Ryan Johnson, a friend for over a decade, passed away in a fire last Thursday.

Ryan, better known on the Internet as RJ2, originally gained notoriety after releasing a AoHack program called FireToolz. We first met in one of the aol private rooms that a lot of other young programmers spent time in. I don’t remember which of the series of rooms it was; teel, ipa, deadend, who knows, but we had some good folks in there. RJ2, Eraser, Propal, Chronos, Sinister, MKB, Stealth, Pimpshiz, Gerbil, myself and a bunch of others were regulars, constantly critiquing and helping improve each others work.

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My buddy Rob and I recently celebrated our birthdays. He’s fucking old and turned 30. I turned 28. We originally planned on having our party at The Delancey like last year, but his dad came through and helped us rent out an entire bar on the lower east side for the evening and we even had full control of the music. Knowing it was our party, there was going to be some good tunes all night long.

This party was going to be so epic that it needed it’s own flyer. It could have used it’s own medical team, too.

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Latina moved in to its new offices last Friday, and I’ve spent the past week and change getting everyone settled in. The move could have gone a bit smoother – our moving company forgot a ton of my equipment and I ended up having to go back to the old office with a friend to get it all. We managed to rebuild my entire server cabinet and network rack, and then realized that none of the cabling to complete the work was around. Once we got to the old office space and headed to my computer room, there was a big box in the middle with “server cabling” written on it.

Idiots.

I’m going to miss working in Times Square. Sure, I absolutely hated it when I began at Latina – the crowds, high prices and all of those “do you like comedy” guys, but it quickly became a second home. I guess we’ll see how things go in Midtown East…

It’s been a minute since I last posted anything. The past few weeks have been really hectic. Latina’s moving to a new office in a just under 2 weeks and I have a ton of work to get done beforehand. The new space needs to be rewired and some construction work completed, new service contracts need to be executed, and my mess of a server room needs to be completely cleaned out. I’m putting in the extra time to make sure it all goes smoothly, and will catch up on things outside of work after the move is complete and everything is running smoothly.

Between now and the end of the month, it’s all work with the exception of a Streetlight Manifesto show I’m going to try and get to on the 21st.

Aside from the physical exhaustion, last Friday took its toll on me emotionally. Everywhere I turned, people were bringing up the 8th anniversary of 9/11. I had a hard time restraining myself while a tourist and his family talked about their visit to WTC while on a line at Duane Reade. They made it sound like a trip to a reenactment of a battle from the Civil War or something – as if while the events were true, but what they were seeing had been created for their enjoyment. I seriously wanted to smack this one child in the head after hearing him say it was “pretty cool.”

I worked about 5 blocks from ground zero when 9/11 happened. I wasn’t at work that day; I worked late the night before and stayed home instead of heading in to the city. That night was the last time I walked through the trade center on my way to the E train. I even grabbed a smoothie from a place directly across from the E train entrance, something I had wanted to do for a few years but was always in too much of a rush to do so. I still have the receipt somewhere.

After getting a few hours of sleep, I woke up and turned my TV on and immediately saw the footage of the first plane hit the north tower. I thought it was a movie at first, then realized what time it was and that i was watching a live newscast. I’ve never been as terrified was I was at that moment. Every single employee of my then employer, along with tons of friends and family were in the area and I couldn’t get in touch with a single person. At the same time, a lot of people were trying to get in touch with me, but couldn’t either.

My laziness really paid off that day. There is a good chance that I could have been in the basement of the WTC when the attacks happened if I did decide to head to work that day.

By the time the dust began to settle, I was able to get in touch with all family that were in the area and got news that everyone from my office survived. My boss was hit with debris and ended up in the hosptital, but was physically fine within a few weeks. He was never quite the same afterwards though. I lost a few friends and business associates that day, but was extremely grateful for everyone that did make it out alive.

My office remained closed for a full week after the attacks. The next tuesday, a bomb scare cleared out the building I worked in early in the afternoon. The CFO and I, both of whom live on Long Island, were took spooked to take the subway to Penn Station so we ended up walking all of the way from Wall St. up to 34th. In the end, the suspected bomb turned out to be a box of soap.

Every year, I remember and give thanks to all of the individuals who lost or gave up their lives as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center. I also remember all of the faces of the friends, colleagues and commuters that I havent seen since then, and remember how lucky I am to be here.

In the end, remember to be a bit lazy now and then. It could just save your life.

My 10-year high school reunion took place last weekend. I was hesitant to go at first, but eventually decided that it would be silly if I didn’t. I’m really happy that I did. It was great to catch up with some folks that I haven’t seen in well over a decade (having spent the last year and half of high school in home or at the hospital), and just being in the same room with so many people that I grew up with.

Tanya and Dee did a great job planning everything, and I was more than happy to be able to help out where I could. I ended up designing the graphic that was used on several items, including etched glasses that were given to everyone. I also made a package of 10 marshmallows for each table setting, plus a few extra – a total of 48 packages! Everyone loved them! There were a couple of close calls during the night, but everything ended just fine.

A bunch of us got together immediately after the reunion ended, and continued the festivities.  Things didn’t end until around 3am Saturday night, at which point most of us admitted that was the latest we’ve been up in a while. If nothing else during the night made me feel old, it was that one comment. It really was hard to believe it had been over a decade since I had seen most of these people, and am not going to loose touch this time around.

 The snow always makes my neighborhood look like it’s in the middle of nowhere, or maybe a Chrismas card. Oh wait, I am in the middle of nowhere…

I think back to my childhood every time it snows. I used to live in a neighborhood filled with children my age and there was an elderly woman who lived across the street. She had a really large yard – it stretched from one street to another. Once in a while, if there was rain after the snowfall, her entire yard would freeze over. It wouldn’t be frozen enough for ice skates or anything, but we’d all lie on our backs and use our legs to push ourselves away from her fence to see how far we could glide across the smooth, cold ground.

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I recently received a message from a classmate asking for a hand with some projects related to our 10 year high school reunion. You know, I think it just hit me that is has been nearly a decade since I was in high school. It’s scary; I tried thinking about some of the time I spent in that cold, white building and really can’t come up with much. Granted, I didn’t really show up to school all that often, but a memory or two would be nice.

Ok, that was a bit of an exaggeration. I do have memories of my time there. They just aren’t the kind that you see on those commercials for teen dramas that are on TV these days. So, let’s see what I remember:

I wore way too many t-shirts with aliens on them.

Debating whether I needed a 28.8 or 33.6Kbps modem for my new computer while in Spanish class. Navegar mas rápido en Internet!

A classmate of mine ran out of global studies class to vomit after eating 4 slices of pizza and a pinwheel, bacon egg and cheese on a roll, some chocolate chip cookies and a quart of milk. I’ll never forget to look of relief on his face when I went looking to make sure he was still alive.

The same classmate threw a pencil at our 9th grade bio teacher’s head and was suspended for a couple of days. She used to give him a hard time and was overly nice to me, in a creepy way. I don’t know how, but she managed to go from an old beaten up LeMans to a beautifully restored 70′s Firebird. I swear she must have been making meth in the office behind our classroom or something…

Watching Reel Big Fish videos at the local pizzeria.

A lot of things are said in locker rooms that wouldn’t be any where else, but I think I heard the strangest reply to a comment back in 11th grade gym class. This kid went up to a friend and said “Wow, you have really hairy legs.” My friend instantly replied, “If you think my legs are hairy, you should see my balls!” I think he was serious. He’s a lawyer now.

I have one last memory in mind, and this is a really good one. I’m not even withholding names this time.

There was this guy named Adam that I went to school with. I’m sure he’s OK now, but he was a real dick back then. One day, before out computer programming class began, he clotheslined me by my locker. It was one of those “what the fuck!?” moments and I didn’t even know how to react at the time. My locker happened to be in the hall just outside of the classroom, so most of my classmates saw what happened. None of them were amused and a few seemed to have plans for Adam.

Our teacher, who was honestly my favorite teacher ever and got me doing what I ended up turning in to a career, left us alone for a few minutes so that he could use the rest room. As soon as he was down the hall, this kid David jumped over a row of tables and somehow managed to get Adam’s neck under his knee while sitting in the chair next to him. I have no clue exactly how he managed to make it happen, but it totally justified our calling him “The Afro-American Ninja.” Anyway, David starts slapping Adam around a bit and another kid, Ryan, joins in. I’m just sitting at my station laughing while all of this is happening. I’m sure it was expected that I’d join in, but I was having a great time watching the show. This went on for several minutes, until another classmate heard our teacher coming back to the classroom. Dave slid under the row of tables he jumped over earlier and Ryan returned to his seat. Our teacher walked back in and saw Adam, his face red with anger, and asked what was going on. Adam immediately jumped towards Ryan, so I decided to get in the middle to break things up and gave him a good punch in the process. Our teacher, who was truly oblivious of the entire incident, thanked me for preventing a senseless fight between Adam and Ryan and continued with the day’s lesson. I think that day’s lesson was “don’t be a dick.”

Despite all of these strange memories and the lack of others over those 4 years, I really am excited to be able to catch up with all of the people that I lost touch with and hope that it all goes well. It looks like I’ll be putting a site together for the reunion, so it looks like my recent interest in WordPress will pay off after all.

Until next time, remember; Don’t be a dick.