BrockLi Soup

Every time I take off my headphones to get a soda or use the bathroom, I’m a little disappointed that the music doesn’t follow me.

Just so we’re all on the same page:

I don’t think I’ve ever been this stressed. We’ve been double-secret busy at work (got what I wished for, no?) and then I got another short-term high-speed project on top of everything else, so I’ve been extra pissy this past week. And did I mention that I haven’t had a cigarette in over three weeks? That’s been going pretty well, but I won’t lie: I’m ready to put a hammer through something, and I don’t much care what it is.

Also, I hear that Christmas is coming up, but I’ve been too busy to think about it. If you’ve got gift ideas for my family, please share.

I suddenly realized, at 4:37 this afternoon, that it was already 4:37. I had a busy day, going back and forth between a few different projects, so time went by quick and I got a lot done (of course, it was 6:37 by the time I left, but that’s beside the point).

I’ve always been the most productive - and the happiest - when I’ve got a lot on my plate. My senior year of high school, I stayed a few hours after class almost every day, for one thing or another, and worked about 20 hours a week, and I was never bored. During a lot of quarters at RIT, I was just as busy. I remember starting my co-op with the College of Business, back in March 2005, and loving the set, 8-hour day…for about a month. It got monotonous quick, and I was looking forward to going back to unbalanced class and part-time work schedules, because it kept things interesting.

These days, I find that I’m the least productive when I’ve only got one thing to do and no definite deadline. If I know I’ve got a half-dozen things to do in the next couple of days, I know I have to hurry up and get things done, and I do. Without any real pressure, I just can’t seem to focus on any of it.

Things are getting busy again at work, and it’s refreshing. It was kind of quite for a little while, which was nice during the summer, but it’s definitely best to keep busy during the colder months. And for some reason, leaving work after dark feels so much more satisfying, like you’ve used the day to it’s fullest potential. I’m juggling more projects that I have since I started this job and it gets dark early, so I think the next couple months will be good for me.

Now that I’ve been home for a day and a half, I’ve had some time to regroup and catch up on sleep (I crashed for a few more hours this evening), but I still need a couple more days to recover.

When all was said and done, Nashville was great. I didn’t learn as much as I was expecting to (didn’t have to do much router configuration), but I got to know the guys I work with a lot better, had a lot of fun, and felt like I had accomplished something at the end of the week. It was an exhausting trip, but it’s nice to come home at night too tired to do anything but sleep, knowing that it’s because you put in a good solid 14 hours of work. After a week on conference schedule, though, real life seems pretty mundane.

As I told the guys a few days ago, I think I could do this once a month, if I didn’t have to drive. I guess our equipment is usually delivered by someone from the company we rent it from, but it didn’t work out this time for whatever reason, so Bryan and I drove a 16-foot rental truck back and forth. The ride down was uneventful - after about 13 hours of driving, we stopped for the night outside Nashville at the same place as Obie Trice, and finished the drive in the morning.

The drive home just plain sucked. We were figuring on leaving Nashville at about 5 on Thursday, and I thought we had to be back in Arlington at 4 on Friday to drop off equipment and return the truck. We figured we’d stop for a little sleep somewhere around midnight and we’d be fine, but we didn’t get out of there until 7 and needed to be back by 1, so we just drove through the night. It was a quiet trip because we alternated driving and sleeping, so there wasn’t much chance for conversation. We pulled in at the office at about 8:30, unloaded all of our stuff, and a couple of the guys took off to return the equipment and truck (Bryan had to go because he’s the one that rented the truck, but they sent me home to get some sleep). And then, of course, I slept forever.

At this point, I’ve got no clean clothes and sore feet. I must have walked 15 miles, all indoors, every day. The Gaylord Opryland is just plain enormous - compare the satellite view to the same zoom level at RIT. The big, round, glass-topped thing in the middle is the Delta Atrium. I overheard some guy saying it’s the biggest hotel in America that isn’t attached to a casino (I don’t have anything to back that up, but it sounds pretty good to me).

It was a lot of fun and a lot of work (and I got to go to Cooters), and I’m looking forward to the next one. For now, I want to veg in front of the TV, and then get back to sleeping.

I’ve spent 16 of the past 24 hours asleep, and it’s the best sleep I’ve had in months.

If you ever meet a Canadian and a Luxembourgian in a bar, be very careful, because they will keep buying you drinks.

For the first time since Thursday, I’ve got about half an hour to sit down and do nothing - or so I hope. I’m across the street at the Radisson, just in case anything goes wrong (they’re doing a few sessions here), but I’ll only be here for another hour or so. It’s so nice to just sit down for a bit - we’ve been doing 14-15 hour days since Friday, but we’re running out of equipment and places to put it, so it looks like things will be a little quieter until we have to pull everything back out Thursday afternoon. Then, Bryan and I get to make the 13 hour drive back on Thursday and Friday, and I’ll probably sleep all weekend.

The Gaylord Opryland is fantastic, and I’m sure it would be a great place for a vacation. They’ve got quite a few restaurants, bars, and cafes, and all sorts of little shops. According to their website, there are NINE ACRES of indoor gardens, and I don’t doubt it - the place is enormous (according to some guy I overheard, it’s the biggest hotel in the US that isn’t attached to a casino). I’m sure it would be a wonderful place for a vacation, but I’ve only been able to spend about an hour a day in my room during waking hours. I’ve taken a few pictures of the place, but I probably won’t have a chance to post them till this weekend.

Been in Nashville since Thursday morning. I’ll be posting as soon as I have a half hour free - hasn’t happened yet, and it’s not looking good today.

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.

It’s been a weird couple of weeks. I got back two of the three midterms I took, and did alright. I was hoping to do better, but at this point, I just want to finish what needs doin’ and get out of here.

Some things haven’t turned out as I’d hoped they would, but do they ever?

I’ve been drifting listlessly through this quarter. I’m taking a bunch of crap classes that I put off for years. Work is going well, in the sense that nothing bad has happened, but it’s not terribly stimulating either. I haven’t been too excited or upset about anything in weeks…just generally disinterested.

Part of it is the fact that I’m leaving soon, I know that. Yesterday, I was walking down the sidewalk and realized how I don’t even think about the campus anymore; five years ago, I loved wandering around during the visits I made before I started freshman year. It struck me that in four years, I’ve probably spent 95% of my time on this chunk of land - everything is on campus. Class, work, food, my apartment - most of my friends live here too. Even now that I’ve got a car, I don’t have any reason to leave campus most days. Just as it was a big change to move here, it’s going to be a big change leaving again.

I support two different classes during my Saturday job, but not at the same time. The classes meet every other week, so as far as I’m concerned, they just alternate.

The class that’s here this week has only 9 students, so I don’t have a lot to do. My plan was write that damn essay, but I forgot to grab the book I need to do it.

Also, I’ve been seeing a lot of fake comment spam lately. I don’t really know the motivation behind it, but they link to random blog posts and things like that (example). I’ve enable comment moderation, so comments won’t appear immediately. Apparently, MT 3.2 has pretty good built-in spam blocking, so I think I’m going to upgrade today.

Wednesday was my last day of co-op. I’m really glad I got the job and decided to stay for a second quarter, because I liked working with those guys and learned more than I could have expected. I got to do some projects I really loved, and one or two I hated - sometimes, that’s even better, because it’s good to know what you DON’T want to do before you take a job doing it. I’m still going to be working for the college, supporting the EMBA program on Saturdays.

It always takes a week or so to get used to working full time. This past six months was the longest period that I’ve worked for - I usually only work full time during the summer - so going back to a class schedule is going to be a weird transition. I’m looking forward to the variety of classes, though; it will be a nice three-month break between co-op and the real world.

Things have been going pretty well lately. Financially, I’m doing OK. I’m buying Becker’s Saturn next week, and I’ve got plenty of money set aside to buy, insure, and register it. The Apple loan is paid off, so I can put a decent chunk of my last couple paychecks to the credit card bill.

I’m working on a new project at work for the big plasma screen in the college lobby. One of the secretaries in the Dean’s office makes slides to show on it, but the system is pretty crappy, so we’re re-writing it to just show a web site we’re designing. I’ve been working on the client side, to make use of templates and styles that we’ll define so she can build slides. It’s been a lot of PHP and JavaScript, so I’m happy.

Classes are starting soon, which means people will be coming back from break in a week or two. I have never seen our parking lot so empty; apparently, most people go home for this break. It’s the calm before the storm; RJ showed up yesterday, and I hear the RA’s are starting to come back for their training. Another week or two and everyone will be back.

I’ve gotten over the whole graduation thing. Usually, I only get stressed about money, when I realize I’ve got $1.64 in the bank and a $50 bill due in four days. I freak out for about 10 minutes before I convince myself that everything has worked out in the past, so it’s sure to do so again. And it has - worrying about it has never fixed the problem, so I don’t bother. My anxiety about leaving for the real world was a little more profound than that, but I’m over it. Things are going too well to worry much about what will happen a few months down the road.

I’m probably one of the few people in an office job that checks his shirt for blood stains before getting dressed for work.