A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

I'm in the Arcus war room now. Jim and the late-night full-timers are trying to figure out how to go live with dialup by Friday morning. I bet I won't be able to talk anyone into a game of Carcassonne.

What is it with young men in tech support and massive cologne use? Just like MINT, and these aren't MINT kids. Is this unique to Maine?

Arcus finally sent me a check. It says "Caffeinated Consulting" beneath my name. Eek... I thought I made it clear the letterhead was a gag. Now I will pay for my little prank.

Mumble. Well, if it actually ends up making a difference, I'll go ahead and register a DBA. So: nyeah.

So how was my Xmas?

I was with mom and dad in their house, along with brothers Peter and Ricky, and Ricky's friend Russell (known affectionately by my parents as "Sewerman"). Sentimental Ricky was near to tears because we nukes (plus Russell) were all together, which doesn't happen very often. (Note: There's a reason for that.) Ricky spent much of the day loudly obsessing over the wording of the Constitution, and how this explained the Civil War. Peter enjoyed a couple of card games with me. He's a big Aquarius fan, and teaching him Mama Mia was pretty fun, actually.

Some fun was had going through the photos on my iBook and telling stories about the people therein. I have given up explaining to Peter that I am not dating every woman who I mention in my stories about my life, so he now thinks I've having all these crazy flings, but this amuses him, so, whatever.

Here I have a little epiphany. To some extent I think everyone in my family feels the same confusion in my stories about my friends. Their concept of friendship is definitely different than mine, as is, perhaps, their whole concept of Proper Interpersonal Relationships. The more I think about it, drawing on my memories of growing up with them, the more I see a belief within my nukes that one is close to one's family, and keeps one's distance from everyone else. Friends can be fun activity partners, but getting too close to them will turn you gay, which means that you have failed as a human or something. No kidding -- my dad used to out-and-out warn me about this, when I was but a wee prog. This assumes that your friends are of the same sex as you, because being friends with someone of opposite gender, but with no intention to eventually marry them, is weird, and probably also a path to sexual inversion. The only way approved ways to bond with people are by a) marrying them or b) creating them, both of which brings them into your family, where it's OK to get as close as you want. Within limits.

Oh, my poor family, when I see them in this light. No wonder they're all broken. All they have is each other, because they don't think they're allowed anyone else. And what does that really give them?

Eh. Maybe I'm just looking for an excuse for my own difficulties in getting close to people when I write this sort of thing. It seems true, anyway.

Back to the gift exchange: Well, to be honest, I wasn't paying much attention. I mean, I usually ignore holidays (and the passage of time in general) but I was extra-special unaware of Xmas this year due to my workload, so I didn't even think about any giving. My parents got me a sweatjacket, which I then gave to Peter, and an electric razor thing with built-in vacuum cleaner, which, eh, I guess I'll eBay or something eventually. I had earlier told my parents that the best gift would be nothing at all, since I have too much stuff as it is, and this explains the lack of new furniture and whatnot. (Over the past year, in fact, they've attempted to gift me with entire patio sets and so on, and it's all I can do to wave my hands at them, no no no, really, you can keep it.)

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Random observation: I view electrical outlets as the source of all life (especially since obtaining my iBook), and I plan my stay in any place by their availability.

My parents view electrical outlets as ugly wall defacements best kept hidden behind large, heavy pieces of furniture. Putting them dead-center behind giant sofas and bookcases always wins, for them.

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I've spent the last couple of days in study. Been playing with Squeak for OS X, and kicking around MIGS, the modular Internet game system, my own mysterious project.

After deciding that my current strategy would make client-writing too difficult (or, at best, easy but with ugly results), I have yet again reshaped my ideas for how this game system would work, and have started slapping some code together, though so much of it is needed before anything can appear on-screen -- I'm trying to make a game-creation framework, rather than just one game -- that there's still a lot more to write before I can start enjoying any gee-whiz results. This is the most trying time of software creation, I believe, the period between barenaked concept and the first pre-pre-pre-alpha working model. I'm almost scared to put it down for the evening, fearing that the future me, seeing no deliverables, will just give up and not return to it. But: I've been working on this all night and need a break. We'll see what happens.

As a result of my rethinking, I have been learning a lot about SVG. If I stick to my present course, MIGS will rely heavily on this particular technology -- which is pretty cool. It's perfect for a lot of the nutty stuff I'd like to do in MIGS, particularly where it involves bringing together lots of little graphical bits from different sources and mushing them all together into one visual field. This is, more or less, my current plan for how MIGS will build and present game boards and pieces. It should in theory work both for people who just want to grab a client program, connect to a server, and start playing, and for those who wish to design and show off their own electronic signature Icehouse stashes or whatever when playing. In theory. We'll... um, see what happens.

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One of the Arcus people, on hearing that I spent much of yesterday hiding out here at the office, said that he spend much of his day hiding in the basement of his father's home with his own two little sons, where they all rolled up D&D 3E characters. They now have an elf wizard and a halfling monk. I said: "Awesome."

Now that I've returned and taken in movie and a chocolate with the locals, I apologize to my Maine friends. Waterville is actually a pleasant place to hang out -- if you have a place there. Today, I did not. The Arcus offices were empty (except for Adam, workin' hard), and as such all my friends there were elsewise engaged over the holiday. I certainly didn't flip out during my recent two-week stint there while waiting for Chez Chestnut to open up, but this time I was there only because the calendar said I should be, and that, it turned out, wasn't a good enough reason to stay any longer than I had to. Out-flippage followed.

I missed an all-hands meeting today due to a series of failures.

• Once I marked the meeting in my Palm, I immediately wiped it from my brain.


• Having it not in mind, I figured that spending the Sunday-Monday overnight with friends in Boston wasn't a bad idea.


• I had, a week or two ago, set the Palm to breedle at me every morning at 8am, in a pathetic imitation of an alarm clock. It never works, and I find myself dismissing the 'Wake up!' reminder note every time I first turn on the Palm for the day, at 11 or so. So when I woke up at 10 today in Medford, three hours south of where I should have been, but still able to barely make lunch, I flipped on my Palm to check the time, and impatiently and blindly dismissed the two alerts awaiting me -- one of which was a meeting reminder.

So I'm waiting for Jim to finish seeing everyone out the door, so I can apologize with no excuses or alibis. This stinks.

I have been in Waterville a week now. Insert pointed drumming of fingers, just once, here. Near as I can tell, there has been no motion on the Cambridgeport front. I have been tentatively sniffing at other opportunities, just in case. Several phone calls to make today. I wonder how much more line I should let out for Chez Charla... while I really want to live there, my confidence will be seriously eroded if I find out today that we're right where we were two weeks ago. The clock is ticking on the prime immediate backup location, just to make things more interesting.

Interesting, yes, ah yes indeedy.

I'm sorry I am so grumpy. Here, look at pictures of a bunny with a succession of leaves on its head.

Other stuff from a letter to a friend:

I have been kept sane during my stay by hanging out all day at the offices of Arcus Digital. They have a wirless network, and I have a laptop. And they have couches and lots of snacks and soda. (And a tip jar.) Mmmm. It's a pretty good environment, but for that it's in the cultural wasteland of central Maine, and that it's all-male. Then again, there are none of the loutish males that appeared increasingly during MINT's decline, so that's nice, but working in a crossgendered environment is still preferable, to me. Then again again, it's not like I'm actually working here. Or even plan on staying too much longer.

I will, however, be doing some work. This evening Andy talked to me about my first piece of contract work Arcus'd like me to do... an easy task, good teeth-cutting, not just with here but with the whole freelance thing. Naturally, Jim & co is all about telecommuting, so I'm very much not tying myself to this geographic spot by accepting the offer (though I do expect to visit semi-oftenly).

At least undef is back in business, more or less... the machine has a fresh new copy of Debian Linux on it, installed under the supervision of Arcus people, who didn't let me set up any security holes this time, and had me install software to help keep the thing hardened. To which I say: good. I'd say that this will absolutely positively be the last Bad Move this box has had to make, but with three such events in 2001 alone, I really wouldn't trust myself with such statements anymore. Then again, the situation is totally different... it used to be an insecure junkpile running either on my apartment floor or in a company machine room, and now it's a very secure box maintained by paid professionals in a dedicated hosting facility. We'll see what happens.

That letter was writ two days ago. Since then, my domain has become fully world-visible once again, though I've yet to properly crawl through the whole site and see what's broken and fix it all, again. It's worth it. I say to the l33t h4><0rs: Come on in. And burn! Yesh.

The cafe upstairs, Jorgenson's, is for sale. Everyone at Arcus will be very very sad if it turns into something other than a cafe, because, mm boy, good coffee right upstairs, available through the afternoon? Friend, that's half the reason I took the job at O'Reilly last year, with the promise that it'd be moving to Davis Square and its three late-nite coffee shops. (Ed note: I took the job, and it didn't move. And then I got laid off anyway.) According to this news story, the owners are selling all their inventory and equipment along with the space, so that's a hopeful sign.

A photographer came in to shoot John and myself playing Lost Cities at lunch yesterday for that story, but they used a photo of a college student instead. Foo! Doesn't two hairy guys taunting each other over a bizarre-looking card game have far more visual appeal than some waifish bookworm? Bah.

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The shower in my parents' house is from the seventh and a half floor. I have to kneel in order to wash my face.

Strange fact: three people in the last three days, two of them friends who are not prone to make such random outbursts, have independently exclaimed how very tall I suddenly seem lately. MaryMary and my Mom offer no hypothoses why this is so. Andy thinks that I used to slouch by default, and have stopped. I am totally unaware of any of this.

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I've started writing again, pretending that I'm settled. Ellie has been sketching rough drafts of book covers. First there was a neat cover featuring two Arabian birds, kites, which editor Linda thought was wicked cool, except that they seemed to be about to kill each other. After Linda asked if she could tone it down, Ellie made one with some sort of fru-fru bird, which Linda labeled "milquetoast". Sadly, Ellie snuck me the URL to it, and just seeing a possible book cover with my name on it made me fall in love with the thing. Since I just finished Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, I emailed the URL to a friend: "Want to see my daemon?"

Ellie has since moved away from birds and now favors monkeys. Green monkeys. Monkeys reflect both the subject matter and the projected sales figures, she notes. ???