Spent the majority of the day yesterday hanging out with Kyle and Pete at Factory. Went to lunch at the supergood Mexican place on ~9th and Washington, then chilled at the space until 2000 or so.

Got SMTP-TLS working on the Factory mailserver, did a little more work on gate, the new firewall, and spent a couple hours reading bash.org.

With regards to SMTP-TLS, a couple years ago I waded through getting Postfix TLS and sasldb for a machine at work. This run through, I just used The Perfect Setup HOWTO and was done with it.

The only thing that really bugs me was having to use a couple backports for libsasl2, which possibly I didn't need (since I'm using the pwcheck daemon, authenticating against /etc/shadow), but I didn't think about it too much.

There are also a few useful notes here.

Around 2000, Ian showed up with his friend Mike and Samid. Ian had his LinuxWorld swag, including a copy of Sun's Java Desktop System, which we've all been very interested in seeing.

Shortly after that, Pete and I took off, as it was getting late and it was already hovering around 0 degrees out.

Ah, Pennsylvania winters. How I love you like truck.

Yesterday was William Gibson day.

Philadelphia's Free Library was his last stop on his paperback release tour for Pattern Recognition, and the place was packed. We showed up an hour and a half early, and our group took up about half the third row.

After an essay read by some woman from Rutgers (which admittedly was a good essay, and captured a lot of the hard to describe things about Gibson's work), he seemed to sway out onto the stage.

The podium is bronzed, shaped like a large tome. He leans on it heavily. The man himself is 6'6", 6'7", with his hair all messed up, eyes squinting out behind round frames. He looks exhausted.

He read the first chapter of PR, with much laughter from the crowd in all the right places.

The Q&A session was interesting. He rambled a bit, but always brought it back and managed to make a point. A third of the questioners had British accents, which I thought was odd.

One of the questions related to how print is apparently dead (again? someone should probably mention it; people seem to claim print is dead just as often as people claim Apple's marketshare is about to completely collapse), and the questioner asked if printing books was a rebellious action on Gibson's part.

(possibly paraphrased, I wasn't taking notes)

"Hell, I don't know. Ask Barnes and Noble or Borders. Why are there more book stores and books being printed than ever before? Why does selling books have such a huge retail slot, bigger than it ever has?"

I've long maintained that there is some undefinable thing about a book, something that can't be replaced by a digital copy. Reading long pieces of text on a display of any sort invariably gives me a headache (including, unfortunately, code). Even when smart paper becomes marketable, and business-viable, it'll still have to be shaped, I think, in some way not entirely unlike a book.

"I'm sure there are some people who read books on their PDAs, but I don't know them."

We all looked pointedly at Andrew, who is the gadget freak of the group. He gave us a What?! look in return. :-)

The crowd itself was perhaps 10% geek, the rest lit people, most of them old. Back in the day, reading Gibson was part of what being in the scene was (not that I've ever been in the scene, just on the fringes of it, enough to know that everyone'd read Neuromancer at least), at least for the cyberpunkish kids.

It was the same mix at the Stephenson signing, in fact. Most of them were literature people; a sprinkling of computer or EE dorks.

The signing itself is where the only really good story comes in.

O'Donnell had decided to give Gibson a copy of Hacker's Challenge 2, a computer/network security book series he co-authors. There's a Gibson quote in the front, and one of the stories O'Donnell wrote is very cyberpunkish. So he marks the cpunk chapter with his business card.

We mocked him relentlessly for this, calling him many names.

However, Gibson thanks him and said it could be useful, and that he'd put it on his research shelf.

Afterwards, we all agreed it was cool and a nice thing for Gibson to say, but remained adament that O'Donnell is just a big dork.

So this morning O'Donnell gets a call, waking him up:

"O'Donnell."
"Uh, hi, Adam? This is William Gibson."
"HI!"

Needless to say, a very cool way to get woken up. Gibson had a couple compsec questions for him, for a friends book. Adam can answer just about any security question you have, so.

The moral of the story here is: Being a superdork pays off.

Have you exercised your inner nerd today?

Walking up South St is always an adventure. You never know what you're going to see, what diverse and overly specialized sub-culture you'll get to interact with. It's like going to the zoo, without the cages. However, you'll still see the same depressed looks you see in the lions or bears eyes, wishing they were anywhere but here, living this life, entrapped by social forces they can barely comprehend but have little choice pushing against, acting out in whatever way they can. Their little rebellions.

Eventually giving up and just wanting it to end, rubbing their fur off against the tree branches and fences that contain them. Genetic memory telling them how wrong this is, living like this, constrained and tame.

Maybe that analogy was too much.

But really, I like South St. Overhearing the random conversations as you walk and weave between the bubbles of cliques, you hear the damnedest things. You also begin to realize that while these groups of people, these punks or preps, gangsters or nerds, the old, the young, no matter how different they look, they have things which bind them together, culturally. They wear different colors and clothes, they put their hairs up in liberty spikes or dye their hair black and wear thick nerd glasses and whine about ex-girlfriends who done them wrong, but they're all really the same people.

It doesn't matter if they're a big fat black woman or a big fat goth chick, a hardcore Hell's Angels wannabe, or a Honda-riding crotch-rocket toting pretty boy.

They all use the word "like" every two goddamn seconds.

(Also, sometimes you get random crazy people demanding if Scarface was Cuban or not. Poor Adam.)

Went up to BHL for the weekend, to hang out with Rik and Gloria. No jcap, so I guess you can't really call it a true #tildedot con.

Rik already did a write-up on it, but: Good times were had. Rik gave me a quick overview of Perl OO and namespace structure (which I vaguely recall, as I'm pretty sure I had a fever by that point) using SubEthaEdit, which is a neat little OS X app perfect for things like that.

I'll be doing a review of Passion shortly, but synopsis: "Bullshit. Utter bullshit."

Got home yesterday around 1645, read the Postfix book that had come in for a while (good book thus far), then fell asleep. Woke up around 0230, took a shower, fucked around with archivist for an hour or so, then headed out.

Philadelphia at 0500, with a clear sky, is just about perfect. The city's still asleep, but the subsystems, everything behind the wall, is gearing up. The lunch trucks are being pulled out and fueled, laden with food and coffee. The bread distributors are opening their gates, other low-level maintenance humans are in motion, while the majority of the populace is oblivious to their work.

Headed down to Factory, stopping at Sev to get some Gatorade, and it's a pretty decent way to start the day, I think.

There was a cabbie asleep in his car in front of the Sev. Thought that was a bit odd. Usually they crash out in the street in front of Factory, or on Broad St.

Trawled my daily sites, dug through the 100 or so overnight logcheck messages, deleted a bunch of spam. Typical routine.

Pretty soon I'll be off to work, taking the Broad line up to Locust like I did yesterday, then PATCO over to Jersey.

Speaking of yesterday morning's commute... there were these two high school kids on the Broad train. At first I thought they were script kiddies, talking about the Internet. They looked the part: young teenagers with messy hair and baggy clothes. Like skaters back home, but not quite.

I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention, as I was reading Driver's Just Another Empire (again), but it became pretty obvious they were some new form of newb. Not AOLers, I think, but something lower. Some sort of proto-newb.

It was more than a little disconcerting.

Not much on the agenda today except for work, work, and probably some more work.

So Adam calls me up Saturday afternoon and says, "We're going to Manhattan. You should come."

So Ian rolls up with Adam and Jason (who was down visiting for a show our friend Nick was spinning at), with John in tow, and after a quick stop at Ian's house, we drove up to Jersey City where Ian had some religious program thing to go to. We walked Ian to the house where his thing was, and he got us some directions to the train station. There's an SUV there, with Hawaii plates. First time I've seen Hawaii plates on a car outside, you know, Hawaii. Jersey City is a mix of old Philly suburb and South Philly. Broken concrete and sidewalks, too many law and bail bond offices.

After asking a few people for directions ("Yeah, man, it's over there", pointing in the opposite direction we'd been going. "You can walk wid us."), we get to the train station. John, Adam, Jason and I PATH into NYC around 1700 and headed to Jason's dorm at NYU.

I manage to get my bag caught in the fucking doors getting on the train, to the short-lived amusement of the other passengers. John had to push the doors open for me. That was fun.

In New York freedom looks like
Too many choices
In New York I found a friend
To drown out the other voices

This being my first time in New York, I suppose I should relate some of my initial impressions: Streets encased entirely in the shadows of buildings. People are much more vocal here than in Philadelphia, or Phoenix, or Albuquerque. It feels like L.A., only maybe less mean and turned sideways so it's vertical.

Walking towards the dorm, we see numerous BDSM shops, some transvestites scuffling (I missed this, apparently). People talking loudly, yelling at each other (though generally not meanly, just being loud). Tiny corner stores and a twenty-four-hours flower shop.

Voices on a cell phone
Voices from home
Voices of the hard sell
Voices down a stairwell
In New York
Just got a place in New York

I see someone with my model cell phone, for the first time in three years, and it's the first of maybe four. Fucking figures.

The subway is necessarily more complete than the Philly transit system. You can buy rechargable cards, which is awesome. Each trip costs two bucks, which is less than awesome, but whatever.

Twenty-eight floors up, the view from Jason's dorm room is amazing. Adam gestures to a point in the sky and says, "That's where the towers were."

In New York summers get hot
Well into the hundreds
You can't walk around the block
Without a change of clothing

We drop off our bags and head back out. They take me to see the Hole. People are selling photo albums of the towers, the five-picture time lapse series. The towers crumpling. The Hole is awash in floodlights, fenced in, with a concrete barrier on the other side so you can't actually see down it, just look across at the buildings on the far side, at the spanning emptiness.

We go for food. Adam has been talking about this Japanese place for a few hours now, how it's so cyberpunk, just like the noodlecart in Blade Runner. It's less than cyberpunk, the service sucks, but my udon was good so it's all whatever. They manage to make Adam's ramen without any seafood, so he doesn't end up dying, which is also probably a good thing.

Jason gets a hold of Akira via SMS or AIM on his cell phone and we agree to meet up at 2130 in Times Square.

Hot as a hair dryer in your face
Hot as handbag and a can of mace
New York
I just got a place in New York

We head out, and Times Square is Vegas without the over-planning and less guilt. The crowds are close, volatile things. The smell of roasted peanuts and the ever-refracting glare of neon off mirrored glass. We go to Toys R Us to play in the Legos section, and there's a projector on the ceiling displaying an interactive demi-game on the floor. You step on what look to be floating candy bars and a computer in the projector notes this, and breaks the candy bar into pieces. Kids are bouncing up and down on the tile, stomping on light. A life-sized version of the T-Rex from Jurassic Park roars every few minutes, and young girls giggle at it, daring each other to touch it.

We wander up into the giant Barbie Dream house, and there's just too much pink, everywhere you look, and it's damn near suffocating.

In New York you can forget
Forget how to sit still
Tell yourself you will stay in
But it's down to Alphaville

Adam is getting twitchy by this point, too much mediation, and Hell, it's New York, there's plenty else to do. We wander around for a while, go into the Virgin for a few minutes.

Finally it's time to head to the damn bar for Scotty's birthday party (which I suppose was what initiated us coming up here). A couple of guys are standing outside some giant store with frosted glass, rapping to the passing human flood.

Akira finds us as we're wandering down a mostly empty side street and we pile into his car. Akira's driving is what people are always talking about, when they talk about New York drivers. Considering his method of navigation, a constant and seemingly uncontrolled weaving in and out of traffic, cutting around cars lined up to turn and a complete disregard for safety laws, lanes, or even simple common sense, you'd think anyone driving with him would be praying to any God or other nearby creature with a supposed omniscience, but not once did it feel like Akira was in any way out of control of the vehicle.

Of course, the fact that everyone else was driving like this didn't do too much for my nerves, but hey, if you're gonna go out...

Kyle calls us just minutes after we get into the car and we go to pick him up at Penn Station. Jason gets the privilege of Kyle sitting on his lap. New Yorkers have no issues with yelling at you if you're half-hanging out the window of a car, either.

After a half hour of driving around we find parking and head to the bar. A few things should probably be explained about this place. It's Remote Lounge, which according to mdxi was talked about a few years ago on teh Interweb. I hadn't heard anything about it until Adam brought it up, however.

The Irish been coming here for years
Feel like they own the place
They got the airport, city hall
Asphalt, asphalt
They even got the police

Irish, Italians, Jews and Hispanics
Religious nuts, political fanatics in the stew
Happily not like me and you
That's where I lost you

The concept of the place is painfully and disturbingly post-modern (or pomo as hipsters and the unsubtle ironic say): There are cameras all over the place. Each booth is equipped with a console containing pinhole cameras on servos in a glass jar, a phone, a video monitor, and simple controls (about a dozen buttons and a joystick). You can control cameras anywhere in the bar from the consoles. The bar itself is also equipped with cameras and controls, and there's a bank of monitors above the bartender displaying what people are looking at.

In New York I lost it all
To you and your vices
Still I'm staying on to figure out
My midlife crisis

There are roughly fifty cameras in the place. Mostly they're pointed at girls chests or butts.

We meet up with Ian and Eric in the bar, and get introduced to Scotty, who I don't think anyone but Jason knows, and some guy who will forever be known as the Wisconsin Guy.

After tooling around for an hour or so, Jason finally procures a booth and we start drinking and fucking around in earnest.

As Jason has a Zaurus, and Manhattan has all the 802.11 coverage you could ever want he starts leeching bandwidth from a misconfigured access point and spams porn at the bar via the booth camera. Not to be outdone, the guy on the other side of the booth moons his camera (a couple times, actually).

I manage to get Adam and Jason to goatse the bar. I can only hope that by that point there were many people tuning into our booth feed, because that may be the only crime against humanity I'll be able to partake in, and get away with.

Some people come and go, some of which we seem to know, some of whom Jason has invited over via the booth's phone. Eventually Adam gets some woman to get some Jaeger shots and she and her friend join our table. This is the part where the story gets funny.

I'm mildly drunk by this point, and not really giving a damn about much of anything. So this woman, who turns out to be 41 year old, Italian-Cuban, and from 181st Street (which meant little to me), starts hitting on me. A lot. After a couple hours she's draped herself on me and continues to refer to me as her "little blond boy". She says, repeatedly, that I look like Andrew McCarthy, who she's always had a crush on. I have, at the time, no fucking clue who this is and go so far as to deny this persons existence. He is, however, a real person, and was, in fact, in Pretty in Pink and fucking Mannequin.

At some point, Eric left with two girls.

You know I'm still afloat
You lose your balance, lose your wife
In the queue for the lifeboat

You got to put the women and children first
But you've got an unquenchable thirst for New York

I don't recall much, if any, of the conversation, except for me saying vaguely and improbably profound things about how surreally fucked up the entire concept of the bar is (considering that I've been dealing with IRC for almost a decade, and various socio-political and personal relationships stemming from all that, you'd think the whole thing would have affected me less), but I do remember Jason explaining some of what he does at NYU (neuro-science) to Nyra, the woman who at that point was nuzzling me and playing with my hair. To put it mildly, Jason is fucking smart.

Another round of Jaeger was ordered, which I declined on the basis of me already being drunk enough.

Lucky too, as by the end of the night (around 0330), Adam attempted to get the woman to take me home. Insisted on it, in fact.

I managed to fall over getting out of the booth, not all that drunkenly, simply because Kyle was looking at me and edging in and out of my vision. I get up and stare at Adam, who is still arguing the case for me getting taken home by someone old enough to be my mother, almost, and I say "Dude, she hassa go to Mass in the morning, fuggoff." Or something. I don't remember.

The short of it is I didn't go home with Nyra, but instead got put into a cab with Adam and Kyle, by Jason, who told the cabbie: "Take them to Fulton and Waters, and don't let them move." I haven't mentioned yet, but Jason's a bit of the fucking insane. A typical thing for a genius to be, right?

So Adam, Kyle and I end up at that intersection, wherever the fuck it was, and decide that it's too goddamn to stand around on the corner and that anyway we're hungry. So we walk up to the street to a McDonalds and get some burgers.

In the stillness of the evening
When the sun has had its day
I heard your voice whispering
Come away now

I couldn't really explain why, but eating shitty hamburgers on a Manhattan corner at four A.M. was probably one of the strangest things I've ever done. Skyscrapers rising up around us, empty cabs sliding past, and we're devouring the nation's favorite meat by-product.

Jason showed up a few minutes later, and we stopped by a supermarket where he informed a couple of girls that he was in search of cookies. "They're down the aisle," they say, and go back to their conversation.

"No," he insists, "You don't understand. We want cookies."

"Yes. We do understand. They're down the aisle."

"A-ha!"

I can't tell if it's because he's drunk, but I sort of doubt it. I suspect this is just how Jason acts. Adam is laughing the whole time, as Jason wanders around some more, demanding Kiwi Water from random people who stare at him. Eventually he buys some milk.

He explains all this to the clerk, who says "Shit, no wonder you didn't get the girls. They wanted the fucking Kiwi Water, man, and you got milk instead." Or something equally nonsensical. I'm sobering up by this point, but that doesn't mean anything is making any sense to me.

There is music reverberating down the street, coming from the third or fourth story of a building, a party obviously in progress. Our New York host gets the attention of someone leaving the building and asks if the party's any good, what the cover is, what the ratio is.

"Yeah, it's aight. Ten fuckin' bucks, man, you believe that? And about one to one, half. S'aight."

Jason's vote of going to this party is shot down by myself and Kyle, and we head back to the dorm, where we proceed to sit around for a half hour. I fall asleep for a few minutes at the very least and am woken up by Adam who informs me that we're going to head back to Philly now.

I'm down with sleeping in my own bed instead of on Jason's floor, so we head down to the subway and stand around, bullshitting and talking about the night. Finally, though, it's decided we should just cab over to Penn Station as it's damn near 0500 and the first train to Trenton leaves at 0515.

We get a cab coming out of the subway station and say our goodbyes to Jason, thanking him for the awesome time. We end up running through Penn Station to catch the train, running down an escalator the wrong way, and careening across the platform juts as they're making last call. And here is where our story takes a tragic turn.

Kyle's about twenty feet ahead of me, and we're all running flat out, and I see Kyle's cell phone jump out of his pocket and go skittering across the platform and down under the train.

Adam and the stone-faced transit employees manage to convince Kyle that crawling down onto the tracks is about the least good idea ever. "Dude, I don't have any [next of kin] contact info for you," Adam quips.

The ride into Trenton and then the switchover to SEPTA for the ride into Philly is mostly full of napping. I force Kyle to read Just Another Empire instead of his Java Cookbook for a bit. Finally we get to 30th St Station and share a cab.

Philadelphia sunlight filtering down through light cloud cover, and it's good to be home.

Except for Kyle losing his phone, I'd have to say my first trip to New York was pretty much perfect. Good people, good fun, random funny things happening. We'll definitely be doing it again before too long.

Oh. There are pictures.

Went to my first Philly Film Fest movie this afternoon, with Sophy, Adam, Andrew and Evan. Otaku Unite! is a documentary about the anime scene, produced by a Drexel grad.

I'm not a hardcore anime guy. I just watch the stuff, and I enjoy it a lot. But like I'm not a hardcore zealoty nerd guy, I'm not Oh Dear God Fucking Crazy about anime. The closest thing I have to religious fervor is my loyalty to William Gibson, and that's because the man's writing has never let me down.

The film itself wasn't horrible. It could have done with a lot of editing; the pacing was loose, there was too much uninteresting history, not enough freakin' weirdos (it's the anime scene, come on), and it needed a soundtrack to keep the energy up during the boring parts.

As it stood, it was just a bunch of fat people or skinny hot chicks with defective personalities spamming about why they're smarter than every other sub-culture out there, yadda ya. There was one guy, though, who reminded me of fucking mdxi pretty much to a tee. The guy who runs Anime Weekend Atlanta. Full of bitter juicy hate for other scenesters, decrying the pathetic use of half-ass Japanese by dumbass gaijin.

I could have sworn it was Shawn.

There was a brief segment on yaoi, which is pretty boy on pretty boy manga. Thankfully brief. It's not that I'm homophobic, I just don't like penises. Hell, I break out the EVA gloves to take a piss (ah, Joe Rogan, Hell is indeed a naked fat man chasing a tiny skinny guy around, forever).

The opening shorts were the best part. One was done by a five year old kid, starring Yoda, Darth Vader, C-3PO, R2-D2, and Sebastian (the crab from The Little Mermaid) flying around on a hamburger. It was awesome. I hope the kid and his family were in the audience, because the reaction was very positive. So cool.

Another was done by a UArts kid that Evan knows. Started off with a couple guys playing soccer and suddenly one is attacked by a giant pink animated monster... thing. Hilarious.

Before the films started up, just as we were sitting down, these middle-aged people in front of us were talking about Japanese media culture. Specifically, the movie Azumi, which was godawful. I mean, I like bad movies (See: Mean Guns) but Azumi was just horrible. Astoundingly, it was by the same guy who did Versus, which I really enjoyed (and which also played at the PFF a couple years ago).

Anyway, they were deconstructing Azumi. Obviously pseudo-intellectual academics, they reminded me more than anything else of the asshats that Randy has to deal with in Cryptonomicon. So goddamn annoying. I wanted to just smack them and ask that they please not to be taking a pooped-out waste of carbon like Azumi seriously in any way. Yes. I have superiority issues.

But only about things that don't matter.

I overheard someone talking about Dramarama, also, which is a band I've not heard of since... talking to Rob Towner about it in mid-2000. I used to listen to Dramarama all the time in '98, driving to ITT every morning...

After the movie, we went to some University City Japanese/Korean place that was very sub-par. I was not impressed with my chicken teriyaki at all, and it was expensive to boot.

(Speaking of food, rjbs informs me that the superb Ice Cream Lady of Bethlehem has created a new flavor: Peanut Butter Doom. I must get to ABE before she ceases making it. Doom.)

Also, there's some Cameron Diaz vehicle being filmed in the city right now. Based on a book by a local, at least. They've managed to pretty much fuck the streets, though, with the filming crews.

Crowds standing around, hoping for a glimpse of a star. Licking at the hand of Media, wishing and fantasizing...

You know what? I'm too tired to do this. It's been a long day. I managed to dump at least a hundred bucks on food and books. And anyway, Mark is just so much better at it.

I'll talk about the books in another post. I'm going to go take a bath and read.

Remember kids, pop culture is just another societial control. Suck at its teat, and you have only yourself to blame.

Also: Hypocrisy is love. War is peace. The grass is always greener after a nuke strike.

Spent the weekend in Bethlehem hanging out with Ricardo and Gloria. As always, had an excellent time with much good food. G made muffalettas, which is Cajun for BIG SAMMICH. It was very rockstar.

Also got to try Barbara the Ice Cream Lady's latest concoction: Peanut Butter Doom. It was most peanut buttery and definitely full of tasty doom.

Rik and I played quite a bit of co-op Halo, which was made watching Red vs. Blue all the more amusing, I think. I also dumped about 15G worth of anime on him, so he should have stuff to watch at work for a while. ;-)

We stopped by a comic shop and picked up some stuff. I got issues three and four of Transmetropolitan, which solios has been bugging me to read since I've known him, and Rik got some Superman trade. I also read the four existing trades of Astro City, which Gloria and Rik both highly recommended. And they're definitely great comics. If you're interested in the form at all, I have to pass along their suggestion. It's definitely worth reading. My favorite plotline, I think, is Steeljacks, as it seemed the most developed. The one where the family has just moved to Astro City is also good. And of course, the Confessor arc is pretty bad ass.

I also recommend Transmetropolitan. It rails against post-modernism, media-tion, and the horrors of the monoculture. And Spider Jerusalem spouting things such as: "Tell me why I should give two tugs of a dead dog's dick" will make sure that you have interesting things to say during departmental meetings.

The trip home was much quicker than it usually seems, I think. We went to dinner at A&W/KFC, then they dropped me off at the bus terminal. There was a bus sitting there (a 1815), and I managed to jump on that just as the guy was closing the door and prepping to leave. It was a pretty full ride, and I forgot to charge my iPod after the trip up, so I had to listen to everyone's cell phone conversations.

Got home, showered, called my mom and grandmother to wish them happy Mother's Days, then read Transmet before falling over.

Have I complained recently about only being able to sleep for four hours at a time? Because I can't seem to sleep any longer than that.

It's driving me insane.

However, to end on a happy note: This weekend's ~con was as enjoyable as they've all been so far. jcap needs to start coming again. :)

This week I'm at YAPC, and it's been a long damn day, so I'm going to be brief.

Ricardo has a good post of Monday and Tuesday. Today was pretty interesting. After the initial State of the Perl by Allison Randall of the Perl Foundation, and some brief comments from Jim Brandt, we got spammed at by an Apple guy from Toronto who nominally explained how to effectively use Perl with OS X but really only managed to be funny and play with Interface Builder.

After that I headed over to Mark Fowler's "Building a CPAN Distribution" and a half hour or so of "CPAN Modules Every Perl Programmer Should Know" talks before skipping out after the lunch break to hang with Rik and billn (Bill's from my hometown) in another room where the wireless actually worked. (UB graciously set us up with wlan accounts for the duration of the talk. Pretty awesome of them. The power situation could be way better, though.)

I didn't pay much attention to the talks until Pierre busted out "Lessons Learned from Many Interviews With Perl Programmers". Pierre is goddamn hilarious. 'nuff said.

Jumped over to Damian talking about Perl 6 (as it stands this week), until 1740 or so when they finally forced him to stop talking and let us leave; Damian is fun to listen to, and lots of Perl 6 stuff seems way cool, and lots either confused the hell out of me, or scared the nuts off me. Mostly it was way cool.

We then (Rik, Steve, Phil, hachi, and about a dozen other people) headed over for a Stem bof by Uri. That could have gone better, I think, though I'm not sure how. Uri is a big guy.

We dropped out stuff back at the hotel, then headed up to the Anchor Bar, where buffalo wings were supposedly invented (while good, Rik says they were not awesome, as seems to be the case with most places that "invent" something). The waitresses were cute is all I really got out of the place.

Then! Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on IMAX, sponsored by O'Reilly. A few minutes before the movie started, Rik laughed and said, "A couple of muggles managed to buy tickets." Poor norms.

Overall I was happy with the movie, and disappointed with the heckling. We had the theatre to ourselves, and I expected way more out of fifty Perl hackers MST3King a movie. You can only take pedophile jokes so far.

Just got back to the hotel now, at 0115 or so. Totally ready to crash. Tomorrow is going to be a long day as well (though hopefully not as long), as I'm spending the entire day in Learning Perl Objects, etc, which is going to be pretty hardcore, but useful for me. Anything to make things I'm pretty sure I mostly understand more clear.

Obviously the alternatives are far beyond me. I think anything "Beyond Advanced Regexes" would cause my face to catch fire.

At any rate. The time for sleeping is now.

Last day of YAPC::NA. Good stuff. Excellent talks all around, some good stuff from the Town Hall meeting at the end of the day. Damian's "Sufficiently Advanced Technologies" talk was good stuff.

Here's a little sample of my notes from Abigail's "Parsing Strings" talk:

/(["'])((??{ "[^$1]*" }))\1/

Yeeeah.
Or how about this?

my $re = qr /[{] # opening brace
(?: [^\\{}] # not a brace or backslash
| \\. # or a backslash followed by any char
| (??{ $re }) # or a balanced string
)* # zero or more times
[}] # Closing brace
/xs;

Someday I'll grok regex, but not any time soon. Thinking of it as a Real Language as opposed to a bunch of "Perl syntax" is the correct way, many humans insist.

A number of useful Perl modules came up, some previous known to me, some not:

• UI::All


• Regexp::Common


• Sort::Maker (Which Uri uploaded to CPAN at the end of his talk on it)


• Devel::Peek


• IO::Progress


• Smart::Comments

The plan now is to eat food in a bit, then crash out. Quite a few people have gone pub crawling, but rjbs and I are both pretty beat and elected to stay at the hotel. Heading back to Bethlehem tomorrow morning, then back to Philly on Sunday.

Definitely planning to go to YAPC next year.

Woke up at noon today, after a long night of alternating reading a PKD collection and working on Resync::*. A good balance of activities, really. Switching my code with the deranged stories of a completely mad person whose primary plot elements consist of totalitarian governments, shrewish women, and mutants with psionic abilities, the question of what is real...

This evening, Adam, Eric, Kyle and I met up at Ritz East with the intention of seeing Farenheit 9/11, but the next three showings were sold out. Unsurprising, I suppose. We walked down to the South St Diner and got some dinner.

I love South St. I really do. Passing some guy on the street... "Yo, wan' some hot mix tape fo' yo' ass? Three dollahs!"

And then later, in the grocery store, some crazy old man tried to engage me in a conversation about the U.S. supplying arms to various resistance groups in the Middle East. "We gave them those guns!" and later, perhaps only to get my attention, rattled on about how there really are aliens.

Reptilian aliens. Among us.

But they don't hurt no one.

But we need to show them that they can't just come down here anyway.

And then I came home, did laundry, and watched Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which I enjoyed just as much as I did the first time I saw it, ages ago.

My life.

I was going to move today. Andrew and I were going to get a U-Haul and get a bunch of stuff from various places around town where he has kit stashed that was earmarked to be thrown away. Including a Sun E4500.

Then we were going to swing by my place, get the big stuff that couldn't be easily transported in a cab (like, say, my bed, and desk, and monitors), and dump it off at my new place.

Pity it's fucking pissing rain out.

sigh.

Spent Tuesday packing and getting everything moved into the new place.

After moving a van full of stuff out of Hahnemann and then all my junk, Andrew, Evan and I spent about four total hours moving crap around the city. The new place (Pete's) is a trinity, which means it's small, three stories, and has Death Stairs up which no bed may climb.

So Russ (the landlord's son) helped us get the bed (slightly smaller than a queen, and freaking heavy) up into the second story window using nothing but a power cord and a threat against Pete's life (who was pushing the thing up the wall on top of a step ladder).

I didn't do much of the work on that one, and was busy pulling the end into position from the third floor, so didn't get to see the glorious moment when the bed went in the hole.

heeeee.

My week has been insane even without moving. Work continues to be strenuous. I was up all Tuesday night, curled in pain, because I'm a weak little bitch of a nerd. Yay for strained muscles. Always my arms.

Last night Mike and I left work just as it started pouring rain, and for the ten seconds I was out of the car (he dropped me off in the city), I managed to get completely soaked. Spent the rest of the night finishing up my room and hanging out with Pete.

He suggested I read Abarat by Clive Barker, so I started it last night as well. About a hundred pages in, enjoying it thus far. Suitably weird.

Tomorrow my parents are flying in for ten days.

This is going to be interesting.

So NWS has been a lying whore lately, and telling us all that there is a chance of rain every other day for the past two weeks or so. Apparently chance rain is actually something that can be accrued and used at a single time, because last night, lo, there was what Adam correctly described as Matrix Rain ("You know, from the first movie. The one that didn't suck"). Rain that bounced three inches when it hit the pavement. Rain like a woman's wrath.

Adam and I are walking up Broad from Factory, looking to get a cab, and the sky Opens. He scurries under the cover of a gas station and I mock him, because I am an ass. Eventually a cab rolls in to get gas and we jump in that.

This is after we go to SFBC for dinner, where all they play any more is 80s pop music. Finally met Drexel Eric (muhar) and I think we spent the better of an hour trying to figure out various songs we knew the lyrics to, but not the title or artist. Our culture is fucking awesome.

Get home, soaked, and Pete informs me that The Bourne Supremecy was great, but all the OMFG ACTION CAMERA SHAKING actually made his friend Joe vomit. That's pretty fucking awesome, if you ask me. The last movie that made me vomit was The Little Mermaid Does Atlantis. You wouldn't think merfolks tails could used be like that, but nature will find a way.

Michelle has asked me to be her date to Adam and Sophy's wedding in September, which is pretty great. Apparently she gets twitchy in crowds where people are speaking a foreign language, so regardless of the ceremony of itself, I should have a decent source of amusement. The wedding is three days long, though we'll only be going Saturday (which is the religious component. There will be monks. We will attempt to get them to do body shots. As I told Michelle, no doubt monks are wild and crazy guys under those top knots), and Sunday (the reception). It will be an Experience.

My parents were visiting all last week, and it was Good. I think my mom got to see everything she wanted to see, they went to New York (which my mother proclaimed to be "small", a concept I am having difficulty understanding), they got to meet all my friends, so now they know I hang out with a bunch of insane vagrants, as opposed to simply having to believe my stories.

Actually, they got along well with everyone and perhaps my mother will cease berating me constantly about going out and meeting people. If these are the sort of people I'll be meeting, maybe I'm better off sticking with what I've got, hm?

We watched The Boondock Saints, which they enjoyed muchly. During the deleted "Mom Calls From Home" scene, I thought my parents were going to explode from laughing. You can say anything, apparently, as long as it's with an Irish accent, and it'll be okay with them. Word up.

Work has continued to be crazy. We're moving furniture and running cable today. The electrician was kind enough to leave pull strings in the drops he punched in the wall, so it's just a matter of measuring the runs. Joy.

I love ladders, and I love crawling around on ceilings. They are my most favoritest things in the whole wide world.

Speaking of, I should probably get ready for work. Need to do laundry, so finding somewhat non-smelly clothes will be amazing.

Today was freaking exhausting.

Work was pretty awful. I accomplished very little (save for getting mirroring on the production volumes working again... which was trivial), and was incredibly frustrated by the end of the day.

So we recently swapped old Macs out for new WinXP boxes in accounting. I would prefer eMacs, but whatever. So like most accounting/payroll departments, they have an ancient printer that they use for invoices. The "invoicing printer". Which is always ancient.

The previous printserver on this printer was AppleTalk only. So I get the CTO to buy a new printerserver. It comes in last week, and I don't get around to installing it, or swapping out the second machine (there are two), because I'm too busy, and interrupting her work this week would not be good for anyone (payroll! invoices!), but the CTO tells me to do it. So I do.

The CTO is getting his interrupt privileges on me removed.

First off, the Wintel box's print driver for the Okidata 320 is screwed. It prints huge, I don't know why, but she has other probelms with the machine so I swap her old Mac back and have her use that until I have more time (next week, probably). We do a test print with the old AppleTalk printserver, it's fine... Then I realize that it's probably just a DPI issue... so I go and look, and while the Mac has 72x72, the Windows box is printing at 120x72... but it only does 60x72. Which is an issue. I swap the printservers back, just to see... sure enough, it cuts off the right margin. Which is where the dollar amounts are. So 1500.00 becomes 150, which is less than trivial.

So I swap em back... and the Mac refuses to print. It sees the printer okay, but says "Waiting for printer to become available." What the hell is this, I wonder. I run Adam's car back to him at the other building, and we head back over so I can deal with it (hopefully) before leaving (or staying until I deal with it and figuring out some other way to get to the train station later).

I'm really frustrated by this point. I mean, really getting pissed off. My entire day has gone like this, and this is just one more thing I don't need on top of three months of crap. So Adam looks at the Mac, sees that it's all set up correctly, and goes and pokes at the printer.

He holds up the other end of the printer cable and says, "This may be the problem."

Yay.

Then I headed back into the city, and got soaked through with sweat waiting for the Broad Line. They need to install fans or something in those stations, it's fucking awful down there. Met up with Adam, went to Factory, hung out for a bit... And then. Then!

Had to go to the old apartment to clean up. I spent an hour and a half there (30m more than I wanted) and ended up completely cleaning out the basement, which I didn't care about at all. The only good part was kicking a couch apart. Completely destroying the thing to get it out of there. That was keen. The pile of garbage was about four feet high and seven feet long. I have my doubts about the garbage crew taking it, but who knows.

Except I think I bruised the bottom of my right foot. :)

Stupid lack of steel inserts in my boots!

After that, it was a matter of running a few more errands, heading home to get clothes, talking to Pete for a few minutes, heading over to Adam's to wash them (the clothes, though Pete can always do with a good rinse cycle), getting food from Sev, heading back to Factory, talking about Factory for a half hour or so (which we haven't done in a while)... came up with some good propaganda ideas, etc. Need to get solios on those.

And... while we were at Adam's, he was busy mirroring (using the "Are you migrating from an older machine?" functionality of new Macs) his RevA PB12" with his new (grant supplied) RevC PB12". Which is now sitting on my bed finishing it's OS X Panther install. Yay. New laptop for me.

In fact, selene Mk II just finished, so I'm going to copy all my junk over so I can use it at work tomorrow and then crash. I'm pretty excited about having a fast laptop finally. It shouldn't take me 45s to parse an NMAP XML file with 50 hosts in it... even if my code does suck. :)

And yeah. That was all very poorly written (ha!) but I'm beat. So. Setup then sleep. Yes.

It is so awesome having clean clothes, I can't even tell you.

Clothes that don't smell like me at my worst are possibly my favorite ever right now.

Except perhaps for the fact that my new laptop has wireless and I'm typing this entry from the shitter.

Pete Moffe: you are such a fucking pig. that rocks.

Much <3

I am sick and tired of all my sad songs.

Friday was interesting. Long day at work, dealing with recovering this hard drive (part of an array; we just sent it off to have the drive's platter swapped... hopefully that will work out). Went to Factory, eventually about a dozen people showed up: Akira came down from New York, picked up Alex (who I will refuse to refer to as "assrabbit", cDc nickname or no) in Jersey. Emmet Plant (from pobox) and his girlfriend, Steph, came out. Emmet seems pretty hardcore about joining Factory, and has some good ideas about it. Went to dinner at Nam Phoung, which everyone seemed to enjoy (lots of nerd humor, etc). They sat us away from everyone else, obviously detecting Akira's miscreant streak and the effect it would have on everyone else.

Hung out at Factory for a few hours after that, getting some work done. It's goddamn hot down there.

Saturday morning I went to dinner with Alex and Adam before Alex headed back home. Stopped by Showcase on South St. to pick up a couple books of The Authority and Y: The Last Man. Sat around for a few minutes before Andrew came over and we headed over to Home Depot to buy some fans and then swung down to my old apartment to get the last of my stuff. Jason tried to get me to clean "my" bathroom, but I refused, stating that he and his pothead friends have been pissing all over it for the last month and a half and I have no goddamn intention of cleaning it. I'm glad to be done with all that. Definitely appreciate Andrew's help in getting my shit out of there.

Back to Factory, then, to pick up some stuff Andrew wanted to take back to his apartment. He's still pretty reticent about letting anyone in there, and dropped me off at home before taking the junk back to his place. I imagine something like John Doe's apartment in se7en, only with computer manuals and boxes full of twenty year old computer gear.

This is the first day in a while where I've got to sit around doing nothing. Woke up, ate some cereal, watched some TV with Pete (we've been watching season one of Millennium. Read some comics once Pete left for his folks place.

Cleared the last of my shit Andrew and I went and picked up yesterday from the old apartment out of the middle of room . A bunch of stuff I don't need, except for my computer chair.

Nice, lazy day.

Got a headache around 1600, so I took a nap. Got up, watched more Millennium, made some dinner (PB&J, Easy Mac, pepperoncinis; I should have made a salad, but we're out of lettuce and I definitely didn't feel like trooping around anywhere).

And now it's time to watch a couple more eps of yet another show Fox cancelled and maybe read some Y, and then sleep.

It maybe isn't much of a life, but at least I've stopped bleeding out my ass.

Goddamn aliens.

Has media so affected our perspective that we've lost the ability to live our own lives? When we fight with our loved ones, are we actually displaying true emotion, or acting out the script from last weeks teen angst drama? When we argue with our girlfriends ex-boyfriend, are our words our own or some self-righteous pretty boy so far removed from actual people he may as well be another species?

When we tell her we love her and that it will work out, is that us, or the lines of some craggy forty-something actor with his eyes slitted against a western sunset, grating out chosen words about love and life?

Have our relationships always been so convuluted, so intertwined and complex, or did we just soak it up while in the womb and become acclimated to the idea of it? When did straight-forwardness become rare?

When we walk down the street, watching the people around us, fragments of overheard conversation becoming a torrent of background gossip radiation, is this life? These dramatized overreactions, the thrill of thrusting intimacy into the ears of passing pedestrians; were we always like this, before someone sat down with a pen and thought to themselves, "How can I glamorize this emotion? How can I make this edgy and sexy and make people want to wear it or talk like it or pretend in their head that this is how the world is, just so they can get through their nothing day?"

Have we so lost our way through the maze of commercials and soft drinks and designer clothing that we have no concept of whatever true human interaction might have once meant?

Where do the lies end, and we begin?

How much more of this can I take?

Sitting at home on a Friday night, coding and eating noodles.

Going to watch In the Mouth of Madness.

Adam is leading a Factory team-building exercise at Intermezzo at the moment, relying on alcohol I suspect to dull the pain.

I think I'll sit here with my Perl and my ramen and pretend I'd rather not be elsewhere.

Yay for drinking alone.

Vodka out of a whiskey glass, not so awesome.

I've been down-hearted, baby
Ever since the day we met

Just got back from the last party at MIchelle's old place. Still drunk. Typing with eyes closeed, head won. Somehow managed to get upstairs. Have hiccips. Bad. Major hippcups.

Apogolize in advance for anything I may have said, or did not say, tonight.

Recall everyone leaving as soon as The Drunkfuck Drexel-related crew entered a room.

Recall sitting on porch with Michelle gods know what sort of nonsense.

Good thing I'm okay with making an ass of myself, yeah?

No idea what idioicy I was spouting. Excellent.

Sat downstairs for twenty minutes after Pete gave me a glass of water before he went to bed and sang along to Everclear.

There is something wrong with me. My life.

The tracks are broken.

The train has fallen.

Why the fuck do I have the death hiccups.

Note: Eric Gallo is funny as shit when plastered.

Note: Michelle is hot.

End transmission.

Showered. Teeth brushed. Hydrated.

I feel almost human again.

Almost.

The obnoxious thing is that I really didn't want to drink last night. But something cracked, and I gave up. Not gave in, just up. Internalized nonsense leaking out and infecting my better judgement. Typical.

I suppose, as Eric said earlier this afternoon, we just needed to learn a little more respect for Jeremiah. If merz actually drinks that garbage on a regular basis, he's more insane than he looks. Just looking at a picture of the bottle makes me want to go stick my head in the toilet for another eight hours.

One of the more amusing things about last night is how segregated the party was. All the loud, faced, academic nerds making asses of themselves and talking about feces on one side, with everyone else vacating the premises when we wandered towards them.

I vaguely recall stumbling into a conversation with Nick, Mihai and Pete, where Nick was explaining his research. Christ knows what nonsense I spouted.

I'm really not a fan of drinking. I know this, I knew it last night. I just need to remember, regardless of internal conflicts, what a fucking awful idea it is.

If nothing else, at least I apparently amused the hell out of Pete. That counts for something.

(Also: Eric, you ate chicken, you drunk homo vegan!)

There was lettuce inspectors at the salad bar today.

They was POKIN at it with IMPLEMENTS.

There wasn't any beepin' stuff, though, and no blinkin' lights, so I don't think they was from the govment.

I wonder what them salad people done to deserve the pokin'.

I am very tired.

Today was Day One (for humans who aren't Sophy and Adam) of the much-feared Mass Wedding Event. A traditional (or near enough) Cambodian wedding which is taking place a week after their civil ceremony. So they've technically been married for a week now, but until this whole thing is over, they aren't effectively married.

I'm not really sure I'm conscious enough now, or ever will be again, to describe today in any detail, so I will just ramble. I am sure you are very surprised by this sudden change in my story-telling.

Yesterday I was supposed to be off from work. But ha ha, the CTO had other plans and came and picked me up. I spent the day accomplishing nothing, certainly not what he wanted me to fix. I get home, try to convince Pete to come with me to Men's Wearhouse, fail, and go by myself. Run into merz at Wawa, then everyone else on the corner. Adam reminds me that Liz's show is that (Friday) night. I say I'll be there as soon as possible (though this is in Bryan-time, which everyone knows is massively unreliable), and go to the suit store. I procure a suit with very little effort. I go home. Pete and I go to Liz's show at Nexus, which is awesome and had what appeared to me to be an Extreme Turnout.

Andrew asks me how work is going, and something snaps, and I start yelling "Fuck you! Fuck you!" while pointing and waving at nothing in particular. Andrew is extremely amused by this, the breaker pops, and I quickly calm back down.

Then dinner at Aoi, which had some pretty awesome beef teriyaki. I will have to take Ricardo and Gloria the next time they come down.

Everyone else went to Mom's but I bitched out, as usual, and came home to sleep, as I suspected the ceremony would be not incredibly comfortable.

Got up early, went and got a haircut. The woman told me I looked like Doogie Howser, which is something I haven't heard in a few years but is apparently still true. Picked up a couple roses for Michelle, as in some technical world we were supposed to be going to the wedding as a date($rand). Got home, took a shower, and then sat around. Mm. Sitting. After the rest of the day, I would look back on that sitting with much fondness.

Michelle showed up at Pete and my place a little over an hour before we needed to be at Sophy's (at 1400), with Mihai in tow as he was kind enough to offer us a ride to South South Philly. We took time getting dressed, sat around watching the first twenty minutes of Akira, and there was some point-taking with regards to our DVD collections.

Get to Sophy's. Stand around for two hours waiting for the band to show up.

Band shows up at 1600. A bunch of stuff happens and obviously none of the white people have a fucking clue what is going on. There is paper which describe the proceedings, and we read it, but it continues to avoid making sense. I suspect the paper was laced with a narcotic of some sort. There is someone from Sophy's work who looks like a young, very tall, Mathew Broderick, but apparently he is not a genetically altered clone, but a guy named Br[i,y]an. I mention it because I think he felt left out of us standing around talking to each other, which is never a fun person to be.

Time passes. It is hot, uncomfortable, loud, no idea what anyone is saying, but it remains somehow mesmerizing. I think the amount of pain and discomfort Sophy and Adam are in is somewhat akin to watching an autopsy, only much less pretty. There is an enormous amount of food sitting in the living room (the dowry; the Groom's, I believe) and Pete is staring at is as he has not eaten. Pete when he doesn't eat is sort of scary.

Eventually we all go outside and they hand the dishes (there are two of everything) to people. Michelle and I were handed chickens. Or duck. Or some fucking thing. Later, Liz told me they still had their heads on but I somehow failed to notice this fact and was suitably freaked out by it. Evan and Andrew get plates with bottles of Pepsi lashed to them, which we decide is meant to signify sugar. We all get lined up, in pairs, and walked back into the house with the food. Traditionally, the groom's family would have brought all this food and we wouldn't have been already in the house to start with. However, Adam's family being Italian, we all agreed that it was unlikely pasta was what Sophy's family was going for.

There was some music, some talking. There was much reverb. The band managed to fix the reverb for the talking, but the talking guy demanded the reverb be brought back, and thus it was.

I don't remember a whole lot. We all kept each other amused by making faces at Adam, Sophy and Eric (who was the Groom's Dude, I have no clue what the terminology would be, but he had to dress up like Aladdin, too, so).

Then there was The Pretend Hair Cutting, Signifying Some Stuff. I tried to get Michelle to go up with me to Pretend Cut Adam and Sophy's Hair, but she was having none of it, so Liz and I did it instead. As did many other people. Sophy's mother was apparently afraid Pete was going to actually cut Adam's hair and almost took the scissors away from him. There was also a little bottle of perfume that you weren't actually supposed to spray, just act like it, but everyone was spraying it. The smell apparently made Eric incredibly nauseous as he looked like he was going to vomit for a while.

There was also a little mirror so you could show the bride and groom how well you pretend cutted their hair. When Adam's father showed him the mirror, all the non-Cambodian people laughed, thinking it was just Adam's dad being funny, as apparently he has an awesome sense of humor, but no, it was actually part of the ceremony. I didn't feel like an ass laughing, though. Humor was needed.

I told Adam and Sophy they looked fabulous and absolutely gorgeous while wiggling the mirror around to make it impossible to see the hair Liz hadn't cut off them. They looked like they needed a fucking laugh is what, but more like they needed to get out of there.

Eventually more stuff happened, but I don't remember much of it. We went to Sonoco for stuff and there was food brought out at some point. I didn't eat any of it, figuring it would probably be an ungood idea. Undoubtably I was correct, thought it certainly smelled good.

Then there were pictures, which was entertaining. We finally got out a little after 1830, I think. Not sure on the time. Adam and Sophy didn't actually get done until 2130 and 220 respectively.

Everyone else (Boston Nick, NYC Jason, Irene, Liz, Andrew, Evan, Pete and myself; Maggie, Matt and Kyle also came out) went to the Diner for dinner. I destroyed a salad, cheesesteak, and a just about all of a piece of cake. Fucking starved.

Except for all the uncomfortableness and how obviously unhappy Adam and Sophy were (her family is insisting on all of this), it was an interesting day. I like having any excuse to see people I never, or rarely, get to see (Nick, Jason; Michelle, which is kind of sad), but it would be awesome if we didn't have to sit around for six hours to do it.

And tomorrow is another five hours, then the reception tomorrow night.

There's other stuff I'm sure I'm forgetting to mention. A lot of amusing comments, which is why I enjoy hanging out with these meatbags, and some other stuff I will be beaten for repeating.

Mm. Beaten.

I require the sleep now. Must be out of here early to get to Ceremony of Doom Part II by 0900.

Thank god Monday is a fucking holiday, or there would be extreme amounts of unhappiness spilling out of my skull and burning holes in things.

(Everyone likes wombats.)

I just took the best nap ever. I don't know what I did to deserve it, but man, I rock for whatever it was.

Got up at 0700 this morning, laid in bed for a while. Eventually Pete stuck his head through the door and said he wasn't feeling well, so I was probably on my own for the wedding stuff this morning. I stumbled out of bed, showered, called Liz, and we took a cab down to Sophy's. Michelle called mid-route and informed us that nothing had started yet, so being thirty minutes late wasn't a big deal.

Harry was there, and a couple more people I didn't know. And Jim. Jim in a suit. I didn't recognize him at first. Fucker cleans up damn well.

There was more ceremony stuff, with the music, and a lot of dinging today. There was some dancy, some walking around.

People tied string to Adam and Sophy's wrists, and eventually we got to throw little rice things at them, which we stripped off the stalk ourselves. Very odd.

Some old woman threw her stalks at Nick and I.

There was this little kid who needed a spanking. Or a swatting. Or a damn Ritalin martini. He ran into me about a dozen times, and kept laying around all over the floor. While extremely annoying, apparently the faces I was making kept everyone around me amused.

They gave Adam a little sword, which Adam told Eric: "This is the sword I kill my in-laws with." Then there was more walking around then we pretty much all fitlered outside; Michelle, Liz and I hung around for a few minutes, then made a break for it.

Tonight is the reception. I have a s/toast/roast/ half-prepared. Apparently Adam's brother Scott has the same idea. I should discuss it with him beforehand. Tonight is also, apparently, formal, so I will be Suiting back up. Fear my sexy suitness. I know you fear it.

Michelle also made "I am so completely average noises". I kept my mouth shut today, as last night I got yelled at for making other noises. I'll probably be getting yelled at for making those other noises shortly enough, however.

Now I need to work on my toast and possibly find something to snack on.

Pete and I headed down to the restaurant a few minutes early, got seated, and sat around watching all the crazy stuff going on. Sophy and Adam were pinning flowers on people as they came in, there were many people taking pictures, kids were running around. It was pretty chaotic.

There was much fooding, twelve courses in all, most of which was seafood, so I didn't eat a whole lot. A chicken came out with its head still attached, and Jason (asm) made a disturbing little sculpture out of it.

A full fish, empty inside, but with all sorts of stuff baked onto it and cherry eyes came out. Adam's little brother Dane walked up to our table, saw the fish, and made a face that caused me to laugh for a good two minutes.

Pete is completely enamored, to put it politely, with Cambodian/Asian women now.

The band was painfully loud, Cambodians do this thing that looks like Hawaiian hula dancing (the thing with the hands), but only in lines. Hula line dancing. Or in circles. Watching a bunch of Italians do this was completely hilarious. Watching Cambodians boogy down while Italians dance around with mad American style through their lines was also pretty awesome.

Adam's brother Scott gave a toast which was completely offensive, and pretty entertaining. He kept skipping pages, which he later came back and read to us. I didn't get a chance to give my toast at the reception, as there wasn't really any time between all the incredibly loud music, dancing, eating, and finally the cake cutting and boquet throwing.

All in all, I think it was exceedingly cool. Sophy looked amazing in her wedding dress.

After the reception, we all managed to get over to Adam's to sit around for four hours for drinking and laughing. It was pretty fucking awesome. I smoked way too many cigarettes with Eric.

Adam busted out the champagne (which was astoundingly awful, I gave my glass to Nick who, while a trooper and drank it, was making Faces the entire time), and I gave my toast. There were many interruptions, those bastards, but I think it was received well. The text follows. Unfortunately for Michelle I didn't manage to record it, which is a pity, because the comments while I was giving it were very entertaining.

First, I'd like to thank Adam for bestowing upon me the privilege of carrying a chicken in yesterday's dowry parade. It was very exciting. And heavy. Unfortunately, my fellow chicken-bearer couldn't be in attendance tonight.

I've known Adam and Sophy for a few years now. Adam and I have seen each other in good and bad times, some of which involved handguns or too far much alcohol, but luckily never both at the same time, and I'm proud to have witnessed the last couple days. As a career bachelor, I'm sure I only know a fraction of the trials and tribulations they've faced to get to this point; the dragons slain, the mountains moved, the rivers re-routed. And here they are, through the rings of fire and over the pits filled with Kevlar-adorned venomous monkeys.

I'm incredibly proud of both of them.

Now... THAT said, Adam can be absolutely intolerable at times. Anyone here who knows me knows that I am a man of infinite patience, but somehow Adam has the singular facility of pissing me off at the drop of a hat. He can be pedantic, long-winded, disgusting, overly detailed, and needlessly perverse. And when he gets VERY drunk, he gives incredibly awful advice -- like telling his poor drunk friend he should go home with a 40 year old woman -- or tries to pay people to throw potato salad at other people. Which I, as an Irishman, find morally repugnant.

Sophy is OBVIOUSLY an angel.

However, there is a thread of decency that binds Adam together, and resonates with a similar thread in Sophy. Something that pulls them together, strengthens them, and drives them to better themselves as human beings, for themselves and for each other. The last few days have been, if nothing else, a testament to the strength of that bond.

And it's that thread, that will to be a better man, that requires me to consider Adam a worthwhile human being and a good friend despite hearing the same poop jokes dozens of times.

There should be something here about a successful marriage, or something, blah blah blah.

And so, Adam, Sophy, may your marriage age like a fine wine: May you gain clarity, and may you spend plenty of time horizontal.

Got home around 0345, and now I'm going to read for a little while, try to ignore the cigarette smell on my hands, and then sleep for a day or two.

It astounds me that anything works, ever.

Went downstairs a half hour ago, realizing I'd forgotten to kick a sleeping Pete off the couch to go pick up his suit for yet another wedding this weekend. Instead, there's a note on the coffee table:

Have a horrible weekend fuckhead. - Pete

Pete++

Now I need to figure out what the hell do to with myself this weekend.

Jesus fuck.

I'm glad Evan and Hil are okay.

I would not be a happy monkey if Evan managed to get his silly ass capped in a fucking MCDONALD'S ROBBERY.

People. I dunno sometimes.

Correcting for the time it takes the world to turn, I'll be twenty-five in about six hours. Since I'm not going to be awake to bitch about it then -- hopefully, assuming I don't get a call from work dragging me out of beautiful unconsciousness -- I figured I would whine about it now.

Then I thought, what really do I have to whine about?

I have a job. I have a place to live and a roommate whose throat I don't want to rip out. I have friends, and things to do. Books to read. My family is all healthy, knock on wood.

Of course, sitting over in the negative pile are a lot of things I consider more important than most of that. Ambition. The willpower to finish anything I start. A girl.

Mostly I lack willpower. Self-discipline I have, for the habits I'm entrenched in, but no willpower for new habits or new disciplines.

So looking around, I'm twenty-five and don't have fuckall to show for it. No real idea on how to get that far, either.

What I need are some birthday monkeys to give me a swift Converse-covered kick in the ass to help me figure out what I need, what I want, and how to get it.

If I remember correctly, Michelle promised birthday monkeys. So?

Eating beef jerky for breakfast is pretty awesome, though not something I want to do regularly.

Getting no sleep last night was not awesome. The sheets my mother sent me for my birthday, however, are pretty awesome.

Coming in and having a drive I was working with last night, before turning the machine off, and having that drive dead, is not awesome at all.

Watching NTFS compile is about the most entertaining thing ever, whereby "entertaining" I mean it's like punching myself in the nuts every two minutes, to commemorate a percent formatted.

Except for Adam and Sophy getting back into town tonight from their honeymoon, I can't think of a single thing I have to look forward to today, except going home and sleeping.

(Whoever guesses where the post's title is from gets to cockpunch me for being a big pussy.)

Adam and Sophy flew back into Philly last night from the mean streets of San Fran, looking tired but, I think, much more relaxed than when they left. Adam called as their plane was taxiing and woke my ass up (from a dream where I was at the diner with him, annoyingly enough) from a nap. I called Andrew, and we agreed to meet up around 1930.

Michelle called, surprising me, and I wandered up to the Diner a bit early. She gave me a birthday monkey, which is pretty awesome. I think I'm going to name him Smack da Monkey. It seems Jhonen-esque. Also, I wore the monkey on my back as we walked back to my apartment, so the name will work on multiple levels. Pictures will be forthcoming.

Dinner was entertaining, though Michelle had to bail early to nominally get work done. Over their honeymoon, Sophy got her hair cut and dyed it. Contrary to everyone insisting it looked awesome, she decided to dye it brown again. Even the clerk at CVS where she bought the brown dye said she should leave it red.

Freakin' women.

I hate not having anything to look forward to.

I hate looking forward to something only to have it blocked by everything else.

If you had to make a list of the things you could do, today, and tomorrow, and the day after, to make yourself a happier person, how long would that list be?

Today was a good day. The plan was for me to come up to Bethlehem Friday night for the start of the Celtic Classic festival, but work interfered. So Saturday morning, I got up at 0500, showered, dressed, called a cab. Saw a squirrel running along phone lines, no doubt going about some evil machinations. Saw a Deer Park water bottle full of what appeared to be urine sitting on a sewer grate at 9th and Spruce. Sat in the Greyhound station for an hour or so, trying to read The Dark Tower while a woman sat next to me prattling in Spanish on her cell phone so fast it was almost impossible to recognize as language.

The brief pauses as she listened to the few words whoever she was conversing with could get in before reattaching to whatever ranting thread she was spinning out.

Eventually the bus comes, and I get on, and try to sleep against the constant droning of some woman boring (I can only imagine he was just being polite) the hell out of the bus driver. Reiterating her points over and over, such as they were, using minutely changed phrasing and then agreeing with herself.

Get to the Allentown station, climb into the car with Gloria and Rik, and almost fall asleep. Hang out for a bit at their apartment, then decide to head out for the parade. As we're walking up the street, we run into John and his girlfriend, M. (whose name I am not going to try to spell). Good timing. We go and watch the parade. Many drunk men in skirts playing bag pipes. A number of school bands are also in attendance. Several convertible PT Cruisers are in the parade as well, which was somewhat jarring. The drivers all looked to be car salesmen. Slicked back hair, the works.

Eventually we made our way to the festival itself. I had a meat pie of some sort. There was some dancing. Some cupar tossing and weigth for height throwing. Unfortunately we couldn't actually see the guys tossing the cupars; the crowd was so thick we saw only what appeared to be telephone poles moving under their own power, and sometimes, if they wanted it enough, jumping into the air, and possibly spinning when they hit the ground.

I got sunburned, which is something that hasn't happened in ages.

Went to go see Shaun of the Dead, which I highly recommend, even if you aren't into zombie movies. It was all sorts of funny.

There were two kids that sat in our row who had to be trying to look like Jay and Silent Bob. If they weren't, they must have been lost, because Jersey is miles and miles from here.

The Seed of Chucky preview ended on a line that made Rik, Gloria and I groan: "GET A LOAD OF CHUCKY." Awesome.

Went to the Golden Gate Diner (which, as Rik found out after asking the owner after our meal, was named after the Greek Golden Gate to Heaven, and not after the fact that much Bethlehem steel went into the Golden Gate Bridge; as always I love when names work on multiple levels, so I was very amused) for dinner. I ate too much, but seeing as how I had a small meat pie and three tacos in the last two days, I'm not too worried about it.

I am unhappy that neither Pete or Michelle got to hang out with the tildekids today, as it's such a good, relaxing group. C'est la whatever, I suppose.

Time to read some more Dark Tower, and then sleep. I'm about two hundred pages from the end... and I'm scared of what King is doing. I don't know that it's bad. But it isn't good.

Mostly I'm afraid it may be right...

Just got home from work. Walked to and from the respective stations, what has been oft referred to as angry white boy music deafening me.

Tired, hungry and more than a little sweaty now.

Felt good to just walk, though.

Debating on food, reading, or maybe staring at my notebook until I fall asleep. The latter is becoming a habit.

Went out with Pete and his friend Elise last night. Got some food at The Last Dish then went upstairs for the Moqita show. It was even better than I'd been expecting. Those guys are phenomenal.

We met up with Adam, Sophy and Jon around 2200. Pete and Elise took off around midnight, Sophy and Adam shortly thereafter. Jon was still raving out when I skulked off around 0100. My throat was killing me. It's still killing me. Awesome.

The show, though, was awesome. The fluteboxing stuff was great, the timing on everything was perfect. Excellent. J.G. called Ashley (?) up to sing Round the Way, and she was incredible. I took off just as J.G. was asking if everybody was ready to shake their ass, because, well. No one wants that.

Great time.

I got a twenty dollar bill from a Wawa ATM yesterday with the following message stamped on the back:

THIS IS YOUR GOD.

I was suitably entertained, but now I don't want to spend it.

There are few things I enjoy more than walking down 130 in the dark.

Mm. New Jersey.

Woken this morning by the subtle beating of someone else's heart, the bellows of their lungs a rhythmic calming; the sounds of kids being readied for school, sneakers sending ancient wooden beams creaking in the freezing air.

Hours, nowhere near enough, later, we took Nancy to the Burlington airport so she could catch her flight home.

Keri (the bride) and Steve (the groom, a friend of mine of many, many years, though at times our contact has been somewhat patchy) and I grabbed lunch at a most excellent Thai place. I got some pad beef and brocolli, Steve tried the beef pho on my suggestion, and Keri got Vietnamese pad Thai. Extremely good. They dropped me off at the airport so I could catch my flight. There was much talk of their visiting Philadelphia in the near future, which would be awesome, though I think they should wait until the spring so they can do all the touristy things without freezing their asses off.

Got through security with no issues, and sat in front of the giant windows overlooking the field; watched F-16s flown by the Burlington "Mountain Men" National Guardsmen land on the strip, listening to Vermillion Pt. 2 on repeat. Eventually the flight was called and I slept for an hour.

These regional planes are so damn tiny. Twin jets, and you can't even stand up in the cabin. The first plane was a three-rower, and seemed to be full except for the seat next to mine. Lucky me. The second was a four-rower, but my fellow passenger was an older businessman and obviously well-schooled in flight and caused me no troubles.

Touched down, got my bag, and hailed a cab. "Yo, man. Philly." The driver looks me. "You know, just somewhere in the city," I quip. According to the card in the window separating us, his name is Yuri Berger; he has a thick Russian or Czech accent (I can't tell the difference, I don't think) and I restrained the urge to ask him if that was an Americanized name, and why had he changed it. He laughs and says, "That's good, but any streets in particular?"

I really can't believe how much fun I had at this wedding. Those damn French Canadian-derived humans can drink just as much as the Irish/Hungarian crowd, and know how to party down. In truth, I fully expected this last week to be pretty awful, and was extraordinarily happy with how it all turned out. I really miss hanging out with Steve. He's fucking awesome. And having finally met Keri, and watching she and Steve interact, and how he interacts with her kids, I feel much better about the whole thing. After we all filed out of the chapel, when we're hugging and kissing and shaking hands with the wedding party, Keri hugs me and says, "Didn't think it would actually happen after the other night, huh?" Referring to a stress-blowout.

"I never had any doubt."

The wedding itself was amazingly beautiful. Keri looked astounding. The ceremony itself was non-traditional and very, very classy. The mayor did the actual marrying and did an excellent job... but he somehow managed to miss an important bit, after having pronounced the marriage:

Mayor Dan: "Now, Keri and Steve would like all of you to attend a reception they're holding---"
Steve: "uh, pst, we haven't kissed."
Keri: "What about the kiss?!"
Mayor Dan: !
Mayor Dan: "You may kiss the bride!"

The next day, looking at pictures with Nancy, Keri and a very nice relative of theirs whose name I don't recall, we were laughing about that, and how perfect the rest of the ceremony had been. I opined that something like that had to happen, just for the sake of the story it provided.

It's the flaws that make things interesting.

Jesse and I drove over to the reception, which was a great time. We ended up staying two hours after it was scheduled to stop because people were having so much fun. The DJ was that good, which surprised the hell out of me. I expected cheese, and there was some, but he pulled it all off with easy skill. Everyone was dancing and having a good time.

The best man's speech was awesome (he choked up in the middle of it, and the entire room started tearing up as well; later he had the nerve to worry enough to say he thought that he'd fucked it up somehow, because he had to fight to get the words out. We were justifiably angered and insisted it had been perfect). There was much dancing and drinking. I got a few slow dances in with Nancy, and got a little freaky as well. Not well, mind you, but I can't say I cared much about how I was doing at the time.

On top of all these great events, there was a near-constant hanging out with cool people. Word to the Plattsburgh Crew for being such good people. Also got to see Jesse, who I haven't heard from in years.

And now I'm home, showered, in my flannels and too awake to sleep, too tired to get dressed to get food. Displaced. A lot of really good memories mixed in with the sad leave-taking of new friends and old.

By no means was this trip trans-oceanic, but I'm still waiting for my soul to catch up to the rest of me.

The kind of phone call that I just had, I could do with more often.

Interesting how random life can be, and how completely untethered it can become.

Moqita is playing another show at Liquid next Thursday (Oct 28). People in for Pumpcon should plan on attending. :)

Lali Puna, a German techno-ish band Andrew found a while back, is playing at First Unitarian on Nov 18th. Definitely down for that. Grats to merz for paying attention to show listings.

Went out to Tavern on Green last night with the Drexel kids. Not really a fan of that bar, I think, but the nachos were okay and hanging out with fellow meatbags is something I seem to enjoy.

Talked to Nancy for a couple hours last night. Things there certainly seem to be working. I am encouraged. Just got cleared for my remaining vacation days. Hmmm...

Now I just need to get work sorted out a bit more than it is. Just three or four big things need to be done, as well as somehow accomplishing the Move.

The ditto script is being refactored right now. Objectifying it and adding a couple useful features.

Wrote a couple pages of stuff last night. Some continuing in the hotel clerk girl vein, and a couple paragraphs of what felt very, very much like system. The latter isn't very surprising, as I had gone through some of system yesterday afternoon before sending it off to abuse Nancy with.

Mm.

Needed to work off some nervous energy, so I got dressed and walked up to City Hall. That's a good fifty or sixty block walk, for those of you who have both have no idea where I live and don't live in Philadelphia. I haven't done that walk in a long, long time. It was needed.

Started off with Duality, then edged into Vermillion for a few repeats, then the acoustic version of The Hollow. Somewhere in there was an acoustic version of The Freshmen. After that I just let the iPod be random and more often than not, the music was appropriate to my mood and surroundings.

I walked up South St. to Broad, then up and around City Hall. Then back down. Took about an hour and fifteen minutes, and just as I was locking the front gate and heading up the walkway to my front door, Nancy called.

She has been reading some stuff I sent her the other night, and used words that would have had me blushing had I not just worked up a decent sweat in the process of walking fifty fucking blocks. Thanks to the Irish blood running down the Allen line, I tend to glow red after a moderate amount of exertion. The word "talent" was uttered a number of times, which is a word that always makes me really nervous. I tried to explain to her that whatever I have in me, regardless of its quality, isn't something, as Gibson put it, I have consistant access to. But she liked it all, and that makes me happy.

I also related to her my idea of flying down there for Thanksgiving, though that's an entirely arbitrary date, really. The idea went over very well.

Now I'm going to put All That Could Have Been, Still on repeat and stare at the ceiling for a while.