Category: Roommates

February 15, 2007 /
  1. Do you own enough shit?

    YES

    NO

  2. Of course you don’t. Get some more! This is easy, because of Capitalism.
  3. GOTO 1
  4. Uh oh, it’s time to move! You’d better pack all that up, drive it around, and carry it up stairs. But your fleshy man-body is weak! What will you do?
    • Hire professionals
    • Ask your friends for help, but pay them what you would pay professionals
    • Ask your friends for help, on Valentine’s Day, in eight-degree weather, and repay them with Mexican food that you didn’t even buy, your girlfriend did
  5. Wow, you’re kind of a bastard! But at least all your shit is moved now.
  6. Wait! You still have more shit to move! How did that happen? You’d better stay up until 3 am. You can move the rest tomorrow! I mean today!
  7. GOTO 4

Thanks to Maria’s parents Mike and Susie, Scott, DC and Beth. We owe you guys a hell of a lot more than those enchiladas.

February 8, 2007 /

So this is the room into which we checked, late Monday night.

The room is small.

And this is the room we were in three hours later.

The room is big!

So are the chairs!

So my advice is, always complain about the air conditioning.

These images brought to you by my new wide-angle lens, which is the second-sexiest thing I own, second only to my new Bose Wave WHY DO I KEEP BUYING SHIT SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE ME STOP

January 24, 2007 /

Remember my list of potential destinations? The least likely of them has become the best choice, and in fact the one I’m making: on March 3rd I’m flying to London, to live with Holly, Kevan and Catriona until Roz arrives in August to take their spare room for fall term. I’ve worked out the tax-related bits and I have my boss’s approval to keep working for Indelible on Greenwich time. I have purchased plane tickets and an iPod. This trajectory does not reverse.

The whole thing fell into place with a suspicious ease, as if we had assembled a Lego castle merely by shaking the bucket, but I am not looking askance. Five and a half years ago I was writing here about how I had to turn down my semester abroad to keep my Comp Sci degree; now that degree is making it possible to go after all, with people I like, and to hang out with my mom and sister and Maria there. Real life seems to have a plot.

I’m going to London!

January 22, 2007 /

Responses to my last post, saved from the feed:

Ben: “All this copyright nonsense gets worse, eventually spiralling into ‘The War on Information’.”

Josh: “Assuming that your parents are baby boomers, your parents’ generation were unique, the only generation in history to have been able to consume without responsibility. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that any future generation will have that opportunity.”

Kevan: “I’m not sure how bad a thing it necessarily is, but the next generation being able to dig through their parents’ online diaries and data shadows is going to be quite big and strange. Reading unguarded entries about what their parents really thought of you when you were young, stocking up on ‘if you did this when you were my age, why can’t I do it now?’ ammunition, and being able to stalk some of your crushes or bullying-targets all the way back to birth.”

Catherine: “Also, the increasing dichotomy between rural and urban cultures. People from, say, Seattle can be a mite uncomfortable in rural Georgia. People from, say, Atlanta are often a mite uncomfortable in rural Georgia.”

All thoughtful, all excellent. Catherine’s response is closest to my own worries: that we will allocate greater bandwidth to strident, divisive, polemical speech than to speech that crosses boundaries. I’m not arguing for censorship of radicalism here–my own brand of radicalism is specifically anti-censorship–but warning against the rapid propagation of our trust networks through people who will tell us only what we want to hear. When you can find a thousand people who agree with you more easily than you can find one dissenter, you are on the road to becoming an instrument.

January 3, 2007 /

Yesterday Maria and I looked at the best apartment in the world, and today she applied for the lease; assuming she gets it, we’ll be moving in mid-February, and I will probably just be leaving my stuff in boxes in anticipation of leaving Kentucky. My very, very tentative plans for the move are to buy my brother’s truck for the transportation involved and drive to wherever I’m going sometime between February and April.

For those of you paying attention: yes, this means I’m going to get my driver’s license.

There really isn’t a better time in my life to do this. Everything I need to do my job fits in a backpack, and I can work from any coffee shop in the country. All that’s missing is a destination.

Excluding New York City and the South in general, where should I move? I want to live in a metropolitan area with a healthy tech sector. Also, truck or no truck, I want somewhere with good public transportation. Chicago (sorry, Flora) and St. Louis don’t really interest me; all the places I’ve traditionally talked about are coastal, but it’s not like I surf. Said places:

  • Boston: I understand there is neat stuff here, and also they put all the cars underground.
    • Downside: I’ve never been there and I might dislike it for the same reasons I dislike New York (cold, dark, smells bad, cost of living).

  • Providence: I’ve been there and I liked it a lot.
    • Downside: Not really a rising-star tech city, and rumor has it the sun sets for six months at a time. Iffy public transit (but highly walkable).

  • San Francisco Bay Area: Been there and liked it too. Kind of the standard to which I compare all other potential destinations.
    • Downside: I would be a twentysomething male web developer living in the SF Bay Area. Also, insane rent.

  • Seattle: High scores in tech and coffee-shop availability.
    • Downside: See SF Bay Area.

  • Portland: Apparently the place where kids move these days.
    • Downside: See Boston.

  • Hilo or Honolulu: Ian might be in Hilo in August, plus, y’know, Hawaii.
    • Downside: This is a stupid idea.

  • Greensboro or Raleigh-Durham: The model of a rising tech area; driving distance from Jon and Amanda.
    • Downside: Jon and Amanda might be moving, and more importantly, this defeats the whole point of getting out of the South.

  • San Diego: I’ve been there and I liked it; solid tech score; not wet, dark or smelly; people can crash my place for Comic Con.
    • Downside: Poor public transit. Would probably be considered outcast for weird skin patterns that emerge when I tan.

  • London: I have beautiful illusions of this place.
    • Downside: This isn’t actually a possibility. I’m pretty sure I cannot legally work there, or afford to live there under a weak dollar. Also I’m enjoying those illusions and would dislike having them crushed. Consider all this repeated for Sydney and Toronto.

The pachyderm in the pantry is that except for the unlikely choices (North Carolina, London, possibly Hawaii), I have no friends in any of these places, and I am spectacularly bad at meeting new people. All of my current friends were obtained through academic programs with enforced social contact or Internet. So, friends on Internet: where should I move?

Update 1038 hrs: Maria got the apartment! Who wants to give me driving lessons?

Thanks to everybody who has commented or emailed with advice and information. You guys are the best Internet ever!

December 31, 2006 /

Me: (scrolling through Tivo) We have a couple of Novas…

Maria: What are they on? …No, I’m not interested in those.

Me: But this one has lemurs!

Maria: No. No. You know what they should make one about?

Me: What?

Maria: Unicorns.

November 25, 2006 /

As seen camwise, the dog has ceased to destroy my copies of Halo 2 (I bought the one with the aluminum case) and occupies most of her days now staring out the window. Eventually she will evolve wings, and yea, the people will learn fear of the Hawkpuppy of Broadway.

How to write this post.

October 27, 2006 /
  1. Your package has finally arrived. Open it. It is a refurbished MacBook!
  2. Boot it up to see if it works. It does! Have Maria show you neat tricks in OS X.
  3. Snip open the mylar packets of RAM and new hard drive that you bought to make this thing more than a toy. Crack the case and immediately fall prey to the shit hell middle screw of death.
  4. Break Maria’s screwdriver trying to get it out. Yes, the screwdriver. Don’t even scratch the screw.
  5. Become very irritable and take it out on the dog. Buy more screwdrivers and, in a fit of bad decision-making, WD-40.
  6. Screw will suddenly decide to pop out about six hours later. Replace hard drive and RAM. Upgrade mood.
  7. Reinstall OS X. Install Boot Camp. Try to set up partition for Windows.
  8. You have erased OS X! GOTO 7
  9. Obtain Microsoft Windows™ XP Professional patented encrypto-mathic secure Protectivation Key™ by advanced method of asking a couple dudes.
  10. Install Windows. Accompany Maria to hospital (she is working; note that in current state of health she should possibly be a resident). Find Wifi. Post.
  11. Profit!

October 3, 2006 /

Years ago:

“Fish are the beef of the sea.”

–Yale

Tonight:

“Seals are basically dolphin puppies.”

–Maria

Yale is sick. Get better, Yale!

September 7, 2006 /

My family was pirates again! Brenna had to go to the hospital! But she’s okay! My embarrassingly bare portfolio site went live! Ben wrote another LJ-feed story!

Mario and Tessa sit at the machine.

“What do you think these knobs do?” Tessa asks. Mario responds in the most natural manner possible.

The machine will hum. Tessa will say “Wait, did you hear that?”

Mario will nod. “Yeah. It’s tensokinetic, all right.” He’ll twist another knob.

The machine will have hummed. Mario will have said “Now that’s just weird. Let me try and find another tense.”

Tessa will have said “Yeah, I don’t think we want to get much more esoteric than this.” Mario will have spun another knob…

But the past tense setting [error: tense not found] broken!