BrockLi Soup

FURTHERMORE (not that this “furthermore” follows anything, but it needed saying), Hollywood has run out of ideas. While waiting for Hitchhiker to start, Heewa and I saw previews for the following:

• Herbie: Fully Loaded, a Herbie re-make.
• Zathura, a Jumanji rip-off (from the writers of Jumanji!)
• Dark Water, a Ring rip-off (from the writer of The Ring!)
• Star Wars: Episode III (from the writer of Star Wars: The Rest of Them!)

I figure they completely ran out of ideas about two years ago.

First of all, I’m drunk, so please excuse typos.

The best evenings start with no plans at all.

Heewa and I decided to go see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which was better than expected. They changed a lot from the book, but it was still pretty funny, and some scenes were just stunning. And Marvin wasn’t at all how I pictured him (this seems to be the general consensus).

We stopped by the carnival for a bit, since it’s Spring Fest weekend and all, but it was just plain disappointing. Sharon called to say she was heading to A-Street with Jen and Kelly, and that’s where the excitement began.

We started at Daisy Dukes, which was cool, but not quite what I expected. Then we hit Bar Fly, which had decent music, but I’m no dancer. Then we wandered down to A-Street Pub, which was awesome. They played a lot of fun 80’s tunes, I met all sorts of cool people (including the owner of The Roost), and the drinks were pretty cheap. Some guy offered to lick Jen’s back. Schmitty, Lindsey, and Justin Ricci both showed up. I had a number of drunken arguments with guys on the smoking patio. A fella gave me a piece of gum on the way out. It was a good place to be.

We went to Tahou’s after. I don’t think I had been there since almost two years ago, when Resig was extra drunk and we told him to say terribly offensive things to the guy working the counter.

It was an outstanding evening. I spent far more than I expected, but it was worth it. I got to play body guard, and I love hanging out with those chicks. I did the Marlboro survey again and got a free Zippo for Schmitty. I had a real garbage plate for the first time in (I think) years. And the bartenders made my Jack and Coke’s with extra Jack when I asked. Sometimes, Rochester is good to me.

I learned last night, in a dream, that I can ride a wheelie on a motorcycle, even if the back tire is flat because the sidewalls are split.

I also learned, in real life, that a ginormous bottle of JD won’t last nearly as long as you might think. It’s not gone, but pretty damn close. BP, James, and I grilled steaks last night, and found that whiskey makes a decent A1 Sauce alternative.

They say the two things you shouldn’t debate are politics and religion, so that’s exactly what we did. A few drinks will always make arguments more interesting, and by the end of the night we were all happy that BP and James hadn’t started throwing punches. JymBob got hats right before the last election - “Proud (Donkey)” and “Proud (Elephant).” He put them on James and BP, respectively, just so we were all clear on who was saying what.

I won’t be going home this weekend after all, because it turns out that it’s already time for Spring Fest. We’re talking about doing another big BBQ on Saturday, but it looks like the forces of weather are conspiring against us, so that probably won’t happen. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy comes out tomorrow, so I’m going to see it with Heewa. I wanted to read the series again before seeing it, but it’s a little late for that now. I’m a little concerned that the trailers I’ve seen all tout it as some great space action flick. The fact of the matter is, the books weren’t great because of a thrilling sci-fi storyline; it was Adams’ humor and incredible writing style that made them good. I really don’t think it’s going to translate well to film, but I’ll give it a chance.

“If we’re both bad influences, do we cancel each other out?” “Thereby making us good people?” “Yeah.” “If we didn’t hang out, we’d be BASTARDS.”

I met with an academic advisor today and found that I could cut my remaining credits from 26 to 20 by switching over to the new curriculum they’re introducing for this coming fall. This means I’ll be taking one class this summer, while on co-op, and finishing at the end of fall quarter. I had to talk to the Bursar, Registrar, and Financial Aid to get it all straightened out so I could register - I still owe them money, so there was a hold on my account. It looks like I’ll be taking Tech Transfer this summer, and Needs Assessment, Internetworking Lab, Imaging Science Lab (or something like that) and something about Haydn (to finish out my German concentration) in the fall.

I wouldn’t have bothered to try and do it if it weren’t going to save me something like $9,000. I was planning on being here another year anyway, so I wasn’t too anxious to get out of here early. The only problem is that it leaves me with six free months before the 1-year MBA, if I decide to do it (it’s only offered beginning in the summer). I should be able to find a contract job or something for that, though.

I’ve been listening to Flogging Molly’s newest album, Within A Mile of Home, non-stop for like two weeks. I was unimpressed with it the first time I heard it, but it grows on you damn quick. Seeing it done live helps, too.

• Laundry.
• Charge my camera battery.
• Charge my iPod.
• Poop.

This has been a hell of a weekend. Co-op has made this quarter one of the best yet. I had hoped that there would be more parties now that it’s spring, but it’s been a blast regardless. After work on Friday I made some mashed taters and corn muffins for Heewa’s swanky dinner party, which was a lot of fun. Some of us ended up at Sharon’s place for a little while afterwards. Yesterday, BP wanted to go to Canada for duty-free smokes and some Mighty Taco on the way back, so Bopp and Fonny joined us for a fun trip north. BP and I got a ginormous 3-liter bottle of Jack Daniel’s at Duty Free, so we came back to our place with some folks to watch Arrested Development and have some Jack & Cokes. ShaunJ called to tell me that a bunch of Tech Crew folks were partying at Jeff’s place, so we went over there for a little bit to hang out since I never get to see those guys any more.

I learned something last night, so I give you:

Things That Are Good But Not In This Order:

1. Eating an El Niño Burrito (courtesy of Mighty Taco)
2. Launching an attack on a ginormous bottle of whiskey with BP, leading to excess consumption of whiskey and, more importantly, Coke
3. Dancing at a party, thereby shaking the aforementioned into a fervor

Today was another lazy Sunday. We went and saw the RIT Players show Twelfth Night, which lived up to all the hype. This evening, I sat around watching TV and sorting through pictures.

It’s been great. I’ve just been hanging out and enjoying the company of friends, and while I’d like to get some personal projects done, the non-existence of school work has proved to be a great stress reliever. Real life is going to seem like vacation after college.

I’m actually looking forward to work tomorrow; The Boss had me add some stuff to our website the other day, and I was telling him just how craptacular the site was and asked if I could touch a few things up. He told me to have fun, so I spent half of Thursday eliminating table and font tags in favor of divs and CSS. On Friday, we decided to overhaul the site and make it look like the new intra-departmental page that the webmaster is working on, so I’ll spend most of this week (at least) playing with CSS, HTML, and ASP. Should be better than fighting with Microsoft Operations Manager, like I’d been doing for the past month.

This is turning out to be a great quarter.

I learned a lot from this book, but not as much new stuff as I expected. A lot of the facts just confirmed (with extensive footnotes) that everything is all messed up. It was pretty easy to read, because each one was only three or four pages, but not a good bed time book because you start to thinking about how really absurd some things are, and then you can’t sleep. I have a feeling that this one will be backing me up in a lot of political arguments.

You can get a rough estimate of humidity based on water condensation on the plumbing above a urinal.

Apparently today is the first time in 12 days it’s rained. That really has to be a Rochester precipitory record.

(Also, “precipitory” is a word now.)

I like to think that this week has been a preview of coming attractions (so to speak). We’ve grilled dinner three of the past four days, the weather has been beautiful for a week and a half, and I’ve just been enjoying life. Things are really good right now.

This summer, Fonny, BP, and I will all be on co-op, while poor Jym Bob takes classes. I’m expecting to be on the same 12-8 schedule, but The Boss mentioned that he might have me do 9-5 so he can work my shift and sleep in. As much as I hate the idea of working at 9 on summer mornings, BP and Fonny will be on that schedule so it wouldn’t be too bad. A lot of people are going to be around, so I expect it to be as much fun as last year. BP and I are trying to make Sharon fail a class so she can’t graduate and has to stay for the summer. We’re good friends like that.

I’ve got to try quitting again. I’ve been smoking more and more lately, and it’s showing - I’m coughing a lot. It’s not dry, wheezy coughing, and I’ve been breathing better than ever before, which leads me to believe my lungs are clearing things out, which leads me to believe that now would be a good time to quit. I blame BP - I can’t quit with him around.

Can I get a moment of silence for my Control Panel?

Thank you.

I decided to launch another offensive on my Powershot problem. Apparently I’ve still got Canon drivers installed somewhere, so I wanted to try again to completely remove them. When I plugged in the camera and tried to open the Control Panel so I could get to Scanners and Cameras to remove it, explorer.exe crashed on me. After a reboot (and repeating this process 2 or 3 times), I decided all is lost. I have no idea what’s wrong with it - there was an error message the first time it happened (some missing DLL, maybe), but who the hell reads those? Looks like I’ll be re-installing XP AGAIN.

Either way, I found that Picasa does a pretty good job of importing photos from a camera, so I’m just going to use that from now on. I’ve been mounting a share on my desktop from my iBook and copying photos through the Mac, but it’s just a pain in the ass. I import everything into Picasa anyway, so it makes more sense to just start there.

Now, I just wish Google had bought Flickr so I could upload photos from Picasa. Stupid Yahoo.

Also, my two free Pro accounts have been claimed by Jym Bob and Sarah, respectively.

…and I am a man who loves muffins.

As you may recall, I upgraded to a Flickr Pro account a couple weeks ago. I received this e-mail this evening:

Hi BrockLi! You may have heard on the grapevine that we planned to reward our dear Flickr members who bought a Pro Account in the early days. Well, it’s true! And since you’re one of those lovely people, here’s a little something to say YOU ROCK! 1. Double what you paid for! Your original 1 year pro account has been doubled to 2 years, and your new expiry date is Apr 4, 2007. 2. More capacity! Now you can upload 2 GB per month. 3. 2 free Pro Accounts to give away to your friends! This won’t be activated for a day or two, but when it is, you’ll see a note on your home page telling you what to do. Thank you so much for putting your money where your mouth is and supporting us, even while we’re in beta. Your generosity and cold, hard cash helped us get where we are today. Kind regards, The Flickreenies.

Furthermore, they’ve lowered the price for Pro accounts and improved free accounts.

I really love those guys.

This week has been straight up exhausting. Wednesday night was the Flogging Molly show at Water Street, which warrants its own post if I can find the motivation to sit down and write about it (and if I don’t, it was totally awesome). Tuesday and Thursday were bowling nights. Friday I spent the evening hanging out on floor. And yesterday, we had a barbecue.

Shane and Schmitty decided they needed to change their oil, and figured a BBQ was in order. Without anywhere to host it, they asked if they could do it at the grill next to my building. Obviously, I agreed that this was a brilliant idea. Shane dubbed it the Oil Change Cookout Extravaganza.

As it turns out, Shane was the only one that needed an oil change, but we had a hell of a BBQ. There were probably close to 25 people here throughout the course of the afternoon. We killed off about 25 burgers, 16 hot dogs, 8 steaks, a six-pack of fancy beer (James’) and a 30-rack of Miller High Life. A little before 8, the seven of us that were still hanging out went to Abbott’s for frozen custard, then came back to my place and watched Clay Pigeons. Klem and BP were the last to leave, around 1, making it an eleven-hour BBQ.

I absolutely love being on co-op in Rochester. I can waste an entire day just hanging out and cooking meat, and I don’t feel guilty in the least because I don’t have any projects hanging over my head. There are still several projects I want to do for myself, but enjoying the company of friends is far more important than making a web-based Ajax-powered newsletter editor for CSH. That can wait.

Today, I’m hanging out on floor. I may do some reading, or some coding, or maybe not. It’s beautiful outside, I don’t have any responsibilities, and I can slack off all day if I want to.

I love spring.

I almost don’t want to say anything and fuck it up, but this has been a beautiful week in Rochester. It hasn’t been too warm out, but it’s been sunny every day. I’m just worried that we’re going to use it up before summer even gets here.

I used to upload all my photos to a gallery on my CSH site, then zip them up and put them in an archive folder on my machine. Since Gallery ran as nobody and everyone used it, the quota for nobody filled up and we couldn’t upload any more pictures (from what I’ve heard, it’s since been fixed). Around the same time, I broke my install and just gave up on it. This left me half of my photos in zip files and the rest half-organized on my drive. I began using Picasa a couple months ago, but it’s not capable of extracting images from zip files, so they were all useless to me that way.

Tonight, I began the process of unzipping and filing away all my old pictures so I could view them with Picasa and maybe upload some to Flickr. I found a few from the apartment that I thought warranted sharing. The one above is my desk right after I moved in - I added some notes, go take a look at the page. I also came across the old Kill List, so I figured I should post the current one for comparison’s sake.

According to MT’s Activity Log, the following are recent searches on the site:

• samsung
• g
• right
• poop

I’d like to think I’m the Internet’s leading authority on Samsung or (preferably) poop, but Leading Authority on Chewed-Up Pencils and Rotating Doors was the best one left when I finally got around to choosing.

And to clarify, I’m not moving back to Buffalo. Yet. I will be spending the summer in Rochester, doing the same job I’m doing now. The whole company hootenanny is to take place AFTER college.

Just so we’re clear.

(Also, hootenanny is a real word.)