Skirv's Roommates

Freshman year I lived with a pair of geeks. Andy and George G. were old high school friends; we weren't really close then, but then again I wasn't that close to anyone in high school, and it was a lot tougher to be close to anyone when they live 45 minutes away and you don't have/want a car. Still, I was probably as good of friends with them as anyone from Uni; we played cards, did projects together, etc. George G. and Andy were closer friends, but I asked Andy to live with me first, and he agreed.

We were originally going to live in ISR, until we realized that Allen was a more realistic option (Andy's sister Nadine worked for Howie Schein, Allen's director, which made the whole thing possible). George G. had already decided to go to Allen by this point, which was icing. We all moved in together - our first time away with home, with the crying parents and all that - and then a few hours later George G. came down and essentially set up shop too. He lived up on the 4th floor, and couldn't stand his roommate, Todd; so, rather than fight, he just figured he'd stay in our room most of the time.

We all got along quite well this year. For some odd reason, we were the most social people on the floor - an especially strange title given that we never actually left our room. But people came to us instead, since we had many computers and video games, plus a large television and stuff to watch. Even our RA came to hang out and play fairly often...

At first, I lived in the triple (485) with Andy and Harf. Before the end of the first semester, this became untenable, for the simple reason that *nobody slept*. Really, it was impressive - there was no time when the room was not clicking away with the lights on, either coding or downloading porn or whatever. It was quite conducive to getting my work done, but not sleeping. And given that my social life was expanding at this point, I needed this sleep. And so, in about November, I moved out - or, at least, over to the other room, to live with George H.

Big mistake.

I hadn't really dealt with George H. before this point, except on a casual level. I knew he chewed tobacco and saved the juice; this bothered me, but wasn't too big a deal because Andy had always chased him out of our room when he was doing it. Once I lived with him, this became a much worse deal. Next up, he was a chronic abuser of other people's stuff, in that "I'm entitled" kind of way that I've never accepted properly. (I was the bringer of most of the stuff). His attitude towards women appalled me; he managed to chase all females away from our room permanently by having a spread-eagled woman plastered on our door during open doors, and liked to show off naked pictures of his girlfriend to anybody that would look. And when he hung out with Jay, a friend from IT that stayed in our room most nights (he worked downstairs), his attitudes towards just about every minority group shone through... The final straw came when, after I had returned from a roadtrip to Mardi Gras, I found that he had decided that the room was too messy and had moved everything of mine into my bed (including from my desk). This left a large pile of crap that I couldn't move fast enough to get the sleep I desperately needed...

I moved into the Allen commons that day in February. I didn't take anything with me, really; instead, I just set up shop with what I had. And I griped. Oh, how I griped. Finally, a new guy, Mike, showed up and listened to me gripe; and during this, he noted that his roommate hadn't actually been around, and would I like to move in there with him? Without any real hesitation (or confirmation from said roommate) I moved in, just a couple of days after I'd left George H. and Jay. I moved my stuff in as I heard an ever-growing number of answering machine messages for the errant ex- roommate, and happily set up shop. I kept one of George H.'s porn tapes that was left in my VCR, and gave it to Belle to burn.

Me and Mike...well, it wasn't that we didn't get along, we just didn't interact all that much. The only real complaint I had with him was that he started dating this girl Mary late in the semester, and refused to admit it. I wouldn't have minded leaving the room so much if he had just admitted it...

Note that I still get along with George G., Andy, and Harf to this day; there were no hard feelings over my leaving there (well, except for a bit of amusement over the whole soxmas.mov/assmilk.mov incident which was admittedly quite amusing). I am not in contact with George H., Jay, or Mike.

My junior year I lived in the Quad, at the invitation of Ray, the sole returning member from the last year's allen19. The room was large and impressive; it was also everything I wanted out of dorm life. I won't go into the room or its history much here, I'll just talk about the roommates.

Ray was the elder of the Quad, and of Ground South as a whole. He was a CS senior, this being his fourth year in Allen, and second in the Quad; he generally knew everyone but was still fairly out-of-the-way to those that weren't directly around. He enjoyed watching movies and playing hockey, generally slacking aggressively, and encouraging others to do the same with him. I was one of those victims from the previous year, having met him through Jesse, a former Quad resident. Early in the year he began dating Mel, who shortly thereafter adopted me as a brother. Ray was also the bringer of booze to the Quad, since he was the eldest...

I didn't really know Dave very well before we moved in together (or more accurately the summer before), but we did quite well. He was an odd guy, an engineer that wanted to go into graphic design and just couldn't get it to work. He brought a lot of the stereo equipment for the room, and was always the...well, silliest one. When the rest of us would stay up all night talking, he would grow agitated and start yelling "GOODNIGHT MOON!" in the room, causing us to all crack up.

Dante was the Unchosen of the year. A computer engineer from Monterrey, to say that he didn't belong was a supreme understatement. He couldn't wrap his mind around our late-night movie sessions, our strange obsessions, our desire to bring strange things into the room all the time... So, when he got the chance, he transferred out at the end of the semester.

Jacob arrived in the second semester; we should have gotten him the first. He was always quiet and easy to order around and get drunk, but was also one of my closest friends; his presence in the room really made my life better. He also brought us a full-sized fridge, which was the thing that truly made us a wonderful floor resource.

The one thing that was really impressive about our room this year was that I had the floor's first DVD player, built into my computer. We watched a lot of movies that year as a result. Otherwise, as usual, we had several people hanging out at all times and generally enjoyed ourselves for it.

More details are here. Again, I will go into the roommates...

It's hard to explain each of the roommates in the h0l, since there were so many. Rene and Dave T were the ones that invited me to live there; the only other one I talked with on a regular basis was Dave R, and the others were around but I didn't necessarily interact with them much. Fred and Chris were brothers, and I primarily saw them when they were playing Tetris Attack in the living room. Mike was always around, but was kindof a hermit; still, I liked him. I rarely, if ever, interacted with Sean.

Caitte was the first person I met my sophomore year, and just recently I had adopted her as my sister. We were close; we were not, however, good roommates. This was probably mostly because she was the first girl I had really lived with - we shared a bathroom and a kitchen, and she cared about the different "icky things" that I never worried about. She was also dating Kerry, which was a point of contention occasionally but not really (Kerry was upset that I had as much control over her has he did). So we fought...but it really was the fighting of two siblings. And we never really lost sight of that.

Overall, the year went reasonably well, after a rocky start. James and I quickly worked out that we both loved movies and television, so we spent a lot of time in the living room watching stuff together. Caitte found this annoying, especially when we found something that she wanted to watch. James and I introduced each other to various forms of techno and television shows that we otherwise wouldn't watch; all in all, we just acted like great buddies. We all picked on each other. And we all had a great time.

When we moved in together, Darren had just graduated with a degree in Astronomy and started work at CCSO as a sysadmin. He had taken over the Quad from me the year before, and had been in charge of Disco; really, we had a whole lot in common. Still, it took us a while to feel each other out. It didn't help that I turned up a relationship early on and Darren was somewhat jealous, but on the other hand it didn't hurt that much either. Eventually we felt out where our comfort levels were on cleanliness, doing various jobs, what foods to eat, and so forth. And then Darren found Rebecca, and that calmed him down more.

We eventually left because a) our landlord left early on and decided to feed us to CPM, one of the worst landlords on campus, b) they tried to raise our rent, c) the other tenants of the building didn't like having non-Asians there (the Indians on 1st floor liked us; nobody else did), d) locals would occasionally throw bottles at Darren, and e) we just generally didn't like the neighborhood (volume, safety, etc). That, and we found a better place.