Surprise!

Posted on 5/30/2006 by Mark

I haven’t written in this thing in months. In order to avoid a long boring post about everything that has happened since then I have resolved myself to consolidate it into a single paragraph so that I can actually write about what happened yesterday. Here goes…

Jen is absolutely the best thing that has ever happened to me. This has only become more evident over the past few months. We now have an apartment together. We live in West Islip. It’s a very cute basement apartment that is perfect for us. Here are a bunch of pictures of the place. There were many adventures in getting to this point that certainly deserve their own posts. I know that I have to write about our New Years Eve debacle shortly. But, right now I want to write about what happened yesterday.

Jen and I had been planning on going out to the Bayard Cutting Arboretum to have a picnic. The night before we made a fruit salad and she prepared some penne with pesto and some mozzarella and tomato. It was going to be fantastic. So, we went over to the arboretum only to find out that you are not allowed to have picnics there. So, we left there and headed over to Connetquot State Park, but lo and behold picnics are prohibited there as well. We made our way to Heckscher State Park. It was a mob scene. But we survived a caterpillar attack, a toddler peeing on a nearby fountain, and an exploding bottle of sparkling apple cider and managed to have a good time. On the way back Jen drank out of the bottle of sparkling apple cider while driving down the Southern State Parkway. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to shower and take a nap. You know when you get back from the beach and you just feel kind of grimey.

When we got back and I opened the door to the apartment all of my friends were inside. It was amazing. The apartment was full of people. Jen had thrown me a suprise party. I have never felt so special. She just treats me so well. I was so flabbergasted as I was walking in that I started wishing other people happy birthday. It was absurd. I told Jen later on that night as we were lying in bed that it feels really good to have someone in my life who cares about me enough to throw me a birthday party like that. Her and her friends made food and they decorated the place. The whole party was Mario themed. There were bricks with question marks on the walls and goombas walking around. It was really something. I plan on bringing the racoon Mario to work and hanging it on the wall there. My friends gave me all kinds of cool gifts. Jen gave me a DVD player / surround sound system. I’m very excited about putting it together. Jen wrapped all of her presents for me like question mark blocks. She’s so creative. Yesterday was awesome. I am so appreciative of everyone who came down yesterday. It was a great day – one of the greatest.

I turn 24 today, that’s 8760 days or 210240 hours (more like 210244 hours now). For some reason 8760 days feels shorter than 24 years. That’s probably because you can comprehend the length of a day. A year is a little harder to get a grasp on. I can’t really get a grasp on the year that just passed by. It was only 8760 hours since this time last year and so much has changed. I am so in love with her.

PS – Jen had some nice things to say about me on my birthday. Thank you, Baby.

Swallowing Promises Back Into Our Lungs

Posted on 7/9/2005 by Mark

“If you could be honest with yourself, maybe you could be honest with the world.” — Heads vs. Breakers – Looking Massapequa, But Feeling Middle Island

I find keeping a blog to be fairly annoying. All of the time I think, “Hey, I should put this in my blog.” and then I forget or don’t have time. When I finally do have time to update this thing I have so many things that I want to touch on that I can’t give any single one the coverage that it deservers. So, I’m just going to mention a bunch of things in a few sentences each so both you and I can get on with our lives.

Jeff Sipek stopped by my house the other day and we hacked on office bocce a bunch. We got the code to a place that will make it much easier to add support for different leagues & seasons.

I went hiking through Connetquot State Park with Brandon, Brandon’s brother Dustin, Steve, and Steve’s girlfriend Melanie. We basically walked from Sunrise Highway to Vet’s Highway and back. It was nice although most of the walk was on sand.

For July 4th I went out with Brandon and his parents on their boat. We had a great time. It was nice to swim around in the bay. It’s been a long time since I last did that. It was a beautiful day and I was very glad to be out on the bay on a boat. This paragraph sucks.

Last night I got out of work at 10pm – suck. After work I met up with the guys at Applebee’s for some appetizers. We then swung by Steve’s girlfriend’s house where there was a party going on. Lots of people that I hadn’t met before and a bunch of Steve’s friends too. They all asked me to juggle for them which I mostly pretend to not like doing all of the time. I do feel a little weird that I get to a party and the first thing that I’m doing is juggling in front of 10-15 people. I don’t want to be the guy who shows up and starts juggling, ya know? Although it is fun to get drunken questions like, “Are your parents in the circus?”.

You may have noticed that my quotations here aren’t exactly “correct” English. This isn’t because I don’t know the correct way of quoting someone, just that I don’t like it. The correct way of telling a story might look like this next sentence. She asked, “Why do you say things like that?” But, fuck that. Basically, the ‘?’ finishes the question being asked, but what finishes the rest of the sentence. I guess this is my programmer side coming out. But, I don’t care. This kind of construct is just plain unnatural. So, I’m consciously making a change to the way that I write. She asked, “Why did he say, “Fuck English!”?”. There you go – much better.

Sticks and Stones are Nothing Compared to Your Words

Posted on 5/2/2005 by Mark

Sure, I have plenty of things to talk about, but I might as well start with the most interesting topic. It also happens to be the one topic that I can’t get out of my head. I just figured I’d warn you that this post is going to get more and more boring as it goes along. But, it will hopefully be able to satiate John’s need for input.

I just spoke with Jamie a few hours ago. It’s getting more and more difficult to talk with her. You would think that it would get easier, but it doesn’t. I feel very alone after I speak with her. It’s not the kind of alone that I was prepared for. I mean, I knew she would find someone. And, yeah, that bothers me, but it’s bearable. What I hadn’t prepared for was the loneliness that is resulting from my realization that the Jamie that I dated no longer exists. I don’t know. I guess there is something comforting in knowing that characters from your past still exist. I’m not exactly sure what to do about the current situation. I mean, it’s not my place to really _do_ anything. Besides, I don’t really want to be involved. But, I wish things were working out differently. I apologize for the vagueness of this entry. I just don’t think it fair to really go into detail here. It’s a shame because it’s the details that really hurt.

Moving on. I went to a hardcore show the other day. It was the first one that I had been to in a while. It was nice to go back to one – for many reasons. It’s nice to be around a whole bunch of people who are straight edge. It’s interesting to go from a world where it is so weird to be straight edge to one where it is almost expected. There’s something about hardcore that is different from every other type of music that I’ve come across. It’s not so much about the music, but about the community. There is a real sense of comradery. I think it might be due to the raw emotion that is present in the music. When you see someone put so much emotion into creating (or listening) to music, it can really move you. I’m not saying that this makes it any better than other forms of music, just that I don’t get this kind of feeling from other genres. One of the kids had a shirt on that said, “Suicide Before Betrayal” on it. Now, it was just a t-shirt, but I’ve been thinking about its meaning since I saw it. Why can’t all friendships be that strong. Why does it feel like it’s a common thing to betray someone. I almost got into a fist-fight at the show. That is pretty odd for a few reasons: #1 I don’t get into fights and #2 Who gets into a fight at a hardcore show? Regarding #1, I just don’t ever get into fights. I didn’t get into any fights all through high school or anything like that. With that being said, I’m almost looking forward to getting into a fight. Maybe I just want to feel what it’s like to get punched in the face. Maybe I’ve watched Fight Club a few too many times. Regarding #2, for the most part, hardcore shows are peaceful things. I mean, there’s a lot of rage and emotion, but respect is a major element of the hardcore scene. I don’t really want to get into the “Mark’s mosh etiquette” rant right now, but this guy at the show was being a real dick. Basically, you should only dance with other people that want to dance. All the kids that are standing on the side of the pit don’t really want to dance and they don’t really want to catch your fist in their face. So, keep a respectful distance and everyone will be happy. Well, this guy was swinging his arms and hitting these two girls right on the side of the pit and next to me. So, I pushed him away from the girls. He came back and was swinging his arms again. So, the girls and I pushed him together, except this time he fell over. He got right up in my face and ‘fight mode’ kicked in. All of a sudden there’s a crowd of people around us and we’re staring into each other’s eyes. It was pretty intense. I loved it. Some of his buddies took him outside. His friends told me not to worry about him and that he was just having a bad day or whatever. After a few bands played and a few hours passed, he came over to me and apologized. I thought that was incredibly awesome of him. It must have taken a lot for him to do that and I really appreciate it.

I submitted a patch to sound-juicer. It doesn’t entirely fix gnome bug #153988, but it helps. It basically makes it so you can type a custom genre into sound-juicer before ripping a CD. I think the interface of sound-juicer is very refreshing and is a stellar example of what I like about the feel of Gnome. The CD-ripper is a type of program that everyone loves to throw features and awkward options into. Sound-juicer has resisted this urge and created a program that is just a joy to use. I don’t expect my patch to be accepted, but hopefully someone will find it useful. I know that I’m using it. :o)

This create your likeness as a southpark character thing has been going around the blogs the past few days. I couldn’t help myself. I made two. One of them is me in all of my bald glory and the other one is when I’m wearing my new spiffy EFF hat.

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Some People Agree with Me

Posted on 4/23/2005 by Mark

It’s not easy being the angry son-of-a-bitch that my coworkers claim I am. It is a rarity that anyone sides with me when I get into one of my rants. I suppose that might be because agreeing with me will likely only lengthen the time that I bitch about something. But regardless of the reason it’s difficult to go on complaining when no one agrees with you. Well, I found a post by someone who is very respected in the technology community who actually whole-heartedly agrees with something that I have said. Tim Bray, one of the original editors of the XML specification (amongst many other accomplishments), recently wrote about his dislike for the word ‘solution’. To quote his post (which is so short that this quote is like half his post), “This is so freaking retarded, can there be a living human being who believes anyone will be more willing to drop the $450 on their box because it’s described as a ‘storage solution’?” That is pretty much my argument as well. When I read something that describes a product as a ‘solution’ I feel like someone is trying to push feces down my throat. When someone uses the word ‘solution’ I assume that they either think that I am a total idiot or that their product fills no real purpose and thus can only be labelled with the word ‘solution’. Everything is a solution. I wouldn’t use the word ‘solution’ to describe a product because I wouldn’t want a potential customer to think that I consider them an idiot, and I would rather explain the exact purpose my product serves instead of making it look like it serves no exact purpose at all.

On another note, I’ve been thinking a lot about culture and how much the overall situation really sucks right now. We’re in a quagmire of legality and lawsuits that basically puts a sleeper hold on our culture and allows record companies to own practically everything that is recorded. I wish I had more time to expand on this topic, but if you want to understand how I feel, give this panel discussion with Lawrence Lessig and Jeff Tweety a listen. Brandon describes it as the “shadier side of online piracy” and I can’t disagree more. I believe that what Jeff Tweety and Lawrence Lessig are talking about has very little to do with online piracy and it certainly doesn’t “tell you it’s not so bad”. Lawrence Lessig actually attacks people who pirate music and other content because it muddies the argument. The worldwide discussion about this should not be about online piracy because the cost of music and the availability of it isn’t really the problem. The problem that I see is that the wrong people end up owning copyrights that last nearly forever and it isn’t very easy to build on past art. I personally have stopped downloading music that is not licensed in a way that makes doing so legal. This decision was not an easy one and it is something that everyone has to decide for themselves. I don’t want to push my ideas on anyone. However, while I am actually buying CDs now, I’m also very much in favor of artists using things like the creative commons to license their work in a way that makes the most sense for them both financially and creatively.

I wish I had more time to expand on my ideas. I’m sure I will at some point. But, Nak got tickets to yet another Mets game today and we’re leaving in just a little bit. I took 2 pictures last night that are available on my flickr account. Nak had a great quote last night. After we both finished eating footlong chili dogs he said, “I felt like a porn star eating that thing”. Classic.

I’m Not Angry, I Swear

Posted on 4/20/2005 by Mark

I literally have a list of things I want to talk about. I wrote all of the things that I want to talk about down on a piece of paper, folded it up, and put it in my pocket. I’m going to try and hit each of these points real quick so I can more easily convince myself that people are reading this. Here goes.

Homophobia bothers me. It really boggles the mind. In all honesty, you would think that I would appreciate homophobia a little more because it makes it easier to identify people that I want nothing to do with. You might as well be wearing an “I don’t have original thoughts” hat on your head – that’s the thing that contains your brain, which in turn contains all of those borrowed ideas that you have. Whenever the topic of gay rights comes up at work, I pretty much just have to keep my mouth shut. It bothers me so much that I don’t think I can keep myself from directly insulting people. So, I hold it all in and write it in my blog, so that people that agree with me can read it. Am I somehow failing the gay community by not defending their obvious right to touch whomever’s naughty parts that they want? I suppose – and I feel pretty bad about that. Just one more quick point while I’m on this topic. It doesn’t matter if people are born gay, if they’re somehow influenced to be gay or if they make a conscience decision to be gay. It’s still none of your fucking business who they want to hug and what they want to kiss. I have very liberal views on sexuality and I don’t think it’s something that is as weird as people think it is. I think that humans are drawn towards sexuality in general. This could be another whole blog post, so just suffice it to say that I don’t think we live in a black and white world. I don’t think that there are 3 sexuality camps (straight, bisexual, homosexual). I think there’s a gradient from one side to the other and I think the majority of people would not fall at the polls if they would only allow themselves.

Alright, moving on. I have a problem with barriers that people place between themselves and the world. It’s hard for me to exactly describe what I mean, but I’m going to try. I don’t like it when people make it seem like they’re better at something than they really are. I don’t like it when people never mention things about themselves that they fear others might not like. I want unadulterated honesty from everyone that I know. I know that I can’t really expect this from people, but I’m ultimately not interested in the person that you’re presenting to me. I want to meet the person behind the curtain. Sometimes people even hide from themselves. Sticking with my ‘man behind the curtain’ metaphor, if the man behind the curtain looks in the mirror and sees what he’s presenting to others, he’s pretty screwed. How sad must it be to get to the point where you can’t discern traits that are actually yours from traits you’ve adopted for show. Individuals aren’t the only ones who are guilty of this. Companies are the all-time victors when it comes to the ‘only look at what I show you’ game. This is part of the reason that I like open source software so much. Try and get a company to tell you all of the things that are wrong with their product. Good luck. All of this is out there in the open in the open source world and it benefits both the product and the consumer. I’m kind of getting off on a rant here, but it bothers me when I’m looking at someone and I feel like I’m looking through one of those shower doors at them. I guess the biggest culprit is pride. Being proud of yourself and your accomplishments is awesome and there’s nothing wrong with that. But, being too proud to identify your weaknesses is bad for the soul.

I booked my flight and hotel for my trip to Germany. For those few people that I haven’t told, I’m attending GUADEC (Gnome Users And Developers European Conference). It’s going to be a blast. I’m going over there entirely by myself. I’m leaving May 25th @ 9pm, I arrive in Germany the next day @ 1:20pm their time. I’ll check into my hotel and have 2 and a half full days of dicking around in Europe before the conference. I’m going to try and jet out to Paris for a day during this thing. That may become complicated because the train ride from Stuttgart to Paris seems to be 6 hours long at its fastest. But, if I can leave Stuttgart at 5:45am, I’ll get to Paris by noon. Then, I can spend about 11 hours in Paris before jumping back on a train around 11pm and getting back to Stuttgart around 6am. So, I would pretty much have to do all of my sleeping on the train. But, when am I going to get back to Europe? Do I really want to go over there, see Stuttgart and then come home? If I have the chance to spend some time in Paris, even if its just a few hours, I think I should give it a shot. The conference lasts 3 days (May 29 – May 31) and I fly home June 1st. Germany is 7 hours ahead of us – so jet lag should be exciting. I’m all kinds of excited about this. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about it more as it approaches and I’ll most likely be blogging from Germany as well.

Alright, this is the last thing for now. I spoke with Jamie for a bit last night. It’s so weird to talk to her. There are really two things that upset me about our conversation. The first thing is that she’s dating someone. Now, hear me out. That isn’t the real problem. I want nothing more than for Jamie to meet someone whom she really likes and enjoys spending time with. But, the guy that she met (I don’t know who it is and I think that’s for the better) doesn’t seem to be the best guy for her. It’s probably not fair for me to speak about her personal affairs in a public forum like this, so I’m not going to say much more. But, from the limited amount of information I’ve gotten from her, I don’t think he’ll have an overall positive impact on her life. Which really should be the absolute minimum requirement of spending any time with someone. But, that isn’t really my decision to make, so I digress. The other thing that bothers me is more of a realization that I’ve made about my own feelings than anything that actually happened during our phone conversation. I would love to expand on my thoughts here, but I don’t think I should. I should probably just put them in an email and send them over to Jamie, because she’s really the only person that this involves. But, the 1000-foot view of this is that I don’t think Jamie and I fit together very well for the last few years we were together. It’s unfortunate, and that’s what had me bummed out pretty bad last night. After we got off of the phone I was in the crappiest mood and just went to sleep early.

Thanks for listening to my various rants. I’m pretty sure the guys at work are getting tired of hearing me run off on rants about things that most people deem to be unimportant. They call be angry. Well, they call me an “angry gnome” to be specific. I don’t think I’m angry – I just think that I expect more from the world than it is offering right now. Do you hear that, world? I’m disappointed. I think you an do better.

The Sugary Smell of Spring Time

Posted on 4/6/2005 by Mark

Judging from the title you might think that this post is going to be about how it’s spring time and the flowers are blooming and the birds are chirping. I guess that could be what this post is about, but it’s not. This post is going to be about abstinence only sex education. Now, you’ve probably already heard (or can quickly figure out) all of the arguments for and against abstinence sexual education. But, I think I have something else to bring to the table.

The basic idea behind abstinence only sex ed is that kids should wait until marriage to have sex. By doing that you don’t have to worry about a lot of things like getting STDs, getting pregnant, or any of a number of other nasties. The sane side of the argument basically wants to give kids the most information possible so that they can make informed decisions about their lives. They argue that you basically have to assume that some kids are going to have sex and that it would be better to have them informed enough to protect themselves.

I was thinking about why conservatives are so upset that kids are having sex. I really haven’t quite figured it out yet. It’s pretty clear that it’s not entirely about protecting them from disease and pregnancy. There’s something that makes parents want their children to not have sex. If it was possible to absolutely guarantee that sex would not cause STDs and not induce pregnancy, I believe that parents would still not want their children to have sex until they were married (or at least well into their 20s). Maybe they’re just jealous. Lord knows they have something to be jealous of.

This brings me to what I’ve been thinking about recently. I really can’t think of anything more pure than being a teenager under the sheets with a beautiful girl. I’m sure it goes the same way for girls also. I know that the nights that I spent figuring things out as a 16 year old will probably be the most real moments of my life. Thinking back now, I don’t know that you can be more alive than that. Now, I don’t know why you would want your kid to miss out on something like that. I know it’s hard to see your kid like they’re a real person (hell, it can be hard to see anyone else as a real person), but they are. Clearly they deserve to have the opportunity to make memories like this. I just don’t know what it is that makes a parent so afraid of their child having sex. I think STDs and pregnancy are definitely part of it, but I think there is something else. If anyone can think of a real reason why, please let me know. Maybe it’s just that the bible says it’s naughty. But, even non-religious parents seem to feel the same way. Maybe I’m missing something obvious – feel free to comment.

Ground Control to Major Tom

Posted on 3/17/2005 by Mark

“Each morning she wakes
with a dream to describe
something lovely that bloomed
in her beautiful mind.”
–Bright Eyes – Hit the Switch

So, I had a fairly interesting week. I went to a different intramural volleyball game on Monday. This one is much more competitive than the other one that I had been going to. The bruise on my hip and the burn on my knee are proof of that. I think I held my own despite not having played that kind of volleyball since junior year of high school. Yeah – that was 6 fucking years ago.

I bumped into Jamie for the first time since that fateful day in December. We chat on the phone every few weeks or so. Her birthday just passed a few days ago and I sent her a text message wishing her a happy birthday. On the way home from work that day I was actually right behind her at a red light on sunrise highway. We had both said that we had things of the others that we wanted to exchange. I had the stuff for Jamie in my trunk. So, being just about a mile from her house, I followed her there to exchange our things. We both got out of our cars and we had this strange conversation from about 10 feet away. I can’t really remember what we spoke about because all I was thinking about was how surreal this whole scene was. I went upstairs with her to get the stuff that she had for me. I saw her mother, her aunt, and her grandmother. This was all very weird since I used to see these people every day. I was a little upset that her cat, Arthur, didn’t seem to recognize me. He lurched away when I went to pet him. Things seem to be going well for her and I’m glad. It’s hard to captivate the utter weirdness of the whole event in words. Just think of the weirdest thing that you can and then back off a little bit. That’s the level of weirdness I’m talking about.

There are many people that I want to get in touch with. Some of them I just don’t know how to get in touch with, others I could probably get in touch with, but I’m just not sure that doing so would be well received. You know, after not speaking with someone for 5 years a phone call can seem a little odd. Anyway, I figure that enough people read this thing now (all 10 of you) that it might work out well if I just list some people that I want to speak with and let the grapevine do the rest. In no particular order, and probably leaving a few people out, here is a short list of people that I would like to get in touch with: Jen Sosna, Bryan Sullivan, Rob Kruper. If you are one of these people or you know one of these people, get in touch with me.

Also, if anyone knows where I have to go to find out about local hardcore/punk shows, please drop me a line also. The long island zoo board thing seems to have dried up a few months ago with no real clue as to where to look. Any hints would be greatly appreciated. This post sucked.