Shaggy · haired · boy

Brad and Josh, two awesome OSL developers, made Jesus happy today. They ported an NES emulator to the $100 laptop and played the original Mario. The world is a better place now, thanks guys!

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My best and oldest friend Justin has just been hired to work alongside me at the N.E.T. group on campus. This is the group that runs core services(DNS, DHCP, Routing and Switching infrastructure, etc), Internet and Internet2 access, public Wi-fi access and various administrative and support tasks therein. I am stoked at the chance to see what our collective minds can do to improve the University.

It sounds cheesy, sure, but I don't really care. Proof is in the pudding, as it were, so getting the chance for he and I, long time partners in crime, to work on the networking infrastructure of our Univerisy has me gitty with delight.

Justin and I go way back, in fact, I first met him when I was trying to learn how to make webpages, something a mutual friend of ours knew he was in. Those were the days of Angelfire and Pokemon. Of Smiley Kids and Punk & Fish. From there, we flourished. We thought it would be neat to write a music player MiWIMP3, I believe, and a whole host of other tools. Everything back then was a play off of our name, MiRWIN (and our tagline? "It's like this idea..."). Oh how little did we know. We went on to try an conquer the world of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing(being able to understand the structure and meaning of a human-written sentence, something almost unfathomably difficult). This was freshman year. Now, don't get me wrong, we never made a dent in these things, the challenge, scope, or complexity of the problems crumbled our attempts to conquer them. But we didn't get phased.

From web design, to server administration, to hardware troubleshooting and game programming, the list goes on and on. It was Justin to first become the budding star of programming at McNary, completing a semester class in a matter of days (Java got owned that week). It took me a bit longer. I was the first to get a Pentium 4 computer to boot at McNary... ever. Come Junior year, I was Senior Tech while Justin made new inroads in CS class when he essentially wrote his own curriculum. We really came to think that we were the kings of our little world.

(A fun aside. I was *this* close to going to Mexico. Strut, a program that donated used and cheap equipment to schools from donations, wanted to donate some computers to a small school in Mexico. The Spanish teacher at McNary was slated to go for administrative and linguistic reasons, and a tech was chosen to go for the actual setup. I was approached to be that tech, and had it not been for the lack of funds, I would have gone. Boo for poor funding.)

And then our teacher told us, Justin and I, about this router programming class. Actually, she had told us about this program last year, our Sophomore year, for us to attend Junior year. Unfortunately, that was the year the School District had the biggest financial crisis it had had in a long time. (Interesting that two programs I was to attend both get cut for budgetary reasons) Router programming, we thought, what the heck is that? We had no idea, but it was a challenge. It was a chance to prove ourselves.

The comings and goings of senior year are a series of posts in themselves, however, and I will expand on that in future posts. North Salem though, the networking program we went to, changed my life. It shaped my job hopes, my skillset, my interests and my passion in mere weeks. Justin and I quickly became frontrunners at Viking HQ, and loved every minute of it.

Having studied together for over 6 years in the academic arena, it is now that he and I get to earn a living, a livelihood, by working side by side. What will we do with this new found opportunity? A short list of projects we want to tackle at various levels:

*Multicasting support on the Mbone network
*Streamline the log management scripts
*Possibly use Splunk for log management
*Roll out the partially-complete IDS architecture in the works.
*Finish rearchitecting the network device infrastructure (I'm almost done!)

And then the fun will begin. So much to do, so little time. This time around, however, we get to see what happens when we work in an enterprise instead of a classroom lab. I can't wait to see what happens.

Someday...
Jake and I will be in the car driving. We will be driving from soccer practice and hop on the highway toward teen resentment ("next 3 exits") when "Hitching A Ride" will come on, and the volume gets set to 11... I will load my Dashboard Confessional compilations, the "Best Ofs" and "Reunion Tour" albums that will have been made by the time I start to lose hair finally begin to wear glasses. With the music filling the silence, I will fill with the percussion, the classic strained voice that is his signature as it will take me back. From wherever my car is driving at--some minivan on some highway--to a night ride in High School. From one minivan to another, but this time I will be quiet a different driver. I will go back to a quiet girl and a dark sky. The same song playing, the same sounds reverberating in my mind. And all I have to do is 'remember to breath.'
But that night sky is temporary because as fast as it came it goes again. It fades from blue to black, I am getting pulled to another night. Earlier still, and not with a quiet girl, but a voisterous boy. A scared boy who, on any other day, would walk with his shoulders back and chin up. His King of the Hill mindset that made him cocky almost to the point of charming. Almost. We would be driving then, not because we were close but because he needed an ear. Sure, we knew eachother and were friendly, but we didn't share our secrets. We hadn't, until that night. That night, you see, existed only as a bubble. It was a night all its own. Back up.
I am getting ready mentally, as I did. I sit quietly and clear my thoughts of the day and the week that has just flown by, and zero in on the goal for tonight, getting the W. I am not a man that condoned preying for a sporting event. And I wasn't, exactly. I wouldn't. I had intimate thoughts with someone, but I wasn't asking for quick hands or hard hits, just looking for a conversation with someone who knew the whisper. Someone who I could slow down with. Quiet and solemn in seafoam green room, head buried in my hands so as to isolate my senses all the more. I was in the second lockeroom, one normally reserved for class and not for the team.
But my praying was not on his mind. She was. Even the impending game was a far second to her on his list of concerns. He cornered me as I emerged from my cocoon and needed to talk. Talk about a bombshell. There is a look in one's eye, a look I saw at that moment. He wasn't wanting to scream and shout and nor was he in the mood to swap recipes or other such banter. His eyes made the room's echo fall and the murmur of players and gear rustling around hollow. I could almost feel it when he told me. She. Might. Be. Pregnant.
Let that sink in a bit, because it took me this long and longer just to try and regain myself. Pregnant.
She might be pregnant. This pup of a boy standing in front of me in undershirt and pads, looking at me in an empty nervousness saying he might, MIGHT, be a father in nine month's time. "Have a good game" doesn't seem to properly fill the void of silence left by letting something like that slip out of your lips. Defense mechanisms and pats on the back are two more failed avenues to take. No games and no laughing. I did what I could, I tried to calm a man who was about to lose it as best I could and on the verge of destruction at worst. Words don't seem to come quickly when you need to scramble like this. And what I did manage didn't exactly assuage him. Can you blame him? Condoms, pills, abstinence. I mean, the guy wasn't a moron in the fullest sense, but he sure flirted with the line. None of these things are, of course, wise to point out to him. And trust me when I say I bring it up. Whatever was to happen, it wasn't going to happen now, and it wasn't going to happen in the next 3 hours. A distraction by way of physical aggression is not a bad idea. Hey, we should play some football. So he played. He was Atlas for that day, holding the Earth atop his shoulders, and yet he suited up and walked out the doors and walked the royal blue mile. I'm not even sure how to take that. Bravery or stupidity. Distraction or distain. It was something though. Whatever he was going to do that day, it took a lot of emotion, which ones his acts were comprised of, however, are lost to me.
The game came and went, and in the heat of the moment, that whole "parenthood issue" did get slightly clowded by plays and downs and tackles. How well do you think you can ignore a pink elephant on a football field? Yea, not well. Then the requisite showers and talks. Friends first, then family. Then fans. We would clap for the fans, but the girlfriends and buddies always made a bee-line for us for post game talk. Finally the goodbyes to the nice couple that go to all the games even though they don't have children of their own. Always be nice to sweet old couples. I think it is a law. Amidst the lockerroom's chatter of play recaps and weekend plans, he looks and me and says we should go get some food. Yea, we should I say. Not the team dinner we normally go to, though, we need to grab a bite on our own tonight. We go to McDonald's of all places, getting unsalted fries.. only to put salt on them. A cheap way to get fresh fries at 11 PM... And from there we are off. Not to anywhere specific, just a place where the world isn't going to bother us so we can the What Ifs of the night.
....
This may be my first roadtrip, as it were. What an odd thing to enjoy. We drove the back streets of Keizer, from River over to Cummings and out North to the big flat buildings where they make and fix and clean things. Then to the windy roads that litter the outskirts of our town, and we talk. It seems the elephant was able to squeeze into my back seat, and I still have enough room to adjust the radio, but music is lost to deaf ears as we talk about anything but the one thing we are both thinking of. Past friends and past mistakes, he says. Talking about his firsts this and that, and I, in turn. We talk about girlfriends former and current. We take that road that drives forever north and leads to a deadend. As we pull into the trashy turnabout, he tells me about hooking up with a friend of ours a few summers earlier, and I am awe struck. Literally speechless to hear the news. (It is only later that I realized how painful it was for our friend to come to terms with this). Like I said, this night went well beyond the normal bonds of friendship and subtly, we were both candid. It did not seem the time to have schoolyard secrets in the face of it. We talked about all the things we would have otherwise never share with eachother, letting the bubble expand sufficiently to contain relationships and school and sports and friends.
He didn't need an answer that night. It was coming in time: Negative. He didn't want a counselor or someone to pat him on the back, reassure him about all the nice things in life. He asked me to listen, and I did. He talked and I interjected, but more than anything, he just needed an ear to let his mind try to cope with the weight. The next day our bubble had burst, as it were, and we were back to normal. We had appended to our list some secrets about the other, but we never got closer, really. It was a simple need of a friend when he didn't have the type he wanted.
Fast Forward.
I probably would have been better off had I never listened when he told me about her, or driven when he asked me. I would have been better off going to Applebee's like we always do, and not to somewhere special. Not because of the time spent, but because I wouldn't have known about our Friend and him. Hooking up, that is. I didn't want to know that. I wouldn't have known that he was almost a father, and seen the underbelly of how one copes with that. I could have slept better at night having not seen that. I would have been just as happy, just as content, had I not been the one to listen as he unraveled.
But even then: With the memory of a story I don't want to have, and the idea of a girl becoming a mother, and a boy a father, I would have done it again. I would have listened and nodded and driven into the night to give him the time. I would have, because we all deserve a shoulder to cry on.

So this is what 20 feels like? Interesting. I don't *think* I look any different, but this is one of the bigger milestones. Two decades down, six more to go. No more teenage shenanigans or troublesome outcomes from misspent youth. I am well on my way to being a "big person" and that... that just isn't cool.

My day is as follow. I stayed up until 4 am writing a paper. I wrote it in notepad just flat, started writing until I hit all the body paragraphs I needed and then wrote intro and conclusion paragraphs. The paper was to be 2-3 pages double-spaced. When I put it into word and double-spaced it, it was nine and a half pages. Slightly more ambitious than what was asked of, so I cut and cut and cut. Hopefully there is still an essay worth reading in what is left. I will post it tonight.

Tonight I am going to buy a baseball and go home. It is already 2 but I suspect I will still go into work and try to get some work done. Configuring cisco switches and playing with a campus firewall is just too fun to pass up, you know?

Until then, thank you for those who were kind enough to wish me happy birthday, and to those who haven't, I know you mean well anyway.

Until next time,
Michael

Today was a day, just like any other.... If only that were true.

Classes went well. Math lecture about identities and theorems. Followed by Sociology and the gross simplification of social structure in a capitalistic economy. That is followed by a long lunch break and good talks on MySpace postings and other Pretty things. To cap off the academic day, Geography recitation and a new TA with an awesomely strong accent and an enjoyable sense of humor.

I gave blood today. The 'be nice to me today' sticker must have been an bad omen. The lady that screened me was the same woman that screened me last term when I donated. The lady that took my blood was surprised at how fast I finished and after I got some free cookies and lemonade, I left the ballroom and walked home.

The end of the evening came with an abrupt and idiotic close. It was one of those things that you regret when you say it, but that inevitably gets blurted out before your mind tells your lips(or in this case, fingers) to reconsider. A passing joke that went too far and hit too close to home. (Earlier I had said that I don't want to joke about "sighs" that are so recent, because they are too touchy a subject, too difficult a river to navigate safely. Well, they are touchy subjects, and I should not have said the stupid joke but I did anyway.) Not surprisingly, it did not go over well.

Of all the things I hate to do, upsetting girls is near the top, especially when it concerns those that I value so highly. It is the absolute worse guilt you can have, and it is dripping from me at the moment. So with a lump in my throat and no butterflies in my stomach I am left to my lonesome. An empty room with a full hallway. And still, an essay to write.

I'm sorry. I don't a fancy or poetic way of conveying it more than just saying it outright. I don't know of some eloquent metaphor or sweet pose that would make it sound more clear. There is no clever way of putting it. Just know that when I say this, it is wholly sincere: I am sorry and I apologize.

One of the activities me and Mom did this weekend was to go see Mission: Impossible 3. Now, for those that have seen Scream, and for those who watch movies in general, sequels are inherently worse than their predecessors.

Oh let me count the movies.

• Starship Troopers took a nose dive when they made a sequel. The intriguing pro-war propaganda that highlighted the tooper's homeworld society became something of a student's senior video. Low quality and completely unconvincing. Oh, and the needless sex scenes were even more needless in the sequel.


• Speaking of, Cruel Intentions. *wow* take a provocative, insightful, busty teen movie that dives into the psuedo-reality of High School, the manipulation of people, and drug abuse... and then try and top it off with a PREQUEL? Stupid, stupid hollywood. (Spoiler Alert) The main character dies *FOR A REASON*, and that rediculous shower scene in the second one? My goodness... That was just lame. Lame, I tell you. And I am boy.


• There is Jurassic Park... Oh man. Just bad. The third one, where the Marines take the beachhead as our cast walks wearily from the treeline? Puh-lease!


• I could throw in things like Scream here, as well. Which is an ironic twist in that it was the one that argued about sequels being worse than the original.


• You have the classic Disney movie sequels, all crummy. Except, apparently, for Rescuers Down Under, but that is an objective opinion I can't personally take sides on.


• Highlander too, for those that have seen it. I'm almost beside myself on this one. They actually rewrite the basic story line (the Highlander universe was suppose to *END* after the first movie in something we call a "Climax", then the writers changed the rules with a "just kidding" and made a sequel).

The only real exception to these is the trilogy. The X-Men, the Star Wars (original, though I give partial credit for Ep 1-3, becase 3 was vastly better than 1), the Matrix... No, just kidding, that ending sucked. They tried to make him the messiah in the completely unconvincing way. Boo Wakowski brothers, boo. You had a great idea and you just choked on it. No points for you.

All of that to say, M:I3 was really good. They changed some dynamics, took out the busty female sidekick in place of an attractive-but-practical wife. Kept the same recurring cohort from the first and second movies, but changed the rest of the M:I team. They gave a ending-first-then-the-story plotline that tied together wonderfully. They got a bit silly with some of the toys, but were much more in the realistic realm than the 007's of late. Overall, even if Tom Cruise is psychotic, I am glad I saw it in theaters. Think of it this way, Tom really is a spy working for the IMF, and his moronic interviews he gives that touch on Scientology are his acting role. Good one, Tom. You really had us going for a while.