After some very stressful weeks here in Texas I spent the better part of the weekend at condfw. While I have a ton of wonderful stories to share from the even, it is going to take me some time to write them, as of course I have a ton of work to do here in the next few weeks. Keep checking back you wont be disappointed. Hopefully I can work up the knowhow to write what i hope will be a series of posts entitled "everything I need to know I learned from watching star trek" or EINTKILFWST.
Odly enough the best way to describe the happenings of this weekend is with one of my all time favorite Star Trek episodes and one of my all time favourite folk melodies from Kataan. Listen and enjoy it really is a thought provoking tune.
Or in real life, The tune played by Picard in "The Inner Light" was an excerpt from "Scottish Fantasy", originally composed by Max Bruch and re-composed by Jay Chattaway.
Basement Rascals
The dilithium crystals made of Lever 2000 boxes, glistened from behind their tinker toy warp core enclosure. A windows 95 computer showed the star field screen saver on a fifteen inch CRT. Pen-tech mechanical pencil lead cases blinked with isolinear information while Christmas lights hung from the ceiling with only red bulbs, poised at the ready in the case of a Romulan attack. Jefferies tubes (lined up dining room chairs with a blanket over them) snaked through the house providing access to the rest of the ship. It was here at my friend Dan's house where my continuing mission would begin.
“Ready the engines, prepare for maximum warp.” Captain Dan ordered.
But sir we're still in space dock, we can't just.”“
I was always the realistic one.
“Damn it, the Enterprise is the most advanced ship in the fleet lets see what this baby can do.”
“But sir the bay doors are still closed.”
“Bahhhh ready phaser banks one and two, prepare to blast our way out. Set course for the Neutral Zone.”
“But sir we cant just."
“Damn it, I'm the captain of this ship and I say we go.”
I tap out the orders and coordinates on the LCARS control panels made of laminated printer paper and Crayola washable markers. All the while secretly sending communications to space dock control to open the bay doors. What was I supposed to do, it was his turn to play captain.
***
After many successful battles with Romulan war birds we arrived at a new unexplored alien planet (aka the back yard) via the transporter (aka running up the stairs really really fast making a whooshing noise).
The imaginary chimes of the transporter rang through our ears as we materialized The hot summer sun made our official Star Trek polyester Halloween costumes stick to the skin. Nylon black utility belts heavy with tricorders and type two phasers, hung low around our waists.
“Away team to Enterprise, maintain standard orbit."
We began our mission to save the universe form certain destruction. Our tricorders constantly scanning, ensuring the atmosphere was safe to breathe, and of course always looking for those alien life forms.
Passing birds and cars became hostile alien attackers which had to be dealt with using a few bursts from our 'Playmates' Phasers. Somewhere a neighborhood mom washing the dishes looks out the window and mutters something about us being nerds and how she wishes school would start again.
We play well into the afternoon fighting off the gratuitous Gorn, exploring crashed alien ships (aka the swing set), and studying the strange voodoo race known as sister.
The light of day has now slipped away and become dusk, our supplies of Starfleet AA Power packs were becoming weak.
“Blast we need to beam back to the ship and resupply.” “Away team to Enterprise two to beam up.” (woooshh).
The ships cook (aka mom) had replicated the evenings rations, macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, almost as good as Klingon delicacies like gagh, except for these noodles weren't moving.
“Delicious.” we mutter.
***
“I don't wanna go to bed”
“Its past your bed time.”
“But I'm not tired”
My mother, tired herself and most probably trying to avoid a late night temper tantrum hesitantly agrees.
If I let you stay up do you promise to be quiet while I watch TV?”“
“I promise.”
Oh man, Mom was actually going to let me stay up, and watch TV with her, and on a school night. Dude If I play my cards right I could totally get some cookies out of this.
Somewhere my little sister was upstairs trying to sneak down and see why I wasn't in bed. Creeeekkkk, the one stair you could never step on light enough gave away her position.
“Back in your room, go to sleep." Dad with his ever watchful ears yells. The subsequent sound of scampering little feet in a onesie immediately followed.
“Yeah take that Jennie I get to stay up with mom and you don't.” ha I win again.
A soft General Electric Console Television glow emanated over the sandy carpet of the family room. Patrick Stewart boldly stated. “Space, the final frontier.” For the next fifty minutes, teddy bear in arms, I watched intently making certain not to make a noise.
***
“Oh man space fights, robots, aliens, laser guns. This is the bestest show ever. There is no way Mom is ever making me go to bed early again, and if she tries oh yeah I've got a special scream worked up just for the occasion.
All it took was four words.
***
“Prepare to leave space dock, aft thrusters ahead one quarter port and starboard to station keeping. Ready impulse engines as soon as we've cleared the outer doors.”
“Baaaha, engaging warp drive.”
“Come on man you cant do that the engines haven't even been tested.”
“You always do this, it takes us forever to get anywhere when your captain.”
“At least when I'm captain I don't push the ship past its limits.”
“What, we always make it.”
“We make it because I play the engineer and I'm a miracle worker.”
“Whatever.”
“Damn it man, I'm the captain of this vessel and you don't follow my orders,I'll, I'll quit playing.”
“Fine.”
“Contact the station master and let him know were on our way.”
“What course sir?”
“Second star on the right and straight on til morning...
or......or.......maybe Risa....”
“Number One, do we have a Horga'hn aboard?”
It was my turn to be captain.
“Ready the engines, prepare for maximum warp.” Captain Dan ordered.
But sir we're still in space dock, we can't just.”“
I was always the realistic one.
“Damn it, the Enterprise is the most advanced ship in the fleet lets see what this baby can do.”
“But sir the bay doors are still closed.”
“Bahhhh ready phaser banks one and two, prepare to blast our way out. Set course for the Neutral Zone.”
“But sir we cant just."
“Damn it, I'm the captain of this ship and I say we go.”
I tap out the orders and coordinates on the LCARS control panels made of laminated printer paper and Crayola washable markers. All the while secretly sending communications to space dock control to open the bay doors. What was I supposed to do, it was his turn to play captain.
***
After many successful battles with Romulan war birds we arrived at a new unexplored alien planet (aka the back yard) via the transporter (aka running up the stairs really really fast making a whooshing noise).
The imaginary chimes of the transporter rang through our ears as we materialized The hot summer sun made our official Star Trek polyester Halloween costumes stick to the skin. Nylon black utility belts heavy with tricorders and type two phasers, hung low around our waists.
“Away team to Enterprise, maintain standard orbit."
We began our mission to save the universe form certain destruction. Our tricorders constantly scanning, ensuring the atmosphere was safe to breathe, and of course always looking for those alien life forms.
Passing birds and cars became hostile alien attackers which had to be dealt with using a few bursts from our 'Playmates' Phasers. Somewhere a neighborhood mom washing the dishes looks out the window and mutters something about us being nerds and how she wishes school would start again.
We play well into the afternoon fighting off the gratuitous Gorn, exploring crashed alien ships (aka the swing set), and studying the strange voodoo race known as sister.
The light of day has now slipped away and become dusk, our supplies of Starfleet AA Power packs were becoming weak.
“Blast we need to beam back to the ship and resupply.” “Away team to Enterprise two to beam up.” (woooshh).
The ships cook (aka mom) had replicated the evenings rations, macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, almost as good as Klingon delicacies like gagh, except for these noodles weren't moving.
“Delicious.” we mutter.
***
“I don't wanna go to bed”
“Its past your bed time.”
“But I'm not tired”
My mother, tired herself and most probably trying to avoid a late night temper tantrum hesitantly agrees.
If I let you stay up do you promise to be quiet while I watch TV?”“
“I promise.”
Oh man, Mom was actually going to let me stay up, and watch TV with her, and on a school night. Dude If I play my cards right I could totally get some cookies out of this.
Somewhere my little sister was upstairs trying to sneak down and see why I wasn't in bed. Creeeekkkk, the one stair you could never step on light enough gave away her position.
“Back in your room, go to sleep." Dad with his ever watchful ears yells. The subsequent sound of scampering little feet in a onesie immediately followed.
“Yeah take that Jennie I get to stay up with mom and you don't.” ha I win again.
A soft General Electric Console Television glow emanated over the sandy carpet of the family room. Patrick Stewart boldly stated. “Space, the final frontier.” For the next fifty minutes, teddy bear in arms, I watched intently making certain not to make a noise.
***
“Oh man space fights, robots, aliens, laser guns. This is the bestest show ever. There is no way Mom is ever making me go to bed early again, and if she tries oh yeah I've got a special scream worked up just for the occasion.
All it took was four words.
***
“Prepare to leave space dock, aft thrusters ahead one quarter port and starboard to station keeping. Ready impulse engines as soon as we've cleared the outer doors.”
“Baaaha, engaging warp drive.”
“Come on man you cant do that the engines haven't even been tested.”
“You always do this, it takes us forever to get anywhere when your captain.”
“At least when I'm captain I don't push the ship past its limits.”
“What, we always make it.”
“We make it because I play the engineer and I'm a miracle worker.”
“Whatever.”
“Damn it man, I'm the captain of this vessel and you don't follow my orders,I'll, I'll quit playing.”
“Fine.”
“Contact the station master and let him know were on our way.”
“What course sir?”
“Second star on the right and straight on til morning...
or......or.......maybe Risa....”
“Number One, do we have a Horga'hn aboard?”
It was my turn to be captain.
Human Soap
“Hey You, Why don't you blog anymore? Remember when we used to have so much fun linking important geek stories and writing about your life.You and other people actually enjoyed those.”
“I don't know.” I say just don't really get the urge to spend the time sitting in front of a text editor after staring at thousands of lines of code for hours everyday. Plus my life really isn't all the interesting, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable even putting stuff out for the whole world to know anymore.
I mean I've seen that CSI show.
The voice which has become synonymous with SyNONYM of whom I haven't herd from in a while speaks up.
“Who said anything about spilling your guts man , you could talk about stuff, link a bbspot post or two, tell a short story or three. Oh like today, when you walked upstairs and your roommates snake was missing from its cage and you freaked out like a little girl.”
“Hey I did not freak out I just didn't have any shoes on at the time alright.”
“Whatever, Indy.”
“Oh and don't feed me that line of bs about looking at a computer monitor all day hurts your eyes thats what you do all day anyway. Dude If your really that lazy You could hook up the Mic and just record your post into a netcast.”
“True that.” Netcasting is something I had toyed with doing in the past but never really got around to doing. I mean what if they think your voice is really annoying? and then I would have to worry about external hosting well maybe in the future.
“Ahem not that hard man .... lazy ass”
The truth is nothing lately has really inspired me to write. Well there was that one about the cabin but that was just too good not to share
. Honestly I just haven't been in the blogging mood for well, for pretty much the past few years. This gets me to thinking how come?
Whats changed, well still in school no help there, you live off campus now typical post nuclear house of college kids, but really whats the difference where you sleep when you still have the same things to do when you wake up in the morning. The soda in the fridge has been replaced with 24 cans of MGD. Running Vista and Ubuntu now, still whats the difference. Eyes took a shit and glasses are becoming that extra thing you need to drag along with your iTouch with you when you go out. I ramble off a proverbial Venn diagram of ideas, all the while knowingly ignoring what truly needed to be compared and contrasted.
The voice of SyNONYM tweets up.
“So basically what your saying is you need some major event in your life before its good enough to jot a few lines down and click publish?”
"I don't know”, Its just hard to gather my thoughts like that on en everyday basis.
“Well it never used to be a problem. Listen your just going to get depressed if you sit here and argue with yourself all afternoon go and do something away from the computer well talk later. Listen No World of Warcraft.Go grab a Guinness or something.”
I walk down the cluttered hallway which as every college house has, one clear path down the middle of massive mounds of crap. I glance over at the now locked snake tank to make sure Munch the ball python is under his log. You ever get out again and I'm gonna have myself a brand new belt.
The house is silent for once, everyones at work or in class maybe. I walk downstairs a mountain of dirty dishes which no matter how many times I wash and put away never seems to get any smaller sits stagnant in the kitchen sink. I think about washing them but decide I've done my share of cleaning this week. On the island a half eaten Birthday cake calls to me and I cut a small piece, no need for a plate. Around the corner the TV has been left on again even though it has no audience. I cant take it and move at least half the pile of dishes into the dish washer and turn it on.
"Dude, why did you do that your not Marry Poppins let the nasty indifferent roommates clean up their own shit."
"Whats up with you today why are you so pissed off? “
“Thats none of your business, just drop it and lets go back upstairs and see if we can write anything that doesn't suck for once."
Dumbfounded by the words coming from the voice of SyNONYM an awkward silence once again fills the house.
| | | |
The cursor blinks at the top left corner of the open office document.
"Ummm, perhaps you should go clean the bathroom. Or theres some homework with your name on it over there in the corner. Come back later and see if you can compose something that doesn't suck for once. Maye go grab a Guinness or something.”
“I don't know.” I say just don't really get the urge to spend the time sitting in front of a text editor after staring at thousands of lines of code for hours everyday. Plus my life really isn't all the interesting, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable even putting stuff out for the whole world to know anymore.
I mean I've seen that CSI show.
The voice which has become synonymous with SyNONYM of whom I haven't herd from in a while speaks up.
“Who said anything about spilling your guts man , you could talk about stuff, link a bbspot post or two, tell a short story or three. Oh like today, when you walked upstairs and your roommates snake was missing from its cage and you freaked out like a little girl.”
“Hey I did not freak out I just didn't have any shoes on at the time alright.”
“Whatever, Indy.”
“Oh and don't feed me that line of bs about looking at a computer monitor all day hurts your eyes thats what you do all day anyway. Dude If your really that lazy You could hook up the Mic and just record your post into a netcast.”
“True that.” Netcasting is something I had toyed with doing in the past but never really got around to doing. I mean what if they think your voice is really annoying? and then I would have to worry about external hosting well maybe in the future.
“Ahem not that hard man .... lazy ass”
The truth is nothing lately has really inspired me to write. Well there was that one about the cabin but that was just too good not to share
. Honestly I just haven't been in the blogging mood for well, for pretty much the past few years. This gets me to thinking how come?
Whats changed, well still in school no help there, you live off campus now typical post nuclear house of college kids, but really whats the difference where you sleep when you still have the same things to do when you wake up in the morning. The soda in the fridge has been replaced with 24 cans of MGD. Running Vista and Ubuntu now, still whats the difference. Eyes took a shit and glasses are becoming that extra thing you need to drag along with your iTouch with you when you go out. I ramble off a proverbial Venn diagram of ideas, all the while knowingly ignoring what truly needed to be compared and contrasted.
The voice of SyNONYM tweets up.
“So basically what your saying is you need some major event in your life before its good enough to jot a few lines down and click publish?”
"I don't know”, Its just hard to gather my thoughts like that on en everyday basis.
“Well it never used to be a problem. Listen your just going to get depressed if you sit here and argue with yourself all afternoon go and do something away from the computer well talk later. Listen No World of Warcraft.Go grab a Guinness or something.”
I walk down the cluttered hallway which as every college house has, one clear path down the middle of massive mounds of crap. I glance over at the now locked snake tank to make sure Munch the ball python is under his log. You ever get out again and I'm gonna have myself a brand new belt.
The house is silent for once, everyones at work or in class maybe. I walk downstairs a mountain of dirty dishes which no matter how many times I wash and put away never seems to get any smaller sits stagnant in the kitchen sink. I think about washing them but decide I've done my share of cleaning this week. On the island a half eaten Birthday cake calls to me and I cut a small piece, no need for a plate. Around the corner the TV has been left on again even though it has no audience. I cant take it and move at least half the pile of dishes into the dish washer and turn it on.
"Dude, why did you do that your not Marry Poppins let the nasty indifferent roommates clean up their own shit."
"Whats up with you today why are you so pissed off? “
“Thats none of your business, just drop it and lets go back upstairs and see if we can write anything that doesn't suck for once."
Dumbfounded by the words coming from the voice of SyNONYM an awkward silence once again fills the house.
| | | |
The cursor blinks at the top left corner of the open office document.
"Ummm, perhaps you should go clean the bathroom. Or theres some homework with your name on it over there in the corner. Come back later and see if you can compose something that doesn't suck for once. Maye go grab a Guinness or something.”
No cookies in Hibernation
It's the end of the day, I'm about hit the friendly key combination of alt+f4 twice and send my computer into hibernation when suddenly from under the table.
“Stop, Don't shut me down, I still have stuff to do.”
Through the acrylic panel a dim red glow annexes the darkness around the full tower, the familiar tone of 2500rpm encapsulates the otherwise silent room.
“Like What” I immediately reply Having every intention of ignoring the latest 'Important update reminder' Microsoft has so diligently created in an effort stop what they have deemed cyber-terrorists, and go right to the power button.
“Every night you put me to sleep even when I have work to do, or when I'm not even tired, and since you disconnected me from the local network I don't even have any other computers to talk to, come on, I mean when am I supposed to do updates and defrag? You never let me do them while your working.
“Well I cant keep you on all night that 700 watt power supply of yours will run up the power bill.”
“Nice try dumb-ass, you spent that extra money on a switching power supply remember, I don't use that much energy.”
All this time I have spent with a can of compressed air and BIOS update tools and this is how my computer repays me, he calls me a dumb-ass.
“Next time you play World of Warcraft I'm downloading every update I can find, Jackass, Oh and I'm disabling alt+tab.”
I decide to go ahead and let windows do its thing while I read through the days /. articles and of course check out the new FARK Headlines.
As I read the various captions, my mind wanders through four years of endless video games, three versions of windows and more LAN Parties than I even care to admit I have been to. I stop and think about how many gigabytes internet explorer and Firefox have downloaded. Yeah sure have had some good times with this rig.
“Remember when you were fast, when you were the talk of everyone at the LAN Party. When you were the host of all the quake and counterstrike servers? When all the ladies dropped by any LAN we were at just to check out your awesome mods and get some of your sweet sweet frame-rates. Don't know how you didn't overheat with your case full of all those ladies hotel keys and underpants.
“Yeah those were the day.... wait what do you mean was fast, I still am. Well, well relatively that is. I mean, I'll still blow the back side buss off of those pieces of shit mega powered abacuses Smell computers imports from India or wherever.
Hold up I saw what you were doing on-line this afternoon, casing out Newegg and Directron. Your not thinking about replacing me are you?”
I laugh look down and examine the scar on my left ring finger recalling when it got clipped by the CPU fan.
“You try and take me apart, and I'll do it again.” The CPU Fan revs.
I chuckle, trying to avoid the question, as the vibrations of a 10,000RPM hard drive tick away. “Maybe I should have done more push ups up there on stage at quakecon for another video card so I could squeeze some more time out of you.”
“What does that matter now, I'm just as fast as I ever have been, maybe even faster. Come on load up Far Cry 2, I'll show you I've got some juice left in these memory banks.
I reluctantly navigate to the executable file of Far Cry 2, and double click, all the while knowing this computers days as a Windows machine were limited. What the hell, lets see what the old rig can do I raise the default settings to medium quality and pray for the best.
Thanks Will Wheaton for giving me this great idea modified version of the Wesley dialogues over at wwdn
“Stop, Don't shut me down, I still have stuff to do.”
Through the acrylic panel a dim red glow annexes the darkness around the full tower, the familiar tone of 2500rpm encapsulates the otherwise silent room.
“Like What” I immediately reply Having every intention of ignoring the latest 'Important update reminder' Microsoft has so diligently created in an effort stop what they have deemed cyber-terrorists, and go right to the power button.
“Every night you put me to sleep even when I have work to do, or when I'm not even tired, and since you disconnected me from the local network I don't even have any other computers to talk to, come on, I mean when am I supposed to do updates and defrag? You never let me do them while your working.
“Well I cant keep you on all night that 700 watt power supply of yours will run up the power bill.”
“Nice try dumb-ass, you spent that extra money on a switching power supply remember, I don't use that much energy.”
All this time I have spent with a can of compressed air and BIOS update tools and this is how my computer repays me, he calls me a dumb-ass.
“Next time you play World of Warcraft I'm downloading every update I can find, Jackass, Oh and I'm disabling alt+tab.”
I decide to go ahead and let windows do its thing while I read through the days /. articles and of course check out the new FARK Headlines.
As I read the various captions, my mind wanders through four years of endless video games, three versions of windows and more LAN Parties than I even care to admit I have been to. I stop and think about how many gigabytes internet explorer and Firefox have downloaded. Yeah sure have had some good times with this rig.
“Remember when you were fast, when you were the talk of everyone at the LAN Party. When you were the host of all the quake and counterstrike servers? When all the ladies dropped by any LAN we were at just to check out your awesome mods and get some of your sweet sweet frame-rates. Don't know how you didn't overheat with your case full of all those ladies hotel keys and underpants.
“Yeah those were the day.... wait what do you mean was fast, I still am. Well, well relatively that is. I mean, I'll still blow the back side buss off of those pieces of shit mega powered abacuses Smell computers imports from India or wherever.
Hold up I saw what you were doing on-line this afternoon, casing out Newegg and Directron. Your not thinking about replacing me are you?”
I laugh look down and examine the scar on my left ring finger recalling when it got clipped by the CPU fan.
“You try and take me apart, and I'll do it again.” The CPU Fan revs.
I chuckle, trying to avoid the question, as the vibrations of a 10,000RPM hard drive tick away. “Maybe I should have done more push ups up there on stage at quakecon for another video card so I could squeeze some more time out of you.”
“What does that matter now, I'm just as fast as I ever have been, maybe even faster. Come on load up Far Cry 2, I'll show you I've got some juice left in these memory banks.
I reluctantly navigate to the executable file of Far Cry 2, and double click, all the while knowing this computers days as a Windows machine were limited. What the hell, lets see what the old rig can do I raise the default settings to medium quality and pray for the best.
Thanks Will Wheaton for giving me this great idea modified version of the Wesley dialogues over at wwdn
Last couple of weeks I have increased my number of portable electronic devices to include an itouch were gonna try to use twitter for a while here to offset the time between blog posts.
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