eor

Before the Berlin Wall fell, I had a portable cassette player. (You kids remember what those were?!) This wasn't a walkman, this was a little bigger than Spock's tricorder, but shaped much the same. Best of all it could work on batteries or plug into the wall with a detachable cord! It had a speaker, but I always used the headphone jack.

I sat in front of the fuzzy green screen terminal nursing a poor understanding of COBOL until my eyes were destroyed and I needed glasses. The process was always the same: type for a short while, submit the job, sit and wait for the job to crawl up the queue, get error messages, debug, repeat ad nauseam. Student jobs always had the lowest priority so at times the wait bit could last better than two hours. Then the moment of ecstatic joy, the job made it to #1 in the queue: executing. Over all too soon, a status of how many cards were read and a list of errors. Yes, this machine still thought it was reading punch cards. An 80 column character limit on lines because that's how many holes you can fit on a card.

Afternoons would find me waiting in line for a place to sit. When others gave up the ghost I would float into their spot pale as Casper. I would show up early on Saturday mornings to get a seat in the tiny room. Plug in, put my headphones on, and begin. I might leave for lunch. I might not. The routine was always the same. Listen, wait, flip the cassette, listen, wait, flip back to side one. Sometime after noon or night I'd go home or down to the pay phone.

"Every one is a super hero,
every one is a Captain Kirk,
with orders to identify,
clarify, and classify"

I was terminally in love.

The Wall fell. Schools, states, and computer languages came and went like autumn leaves. But I still wear the glasses I earned that year. And I still prefer to program on a green screen.

"Down the beaches hand in hand,
twelfth of never on the sand.
And we said we'd be the pirate twins again
In the freezing rain of the Eastern Bloc"

"I owe my soul to each fork in the road,
each misleading sign." - Poi Dog Pondering "Thanksgiving"

The virus in my throat makes proper enjoyment of food impossible. I swallow the first bite with a wince. The later bites only become tolerable as my threshold of pain increases to the point where I can't feel anything. The food tastes good, but my usual sprint for seconds is replaced by a suspicious glare at the food.

Mind you this is nothing really to complain about. I don't have a fever. I'm sleeping well. And other than taking sustenance and trying to talk above a low conversational tone my throat is trouble free. Even the throat thing has been worse...

( 1984 )

This afternoon I'm drinking lots of tea and formatting some more books for the ebook. Later I might have some eggnog with rum. :)