macolyte.net » Real Life

Sadness

a.j. — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 22:11:26 +0000

Robert Anton Wilson died this morning.

I done good

a.j. — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 20:59:54 +0000

Yesterday I stopped my aunt’s boyfriend from going to Geek Squad to get his son’s computer fixed.

Secrets

a.j. — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 13:37:03 +0000

When I was in college, I was a frequent visitor to a site called bittersweets. People would post little vignettes that started out nice and reassuring, but always ended sadly. Some of them were quite moving and when the site closed down, I found myself missing them intensely. Recently I was introduced to PostSecret, and it almost fills the hole that bittersweets filled for me. I highly recommend reading it. And for a taste of what bittersweets offered, here is a link to the archive.org entry for the site: bittersweets. Look at the entries for the late 90s.

The Buddha said there’d be days like this….

a.j. — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 21:15:21 +0000

What a completely shitty week it’s been. On Monday I found out that Robert Anton Wilson, a man I’ve studied and admired almost my entire life, is not only dying, but is pretty much destitute. Bob’s writings have been one of the single greatest influences on the way I think about and interpret the world. On Wednesday I found out that “Digital” Bill Douthett died suddenly in his home in Florida. Bill was one of the nicest geeks you could ever talk to and was one of the first to get in on the whole podcast craze. His singular wit and boundless wisdom will truly be missed. I never got the chance to meet him in real life, and now I never will. Finally, this was my friend John’s last week at work. John is hands down my closest friend at work, and he’s leaving for another company. I really don’t know what I’m going to do without him there.

Fortunately, there are two bright spots for the week. My friend Andrew made it to Colorado on Tuesday. And thanks to a veritable army of donations, Bob Wilson has managed to raise $68,000 in just a few days to help pay his rent and medical bills.

I’m not a very emotional person usually, but this week has been a rollercoaster for me. I’m glad it’s the weekend.

It’s Sad

a.j. — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:55:03 +0000

I only paid $3/gallon for gas the other day. And I was excited about it. I remember when I first got my license $10 would fill up my entire tank.

In other new I saw an article about acid rain. In China.

A Good Cause

a.j. — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:12:49 +0000

I’ve known my friend Andrew since I was probably about 3 or 4 years old. He was always an adventurous kind of guy, whether it was building something wonderfully neat with scavanged parts or climbing big rocks like El Capitan. I always admired his courage, no matter how crazy I thought he was for doing some of these things. Now he’s doing something so crazy I can’t even fathom it; he’s biking across the country. But it’s not just because he feels like it, he’s doing it for a good cause: raising money for the American Cancer Society. This is something near and dear to our hearts here at CoaIJ. Steph’s grandfather [who she was extremely close to] died of cancer and my grandmother [who I'm pretty close to] is currently fighting it off. His blog has all the details.

Honeymoon: Day 0 / Day 1

a.j. — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 20:39:15 +0000

Woke at 9:30 am to finish packing and drive to Steph’s parents’ house where we were leaving our cars. My parents picked us up at my in-laws at around 2:30 pm so we could get to Newark Airport [which is about an hour away] two hours before our 5:25 pm flight. The trip there was uneventful, as were check-in and going through security. The line at check-in was excruciatingly long, though; glad we got there early. We waited in the terminal for a bit and then boarded the plane. For the record, Alitalia’s food is not nearly as good as Virgin Atlantic’s. I slept a couple of hours during the flight, but for the most part stayed awake reading.

We arrived in Italy at 7:30 am the next morning [1:30 am NJ time]. After deplaning, we found the cruise line representative, waited around for the other passengers, then got on a bus to take a tour of the Vatican. And boy was it the wrong tour for us to take. 5 hours of walking around in the heat, listening to the [very knowledgeable] tour guide talk about all the art and architecture in the Vatican Museum. We could have been on an air-conditioned tour bus seeing all the touristy places in Rome. I was very unimpressed with the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s also got an “eh” from me. On the whole, I did not enjoy the tour.

Sweaty and tired, we finally boarded the bus that would take us on our hour long ride to the ship. Steph fell asleep [as she would do on every bus ride we took for the entire 12 days], but I stayed awake and enjoyed the countryside. We checked in at the ship, got our keys, and went to our cabin. Fortunately, all of our luggage had made the trip and was happily waiting for us when we got there. Other passengers were not so lucky. After getting situated, we went up to the dining room for dinner. We had the late seating, so this was at around 8:45 pm local [2:45 pm NJ]. I was a bit nervous about this because, unless your party has exactly the same number of people as there are chairs at the table, they seat you with random people. Thankfully, the couple that we sat with didn’t suck. Dave and Stephanie, of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, were also married on July 1 and on their honeymoon. They turned out to be great dinner companions.

With all of the day’s required activities at an end, we were finally able to retire to our cabin and get some sleep. All told I had been up for 30 hours straight, with only an hour or two of sleep. I crashed hard….

Back

a.j. — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:35:24 +0000

Just a brief post to say we’re back from the honeymoon. I’ll write up some detailed posts about all of our stops after things get settled.

It had to happen eventually

a.j. — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 22:15:25 +0000

As of yesterday, I am a married man. We had a lovely Roman Catholic ceremony, and surprisingly the church did not burst into flames when I received communion. Thankfully the church was air conditioned because it was exceedingly hot. After the ceremony, we spent about a half an hour at a park having bridal party pictures taken. Then it was on to the reception, which was held at a hotel right on the river. Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves, with many saying it was the best wedding they had ever been to. By the end of the day, both Steph and I were exhausted. We’re currently at her parents’ beach house with about 20 other people. I’ve definitely gone over my quota of socialising for the month.

Some pictures today

a.j. — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:22:38 +0000

Steph and I were walking back to our apartment from dinner on Monday night and I saw this great sign. It made me laugh so hard I had to take a picture:

And yesterday we were in the Freehold Raceway Mall, and I felt obligated to take a picture of the Apple Store that’s being constructed:

I can’t wait for this baby to be finished. Now all I need is for them to open one in Princeton so I can get a part-time job there. I think that’s unlikely as there are three within a 40 minute drive of here.