My Thoughts on Computers

I suppose that this topic is quintessential in understanding who I am as a person. My interest in computers has been the driving force behind my decision making for a very long time.And, It is without a doubt that I can tie who, what, and where I am to one experience that happened many many years ago. From the very first time I laid my little six year old eyes on a computer my world changed, in that very instant my mind was made up. I no longer cared to be a Paleontologist, or an Archeologist, there was no doubt I would work with computers. At four I knew the word Paleontologist that's how into dinosaurs I was and in one instant that all changed. Now I wanted to be a Computerologist? Computerer? No, I didn't know what it was called but I wanted to be it. I'm not exactly sure when this moment occurred. It was in 1989 or 1990, and the computer that won my heart was none other then an Apple IIe, a computer that was as old as I was. They put the 5 1/4" floppy into the drive and let it spin up. I can remember the smell of that computer, I'm not sure how to describe it, something like dust, and aged plastic, but I've always associated it with old electronics. The disk it was loading was a LOGO program. You could give programming instructions to a little triangle and it would draw shapes. The first thing I ever did on a computer was program a "turtle" to draw geometric patterns and I loved it with all my soul. It was the most amazing, incredible thing I had ever seen. I don't know what I had it draw, and it doesn't matter. I am positive that this experience completely changed my life.

From that time on when i was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up I would say, "A guy that works on computers." I found every opportunity to use computers as often as I could. We didn't own a computer at the time, but I had friends who did. I remember playing the classic death simulator known as Oregon Trail. I was always a banker and I'd buy a wagon load of ammunition, no shoes or blankets for my kids it's a dangerous world and we needed to shoot it! I usually killed little Timmy in the first river we decided to ford. Little Sara Jane was next. She would be well on her way to death by dysentery or cholera before Fort Laramie. And by the time we got to Independence Rock we were all dead a door nails. Looking back I suppose the banker was a poor choice. After all he had lived his life in a posh inside job with the best amenities the 1840s had to offer. That is, until his mid-life crisis forced him to pull his family away from the relative peace and comfort of the East to satisfy his selfish need for accomplishment and adventure by making an ill planed campaign across the frontier to the land of Seasonal Disaffective Disorder. And, in this foolish attempt to feel alive he subjects his ill-equipped family to the rigors of frontier life only to die tragically at the hand of unassuming parasites contracted while drinking out of a dirty river he never should have tried crossing in the first place. It all makes sense now.

When I was a little older my parents brought home an IBM computer, I don't know what kind of hardware it had, but I remember the orange monochrome monitor. The most entertaining program it had installed was a toss up between Word Perfect and DOS. It did  have a keno gambling game, which might sound like it could be fun but you have to remember that nobody ever wins at keno. So, it was just a way to watch your number of virtual dollar amount reach zero while feeling a vague sense of shame, guilt, and despair. So again, I say Word Perfect was probably the most entertaining program on the computer, I mean, you could change fonts! I remember writing a couple terrible short stories about baseball cards.  My parents would praise my attempts at writing with compliments and encouragement, but I know that after reading my youthful attempts at literature they were probably trying to figure out where they had gone wrong and what possible chance I had to lead a normal life with such a handicap.

It was not long after this, that on a snowy Christmas morning that I received one of the greatest gifts of my life. I woke up, and there on my desk beside my bed was a very old, very used, very familiar Apple IIe computer in all it's green monochrome glory. It had a box of hundreds of 5 1/4" program discs with it. And, with some embarrassment I have to admit I used that little green box into the late nineties.

In school, I had the chance to learn Geography, History, and Astronomy all while chasing a brown haired vixen in the red trench coat. She lead me through time, across the world, and even out to space, and naturally, I followed. I very vaguely remember learning math from aliens, or monsters, or something. I'm not sure which. I ran around catching misspelled words in a butterfly net for trophies. Now that I think about it these old games sound more like the musings of the criminally insane, but they kept my computerer dream alive. One day I would understand these magic boxes and in that day I would be able to make my own magic. I played Doom, and Wolfenstein. I killed Nazis and demon space monsters without remorse or sympathy. I flew planes...eventually... once I finally learned how to keep from crashing on take off, but I never could learn to land the blasted things. I'm of the opinion that it was impossible. I am sure that the landing gear was rigged with explosives and set to detonate the second they touched the ground. I played chess which was really unfair since at the time I didn't even know how the pieces moved. I fired bombs over mountain at very specific angles and velocities. I played anything I could get my hands on and even though I was always well behind the times, I loved it. Every bit of it.

My first memories of the internet came from fifth grade.The internet capable computer was found in the corner of the gifted classroom. Yes, in my youth I was a certified genius, I had been tested! The computer was running some sort of Prodigy service, and from what I can remember all we could do on it was take tests. As you can imagine it was never very popular. I preferred using my time building complex geometrical shapes with yarn and straws, and other sundry gifted projects. However, in sixth grade, also while in the gifted program I used my genius level intelligence to help our school librarian learn how to use Netscape Navigator to find Hubble pictures from NASA.

At the ripe young age of 12 or 13 a friend and I entered chat rooms on AOL for the first time. What fun was had pretending we were older and cooler then we actually were, and talking to other people pretending to be younger and less creepy then they actually were.  From what I remember we would be asked our a/s/l, and we would respond with some lies that would make us seem interesting then try to keep the lie going for as long as possible, which as it turned out was forever, because everybody else is doing exactly the same thing. There have been more lies told in chat rooms since the early 90's then in all the rest of the world since time began.  In hindsight, I cannot tell you how many soon to be registered sex offenders we chatted with, after all we were young and innocent, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number was "all of them".

I learned to program from a friend with a copy of QBASIC on a 3 1/2" floppy. I took classes in high school on how to program in C++ and Visual Basic. Once I graduated I attended college and studied Computer Science. Everything was going to plan I was doing everything required to achieve the dreams of my youth, and then it happened. It was the end of my junior year in college and it struck me that I no longer enjoyed what I was doing. The magic was gone. I had learned too much. I was too far in and now all my dreams came crashing down around me. I looked around and I now knew the limitations of computers, the various ins and outs. I had just enough knowledge to destroy what made them special and not enough to do anything with it. I continued on anyway. I finished my degree. I got a job shortly thereafter "working with computers", now I am a professional Computerologist, whatever it's called. I have accomplished my childhood dreams. Maybe with time I will will rediscover the joy and magic of my youth or perhaps I should have been a paleontologist.

My Thoughts on Food (Part 1)

I really like food, a lot! I'm not even kidding here. Food is something I relish, it can cheer me up on a cloudy day. It can comfort me when sad. It can listen when I just need to talk. It waits patiently and never calls you names. Food can be sweet and tender, or hot and spicy, full of the zest that makes life worth living sometimes. It can even fill up that emptiness deep inside you. But in all seriousness I want to talk about my special relationship with food over the years.

I was a fat kid at birth, 10 lbs and 13 oz, and I assume from baby pictures that didn't change much until I was able to run around like the crazy little blond boy I was. There is a story told about me when I was mere months old my mother was at McDonald's and I got a hold of one of those fries and with a death grip I gummed it into submission devouring my first solid food like a baby shark fights for survival in it's mother's womb. I had tasted victory, and it tasted like starch, salt, and vegetable oil.

I was an undefeated champion of food. I always made sure my plates were happy plates until one fateful day. I remember at the time I was living in Austin Texas in "The Blue House". We were sitting down to dinner, I remember we were having baked beans. I don't remember what else was on the plate, but I clearly remember those beans. I went to poor salt on them and the top came off and dumped salt all over the beans, much to the delight of my older sister. They were inedible, ruined, I couldn't eat them. However, at that very moment a thought occurred to me. I had a glimmer of hope. I had recently learned about the concept of opposites and since pepper was the opposite of salt they would cancel each other out. Genius! I thought. So I dumped the whole container of pepper into my beans to counteract the salt. Much to the dismay of my father. Sadly my genius plan had a small miscalculation. It turns out pepper is not in fact the opposite of salt. After my first bite I realized my mistake and protested loudly against the school system for their misinformation. Or perhaps more accurately I protesting the spoonful of salt and pepper with a hint of bean. My father now furious at my idiocy (he didn't take into account the high level problem solving skills I had just utilized) said that I had to eat all the beans with the salt and pepper in order to have dessert. I was determined to have dessert and tearfully I shoveled a second spoonful of bean flavored salt and pepper into my mouth. Sobbing into my beans I took a third bite now even saltier from the tears. This time it was rejected and there was nothing I could do about it. As it turns out human bodies especially small 5 year old human bodies cannot actually consume that amount of salt and pepper and survive. I was beaten. My reign of supremacy over food was at an end. To this day I do not remember the aftermath of the event. I will, however, never forget that salt and pepper are not, in fact, opposites of each other. Never Forget!

After a story like that one, you might think that baked beans became my food nemesis, but that is not the case. I don't remember exactly when I met him for the first time, my great weakness, my own personal Kryptonite of food, but we've had many opportunities to meet and when we do it is a hard fought battle where the outcome is not assured. This culinary equivalent of supervillainy is non other then the infamous Chinese Stir-fry. My parents owned a wok and they weren't afraid to use it on occasion. I hated that piece of cookware. I hated it with a passion. I'm sure the first time we met I stared at the self righteous smug excuse for a meal and perhaps poked it with a fork (we didn't use chopsticks. There is no doubt this is the only reason I survived. At the very least, I had a weapon I knew how to fight with.) I'm sure words were spoken along the lines of "Try it you'll like it, it's just vegetables and rice." I probably pouted and thought "Yeah right if it was just vegetables and rice it wouldn't taste like ..." I actually don't know what I would have compared it too because from that day forth the 1 in my 1 - 10 scale was defined. It was the worst imaginable taste, the antithesis of all that was good and holy in the world. It was my enemy. I rejected it. I would not eat it. I was sure of it. I promise you, to this day, my stomach will spasm at the thought of eating it. I remember the sad full plate pleading to be rid of it. The plate was unhappy and there was nothing I could do. I had no power to save it. The plate suffered, and I was impotent, that moment killed a small part of me that I will never be able to restore.

My memories of food aren't all bad. There were many great and glorious feeding experiences some involved my father's mother, our Mimi. I know many people have that grandmother so skilled in cooking she could make angels in heaven weep. I will not try to say that my grandmother cooked better then yours. I have no way of knowing, and it doesn't really matter. What I am saying is that the times we spent eating when visiting Mimi were without a doubt some of the greatest moments of my early life. When we would visit we would come in right before dinner time. It didn't matter what time it was when we showed up, because no matter what hour we got there it was about 20 minutes before the food was ready. She would have all four eyes of her stove cooking fresh vegetables prepared in the southern style. As I understand it southern style veggies are cooked with butter, salt, and love and to this day I'm not entirely sure what love tastes like. There would be ham, and turkey, gravy, dressing, rolls and the crowning food of awesome, the creme d'la creme, the pinnacle of perfection, the pear salad. I don't know where this particular treat originated, but whoever first stumbled upon it was either a genius or most assuredly mad. You take a leaf of iceberg lettuce and lay it on the plate, you then take a pear half and place it one the leaf. In the depression where the seeds have been removed you put a dollop of mayonnaise. Now, bear with me, I know what you are thinking, but we aren't finished yet. You then take a finely shredded cheddar cheese and sprinkle it on top. I know, I know it's madness but when you eat it you are revitalized. Your tongue sings sweet praises, and true joy is made known unto you. I don't know how. I don't know why. I don't question the mysteries of life, it just is. Now, after eating all that, multiple times, you are now eligible to approach the dessert tray. There were always a variety of confections, pies, and cakes to choose from. The ever popular lemon icebox pie, a pecan pie, pound cake with whipped cream and fruit, chocolate cake, cookies, fudge, and ice cream. You could pick and choose, or take a bit of each. By golly, you had earned it! This feast wasn't for the weak willed this was a spread for the mighty champions of the comestibles, and I was a champion.

My Thoughts on Online Dating

I recently met this girl over the internet. I was participating in one of those online dating sites. It seemed like a reasonable next step. I mean, What can I say? What was I supposed to do? There wasn't anybody around that I was interested in getting to know better. So, I said to myself, okay I didn't say; I thought to myself in a very general way. "Why not try to sell myself to a wider audience?" I was unable to find a good enough reason not to so I did. I advertised myself with pictures and a profile. I even took the little personality test, you know, the whole nine yards. Over a few months of idle searching and looking I had met a few people from the site, I had even gone out with one in person, but to be honest I was not very impressed. I was the opposite of impressed really, but I suppose that goes with the territory. I suppose that's why online dating has such a negative vibe.

Anyway, I was contemplating what I would do next. What other means of meeting people that don't live within my narrow little life when I received a "Hi" from somebody on the site. "I'll take a look" I said to myself "Why not, make myself feel worse for mentally rejecting another girl I'm just not attracted to? Wait... what's this? She's cute... Don't get your hopes up yet, you haven't even read the blurb you have to read the blurb. I mean what if she's crazy or, heaven forbid, dumb as a brick?" I told myself, while once again feeling worse about myself and humanity. I read the greeting, she didn't sound crazy, she wasn't dumb, in fact she was interesting. I caught myself wanting to know more. My next order of business was to send her a message. I attached my e-mail address, and let her know that I appreciated her "Hi", and mentioned that I found her profile intriguing.

That's the word I used, intriguing. I remember wanting to sound interested without being creepy weird. And, for the record I find that the line between interested and creepy weird is too narrow. I'm not saying I want to do creepy weird things, and it be normal. I just think some normal things are considered creepy weird... hmm, does that mean what I think is normal is actually creepy weird? Possibly... I should ponder that more.

So she responded back to me, with a little caution and some back-peddling thrown in for good measure. "It was just a little 'Hi'"She implied, "It was very innocent I swear! By golly if you are creepy weird I will drop you like a hot rock." That's the sort of vibe I got from our first correspondence, a promising start right?... "I'm a creeper and she knows it... great!" Okay probably not so promising, but I could work with it. I tried to respond in a manner to set her at ease, something along the lines of "You are absolutely right people online are creepy and weird. However, if you are up to it, maybe we can learn a little about each other, and not be creepy or weird!" It worked! She totally responded to me again. This time much more at ease. "I'm still concerned! You haven't proven anything yet. So, state your business and I may consider what you have to say." I'm of the opinion she replied with those exact words hidden among other sentences. "Hot dog," I thought (this is not a popular phrase and after writing it I can see why.) "I'm making progress."

We traded messages once again. This time it was much more congenial we answered questions and talked about what we do, who we know, our dreams and ambitions, pets, books, movies, and religion. I then didn't respond, I was busy. I was moving after all that's an excuse people use and it was true. I was working, I have to sit there, every day, in front of a computer that has internet access where it's possible to email. How could I possibly respond? And, I had activities and people to please. Then a week past. "Oh now it's weird. I mean we had sent 3 correspondences in less then 3 days, and now it's been a week..." what does that even mean in the world of the internet? That's like 3/4 of an eternity on the internet. I mean, memes live, grow old, die, and zombify in that time. So now I was moving, working and terrified that I had spurned somebody who didn't take kindly to spurning. Another week past, oh great now I was a jerk. Two weeks, that was officially the amount of time necessary to jerk a human being, and I had done it to myself. I wasn't going to let it fade away though I mean this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Right? An interesting person who's cute from off the internet ... no way... I know!

So, I sent her an apology and picked up where I had left off. I hit the send button and waited... my first thought was "She's going to wait two weeks out of spite...*fake spanish accent* 'I hate waiting'", I mean I was the jerk I deserved it. It was a whole 12 hours later when I knew I was off the hook and was officially not a jerk. "Yes! I knew I wasn't a jerk... it's normal for things to happen. Of course things happen. Who would think somebody was a jerk for not writing for two whole 3/4 eternities?" That's a whole eternity and a half for those of you who aren't very good at math. If you happen to be very poor at math I'm sorry I don't mean to offend.

Well, this leads me to the point of these musings what do we do now? We are continuing our internet get to know you session, but what are the options? How does this long distance thing work? How do you take it from oh 'Hi' to something more then that. I don't think it's time for something more then oh "Hi". I'm just curious. I just mean, I tend to think about the future, and I am currently having difficulty seeing what's going to happen in the next few internet eternities.