Microserfs

28) I wonder if I've missed the boat on CD-ROM interactive - if I'm too old. The big companies are zeroing in on the 10 year olds. I think you only ever truly feel comfortable with the level of digitization that was normal for you from the age of five to fifteen. I mean sure, I can make new games workable, but it won't be a kick the way Tetris was. Or will it?

29) In the end, multimedia interactive won't resemble literature so much as sports.

MONDAY

Random moment earlier tonight: out of the blue Todd asked everyone in the Habitrail 2, "When they make processed cheese slices that are only 80 percent milk, what's the remaining 20 percent made from?"

Michael replied instantly, "Why, nonmilk additives, of course."

* * *

Today we learned that Bug had a piece of shareware on his computer that installs wood paneling all over your Macintosh desktop — and he didn't even tell us! Grudgingly he gave us a download. "It's called shareware, Bug, not hogware."

So now we all have digitized wood paneling on our desktops. The rumpus room dream lives on inside our computer world.

* * *

Abe-mail:

I am going to RANT today. 2 things: 1)

The US Dollar is the working currency not only of the domestic econimy, but of nearly every other country on earth (minus Europe and Japan). That must count for somethin. It's obviously grossly undervalued. Why does the Federal Reserve keep the value so low?

(insert conspiracy theory here)

And WHATS WITH THESE MUTUAL FUNDS AND PENSION FUNDS? I REFUSE to believe that money put into a bank in 1956 is *still* money in 1994. 1956 money may still technically be "there" (wherever "there" is) - but it's undead money. It's sick. Evil. I can't believe that *I*, of all people, am saying this, but there's something obscene about money that sits inside a bank and collects interest for decades. "lt;s hard at work," we're told . . .

OH RIGHT!

No, I think money is due for some sort of collapse. People are going to realize that money has a half-life - a decade or so? and then it becomes perverse and random. Expecting a pension kids? Ha hah ha!

I'm feeling like Bug today.

2)

Easter egg

platform

surfing

frontier

garden

jukebox

net

dirty linen

pipeline

lassooo

highway

We will have soon fully entered an era where we have creatted a computer metaphor for EVERY thing that exists in the real world.

Actually when you think about it, *everything* can be a metaphor for "anything*.

To quote YOU, Daniel: "I mean, If you really think about it."

* * *

Abe has a friend in research who's working on "metaphor-backwards" development of software products. That is, thinking of a real-world object with no cyber equivalent, and then figuring out what that cyber equivalent should be. Abe's worried because at the moment he's working on "gun."

* * *

Thought: sometimes you accidentally input an extra digit into the year: i.e., 19993 and you add 18,000 years on to now, and you realize that the year 19993 will one day exist and that time is a scary thing, indeed.

* * *

Actually, I've noticed recently that conversations always seem to reach the point where everybody says they don't have any time anymore. How can time just . . . disappear! Early this morning I told this to Karla as we were waking up and she said she's noticed this, too.

She also said that everybody's beginning to look the same these days - "Everybody looks so Gappy and identical." She considered this for a second. "Everybody looks the same nowadays because nobody has the time to differentiate themselves - or to even shop."

She paused and looked up at the ceiling. "Your mother doesn't like me."

"How can you get so random out of nowhere? Of course she does."

"No. She doesn't. She thinks I'm a hick."

(Oh God - not this stupid stuff again.) "You two never talk, so how can you even tell?"

"So you admit she doesn't like me?"

"No!"

"We have to do something together. We have no shared experiences or memories."

"Wait a second-don't I count?"

"Maybe she sees me as stealing you."

"Mom?"

"Let's arrange a lunch. We've been here how long? And we've never even had a lunch out together."

"Lunch? That's not much."

"Memories have to begin somewhere."

Now that I think about it, Mom never comes over to our work area. Ever. And the two of them never really do chat. It occurs to me that I should have noticed, and I realize that I'm worried about it.

A crisis in my new-and-improved life.

* * *

We shot Nerf darts (Jarts) for a few hours this afternoon down in the backyard to allow the sunlight to reset our circadian rhythms. We drank Napa Valley Cabernet like we were Gary Grant and made Klingon jokes. We used Dad's Soviet binoculars to inspect the enormous blue "Jell-O cube" down in the Valley below - a.k.a. the Air Force Satellite Control Facility, at Onizuka Air Force Base in Sunnyvale.

A citrus tree was blossoming outside the house; the air was lemony fresh and smelled like an expensive hotel's lobby.