Newsgroups: alt.angst.xibo.sex,alt.mud,alt.religion.kibo From: jfurr@nyx.cs.du.edu (JKF) Subject: Xibo's Vacation (LONG) [Repost] Message-ID: <1992Dec20.032721.23591@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> Keywords: mud angst xibo tank girl Reply-To: xibo@fido.econ.arizona.edu Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept. Date: Sun, 20 Dec 92 03:27:21 GMT Lines: 1380 Yes, Xibo knows I'm posting this. Send comments about the writing to Xibo at xibo@fido.econ.arizona.edu. By: xibo@fido.econ.arizona.edu (Mr. Coates) Date: 9 Apr 92 18:41:49 GMT Organization: Xibological Perimeter Several months ago, a few angst-list members were mulling over the idea of AngstCon III, where to have it, and when. It became quickly apparent that if we held it in Minneapolis, then the turnout would be pretty good, since five of the members live in that area. So a few arrangements were made, the date debated wildly, and eventually the weekend of March 27th was decided upon. I decided that since I was going to fly all the way out to Minneapolis from my humble abode in Tucson, I might as well see other parts of the midwest as well. Utilizing my knowledge that round-trip tickets don't have to be with the same city, I chose to visit Chicago, because it's a big famous city that I've never been to before. All I had to do was arrange to get from Chicago to Minneapolis on my own, via bus or with a friend. As it happened, I was able to convince Pope_751 to drive down from Milwau- kee, pick me up in Chicago, take me to Purdue for a couple days, and then drive me to Milwaukee, where I would meet up with another friend, Markian Gooley, who would then take me to Minneapolis, where I would do the AngstCon thing and then fly back home. The overall adventure took nine days, from Friday, March 20th to Sunday, March 29th. I planned to take a week off from work, but made no official arrangements with the department secretary, as I was rather displeased with having to work panic-level hours for a couple weeks, getting the RS/6000s back on their feet after they had been decimated by IBM's kludge-filled AIX 3.2 upgrade. If you are considering doing this upgrade on your RS/6000, DON'T. If you are looking to hire someone who has experience managing RS/6000s, please hire me, I'm very underpaid currently. So, armed with airplane tickets, ride plans, and contingency plans, I ventured forth on my adventure into the great midwest. What follows is a short summary of my travels, along with some of the observations I made at the time. Friday, March 20th After two weeks of pure hell, the RS/6000s were rescued, and the laboratory had almost returned to business as usual. It was amazing that I was able to clear things up in that time, and leave for vacation with a clear conscience. Casually I packed my luggage, one really big suitcase with a week's worth of clothes and my camera, and my briefcase for carry-on entertainment, and "maps". These maps, for the most part, consisted of text descriptions of how to get here and there, which I had received via email. For entertainment I put the day's Wall Street Journal, my Game Boy (with Final Fantasy Legend II cartridge), and a paperback novel, "The Difference Engine" by Gibson and Sterling. It was a calm, sunny day, near 70, as I drove to the airport. I managed to get my car parked at the $2/day long-term parking area, check into the airport, and find my gate, all with no difficulty. I was really early so I treated myself to an expensive breakfast at the main restaurant in the airport. The flight to Chicago was non-stop, and only about three hours, which I thought was really short. It was a fairly modern plane, with phones in the back of the seats. For $2.00 per minute, you could make a phone call from 30,000 feet. I was tempted to call my brother and tell him I was talking to him from a few miles in the air, but I decided against it. By some really strange act of fate, we flew over the Very Large Array. The pilot was pointing it out so that the people on the other side of the plane could see it. A few minutes after passing that, I looked down on the ground on my side of the plane, and saw a most amazing sight: Socorro, New Mexico, home of New Mexico Tech, where I went to college and suffered much angst and mental anguish. The college, which only has 1300 students, looked really small. I could see "M" mountain, the whole city, the Rio Grande, the explosive test sites... all at once, and it was quite miniature. It was comforting to know that I had risen so far above all that. It didn't take long to reach Chicago, touching down at O'Hare airport. I'd never been there before, but I knew it was supposed to be pretty big. At the gate, I looked around, but could see no sign of Wanderer. Damn, I thought, I sure hope he isn't late. He's the only person I knew in Chicago. So I stood around for a couple minutes, making sure he wasn't there, and then I proceeded to the baggage claim area, making sure he wasn't at the security checkpoint site, which was pretty big and partitioned off and confusing. He wasn't at the baggage claim area either, and my suitcase quickly arrived. So I looked around, confused, trying to figure out what to do. I called his house and left a message on his answering machine, but that didn't really cheer me up much. Finally, I decided that there was little I could really do, and I sat down and read some for a while. A few minutes later Wanderer runs in, explaining he's been waiting right outside, in a line of 40 cars, and he was expecting me to walk out of the area and see him instantly. Yeah, right, I thought. All this just so we wouldn't have to walk to a parking area. *sigh* So I resolved to write up an airport protocol, in the hopes that in the future, people everywhere would use the protocol, and no more confusion would have to be suffered. [See Appendix B] We drove off, doing smalltalk about the weather, and freeways, and before we knew it we drove under a plane. It was the first time for both of us. How it happens is that O'Hare, like DFW, is so big that the freeway separates some of the landing strips from the gates, so there is a heavy-duty bridge the airplanes taxi over, to cross the freeway. Thus, with some lucky timing, you can drive underneath an airplane. Traffic was a bit congested, as it was rush hour by this time, so when the Burger King on top of the Freeway came into view, which I thought was a crazy place to put a Burger King, we exited and hid there for a while. There were arcade games, including my favorite, Smash TV. So we pumped a few quarters into the machine and won big money, big prizes (I even won a toast- er!). Then we killed more time by actually ordering some food. Wanderer's place was actually in a distant suburb, and the streets began to have familiar names. I was told that this was normal, as the suburbs of Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City all connect, and we were currently somewhere in Utah. I nodded, wishing I had known this before, as I would have just driven instead of flying. I got to meet the cats, Boris and Rigel, both of which were very playful critters. Wanderer showed me his lovely abode, a nine foot square cardboard box that leaned against a supermarket. (It did have net-access, though.) After settling in, meeting one of his roommates and cute asian friend, we headed back out into the cold night of Chicago. The skyline was simply awe-inspiring, but unlike New York City, you could actually drive around without delays. We stopped to get some power steering fluid for the car, which was screeching a lot. My friend hadn't thought to do this before, as car maintenance isn't one of his strong points. The view of the Sears Tower at night was really impressive. Strangely, it didn't look as mind-boggingly tall as I had hoped; this may have been due to several nearby buildings being almost as tall. Still, with the night lights, it all looked very modern. We drove past downtown and on towards another person's apartment, where picked up someone else, and then we headed back downtown to go play Battle- Tech. This was a stripped-down version of Mech Warrior that had been reprogrammed to allow several players at once, using a network using LANtastic and run on 286es. We made several sniggering comments on how primitive the hardware was, and then played a couple games. The games were very expensive ($8) and only lasted a few minutes. The selling point was virtual reality, which is to say that they sit you in a box that blocks out external light, so all you see is several buttons and switches that do things only advanced players can guess at, a couple hand and foot controls, and the viewscreen. I guess if one wasn't aware of all the simple software tricks involved, it might have looked impressive. But personally I thought it was really lacking. After that we cruised through downtown streets that were made by famous by the movie, "The Blues Brothers". That was entertaining, and then we stopped by the Sears Tower so I could take some pictures of it from up close. We couldn't get in, for it was closed by that time. A persuasive black man tried very hard to sell us some gold chains; he was rather insistent, but I just blew him off entirely. The others actually tried to talk him away. After dropping off Wanderer's friend, we drove back, discussing along the way several ideas on how to improve on the BattleTech idea, how to rip it off entirely, and how to make a much better product. Sometimes, even now, I think about getting a few people together, and building a simulation involving space dogfights, but it would require about $50,000 investment to start. So I just laid down on the couch and let cats walk over me all night long. Saturday, March 21st When I woke up, there was snow on the ground. And it was falling lightly. Wanderer was still quite asleep, but I didn't feel at all tired anymore, so I played with the cats for a while. They were really cute, fun things. I'd never get one, though; you have to feed them regularly and clean their litter boxes and that's just too much of a hassle for me. I just laid there for a long time, and pretended to be asleep, and watched one of the roommate's girls leave, and then come back an hour later or so, as if to pretend she hadn't spent the night there. "That's odd..." I thought, and shrugged. So I pulled out my Game Boy and vegetated to that for a couple hours. It's not an exciting game, it's not even a good game. But it was better than watching the snow fall down. The icicles on the pine trees were really awesome, though. Eventually though, we did get back in gear, and walked out to the car, which was covered in snow. Actually all the cars were covered in snow, and if you didn't remember where you parked you car, you had to wipe snow off cars until you found yours, as they all looked alike, all the same size, all late-seventies boats. The drive back to town was a bit of a challenge; there was ice on the roads, which didn't please me at all. But for the most part the car stayed under control. We found Wax Trax, a famous alternative record outlet, without much difficulty. Parking was another matter, though; and when we travelled on a side street, which had not been salted, the car decided not to stop at the stop sign, and we slid into traffic. Whee. Amazingly, there was no collision. I really do not understand how people can live in a climate like that, where losing control of the car and endangering yourself to collisions every day is just a normal part of life. It's absurd! But we did make it Wax Trax, and they had a very impressive selection of CDs, but not as good as the Wax Trax in Denver. Actually, I thought the place was rather small, but I did find 9 CDs worth buying there. [See Appendix A] So, one of my big goals of the trip over with, I sat back in the car and relaxed, as the snowstorm got to be rather severe. We had planned to visit the Sears Tower, but after a few minutes of driving, it became obvious that the best thing to do would be to manage to make it back to secure shelter. Traffic was not pleasant, and road conditions were an unhappiness. I even got Wanderer to admit that he didn't like to drive when the weather was like this. Gee. We stopped at a grocery store and picked up a case of RC cola so we'd have stuff to drink. The roommates were watching "Robin Hood" with their girl- friends when we got back to the apartment. I ordered some pizza from Pizza Hut, and got chewed out by the roommates for not getting real Chicago-style pizza. Fuck 'em, I thought. I wanted pizza, and I didn't want to risk having it be weird. Pizza Hut is the same no matter what part of the country you're in. After the movie they put in "City Slickers". This was a very good movie; I didn't get a chance to see it when it was showing in the theaters. When it was over, I thought about it, and decided that my trip to the midwest was kind of like a reverse of the movie's concept. I'm from the desert southwest, and I'm spending my vacation visiting highly urban cities. So if there's a term for the reverse of a city slicker, then that would describe me on this trip. Sunday, March 22nd So after another morning of being walked up on by cats, vegging out to Game Boy, and contemplating the weather, things picked up again. We did the food thing, eating out at Arby's. Wanderer drove in circles in the parking lot five or six times, because he was bored. I was finally able to contact Pope_751, and convinced him to drive to Chicago and pick me up. Then it simply became a matter of killing the day off, because he needed to sleep first. So, what better way to kill time than to preview OS/2 2.0? A copy of one of the latest beta releases was on hand, so I got to play with it for a couple hours. Overall, it was much better in appearance than Windows 3.0, which impressed me, as IBM has a habit of making a lot of hype about things that are actually just so-so. But this is actually a better product than Windows, so I think IBM might actually have something here. Problem is, you need a 386 and about six megs of RAM to run it effectively. Most people have a 386 by now though, and it shouldn't be long before people clue in to the concept of buying more RAM. Still, I'd rather run UNIX. Even AIX, which is evil and buggy and had a disastrous upgrade recently that caused me a lot of grief. I just don't think having a cute graphical interface hiding command line prompts is enough reason to justify suffering all that overhead in making a multi-tasking DOS-compatible system. But, oh well. Wanderer had to take off to do some urgent work, so I was left to play with the computer and get in some net time, catching up with email and doing a little mudding. While I was mudding, I heard some sounds behind me, and I turned around to see a large iguana climbing the closet door. I stared at the iguana. It stared back at me. I nodded at it and went on typing away at the computer. It went on climbing the closet door. There was balance in the universe. So, the computer thing got old after a while. It got dark. I read some out of the novel I brought along, then vegged out some more to Game Boy. It wasn't the most exciting time, but it wasn't particularly stressful either, and pretty relaxing compared to my normal life. But alas, it had to happen, Pope_751 finally did arrive, driving a (Surprise!) late-seventies boat. We loaded the car and took off. His car a had a totally awesome sound system, it was capable picking up frequencies from 530 Khz to 1600 Khz. So I became mesmerized by the sounds of talk radio and we drove in circles in the suburbs of Chicago, looking for a freeway. On the second time around we found one, and half an hour later, past a few toll booths, we were on our way to Indiana. We got gas near Gary, Indiana, and coke, too. As an added bonus, the car picked up a nail, and a while later we discovered that the tire had gone flat. This was a bummer, because it was cold outside, but we were near a rest area, so we parked there and checked it out. Simple flat, and there just happened to be a jack and a spare tire in the trunk. What luck! Only