Manlio Rules

as we speak, xCorp is checking my references…

i think that’s a good thing…

so this past weekend, i went up to rhode island with my brother and sister for our sibling vacation that went from a one week ski trip, to a long weekend at a B&B, to a very short weekend up at mom’s house. so it goes. marco and i made it up friday night in about 2 hours (marco drives quickly), and friday night i basically watched all the bad sci fi that i would normally watch, but less drunk and with commercials.

saturday we went to the newport storm brewery in newport RI. if for whatever reason you ever find yourself in newport when they’re giving a tour (fridays at 6PM, some saturdays), i highly recommend it. the tour is run by this guy brent, who’s also the president, and one of 4 people who work there. he and his buddies all went to Colby College up in maine, then decided to make beer for a living. the tour is fairly short, but brent fills you up with 3 pints of newport storm, and pokes fun at himself and the entire process of making beer in a very endearing way. i feel like this is basically the brewery that i would run with the monoki crew if for whatever reason we all gave up on tech and decided to make beer (think about it guys…).

saturday night i took a nap from all the beer, then had a delicous lobster dinner and then slept some more after watching more of my normal adult swim tv rotation. yes, i’m a geek.

sunday we came back to NY, and i had a ton of stuff to do, none of which got done. so tonight i’m working when i should be… out… drinking? no, that doesn’t sound right. anyways, pictures are below:

so, last week i spent wednesday through monday in vail, with luke, briehan, alex, dan, amy, and sharon. it was a ton of fun, the snow was good, the house was beautiful, and all of us had a great time, or at least i did. i assume everyone else did as well. thanks go to luke’s parents, who put up with us all week, and luke for inviting all of us out there. photos are below:

ok, it’s winter season down at floyd, and that means bocce for all! or at least, bocce for me.

the crew (minus sara and daya) showed up at floyd, ready to make it back to the championship game this season, and hopefully not get killed like last time. i gotta be honest… we came in rusty, and we came in cocky. we didn’t really take time to warm up, hell, i decided to roll out a brand new style of pitching (which was kindly referred to as “dainty” by the rest of the team), and we just got outplayed. we were overconfident. at one point our opponent asked me if i was bowling ambidextrous style, and i said: “no, but i can if you want me to.”

so yeah, we went down hard in the first game. then the next team didn’t show up, so we got the forfeit win, but it wasn’t an encouraging start to the season. i’m hoping we’re just doing a little snake order from our last season, so we’ll lose our first game, and then never lose again. i apparently need to work on my mechanics, for fear of being “that dainty guy playing bocce”, and we need to get our heads in the season.

the MVP goes to Matt S. who didn’t play a single round, but showed up halfway through after having spent a grueling 12 hours on amtrak the day before, and coming right from penn station to bocce. Matt, you are a better man then I.

oh, happy valentine’s day all of you. i spent the night at the gym, so hopefully next year me and my amazing new body won’t have to do that again.

so… tonight i was stranded on a stuck subway for 35 minutes from 3:35 to 4:10AM, the following snippets are from acutal conversations:

nerdy guy: the joker was trying to kill people? i never got that.

yabo: yeah, me and my boy went to vassar. we busted some heads up at vassar.

same yabo: if we need to eat each other, that guy’s got a water bottle. he goes first.
me (bottle in hand): come and get it.
yabo: watch it buddy.
me: didn’t you just say you went to vassar?
yabo: yeah.
me: i’m not worried.

so…

it looks like things are going to maybe maybe work out. my contact at Xcorp can’t hire me right now. but… he was very impressed at the demo, and especially that i turned it around in such a short amount of time. he has offered me a chance to work freelance for him doing the job i would be doing fulltime for the next 5-6 weeks, about 20-30 hours a week. this will be difficult to do along with my current 30 hour a week freelance job, but the money is good, and if i do a good job, i think this will solidify my chances at going out there, sometime later on this spring.

truth be told, i’m still a little unsure about if i really really want to leave NY, but i know that i really really want this job, and if it means going to SF, well… there are worse places to go for sure…

bortche: switching to css from tables is like dating britney spears and then going to lisa loeb
bortche: there’s a rigid uniform good look to one, but the other has that smart & sexy & difficult thing going on
bortche: that you just can’t turn down
manlio27: and all the time you keep sleeping with that bitch javascript cause she’s always just *there*
bortche: she can do alot of things
bortche: but none of them particularly elegantly

i finished a week of working on the demo for Xcorp, and sent it to my contact there. if you want to see exactly what i can come up with in a week of working from 10PM - 1AM, click here.

instructions:

“m” brings up the menu
the arrows navigate
“o” lets you perform an action…

there will hopefully come a weekend where i quietly enjoy the peaceful offerings of new york city, and reflect on intellectual matters of the heart and soul, while free of inebriation and other mind altering substances…

or perhaps not.

friday i met up with a few people after work at 5PM and proceeded to go on a 10 hour drinking extravaganza that spanned 2 boros, 5 bars, and a whole bunch of beer and alcohol. the night ended with me getting punched in the face (by accident) and almost wading into a bar fight… good times

saturday was lesley’s karaoke birthday. i don’t have much to say about this, i think the pictures tell a better story. my quote of the night: “if you can’t make that happen, you’re nothing!” i’m such a pleasant individual…

sunday was the super bowl at brie’s place. good wings, shitty game, and man, you get 10 loud people in a room and everyone gets mad when you shush them, even if they’re talking at full volume directly in your ear to someone across the room…

ok, so PT had a great idea. i’m throwing the first annual Manlio Rules name that band competition.

i’m starting a band. yay! band! the problem is that we’re having trouble coming up with a name. right now it’s a 4 piece, but it will definitely become a 5 piece and possibly a 6 piece at some point. the style of music is sort of like epic indie rock, think arcade fire meets faith no more. and if you dont know those bands, it’s like a less awesome version of david bowie, playing with black sabbath and a violinist…

the band names that have tickled our fancy to this point, and why we decided on not that:

Embers - half of us love this , but there’s another band with this name already, possibly a few

Hydro Embers and the Skintight Card - i heart this one, but it’s a little unwieldy

The Utah War - historically interesting, but possibly a better album name

Kiss - umm… taken

and there are some others. basically we’re in the “we’ll find the right name when we see it” mode, but i sort of feel like that might not happen given that we’ve had no success so far at agreeing on anything. Sarah rightfully shies away from “boy names” like “civil unrest”, and “i will shoot your toungue”, and i’m still playing “name my fantasy metal band” from 1993, gravitiating towards names like: “running the asylum”, and “the randy rhoads experiece (starring manlio)”

so yeah. any suggests y’all have would be much appreciated. if we use your suggestion, i’ll… write a song about you or something…