Month: March 2007

new job is going well. according to our TOS, i am not supposed to be maintaining a blog of any kind at work. we’ll see how long i can run the gambit before i go back to VPN access at home.

i have a ton of challenges queued up here. i need to seriously tech-ify the business process, and there is a LOT of new works in the pipeline.

personally, i am sad to see winter leaving, with only a fistful of good snowy days to show for it. boo on summertime.

all in all, doin o.k. i need to get my last paychecks from my last job, and get my damn taxes paid! i need to invoice some people, and collect some outstanding debts too, or work on collecting outstanding debts.

happy hour with new co-workers tonight. maybe i’ll make some friends.

new job, back in it, and it looks like i am not on local desktop lockdown!
woohoo.

i have less than plush seating arrangements, but, short term, i am more than willing to trade that for full access to my pc and the ability to install firefox.

i may not jump to chat just yet. we shall see.

i have so much to learn by monday, it kinda makes me want to poop my pants. i think i can do it though. this job has a lot more to it than was scoped out in interviews (read: 28 page exit memo & 250-odd pages of procedural stuff), but it also offers me a really good opportunity to get face time with the people who matter in the techie/exec world.

as long as i can make it through the next couple weeks without screwing the pooch too badly, i should be in good shape.

my favorite part of yesterday was when i had to take an hour-long e-learning course on equal-opportunity employment and non-discriminatory workplace behavior. if i could post one of the videos, i would, but they were locked down super-tight.

suffice to say, i think they used the same production company as the DMV.

probably in PA this weekend, unless bad weather grounds my father’s flight. first tango with Vista home this weekend. i am so excited, i want to vomit.

and , thanks for the well wishin on the previous incarnation of this post. i deleted it accidentally, so your comments evaporated.

so you know that old adage about 1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters eventually producing shakespeare? well, that same scenario could not possibly script my day thus far. seriously? last day, they did an emergency SAN move last night, and the whole virtual server, oracle instance, and middleware client config is FUBAR. i may break into my emergency scotch reserves at the office a little before 5.

for the first time in years, i missed the equinox.
i am so wrapped up in my changes and life i missed the bigger picture.
way to focus on the trees instead of the forest.

wanted a story, so here is a sad but humorous one about a pornstar and a mall security guy from my college days


Lloyd aimlessly strolled around the food court on his seventh round of the day. It had been a slow morning, and, with a mere four hours to go before he got off shift, Lloyd was hardly concentrating on his work.

Only nine more trips around the mall and then he could leave. As the burly guard stopped by one of the glass-encased elevators on the lower level he was walking, he admired his bulk in the reflection of the large panes of glass. Lloyd had to look good today; big things were happening after work. Scratching the raw edges of his thinning salt-and-pepper beneath his hat, Lloyd’s gray eyes worked over his ponderous reflection as he worked a meaty palm over his chubby face, as if to rub away the tedium that was his life.

Lloyd had never been an interesting guy, and had never had much drive to become one. Women and beer were his two hobbies, his pastimes as it were, and while his prominent beer gut boasted of his near-certain prowess in one of these fields, he had never even broached the other. As Lloyd let out a lingering sigh, he awkwardly spun around, and started a slow waddle towards his next checkpoint. As he did, he conjured images of his only non-chemical escape; and his other obsession: his pornography collection. Lloyd went far beyond a casual collector, he was an affectionado of adult entertainment.

Somehow he found that while women and dates would be demanding and pushy, sometimes downright embarrassing, his tapes and magazines never backtalked, never interrupted the game, asked him to do dishes, or prevent his otherwise drab bachelor lifestyle. Today, however, would be different, because today, finally, his life was going to change. At the eXotica, one of the finest providers of adult entertainment, there was a special guest signing this evening, whose star was none other than the chief diva of Lloyd’s nirvana; Lacy Bottoms. Lacy; her name seemed almost like poetry on the wind, her physique a whole universe from the stale mall-sounds which floated all about him.

Lloyd was torn from his reverie by the loud, scratching sound of his walkie talkie informing him of a 417 down at Bangles, an accessories store in the west wing. Lloyd loved 417’s. They always got his blood pumping. Kids were the bane of his career at this mall, but shoplifters gave him job security. If it weren’t for them he’d have easy days, with no need to go busting his butt around the mall chasing after petty thieves.

One time he had to stop a guy from taking one of Santa’s reindeer from the Christmas display. At the time he had been the serious security guard who had escorted the offender to the security office, but later that night when he was sitting on his couch pounding a beer he started laughing at the hilarity of the situation. What moron would steal a fake reindeer from a mall? There sure are some losers in this world.

Lloyd quickly turned down his radio and started into a light jog down the walkway. He was all the way on the opposite end of the mall still near the food court while the store he was heading for was located at the complete other end. Lloyd began increasing his pace.

“God damn kids.”

As Lloyd veered around a fountain to gain quicker access to the escalator on the far side of the food court, he nearly barreled over a woman with a stroller. In his near-acrobatic attempts to avoid squishing the lady and her child, the ponderous mass of his gut fought too greatly against the strain of his shirt, sending three buttons flying into the fountain .

Cursing louder than before, Lloyd knelt down in haste, scrabbling for the white buttons in the tepid pool. As he lunged to collect the last one, the terrible telltale sound of ripping fabric tore through his ears. Before he could completely ascertain what had ripped, his walkie-talkie went off again, urging speed; the perpetrator was about to make off with the stolen goods. Lloyd let out a loud snort and trundled up the escalator, pocketing the buttons as he awkwardly panted his way towards the store.

Lloyd attempted to collect himself as he vainly tried to regain his breath. Late night Heinekens and cheesesteaks were starting to catch up with him, it seemed, and he noted with a painful glance that his hairy stomach was protruding from the button less gash in the field of his navy blue shirt. The three buttons he had lost had come from the mid-section of the shirt, and so, Lloyd, the lone bastion of order in the mall, was forced to straiten his tie, suck in his gut, and walk into Bangles. Lloyd did so with his no-nonsense mask on, and the hairy cyclops of his bellybutton winking with his gasping breaths at whomever met its stare.

When Lloyd walked up to the counter in the store and informed the cashier not to worry since he was security, the disgust that filled her eyes made him blush. He seethed on the inside at the impudence of the twit, but he had a job to do and he had to carry it out. Keeping his stern look going, Lloyd sauntered over to the three girls still standing around one of the spinning display cases in the back of the store. They did not notice his arrival, which was good, since Lloyd had always believed that an ambush created confusion that might lead to a suspect revealing his or her guilt in a crime. Having been told that the girl under suspicion was the one with the full red hair he laid a heavy hand on her shoulder and spoke as he turned her around.

“Alright young lady, show me what’s in your purse.”
As the girl in question raised her gaze to his he was suddenly struck by the realization that this was no ordinary girl. What was he thinking? This was no ordinary woman. He was actually touching, he was in fact holding on to, and had in his possession. the one, the only, wet dream of wet dreams: Miss Lacy herself.

Thinking fast, he realized that she must have decided to spend the day in the mall before her stint at the video store for her signing. He could tell from the look in her eyes that she knew he recognized her. When her gaze left his and traveled down his body taking in the greasy hair underneath his hat, his buttonless shirt, his hairy gut, and his too short trousers, Lloyd blushed even more deeply than before.

When her moss green eyes returned to his face, Lloyd was sure they were going to be filled with the same disgust that the cashier had had. Yet on their return he saw not a hint of disgust, he even suspected that there might be a bit of interest there. Deciding that perhaps she knew a good man when she saw one, Lloyd straightened his shoulders a bit and sucked in his belly a little more and said in his most authoritative voice,

“Well… aha… that is, if you could… er… I mean to say…”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Lloyd caught the woman behind the counter peer over and around the earring display, as if to se what was going on. The two other girls near Lacy, apparently sensing something was amiss, drifted towards the front of the store.

Lloyd withdrew his hand, and wiped it once on his thigh as he stammered on, absolutely hypnotized by her eyes.

“If I might Miss, look at what is in your purse. That is if you want, er, if rather…”

Lloyd’s ramblings were cut short by the abrupt pressure of one of Lacy’s perfectly manicured fingers pressing down on his large rubber-band lips.

“Shhh. You can look.”

Lacy undid the fastener on the bag, and, holding it up to her chest, tucked the arm under her chin to hold it momentarily, then shifted it to fold the top over the main bulk of the beg. Opening it in her hands, she held it away from herself at an angle for Lloyd to inspect. Her thumb however, seemed to get mysteriously caught in the V-Neck of her shirt, and as she held the bag away from herself, her shirt seemed to part like the red sea. Through the silk valley of crimson, Lloyd could see both mound Hebron and Sinai, neither of which were capped in the customary top of white-silk snow known to oftentimes grace such glorious geographic structures.

Lloyd’s eyes nearly bugged from their sockets as he held a breath and felt a sweat break out all over his forehead. He ran a nervous tongue over his lips, and, staring down the shirt of his goddess, he was completely oblivious to the three stolen CD’s, two pairs of earrings, still labeled and fresh of the rack, as well as the watch, still in plastic case.

“See, nothing I need to hide here officer”

Lloyd’s only reply was a coarse attempt at his previous stammers.

“A man of the law, huh? I like your cops. Uniforms are sexy. Takes a real man to run a mall like this. I bet you see all types, huh? You may have some talents I am..ah… interested in. Care to do a little extra work for me?”

Lloyd’s blood sang in his ears. He dully nodded.

“Good,” said Lacy, snapping shut the bag and Lloyd’s view “I’m at the Bedford Townhouse, meet me down in front at about eight tonite, and I’ll explain what I want you to do. You know where the townhouse is don’t you?”

Another dull nod was Lloyd’s only response.

“Good, I’ll see you there then.”

Lacy, turning on her heel, slid right past Lloyd, and out the main door. Lloyd, who still stood in a catatonic pose, was snapped out of it by the shrill whine of the woman behind the counter.

“Lloyd, what are you doing? Lloyd, you’re letting her get away!”

Ignoring the shrew for the moment, Lloyd simply watched as Lacy walked out of the store and turned left, meeting up with her friends who had been waiting outside for her. When she was no longer in sight, Lloyd sighed long and deep and turned towards the lady at the counter.

“Look lady, I checked out her purse, there were no earrings, no bracelets and no other doodads in there. She was clean. So get off my back and don’t call unless you see the person put it in something, alright?”

Lloyd left before the duly chastened girl could remark. He slowly headed back to the other end of the mall to the foodcourt so that he could get a taco. All that running and excitement had set his stomach growling. Grinning to himself, and at the thought of tacos, Lloyd picked up his step and made it to the food court in under five minutes.

As he neared the taco stand he was already imagining the greasy meat and the oozing salsa and sour cream. Just as he neared the counter a group of school kids ran up to the taco stand and got there before he did. Now instead of getting his taco in seconds, he had to wait in line behind some goddamn kids. They were attended by a late teenage mother’s helper, who obviously could not deal with the handful of rodents which had been made her charges.

“HEY! Look at that police officer! He has a big belly!!”

The noise around the food court, while not roaring, subsided to a meager fraction of what it was before. Lloyd suddenly felt very uncomfortable as several dozen pairs of eyes found him instantly. The little boy who was still pointing at him giggled slyly as the sitter’s hand found the back of his head.

“Billie, what an awful thing to say!”

The babysitter, obviously appalled and embarrassed, but staring nonetheless at Lloyd as she scolded, did so in a manner that seemed to break the ice, allowing the whole court to start chattering again. Lloyd was no longer hungry. He went back to his cubicle, stapled shut his shirt, and fantasized about the night to come for the rest of his would-be workday, putting off any major security breaches in the same part of his brain he had already buried the taco-kid’s comment.

Finally, closing time arrived for the mall and he only had do was make one more round to check that all the stores were locked up, and that the metal grates were all pulled down. Completing the task in record time, Lloyd climbed up into his beat up old truck and peeled out of the parking lot with the orange flashing security lights on. On his way to the townhouses he stopped in a local 24 hour pharmacy to pick up his daily lotto ticket. While he was waiting for the numbers to come up, he noticed a rack of prophylactics inauspiciously displayed just behind the counter.

Thinking it would make a good impression to come prepared, he reached over and grabbed a box of Sheiks and tossed them onto the counter with his losing ticket.

Smiling to himself, he paid the cashier. Giving her a knowing wink as she placed his purchase in a little plastic bag, Lloyd again was filled with a rush of anticipation for the evening to come. Hurrying back to his truck, Lloyd jumped in and continued on his way to his apartment, thinking all the while of the possibilities for the evening.

Lloyd’s nervousness totally botched his routine preparation for an evening out. Lloyd bathed, shaved, then applied copious amounts of underarm deodorant, foot powder, aftershave, and cologne. He put shaving cream on his toothbrush. He used mouthwash for aftershave. Not a glance was spared at the plastic cases of the tapes strewn about his apartment, not one of his well-thumbed magazines were touched. Smelling like Barbisol and Listerine, Lloyd set to assembling his wardrobe.

The pair of tiger-patterned bikini briefs sized precisely four inches too small for him at the waist went on first. Lloyd then bedecked himself in the best apparel of his wardrobe above them. He squeezed into a polyester, powder-blue leisure suit, and a white horizontal-striped button-down. Running his sausage-fingers through his well-oiled hair, Lloyd examined himself; a powerful sex magnet, one last time before he darted back out to his waiting Dodge Dakota. He peeled out of his parking spot, and drove off like mad towards the Bedford townhouse..

Back in his truck, Lloyd truly felt like the rugged outdoorsman he’d always believed himself to be. The mall security officer again returned his thoughts to the coming night. He remembered all five of Lacy Bottom’s films. Real works of art, they were; truly stunning. She always managed to capture the innocent look while still keeping the image of seductress alive. And man, could she ever suck a dick. Just thinking about watching her was making him even more excited to start the evening. Pulling into her parking lot at exactly 8:01pm, Lloyd quickly checked his appearance in his rear view. Spitting on his hand he reflattened his hair to his brow and then dusted a nonexistent piece of lint from his shoulder. Satisfied that all was in order, he got down from the truck and headed to the front door of the building.

As he neared the door he realized he’d not thought of bringing her anything. Lloyd froze halfway to the door, sure in his knowledge that you were supposed to bring some flowers or something to a girl like Lacey. All he had was the brown paper bag with the condoms in it, gripped in his left hand. Feeling slightly embarrassed Lloyd waited halfway up the walkway, trying to decide whether he had enough time to run to a grocer and get some flowers. Just as he turned to go back to the truck he heard that sweet voice call out to him,

“Heya big guy! You made it.”

Lloyd’s knees turned to water, and he fumbled with the bag in his hands as he turned around again. Lacy was wearing a red spandex miniskirt, and a haltertop that barely cut below what he had received a free visual tour of earlier that day. She strode towards him while he turned around on the path to the door, trying to think up an excuse for not having anything. As he stammered, Lacy closed the distance, and for the first time, noticed the bag in his hands. She snagged it from him before Lloyd could even think to move the bag away from her reach.

“Oh, for me, how swee…”

Lloyd, horrified at this accidental disaster, lurched forwards as Lacy returned to the doorway. She opened the bag before he made it halfway. Her comment was cut short by a sudden uprising of laughter from the back of her throat.

“MOMMM! Watcha laffin at? Is the babysitter here yet? I wanna order pizza…”

Chills arced through Lloyd’s body as he recognized the voice of the kid from the taco stand earlier that afternoon. Lacy turned about to face Lloyd, who stood there as if struck dumb by a thunderclap.

“You do like kids, don’t you? I mean… well… I guess this…”

Whatever excuse she was going to make dispersed as her words were drowned out by the sound of a motorcycle revving down the street. With a wild combination of breaking, swerving, and squealing, it came to a perfect stop right next to the curb right at the end of the path from the doorway.

Lloyd turned towards the bike. A man hopped off it. Lloyd watched him saunter up the path, taking in the leather jacket, torn jeans, and black snakeskin boots. As the man removed his helmet it revealed a full head of luxurious black hair and a face chisled and bedecked with a one-day’s growth of stubble. The man came to stand in front of Lacy, stepping around Lloyd as if he were a bag of garbage. He easily rivaled Lloyd’s six foot three inches but Lloyd outweighed him by about a hundred pounds. The mystery man had a muscled physique that was emphasized when he grabbed Lacy around the waist and swung her around high up in his arms. Returning her to the ground, he looked at Lloyd as if he noticed for the first time he had not stepped around a bag of garbage.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Uh… I’m Lloyd.”

Lloyd assumed that the man’s silence was due to the fact that he was overwhelmed by his eloquence.

“He’s the baby-sitter, hon. He’s staying with Billie for the night.” Lacy replied, her eyes never leaving Lloyd’s face.

Lloyd could feel the cold sweat racing down the back of his neck. Looking away from Lacy’s undisturbed gaze, Lloyd just nodded and said, “Yeah, I’m the baby-sitter.”

“Oh well great. If we are coming back tonight, we should be back around 3am or so. If not, after the continental breakfast tomorrow. If you aren’t too hung over or sore, right babe?”

The man walked back to his bike with Lacey in tow. He popped his helmet back on and Lacy climbed on behind him. She had hardly settled into her seat when he gunned it out of the lot. Lloyd’s eyes followed the sight of his Lacy leaving with another man. He was fully prepared to stay out on the pathway, waiting for her return for the entire night. His attention was shifted by a shooting pain racing up his shin.

“OW! You kicked me you little shit! Why did you kick me?”

Billie continued to rain little sneakered kicks below Lloyd’s knee. He looked up with a scowl then stuck out his tonge, and took off as Lloyd reached down to grab him.

“I want to order pizza, NOW!” The yell carried promise of an impending tantrum if demands were not met. With a shuddering sigh, Lloyd intoned what he felt would end up being the motto of his evening: “Goddamn kids.”

tomorrow is my last day here, and i am trying to wind down and document everything. unfortunately, fate appears to be determined too prevent this by throwing three times the number of direct operational issues at me than is normal for a given week, in a two day period.

there are times when i wish i didn’t keep statistics on these things, just so that i wouldn’t feel so steamed when i can quantify them.

mostly, right now, i am totally spent. i’ve been working like a madman to get things done, and am really concerned about my energy reserves going into a new shop on thursday, and having to make a professional appearance. usually the first day or two is mostly handshakes and whatnot, but i still want to be sharp, and present myself well.

with so much change ahead of me, it is hard to predict how things will go. it is my hope that i will have my hands in the pies that i want them to be in, in an institution willing to put me in a position where my thoughts/goals/experience is viewed in a much more central light, as opposed to the peripheral consideration it has been given thus far. time will tell. i am sure it will not be all rainbows and puffy clouds, but i am hoping i have way more clear skies than thunderheads in my future.

i’m excited at prospects. for the first time, however, i am jaded about a new opportunity, simply because of the way that i have seen the politics mirrored from institution to institution. i am really trying to start best foot forward, but my life-planning strategy which dictates planning for the best and expecting the worst seems to be the predominant undercurrent to my upcoming move.

my greatest consolation is that the meaningful relationships i have made here will survive my transition, at least if i have anything to say about it. what will be, will be. the framework of the world changes a lot when you start considering a job as a career. i am certainly at that stage in my life, and it seems like i have a good leg up on it, but it is still kind of frightening to consider the prospect of doing this stuff for another forty years. assuming the house of cards doesn’t collapse, that is what it will probably be, barring some intervention of fate or windfall.

one question a couple people have asked me is i am scared. challenges don’t scare me, neither does work. my fears are pretty deep rooted, exotic, and, for the most part, rooted in non-substantial things as opposed to mechanical day-to-day stuff. what was the last thing that scared you?

wow, i just found out that one of the cops shot in the west village last week was a full-time employee at my local bookseller by work. Nich and I had talked medieval lit a couple times, and he once invited me to some lecture going on at Hunter. that is really weird. kinda makes something horrible and distant right up-close and personal.

when i got my netflix account back in 2002, i loaded up my queue with 365 movies. I wanted to see how long it would take to watch that many. Five years later, I am at 213. the answer, dear readers, is a long fucking time.

I’ve used computers for a long time. Not a long time in the global scope, but certainly four fifths my life. For some under twenty reading this, that may sounds like an inane statement. For those pushing thirty, it is a much thinner group. My first real ‘aha’ moment with a computer was back in 1985, when I formatted my first hard drive, trying to free up memory. That was where I learned the difference between RAM, ROM, hard drives, and exactly how bad the buckle of a belt can hurt when it is not firmly grasped in the hand of the person who is wielding it. Since then it has been a long road of those kinds of moments, in gradually escalating layers of knowledge and interoperability. Technology has been a lifetime crusade, but I only recently discovered what my grail is.

A bit more behind the cut:


At the time I formatted the hard drive, I was trying to compile a BASIC program I had gotten from my then mentor, Peter Stark. Pete was about 10 years older than me, and last I head head of him, he had retired in his late 30’s after breaking the bank in the dot com bubble game, and patenting a neat little EE process which apparently beats in the hard of most of your basic cell phones on the market.

Pete was a nerd. He was, in my world, in many ways, an idol. He introduced me to RPG’s, tabletop gaming, anime, and computers. His dad worked for IBM (my dad was an accountant, hence the PC in my home), and was a wealth of computing information in my young and formative years. Atari, BBS’es, war dialing, flight sims, Chessmaster, BASIC programming, phreaking, hacking, cracking, listservs, documentation, hardware, the start of what we know as the internet – hell, the start of pretty much everything I used came to me via conversations or floppy disks I got from Pete. In some ways, he resented me, he was my minder (sometimes paid, sometimes unpaid), and he had a pretty broken home, so he sometimes partook in the slightly less broken ensemble of my family. I remember adding an overprocessor to a 386 to make it a 486. I remember the first time I ever saw someone fry a mobo (it was Pete, who spilled a bottle of mountain dew on it as he was trying to solder a sound card connection onto it. I remember installing a 9600 baud modem and thinking that data could never flow so fast. I remember laughing about that years later, when 14.4 kbps became the standard. I am laughing now, typing this on a LAN connected to a fractional T3.

Pete’s friends, Mark, Leo, Austin, and later my elementary school friend Johnny and his uncle George, and friend Alex – they were a mad crew. I once watched them get wasted on stolen beer, and remember every grimace on Alex’ face as he ate an entire pack of Topps baseball cards. He had lost a bet that Topps were still packaged with a stick of gum inside. He had to soak the last two in beer to get them down. Thinking back on it, I think that is the first time I ever tried beer. Small wonder I don’t like it.

George’s four cats, Mace, Flail, Katana and Halberd, were the first cats I ever truly bonded with, I was sadder when Flail got run over by a car than when our first family dog died. Shit, I imagine all those cats are dead now. Leo is dead now. He died of AIDS, not too long before my Grandfather died of spinal cancer. He was also the first openly gay person I knew, and very open about it. All the other guys gave him hell for it, but never in a way that hurt, only in a way that egged him on. I find it funny, in some ways, that I knew what ‘fag’ meant before I knew what a virgin was. Such an odd education.

If my parents knew 1/10th of what I got into “bike riding” or “hanging out at the park” with Pete and his friends, I am sure they would both go into full blown apoplexy, even today.

I have no idea what happened to Austin, as he was the eldest, and had the least time/interest in me, aside from making fun of me for being a kid. He was always frustrated with me for asking so many questions. I don’t think he was part of the group at heart, but was grateful for the company, since nobody else would really take him in. He was a fat kid with a harelip. He was something of a social pariah for being Jewish, and for living in a single family home, but none of the rest of the guys cared.

Mark is in jail in federal jail in Kentucky or somefuck. He wrote me a letter addressed to me at my parents’ place just before Y2K. He had tried to blow up a K-Mart using a car full of homemade explosives after dropping out of school. He had wanted to say goodbye before the world ended, and for some reason, mine was the only address of the crew he remembered. That is probably because he was the first of the crew with access to a car, and Pete used to have him drive me home all the time.

Mark apparently thought that Y2K was going to be the end of it all. In all fairness, I should mention that Mark was the first person I ever hung out with who was on acid. I was seven. He was fourteen. I haven’t tried to resume contact with him since that letter, so I don’t know how he feels about being wrong. Johnny apparently works a coding job in Jersey, according to my brother, who was the last person I know to talk to him. He has a younger brother who is as old as my youngest cousin. There are seventeen years between brothers there – with two different fathers who left the same woman, in the same state. Patterns of mistakes, patterns of behavior.

Peter was a good egg, so was the rest of the crew. They let me get into some trouble, but never too much. They censored themselves somewhat when I was younger, but less as I got older. When the last of them left for college, I was 10, and starting my own hassles of thought ant enterprise. I still talked to Pete over breaks, and we still all got together now and again to game. That ended when I was 14 and the last of them graduated and moved away.

I owe a lot to Pete, in terms of who I have become in this world. For the record, I also blame him for me being a gaming geek.

Despite my love affair with the Wizardry series of PC games in the late 80’s (I even got one from the library, if you believe that), the first game that really nailed me was in 1989, when I tried to fire up the game “Heroes Quest” (later re-named Quest for Glory) on my family PC. By then, dad’s work on the machine was more of a monthly close thing, and I had a LOT more time to play on it, without butting heads with him. I was the one who pushed for windows, when it finally came, and I was the one who took over the troubleshooting not long thereafter.

Without getting too much into detail, I decided that I would try to trick the game. There was one point in the game where you need to do a bunch of heroic things in the local castle. In order to gain access to the castle, you need to announce your name to a herald (spelling whatever name you chose for yourself correctly) so he could announce you to the baron for an audience. One of the central quests in the game required that you find the Baron’s long lost son. After some snooping and talking to people in the game, you figure out the Baron’s Son’s name (which, ironically, I shit you not, was Bernard). I jumped out of the game, created a new character, and gave him the exact name of the Baronet, assuming that I could fast-talk my way through the quest, if the gate guard announced me as the long-lost son of the Baron.

In reality, it didn’t make a lick of difference to the game what my name was. Of course, this was before I understood scripted logic, and how computers worked on the inside from a programmatic sense. I definitely understood cause/effect relationships, and how to DO things with computers, but I didn’t understand the essence of computation, and the cold beauty of the latticework of logic beneath the shell.

I turned to those early resources at my disposal. The Sierra On Line BBS was full of older gamer geeks, whose responses comprised the usual cocktail of internet responses. Some applauded thinking outside the box, others amounted to ‘RTFM N00B’. Both sides seemed to agree that to understand why what I did would not work, I needed to understand how programs worked. That led me to my first brush with OOP, via The Zen of Programming, which was assigned reading years later in my intro to OOP class in college.

As a footnote, Sierra, the game company that made the series of Police Quest, Hero Quest, King’s Quest etc, also had the first graphical online game environment I ever took part in. It was called Sierra On-Line, a BBS based GUI, complete with avatars, gambling, and live real time MMORPG, which cost 39.95$ for FIVE HOURS of connectivity (long distance for dialing CA not included). After getting into my first internet relationship (with a woman who later became a r/l girlfriend, and who came in and out of the scene in my life from so many angles it is hard to pick her out of it), I learned the moral lesson of moderation, when that 400$ bill came in. My parents did not believe it possible for someone to spend 50 hours on a computer doing ANYTHING that was not a paying job. How the world has proved them wrong.

Since that last brush with the conceptual reality of programs and programming, at the doorstep of 1990, I have continued to love technology. Sometimes I am fascinated by potential, other times wowed by achievement. Occasionally I am nauseated by its poor application, or outraged by its misuse. Most of what keeps me in technology head space these days (aside from a steady paycheck) are the theoretical possibilities beyond the event horizon. Towards that end, over the past few years I have spent large amounts of energy absorbing the underlying physics principles which has led to the theories bundled as quantum mechanics. This has not been focused until fairly recently (last two years or so) wherein I have been exploring the logical/logistical conundrums of quantum computing, and moving through the murky waters of cryptography into the full-blooded science of information theory.

My patterns of thoughts and obsessive reading shout out at me through my expenses on books for 2006 (part of keeping an itemized tax log); anthropology, biographical minutiae, history, theoretical science, philosophy, theological history, theoretical spirituality, information theory, annals of fights between inventive geniuses – all of these interconnected harmonies with no central melody to unite them.

None of this data flow really came full circle until a couple weeks ago, when I was trying to make some notes for further research, and dropped my Treo. When I came back up from beneath my desk, I bumped my head, which hurt a lot. While I was trying not to curse too loudly, scrubbing the lump forming on the back of my skull, my gaze fell to two books stacked on the corner of my desk, one of which had been knocked askew by my noggin . Programming the Universe was sitting atop Decoding the Universe. Despite the painful knot I gave myself on the underside desk, I have to laugh now at the revelation it led to.

For those who have not seen the movie Pi, allow me to add a spoiler or two:

  • The protagonist suffers from migraines (which is how the movie was recommended to me)
  • He believes that he has found a number set which unlocks the patterns in life, which is a closed numbers system. he uses this magic number to break codes on the stock market, or whatever else he applies the number to.

My greatest moments of self-realization always come at times when my life is in chaos, and I am being so scrutinizing of all the variables in my world, while trying to maintain a rational detachment from them to analyze trends.

I’m looking for the opposite of what the guy in Pi had. I am searching for the algorithm that tells me where the grail is not. I don’t need essential starts, universal answers, or self-solving problems. I want to be able to apply an information frame set to a logical reduction with scoped variables, and find out which ways it will turn up wrong, and what those things wrong have in common. I want to know where the patterns of wrongness lives, not the home address of the universal solution. Gather enough of that problem data, and I think you might be able to quantify chaos meaningfully. I’ve been a worst-caser for a long time. I am looking for a system to support it, and refine it. I want to do this before the variable I am solving for becomes a realistic constant in my information framework.

I don’t think the truth of life lies in the answers. I think it lies in what all the failures and wrong answers have in common, either in madness or in method.

Goldfish.

they are filming more “I Am Legend” stuff in NYC today, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. it is weird walking to work onto a movie set, even weirder when they have made it look like things have been abandoned for 20 odd years. creepy.

the movie was everything i have been waiting for since i first heard rumors of its impending creation. the fact that the only two movies in the last 10 years i have had 0 complaint about when walking out were both Frank Miller adaptations is no coincidence, in my mind.

the acting was well done, without being hammy (my last lingering fear). the costuming breathed life to the pages of miller’s work, the score and sound effects were superb. in a movie with so much death, they still managed to make the poignant deaths heavy. there were several times i got chills.

go see it.