place, and it's still known to the non-CS community as a smelly, stinking, and
likely disease-ridden cesspool that reasonable people dare not venture.

