BrockLi Soup

We’ve been sitting on the runway in Buffalo for an hour. The flight attendant asked if anyone on board is engaged, and now they’re collecting marriage advice written on napkins for us.

This week, I’m working from home home - my parents’ house in the suburbs of Buffalo. My brother is getting married this Saturday, and I came up on Thursday for his bachelor party this past weekend. Rather than making the trip twice, I’m staying through the week and working from here for a few days.

This is the longest I’ve worked remotely. Once in a while, I’ll work from my apartment for part of the day if I have a doctor’s appointment or something like that, but I’ve never done it for three solid days like this. I thought it would be great, but it’s kind of weird. Without the office environment, it’s a lot harder to get in the swing of things. I’m working at the kitchen table here, so it’s been a challenge to get comfortable and get the light at the right level (it’s about the only thing I’m fussy about in my office). The time seems to fly by, and I feel like I’m not getting as much done as I usually do, but I can’t figure out why - it’s not like I’m goofing off. If anything, I’m more focused because I’m not talking to co-workers as much as I would be if I were in the office. Maybe it’s just because I don’t feel like I’m working.

I’ve always thought I would like working from home, but I think I would need a decent office if I were going to do it long-term. The kitchen table will work do three days, but I don’t think I could handle it much longer than that. But even if it isn’t very office-y, at least there’s no commute.

You know, out here in the exurbs, I’m not sure other people will get the sarcasm in the song I posted about the other day, and I am reluctant to play it in the car with the windows down, because I think some people around here actually have “God is on our side” bumper stickers.

Twitter’s scaling problems are near-legendary. Ever since it really took off last spring at SXSW, it’s been going down for short periods on a near-daily basis. It’s a cliché, but Twitter has been straining under the weight of its own success.

This most recent spate of problems has been especially bad, though. I don’t know if anything in particular happened to cause it, but the IM functionality and pagination have been disabled for most of the past couple weeks. Even then, it just doesn’t work at all a couple times a day when the load is too high.

Unlike so many other people, I’m not complaining. It kind of sucks, but Twitter is a free service - the way I see it, if I haven’t paid them, they don’t owe me jack diddly. People are getting really upset about the downtime, and I don’t understand the sense of entitlement that makes one believe they deserve some level of service from a company that’s doing it for free.

No, I’m actually kind of thankful. The thing I do have in common with the Twitter-bashers is a mild Twitter addiction, and when you can’t see more then the most recent 20 tweets on your friends page, you start to lose interest. I still love Twitter and check it a few times a day, but now I don’t really worry about the ones I miss - if something important happens to someone close to me, I’ll probably hear about it either way. It’s like a little reminder that, hey, there’s more out here than the Internet.

A couple days ago, Fonny (this Fonny) told me about Defiance, Ohio, a great acoustic folk punk band. I mean, they’ve got a fiddle, a double bass, and a cello, and they release all their music for free on BitTorrent - how could I possibly NOT love these guys?

My favorite song is The New World Order, and I know that no one likes song lyrics in blog posts, but tough nuggins. These were copied straight from their site, without any high-falutin’ formatting:

They say the new world order is just god’s master plan but if the blueprint calls some to starve, don’t blame god’s right-hand man, ’cause the president is holy, and the president is pious, and hallelujah! he’s a good ol’ boy! hosannah in the highest!

The plan is written in god’s hand so only bush can read it, and it calls for battle in god’s name and it calls for bush to lead it, and the blueprint calls to drill for oil, and exterminate the land, and if you can’t hear god’s calling, then you’re probably from france! cause the USA is holy, and the USA is pious, and hallelujah! god is on our side! hosannah in the highest!

And god is great, and god is good, and let us thank god for our food, we may well have more than we need and god well yet have mouths to feed, but god is great, and god is good, and someday soon, he’ll feed you, too, ’cause once we’ve got our yachts and crowns, god planned some food to trickle down, so just keep those thoughts holy, be patient and be pious, and hallelujah! god’ll grant your prayers, hosannah in the highest!

And I thank god for a god so mild, who spared the rod and spoiled the child, and signed a blank check so his boys and girls could buy up the entire world, so don’t think us rude if we intrude, but god in heaven ordained us to, so you best improve that attitude and step aside we’ve work to do and thanks for keeping things in shape ’til we could come and take our place. Oh hallelujah! ain’t life great? Hosanna in the highest!