WOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO!! 10 more minutes and then I'm off work (for a month!) and one step closer to Europe. I'm so excited I can't stop smiling. I look like I could be a kid's TV show host. ;)

I just remembered something rather pertinent to my trip to Europe.

I went to Montreal a while back where a good number of our fine northern neighbors speak French. I came off the plane and my baggage was missing, so I had to go to the baggage claim counter. I asked the lady how to file a claim and she gave me some unintelligible answer, so I naturally assumed it in was French. I said "I'm sorry, I only speak English." She then replied rather curtly with "I *AM* speaking English."

Crap. If I can't even understand *English* how am I supposed to get around Europe? I'm so fucked. :)

John and I got on the topic of vibrating eggs the other day (don't ask), and I made the following comment:
"Mork calling Ork, come in Ork..."

To which John replied:
"i don't get the mork ork thing."

Which I countered with:
"neither do i. ;) i just made the reference to mork and mindy (the 80's tv show with robin
williams) because you mentioned an egg and he came to earth in a big egg.
i guess it was more of a random pop culture reference than something
humorous. although, humor could be derived from the obscure reference
itself, assuming the recepient of said comment was not a member of the
national egg board, a detestor of the aforementioned situational comedy,
an egg-bearing animal, or a user of Leggs Pantyhose* (c).

* Leggs Pantyhose (c) are distributed to consumers in plastic eggs. Notice
the clever marketing; pantyhose are for legs, and the hosiery from this
particular company comes in eggs. Hence, "legs + eggs" = Leggs.

Ahh, my dry sense of humor kills me. ;)

I can tell this is going to be one of those painfully slow weeks. Normally things go by quickly, but this week I'll be looking forward to my trip like a kid the day before Christmas. The seconds will tick by in antici... ... ...pation. In addition not much is going on at work, which will make the time pass even more slowly. Fuuuuuck.

On the plus side I'm almost over my cold and I'm pretty much set for my trip. I just have to pick out which 3 pairs of clothes I'm going to be wearing for a month and then I'm good to go.

So here's one of my flaws that randomly popped into my head today:
Sometimes I look too far into the future. It's probably related to my problem of planning things when they don't necessarily have to be planned. I'm working on that though: examples being my open-ended trip to Europe and trying to not focus on the details of life so much. Anyway, back to looking too far into the future. I am currently happy with my life. Why do I sometimes think about what my life will be like when I'm 30/35? Why do I ask myself questions like: Will I be happy with my career? What is my goal in life? How do I know if what I'm doing with my life is worthwhile? If I get married in my mid/late twenties will we stay married or will she/we have a life change down the road and get divorced?

Of course then I step back and talk some sense into myself.
Who cares if I'm happy with my career then, I like it now and if I don't later on I can change it.
There are no goals or endpoints in life. Just enjoy the ride, jackass.
I haven't figured out how to tell if what you're doing with your life is worthwhile yet. It's pretty subjective.
Who the hell knows what will happen after you get married. It won't happen for a while. People are always changing, so it might work out, it might not. Assume it will.

Ahhh, I feel better now.

I guess when I hear about problems other people are having in their lives I put myself in their shoes a little too well. It keeps me aware of possible problems and things I should work on, but also makes me worry sometimes.

Maybe this is my midlife crisis, but during my early twenties? People have always said I'm mature for my age. I suppose it could be nice to get it out of the way now. :)

Comments anyone?

This time next week I will be 5567 miles from Santa Cruz, in Brussels. Scary. Fun.

As a side note, I am currently 5867 miles from Katie. Next week I will be 7375 miles from her. But hey, it's only another 1508 miles. What's that, like an inch when you're looking at a world map? :)

So I've been sick the last few days. I took Thursday off work to get my car fixed and recover. During my delerium-tainted sleep Thursday night I was dreaming about firewalls and computer worms. I'm such a nerd. I have a good excuse though-I kept waking up every half hour because I had a fever, and I spent most of Wednesday at work killing one of the many worms that were on the Internet this past week. Yes, I know I'm a freak. Shut up.

Saturday I went with Josh and friends to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for Russell's birthday. I got to make friends with a bunch of new people, drink, and visit my first frat house. Josh got pulled over for doing 90 in a 65 zone which was fun. Luckily Officer Remington wrote it down to 80. I heard from someone that if it's a certain amount over the speed limit they have to impound the car, so I guess the guy was feeling more lazy than generous. :)

I got to try out my new hat and Josh wore his new pink shirt that's bright enough to signal aircraft. Check out the pictures. I swear he got so many compliments on that shirt from both girls and guys. The theory is that everyone realizes you have to be a true man (and hung like a horse) to wear a bright pink shirt around town so they all fear and respect you, kind of like the Godfather.

The next morning (after 3 hours of sleep) we went to breakfast at Margie's and got breakfasts large enough to choke a water buffalo. Daniel had pancakes that honestly must have weighed 5 pounds. After that we crammed four people in the back of Paitra's Volvo and tried to find a comfortable position for the two and a half hour ride home. Amazingly Saipriya was able to sleep on the floor, wedged between us and the front seats. Crazy.

Pictures are here.

One of the guys at work got a free subscription to a magazine for top-level managers in the computer industry (CIOs). He didn't want it and offered it to me, saying that I would need it as a future CIO.
My reponse was:
"Who needs magazines, third party views, and user input as a CIO? When I get to the top I'm going to rule with an iron fist from an isolated penthouse office, like Howard Hughes."

Ok, so maybe you had to be there. Hey, I'm trying to come up with shit to post for you people, cut me a little slack. My life is pathetically boring, so I'll post anything even remotely interesting. It's not easy entertaining people with my daily life.

Had a BBQ at my place this past weekend with a good turnout. It wasn't one of my usual well-planned two-week-advance-notice kind of things, just a "hey, let's have a BBQ this weekend" thing. The highlight of the BBQ was when Josh's friend was molested by a bulldog. A few of the guys were out playing wiffle ball when this horny bulldog makes a bee-line straight for Jason (I think that was his name.) The dog jumps up and goes to town on his leg, humping like the world is coming to an end. The dog looked pretty ferocious so Jason didn't want to risk pushing it off, so it stayed there for a good 3 or 4 minutes, long enough for Josh to come to his senses and take a picture.

Other than that things were pretty low-key, just lots of food and beer. Yeehaw!

Pics are here.

Went swing dancing with Josh last night. It's been years since I last swing danced. Had a good time and also reinforced my opinion that Santa Cruz is the most incestual city in the world. Incestual without the sex that is- everyone knows everyone else in some weird way. Josh and I met some girl there who happened to know half of our friends. Weird. And that's a normal occurence in this city. You'll meet someone you've never seen before and find out they know half of your friends.

By the way, all you people reading this feel free to post comments about all this crap I write. It lets me know that someone's actually reading it. Something simple like "Bryan shut up no one wants to hear what you think" would work, or something productive like "You bring up a good point Bryan, that reminds me of the time blah blah blah..."
Post comments people, that's what they're there for! Otherwise I'm just talking to myself, and I get enough of that when I'm drinking in the bathtub.

I got rear-ended on the way home yesterday.

I'm talking about a car collision, you pervert.

My bumper was a bit scraped up and my license plate was bent in half, but I'm ok. The guy that hit me didn't have insurance but offered to pay or repair the damages himself. I'm not at all stressed about it, but getting it taken care of is just one more thing to add to my busy schedule. =P

On the plus side I went to the Boardwalk (I hate rides that go faster than 5 mph so I just sat and watched my friends and ate 60 cent hotdogs) and for some reason Jennifer and Tyler cheered for me every time they got off a ride. They eventually decided to become my official personal cheerleaders. Having personal cheerleaders is great. I would have preferred mariachis, but hey, I'll take what I can get. =)

At work yesterday my friend/coworker Stephane came in and said "Hey Bryan, can you come here for a minute? We have a problem that we've been working on for a while and can't figure out." I of course obliged. On the way there he said "We all have a bet going that you can solve it in less than three minutes." Yeah, no pressure or anything, just my reputation of Ubergeek is on the line. ;)
I sat down at the computer, tappitty-tappity-tap, reboot, waiting... waiting... reboot done, more typing, and the problem was solved. Total time including reboot: One minute 15 seconds.
w00 h00!! Picture Kevin Spacey in American Beauty... "I rule."

Although I don't think the reboot time should have been included since that's just sitting there waiting for the computer for almost a minute. ;)

Here's another good one, but not nearly as exciting: It's my first day of work, a little over a month ago. My new boss comes in and gives me my frist assignment. "Hey Bryan, we've got this problem with the network and two servers that no one has been able to figure out. A big contract is going to go down the shitter if we don't get this working. Figure it out."
Fuck, talk about a baptism by fire. To make a long story short (I love cliches), I nearly went blind sniffing traffic and staring at packets, but I found out what the problem was.
sha-ZAM!! Bryan: 1 Network Goblins: 0

I hope I haven't sounded like an arrogant prick with all this talk lately about how people like me, gay men think I'm hot, and I'm an Alpha Geek. I'm not used to being the center of attention or having my skills recognized as something worthy of praise. My ego/self-esteem has suddenly gone from the size of a cockroach to the size of a well-fed hamster, and it feels kind of nice. I just have to keep that balanced out by my usual constant supply of self-doubt so that I don't become an arrogant asshole. ;)

So I went to lunch and bought an $8 sandwich. Expensive, yes, but I figured since it was large enough to choke a horse it was worth it. I ate half of it for lunch and saved it (along with my YooHoo) for dinner by placing them in a plastic shopping bag in one of the refrigerators at work. I came back later in the afternoon to partake of my YooHoo, eyed my sandwich suggestively (oh yes baby, come dinner time you *will* be mine), twisted the bag shut, and went back to work. Quittin' time rolls around and I skip gleefully to the refrigerator to take my sandwich and YooHoo home. I pick up the bag but it feels surprisingly light. I look inside and find only my YooHoo and receipt. A wave of panic goes over me and I frantically search through the refrigerator, throwing aside leftovers, yogurt, tupperware, sodas, and other prisoners of the mighty ice fortress. After checking every inch of that God-forsaken refrigerator, TWICE mind you, I gave up and collapsed in tears on the well-polished floor. "WHY GOD, WHY?!" echoed down the hall, causing the few people working late to peer out of their offices curiously. I collected myself and shuffled home, weakened by my spirit-crushing loss. I was looking forward to eating that sandwich dammit! It was good! And just that half cost me four bucks! Bunch of fucking savages in this world I tell you.

So I figure to get revenge I'll buy the exact same sandwich, eat half, and lace the other half with concentrated laxatives before placing it delicately in the refrigerator. Like setting a land mine to catch a rabbit. That'll learn the bastige.

Yet another bout of drunken debauchery at our place last night. Mike's friends from Santa Barbara came up, as well as Alex and Andy. Tyler played the PG-13 version of Jenga with Emilie and Laura and had to remove an article of clothing. Not being one to beat around the bush, Tyler went straight for the pants.

For some reason everyone loved me last night. Maybe it was the shirt. Since it was Friday I wore one of my lounge shirts to work and three or four people said they liked it. When I got home and started sipping my scotch whiskey (later gin and tonic) I got a wave of compliments on how classy I was. It's great to be loved. =)

Pictures are here.

I forget why (damn alcohol) but we're having another gathering tonight. I'll post pictures if anything unusual happens. ;)