BrockLi Soup

Someone pointed out earlier this week that we’re about to start the second half of the decade. Was that Y2K shit really that long ago?

Last new year’s eve doesn’t seem that far off, but this certainly wasn’t a quick year. A lot happened, so January seems awfully long ago. Let’s review, shall we?

January Dane Cook and Dropkick Murphys both came to RIT, and some other crap probably happened.

February I quit smoking (again). It doesn’t last long, because I remember smoking when RyanD and I road tripped to North Carolina to see Dan and Casey. I see the ocean for the first time, and hug a palm tree.

March I started my second co-op and met some cool people because of it. I had my first St. Patrick’s Day as a legal drinker, and finally wrote down some requests in the event of my untimely demise (don’t forget those, people).

April I spent a few days agonizing over where to settle down after college, even though none of the obvious choices came to fruition. We threw a kickass BBQ, and saw Flogging Molly. My love affair with Flickr began, though it’s fallen by the wayside lately. BP and I buy a big bottle of Jack Daniel’s and…

May …drink it in record time. The stars aligned and Cinco de Mayo and No Pants Day happened in the same night. Fonny and I try our hand at parenting with some Triassic Triops. I got to try food poisoning (thanks again, James), and got a ride home from the cops. We invented a new sport. The school year ended with a bang, and Kidder and Brie move out. Fonny and I spend the next two weeks weeping inconsolably. BP and JymBob moved in, I tried some wine, and we spent a night in Toronto to see Against Me!

June We threw a swanky champagne party, wherein Sharon and I played Edward Champagne Hands and got all messed up. BP and I started watching Scrubs - again. Skynyrd came, and Cupcake yelled “Freebird!” a whole lot.

July It was a relatively uneventful month. I visited Potter’s place in the Adirondacks and played paintball for the first time. Somewhere in there, I got my motorcycle license, and Jym moved out (no one weeped) so Sara could move in.

August I spilled beer on my crotch, and we were introduced to Gogol Bordello by way of another Flogging Molly concert. Then we threw the Redneck Party and BP got a Fantastic Flying Funship. At the end of the month, I started playing racquetball and finally got another car (Malique).

September I taught the guys how to bump start a car, and went back to classes after six months of co-op.

October I failed my first test, just two months before finishing my educational career. I quit smoking on (around) the first of the month, and haven’t touched a cigarrette since, despite several long drives, lots of drunken nights, and at least one evening around the campfire (the three toughest times). I turned 22, we threw BROCKTOBERFEST, and I played my last game of hockey.

November November was freakin ridiculous. It started off with National Drunken Writing Night, a five-part epic of drunken tomfoolery. I finished my undergraduate career, and BP threw me a kickin going away party. I added up my student loans and cried myself to sleep. I made the plans for the most important trip of my life to date, and then up and moved to Virginia.

December I spent this month wondering how the hell I wound up in Virginia and watching movies, and Christmas happened too.

I’ve made a couple reasonable resolutions for 2006. I want to spend more time in DC. There’s a lot of cool shit up there, but I’ve only been there a couple times. I still need to do the touristy things. That’s where the history comes from, after all. I want to read more books and learn more. My “things to learn” list has been growing for years, and now I actually have some free time to learn stuff for real. I want to watch more movies, too; I’ve seen a lot since moving here, but I’m only up to 93 so far this year (down from 120-ish last year).

I also want to do more side projects of my own and write more here. I’ve really only worked on the AJAX version of Webfault, and I haven’t even touched that in months. I haven’t been writing much, either. I was so psyched about blogging when I started it and thought I’d be writing a lot, but it dwindled quickly. I’ve just been a layabout lately. It would be good to do some more programming and writing.

I have high hopes for 2006. I’ve got my own place (for now), I’ve got a real job, and my real life has begun. I miss college, and that won’t go away any time soon, but things are going well. It’ll be a good year.

I’m comin to you live from my couch! I got me some wireless yesterday. Lucky for me, Best Buy has the Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Router - the one I’ve been looking at - for $40 after rebates.

I took some pictures before I started unpacking and building furniture. Even after spending four hours working on stuff, I don’t feel like I got very far - my couch is still buried in crap and there are boxes all over. I don’t remember having this much stuff…

At any rate, it’s nice having a real DVD player. I had my iBook connected to the TV for a while, but it looked like crap. Real wide screen kicks ass.

The apartment keeps getting better and better, and it feels more like home every day. On the other hand, I moved in with every intention of leaving at the end of my six-month lease to get a place with Matt (and now Drew and maybe others). I almost don’t even want all this furniture, since I’ll just have to move it again soon. But I’ll deal with that in six months.

My apartment is full of crap. I’d show you pictures, but the cable for my camera is buried in there somewhere, so you’ll just have to trust me. I got back to Arlington today with a U-Haul truck full of furniture and the rest of my stuff. As it turns out, the best way to furnish a new apartment is to rent a truck much bigger than what you need, and then casually mention this to family and friends. Everyone has some furniture that’s yours for the taking if you just get it out of their basement. Now I’ve got a kitchen table, a second dresser, and a bed. It was once a water bed, so it’s even got some shelves in the headboard and drawers underneath.

I’d say that more Christmas weekend details will be forthcoming, but that’s a bold-faced lie and we both know it, so here’s a quick summary:

Fridays are best when they end at noon with BBQ pork and Samuel Adams (I love my job). Baltimore airport may be cheaper, but getting there is a pain in the ass. Seeing the extended family was a lot of fun, as it always is. Christmas was great, and I got a kickin DVD player, so I won’t be leaving my living room except to sleep in my new bed. Driving a huge U-Haul took some getting used to, and I spent way too much time in Pennsylvania today. Matt P is a hero, and solved the many issues related to the U-Haul, including unloading it, returning it, and getting my car back - thanks again, Matt.

Driving all day takes a lot out of you. If I can find my toothbrush, I’m going right to bed.

I’ve been watching a lot of movies in my newfound free time. It’s been nearly three weeks since I moved down here, and I’ve seen 14 films since then. I want to get my money’s worth from Netflix, Mondays is dollar night at the Drafthouse, and we’ve made a few visits to Regal. I’ve got a list of hundreds of movies I need to see, and at this rate, it almost seems like a plausible goal.

Bottle Rocket I didn’t really like it when I saw it a couple years ago, but I figured it deserved a second chance. It didn’t.

AEon Flux Badass. I never saw the cartoon and didn’t know the back story, so I couldn’t be offended when it strayed from the original. The pacing was weird in the first 20 minutes or so, but it got interesting quick and I liked the plot.

Serenity Way badass. Again, never saw Firefly, so I couldn’t be too disappointed.

Easy Rider Disappointment. I was expecting a biker movie, not an artsy-political-statement hippie flick.

Raiders of the Lost Ark Pretty good. Thanks to a mistake on the Circuit City site, and Matt pointing it out to me, I got the box set real cheap. I’ll probably watch the other two this week.

Wedding Crashers I’m not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn’t quite it. Still, it was hilarious.

The Producers (1968) Gene Wilder irritates me, and I’ve never cared for older movies - they sound funny. For all the pissing and moaning about the re-make, I think I’m going to like it more than the original.

Syriana Disappointment. Marketed as an action movie, but it’s a political flick. Probably would have liked it more if I was expecting that, but I wanted explosions.

The 40 Year Old Virgin Way better than expected.

Tonight I learned a lot about myself, entirely by accident, and all because of an overpriced audio/video cable.

($1 to the first person to name the reference)(Rhubarb doesn’t count)

I spent my entire evening driving. I didn’t even have time to read The Post. That’s right, I get The Post now, because I care about current events, and lingerie ads.

After work, I headed out to Sterling, which took waaay too long. My uncle’s friend gave me a bunch of furniture, and I had to pick it up out that way. Lucky for me, my uncle has a pickup truck and he offered it for the move. Even luckier, he and his friend loaded the couch, dresser, desk chair, and coffee table into it for me. I drove out there, drove back to Arlington with it - grabbing Matt on the way - and unloaded it at the apartment. Unfortunately, the coffee table was in the back seat of the truck. I have no idea how he got it in there, but we couldn’t get it back out.

We had dinner at this little diner in the plaza by me, then I dropped him off, dropped off the truck, and drove my car home - more than five hours of my day just to get some furniture, but it’s better than buying new stuff. I need to get a cover for the couch, because the cushions are in rough shape, but it fits well in the living room. I’m almost ready to entertain guests.

I found tonight that it’s hard to tell the difference between a light bar and a taxi sign (not to mention pizza guys), so I invented a game I call Cop or Cab. So far I’m winning (you lose when you get a ticket).

I also decided tonight that the Saturn definitely has to go in the spring, and I’m thinking of just buying a motorcycle instead of replacing the car. It would be so much easier to get around in the traffic on a bike, but I’m not sure I can justify the purchase. Either way, the Saturn won’t fetch me much, so it’s Drive It Like You Stole It Week here at BrockLi.com (or, taking a cue from NaNoWriMo, DriLiStoWe). I encourage you all to participate.

Just remember, the rules for Cop or Cab are always in effect.

Yesterday I bought this cheap little Eureka vacuum. I knew I’d need one sooner or later, and now that I’m mostly settled, it was time to clean up all the leaves that had been tracked in while moving and the drywall dust left over the wall-bashing incident. I wanted something cheap and little, and this thing looked like it would do the trick.

I had a feeling it wouldn’t handle carpeting very well, because something that small and that cheap can’t be too effective, right? The damn thing ate my carpet. I had barely started when I noticed a big ball of lint swirling around in the dust cup thingy. I wanted to take a picture of all of it in there when I finished, but it clogged up halfway through and I had to empty it. My 640 square foot apartment produced, by my estimation, a cubic foot of carpet shit. It was quite impressive, really. And now I have an excuse to skip vacuuming, because I don’t want to have to replace a carpet when I move out.

1. Hot dogs cook a hell of a lot faster in an over broiler than in a Foreman grill.
2. My smoke detector works.
3. I don’t own a fire extinguisher.

Dear Internet,

Today I decided to make chicken salad for lunch. I learned the following lessons:

1. Less egg.
2. More mayo.
3. Chop the chicken smaller.
4. Chicken salad tastes better cold.
5. Sourdough was obviously the best choice for that sandwich.

In the process, I had to learn how to hard-boil an egg, which was touch and go for a little while there, but it all worked out.

Before I even moved down to VA, I had plans for this past Saturday night. Risa got everyone together for a Capitals game and took care of tickets and all that, because she’s totally awesome that way. A bunch of people went to the Smithsonian in the afternoon; I wanted to go, but I was waiting on a delivery and the cable guy, so I didn’t make it. I caught up with everyone in time for dinner and drinks at Fadó, an Irish pub just a couple blocks from the MCI Center.

I parked at Pentagon City and took the Metro into DC, and as I’m standing there in the train, I notice a guy with a big Army-style duffel bag. He was looking down, writing letters, but I thought, “That guy looks like Eric without any hair.” Then it occurred to me that Eric was doing Marine office’s training, and probably didn’t have any hair. And THEN it occurred to me that he was supposed to be in DC sometime soon, but I wasn’t convinced it was him till he finished writing, stood up, and said, “How’s it going, Brock?” as if he expected to find me there all along.

We ran into Michelle and wxs before we made it out of the metro station, which was lucky, since we were going the wrong way. Fadó was probably the best pub I’ve ever been in, and the food was great. The game was pretty good, though there was almost more action in the stands than on the ice - after a couple periods of drinking, them hockey fans get downright rowdy.

As we were walking from the pub to the game, I realized how much I like living in a city. Buffalo and Rochester are both pretty dead, and I didn’t spend much time downtown when I was in Pittsburgh. But I love having a lot of people around, I love being able to hop on the metro and go all over the city, and I love that we could have a few drinks and then wander merrily down the street, laughing and talking. There’s so much to do here.

That, and I’ve seen guys riding every day I’ve been down here. With such little snow, you can ride almost year-round, if you’re got the right gear. I’ve been keeping an eye on Craigslist, and it looks like I could get myself a decent cruiser in the $3-4000 range. Of course, if I had $4000, I should spend it on a newer car, but bikes get better mileage so I think I could justify it.

Poorly Written Web Forms

I’m going through and updating my address on all sorts of accounts. I’ve received errors like this more than once:

Please re-enter your address without using characters such as the forward-slash /, back-slash \, &, etc.

Any programmer that would irritate the user rather than stripping punctuation should be locked in Rosie O’Donnell’s house on grocery day. The worst is requiring a specific phone number format. Any half-decent BASIC coder should be able to re-format a string of numbers however he pleases.

// The number of values may vary but must always be a multiple of 2 plus 1.

Or, “odd,” if you will.

Matt: so my boss called me at 11pm tonight. Matt: i guess it is supposed to snow tomorrow. he told me to bring an extra pair of clothes cuz it is supposed to snow tomorrow, and they will just put us up in the hotel next door if it snows.

These silly Virginians don’t know how to handle weather.

People keep asking me where I’m working, what I’m doing, and how the hell I wound up in Virginia (which I’ve been wondering myself). I don’t feel like writing much, so this is the abridged version.

I’m living in Arlington, VA, in a spacious one-bedroom apartment that is starting to feel like home. I moved down with a Saturn worth of stuff - I stuffed the car with as much as I could, and the rest is in a heap in my parents’ family room. The first few days were sort of depressing, as my apartment was full of holes, I didn’t have any furniture or Internet access, and I spent most of the first two days at work looking over code.

But things have quickly improved. The cable guy came yesterday and blessed me with Internets and TV. My parents surprised me with a wide-screen HDTV for graduation (I had totally forgotten about the part where you get stuff), which came yesterday. Last night and early today, I started looking for some furniture on Craigslist (at Sarah’s suggestion), and by five this afternoon I had a couch and a desk (before pics, and the rest of the place). My uncle lives near here, and knows a guy with some furniture he’s looking to get rid of, so I might get another couch and a table. I’m still sleeping on an air mattress, but they fixed the heat in my bedroom so it’s not freezing cold any more (I had to use an electric blanket all week). I’m sort of living out of boxes, since I don’t have a dresser, but that’s OK for now. I’m hoping to find a cheap one on Craigslist soon.

I’m working for a tiny company called AetherQuest Solutions. I had debated whether or not I wanted to discuss work at all here, but enough people have asked about it that I’ll say a bit about it. There are only about 10 of us working there, it’s really laid back, the other developers are around my age, and I’m doing web programming - I couldn’t have found anything more perfect. It’s also only five minutes from my apartment, which is almost unheard of around here; I know people who live in Maryland and go two hours each way. I couldn’t deal with that.

Now, the important bit - how did I wind up here? Honestly, I’m not even sure. Some of the CSH-DC crew had mentioned to me before that I should move down here, but I never really took them seriously. I had every intention of finding something in Rochester and staying there. I talked about looking in Boston, Toronto, NYC, San Francisco, and Alaska, but at the back of my mind, I figured I would settle down somewhere in western New York. I didn’t even really start looking elsewhere until a few weeks before graduation, when I realized how soon I needed a job and how little I’d found in the area. I stumbled on a job listing on Craigslist (seriously, it’s been pivotal to this whole experience), and before I knew it, I was planning a trip down here. It worked out wonderfully with the weekend in Pennsylvania - I just kept going south on Sunday afternoon. I had an interview on Monday, accepted the job on Tuesday, and was back in town the following Monday to start working on Tuesday.

I never really had time to sit down and think about my decision and the implications. I had no intentions of winding up in Virginia; it just kind of happened. I’m having a hard time shaking the feeling that I’m only here temporarily, much like my co-op in Pittsburgh, but I know I won’t be back at RIT in three months, or going home for break week. It’s a weird feeling that slowly disperses as I make this a home - having some furniture helps a lot. Until this afternoon, this was just the place I kept my clothes, but now it’s starting to feel like it’s my place.

It’s exciting. I just picked up and moved to a city I didn’t know and had only seen for a couple days. I moved away from parents who never lived more than 20 miles from where they grew up (this experience has been harder for my mom than I thought it would be), and it’s unlikely that I’ll return - the economy here is doing just as good as Buffalo is bad. I found myself a place to call my own, and I’ve starting filling it with stuff. I’ve started over fresh in a new place.

I’ve started my own life, and it’s as scary as it is exciting.

The guys I work with have been getting lunch at the deli across the street almost every day for the past couple years. They assured me that the two girls who work there would know my order within a couple weeks. Today is my third day on the job, and when I walked in today, she asked me, “Number 18 on a sub?”

“Yes ma’am,” says I.

Things are getting better. The night I moved in, three maintenance guys were knocking holes in my walls looking for the source of a leak in the kitchen, so everything I own down here is in my bedroom. The plumbers did their thing yesterday, and the drywall guys were supposed to be coming today, so I’m hoping it’s all fixed when I get home (cable guy doesn’t come till Saturday, so I’m stealing Internet at work).

Now that I’m in the city, traffic isn’t an issue, since my apartment is five minutes from work. There’s a plaza a couple miles away with Target, Barnes & Noble, and Best Buy, and a Giant grocery store is right around the corner. The guys I work with are totally awesome. My neighborhood seems to be safer than I anticipated. Aside from the holes in my walls, things are going well, and I suspect they’ll only get better once my apartment is fixed and I get some furniture.