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BTN: Birmingham Telecommunications News
COPYRIGHT 1990
May 1990 Volume 3, Issue 4
Table Of Contents
-----------------
Article Title Author
Policy Statement and Disclaimer................Staff
Editorial Column...............................Dean Costello
Another BTN Party..............................Jet Thomas
WWIV: Part 1 of ???...........................Duck Capps
Conversational Telecommunicating...............Tyros
BTN Party Questionnaire Results................Chris Mohney
Gamer's Corner: Welltris......................Eric Hunt
Gamer's Corner: Catch'em......................Dean Costello
Ode To A Friend Of Mine........................Lisa Straughn
Profile: Kristina Morros & Marie Huffstutler...Chris Mohney
Known BBS Numbers..............................Staff
EzNet Multiple Echo List.......................Staff
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Disclaimer and Statement of Policy for BTN
We at BTN try our best to assure the accuracy of articles and
information in our publication. We assume no responsibility for
damage due to errors, omissions, etc. The liability,if any for BTN, its
editors and writers, for damages relating to any errors or omissions,
etc., shall be limited to the cost of a one year subscription to BTN,
even if BTN, its editors or writers have been advised of the likelihood
of such damages occurring.
With the conclusion of that nasty business, we can get on with our
policy for publication and reproduction of BTN articles. We publish
monthly with a deadline of the fifteenth of the month prior to
publication. If you wish to submit an article, you may do so at any
time but bear in mind the deadline if you wish for your work to appear
in a particular issue. It is not our purpose to slander or otherwise
harm a person or reputation and we accept no responsibility for the
content of the articles prepared by our writers. Our writers own their
work and it is protected by copyright. We allow reprinting of articles
from BTN with only a few restrictions. The author may object to a
reprint, in which case he will specify in the content of his article.
Otherwise, please feel free to reproduce any article from BTN as long as
the source, BTN, is specified, and as long as the author's name and the
article's original title are retained. If you use one of our articles,
please forward a copy of your publication to:
Mark Maisel
Editor, BTN
221 Chestnut St.
BHM, AL 35210-3219
We thank you for taking the time to read our offering and we hope that
you like it. We also reserve the right to have a good time while doing
all of this and not get too serious about it.
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N E W S F L A S H
For those of you who read BTN regularly, please pay
attention! Several boards in town that maintain
transfer ratios allow BTN to be downloaded freely
through ProDoor. You may download BTN from these
boards without penalty to your ratio. Among these
that I am aware of are CONNECTION, LZ BIRMINGHAM,
and CHANNEL 8250. I am sure that there are more of
them out there.
If you are a sysop and you allow BTN to be downloaded
freely, please let me know via EzNet so that I can
post your board as a free BTN distributor. Thanks.
I am also looking for a new, more useful format for
the Known BBS List. Please send me your suggestions
via EzNet or upload them to Channel 8250, Bus, or
Crunchy Frog. The best way to demonstrate a
suggestion would be to edit the bbs list in this
issue and show how you want it to look. Should
there be more WWIV info, PC Board info, FidoNet
info, other networks and/or systems info???
Remember, I can't do it if you don't suggest it. I
gave up telepathy a few years ago.
MM
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Well, Now What?
Yeah! It's another article by me. I trust you are so happy and
overjoyed that you can hardly contain yourself. Same to you. Anyway,
now is the time that I need to think of something to write. Yes, Mark
and Kathy took me out to dinner again, and now it is time to extract the
proper two or three screens of flesh.
So, let's see what is happening in the telecomputing world right now.
Well, Tyros has a real computer for a change; Randy and Rocky's MetroNet
seems to be working fairly well (Always remember: A national echo is a
terrible thing to waste); and there seems to be another party coming up
on the horizon (April 21st in case you haven't seen announcements); and
this is the...
SECOND ANNUAL BTN ANNIVERSARY!
Yeeeeaaaaahhhah, buddy. We are starting on our third year of this
august and respectful periodical, the one that allowed me to get my name
in print. Imagine, the third year of this nonsense. Absolute proof that
there cannot be a God; or that there is a God, and she/he doesn't like
me very much.
Figure though, what were you doing in April of 1988? I personally was
still working for Perdue, Inc. as a lab technician at their oil
refinery, hoping and praying that the job would come to an end and I
could go to graduate school. And you? Are you still doing the same
thing that you were two years ago? Now, who needs to 'get a life'? At
least I AM in graduate school, doing something completely different.
Yeah, you see how much work I am doing for my degree, don't you? I
should be at the apartment right now doing Important And Scientific
Things to my data, but I'm not. I am instead trying to pump out this
screed on BTN, one more time. If nothing else, I do like these
editorials better than real articles. Where else can I rant for this
long about something or another; whatever subject that catches my
imagination at a particular time; and still get credit for it from Mark?
And believe me, he does keep track of who writes and who said that they
would write, and who didn't follow through...
I have found that when all is said and done, it is probably more
advantageous to be on the positive side of Mark than on the negative
side. Look at it from my point of view? I have all these neat little
do-hickies that I have picked up from over there, dinners beyond
counting, and a release of sexual tension with his wife. What more can
a simple person such as myself want? That's right, not a whole lot more.
So to recap, Tyros has a computer, MetroNet is neat, there is a party
coming up on the 21st, it is the beginning of the third year of BTN
publications, and you need to get a life. Hope to see a couple of you
(not all, mind you, just a couple here and there. The ones I want to
see probably already know who they are, the rest need not even come if
they have something else to do that night) at the party.
Sincerely Yours,
__ __
/ ) / )
/ / _ __. ____ /
/__/_</_(_/|_/ / < (__/ o
Dean C.
Editor-at-Large
editor's note: Is that "Editor-at-Large" or "Large-Editor"? MM
Take 2 <snap>.
Well, guess who missed a deadline. Yes, Mark screwed up here. He went
and blew off April. So, the entire above screed is really all for
naught. Annoying trait.
Anyway, Now I need to think of something else clever and neat to write
about. It is the night before the BTN party, in which a whole pile of
people have planned to attend. I am personally kind of curious as to
who will actually drop by. Claims and actuality are all too often two
entirely different things.
I honestly don't know what we are going to do with Mark. To paraphrase
Bill Cosby, the boy needs help. But who am I to say anything, you ask.
Which is indeed an entirely correct attitude to have, if you think about
it for a minute. Let us look at my record when it comes to my research.
1). It is October, 89. My advisor, John Manning, says that there is an
chance of me being able to finish before the end of the fall
quarter. And if not by then, then definitely by the first of the
year. Maggie says nice things about missing me. Others either
ignore it completely, or say such pleasant things like it will be
such a nice place with me gone. Come to find out, I had to start
the entire sequence over when my bacteria died, and the methyl
parathion plant burned down.
2). It is February, 90. It is said that I could very easily be done by
midterms. So I only take 3 credit hours of research so that I can
be at least a part time student. Mark starts making jokes about
how Scott Hollifield is his dupe in a strange and curious plan to
wreck my experiment.
3). It is March, 90. It is said that I could very easily be done by
the end of Winter quarter. Jokes about my ever completing begin to
surface in EZNet. Scorn and derision are heaped upon me, and Doug
Reinsch brings me a clipping that said that Mobile Bay froze over.
4). It is now. My advisor says that the research is coming along
nicely, and that there is finally light at the end of the tunnel.
I get turned down in my sole interview as of yet. Life is really
starting to suck, especially with the weather getting hotter.
Not really important, but I seem to have missed a few deadlines also, as
I look back on it. But that does not take Mark off the hook. So he had
some things to do during the first week of April. BFD. We are not all
that impressed. Busy was me at the end of Winter Quarter 1989, when I
had 4 finals, 2 papers, 2 presentations, a car accident, and knee
surgery. Now that is a full week, and don't you forget it.
And he thinks that changing careers is a proper excuse for...Where was
I? Oh yes, why there wasn't an April BTN. Alas, one of those things, I
suppose. What's the point of bitching about it, when you get right down
to it? No one is going to die if one of these things doesn't hit the
BBSs on time. Hell, I only read them because of my articles (and
articles with me in them, for that matter). Mental masturbation, I
suppose. And I want as many people as possible to watch (read) as I get
off. So I suppose I am personally annoyed that I won't get another
issue to jack off in, but those are the problems of life. I believe it
was brother Mick who said, "You can't always get what you want, but if
you try sometime you might find that you get what you need." I would
assume that this will probably be the last issue of BTN I will be
writing for, so I intend to wax philosophical about it. And as a
result, I will take this as far as is possible.
I was just thinking about the way I write these damned things. I am
sitting in Mark's back room, where it is about 14 degrees hotter than
body temperature, banging this puppy out. Did I have any idea as to
what I was going to write? Not hardly. In fact, it is a constant
struggle to keep going from text line to text line, and yet keep some
semblance of continuity going.
Something else that had occurred to me was that it seems that my shock
value is gone. I can say the most sensational, most outrageous, the
most sick things, and no one will even bat an eye anymore. It is
getting frustrating, to say the least. But unfortunately, when I am
being more or less straight about things, no one is taking me seriously.
For example, it occurred to me that Jesus was probably a member of the
Zealots, and that to make the group look like it was sanctioned by God,
they set up Jesus as a martyr after he got caught in the Temple doing
naughty things to the local vendors. Now, no one would argue the point
with me. I still feel to this day that it is a viable, logical argument
that explains the creation of Christianity without resorting to a deity.
And No One Would Argue It. I have always felt that ignoring something
is tacit approval, which is why you see me get worked up about very
marginal, very superficial issues <shut the hell up, Mark>. Now, have a
whole bunch of people on Bill Freeman's board all given up their
Christianity and decided that I held the key of knowledge that they all
have been looking for? Hell no, they just assumed it was me just
spouting off something again as I try to get a rise out of them
(coincidentally, this was the week of Easter, but it was not intended
that way). Very frustrating; especially if one deals with a lot of
topics that are controversial. It is kind of sad to know that there is
no way in hell that I will even again be voted Most Favorite User in
Birmingham. I feel kind of like Morton Downey Jr., in that my escapades
no longer stir emotions as much as are just kind of tolerated and then
ignored. But I can always depend on Mark K. to call me a loser (even
when it takes two to exchange nasty messages, right Richard, Doug, and
Mark M?).
Take 3 <snap>
It is now after the party. This issue still hasn't gone to the
metaphorical press. And accordingly, I need to update once again. The
party was a couple of days ago, and it seems to have gone fairly well.
At least, that is the way I perceived it. And as you will soon find
out, Jet Thomas didn't quite perceive things the way I did. But, I am
not allowed to continue on this vein, so I am going to stop now.
So, let's see what else I need to talk about. I discovered FIDONet a
couple of days ago. There is a good conference there, called Science,
that I have taken a liking to. I am impressed. I heartily recommend
that you use it if you have an interest in science. In the couple of
days I have been involved, the discussion has ranged from UFOs to
Creationism to alternative energies to the Cold Fusion experiments. A
fairly wide-ranging discussion set.
Mark really needs to cut the grass in his side yard, but I suppose that
is neither here nor there. Can't hardly blame him, though, with all the
Milky Way candy bars that are out in the yard, you know. It was a
function of the party, but I can't talk about it right now, for the
reasons mentioned above.
I would like to take this opportunity to protest the crappy way I was
treated at the party. When I was torn up (from a combination of Joey I,
II, and IIIs), they, about 9 different sysops, tried to get me to do a
strip tease. Yeah, that's right. Appalling, isn't it? Anyway, they
were willing to give me up to $4.07, a button, an option on another
button, and a tie. And if I didn't, I would lose somewhere in the
neighborhood of about 10-16 hours of daily access to the BBSs that I
regularly call. In case you are curious, I call on a rigidly daily
basis 5 boards (7.75 hours/day access time) and on at least a weekly
basis, another boards (10.5 hours/day access time). And they had the
gall to say to me "Get a life"? If all they have to do is to pick on
some poor drunk party goer, I think that says an awful lot more about
them than the time says about me.
But nonetheless, it has been an interesting time here on the BBSs in
Birmingham. Without you, I would have long since slit my wrists.
Especially last summer. Since this is probably the proverbial 'It' for
my writing here, there are some I would like to mention. I have met
some nice people including Randy (Dammit, 2.5 hours is NOT enough),
Chris (I still can't believe that you liked tequila & ginger ale),
Maggie (My 'Outrageousness Meter', but I am not going to strip for you,
no matter how sadly you look at me), Scott (But, will I be voted "Most
Favorite User" next year...), Chris (Praise "Bob" and pass the
camcorder) and Kathy (Oh, please? It is only for effect, you know); a
few normals such as Doug (The Censor King), Velina (Maybe henna WILL do
the trick, it sure can't hurt...), Tamara (I still think the accent is
on the wrong syllable), Karsten (You're who? Nah...), Kelly (Why are you
hitting me?), Rocky (The Discordian Connection), Terry (The Discordian),
Dave (The Disciple), Jeff (But why an entire box? Are they rotten?),
Brett (You are way too sensitive about the South), and Kristina (And
don't forget that 'K', dammit, but first, can I ask you a personal
question?); plus some just plain warped individuals, ie. Jet (Well,
right! Right! Well, no!), and Mark.
It was also neat to listen to everyone else's ludicrous ideas about
society. It is sad that you are wrong, but alas, such is life. There is
really little else left to say. I appreciate the friendship and the
tolerance many of you have extended this poor graduate student. I like
to think I reciprocated in kind; in my own way.
Farewell, my friends. May you survive.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Another BTN Party
by Jet Thomas
Mark Maisel asked me to write about what happened at the BTN party.
I don't know about most of it, of course, since I only got to watch what
was going on in front of my eyes, and I don't have room to write all of
that.
I really enjoyed the party. It gave me an opportunity to push my
new C&C game, and I learned more about human nature in late 20th century
America than I had at any previous party.
I brought some friends, Bruce Oliver and his girlfriend Chris. Both
of them have computers but neither have gotten modems yet. Bruce stayed
in the computer room for a while, and when he came out he said, "I sat
in there for half an hour and I never heard a complete sentence I could
understand."
I showed people copies of the C&C game rules. I concentrated on
getting copies to women, since the women tend to be more conservative,
and there was no point in getting men interested if their wives or
girlfriends refused to play. The response was better than I hoped, only
3 outright no's (including 2 who wouldn't look at it, who might change
their minds someday), 2 conditional no's (they said, "Yes, that looks
really interesting and we really ought to try it someday," which is a
polite way to say no) 5 conditional yeses (they seemed really interested
and talked about it to each other) and 2 outright yeses (they told their
boyfriends somebody else would play if the boyfriends wouldn't; these
women were serious). I'll upload the men's manual under the name
CONIND.TXT, on various boards.
Mark Maisel wore a special necktie. It was salmon pink, except at
the knot where it was a sort of matted brown. The end wasn't cut like
most neckties, but had a sort of rounded, sigmoid shape. It looked kind
of peculiar seeing Mark barefoot wearing a necktie. It was a symbolic
thing, the necktie represented a circumcised penis. I had read that all
neckties had similar symbolism, but I had never seen one so blatant.
Late in the evening I noticed various women wearing Mark's tie; I didn't
ask them how they got it.
I listened to various people. Brett Thorn was his usual superior
self. He went around with a little smile, like he understood everything
that was going on but there wasn't anything worth participating in. He's
smarter than I am and much better acculturated, but it seems like it
still doesn't get him what he wants. I discussed the new RTX chip with
Blake Miller. Blake is handsome, suave, brainy, and apparently totally
competent at everything he does, but he didn't have much to say.
I talked with Sid and Michelle Browning. They seemed to be new to
the boards, and were acting like they felt like strangers at the party.
I had a lot of trouble remembering their names, and eventually set up
mnemonics, but I forgot the mnemonic for his. They seemed like nice
people.
Doug and Velina Reinsch were there. Velina had a hairstyle and a
sort of face-set that made her look middle-aged and dull. I knew from
that, that she had a responsible job. She looked like a dentist's
assistant or a librarian, the sort of person that you want to assume is
totally competent at doing things by the book, and utterly
unimaginative. I was AMAZED that Velina could achieve this sort of
protective coloration. She isn't like that at all. It was an
interesting twist for her to come to the party in disguise.
There was a little girl about Sarah Maisel's size who stood in the
kitchen doorway working on a tantrum. When asked, she came out of it
enough to explain that her mother had told her she couldn't play with
the other kids because she was bad. We played with Mark's synthesizer
for a while, but her mother came in and told her to stop.
Kelly Rosato started hitting me gently behind the knee or on the
temporalis when he walked by. After a while I asked him why, and he
said he liked to see me jump. Pretty often little social problems clear
up if you talk about them. I thought he maybe didn't like me or wanted
to threaten me, but he was just having fun. I started doing the same to
him, and he asked me about it. Then we both slacked off, and pretty
much quit. I made sure he got the last lick. It's easier for people to
make social agreements when they're winning, and it didn't cost me
anything. I don't know what Kelly will do the first time we meet after
he reads this, though. It's easy for unstated social agreements to
break down when people talk about them. It's like people can
tentatively provisionally behave in an agreeable way, but when they find
out the other person is thinking about it differently from them,
suddenly the question isn't what to do, but what it all means and what
it "really" means to the other person, and people find themselves making
points that would be totally unnecessary if they had no idea what the
other guy was thinking and didn't care. Oh well.
I carried the girl-who-couldn't-play-with-the-others piggyback, but
her mother made her quit that too. She had been bad, so she couldn't
have any fun the whole weekend. That was strange, how do you stop
somebody from having fun? If they're sitting quietly by themselves, how
do you know if they're having fun or not? Riddle: How can you keep a
mathematician from having fun? Answer: Sit behind him with a big stick
and hit him every now and then. But the kid was buying into it, she
believed she couldn't have any fun. Chris Mohney would say she didn't
have any slack. I talked to the mother, who reminded me of a bobcat.
Small, sort of friendly, but utterly ferocious.
I talked with Mitch White, who seemed very wise. But afterward I
couldn't remember what he'd said. I hope I incorporated his comments
into my own thinking. But all I remember in context are his criticisms
of what I said.
Jeff had brought a giant box of candy bars, things that had just
expired at the place he worked. I ate a lot of them and drank some
Pepsi. I started getting high. Some other people were drinking things
that smelled like spoiled orange juice, and rotten apples, and juniper
berries. And beer, of course. It seemed like over the evening people
had less and less to say, but they said it with more and more intensity.
People I talked with late in the evening seemed like simpler people than
the ones I met earlier. They had been degraded (that's what degradation
means -- to break up into simpler pieces) but they didn't seem to mind
much.
I played some with the bobcat's son. He hit me a couple of times,
once in the Adam's apple, but when I distracted him quickly, he got real
happy,began to have fun and quit hitting. I've noticed sometimes the
same method works with angry people who have guns, but it isn't the sort
of thing you want to depend on.
Some of the women asked me when we'd play the C&C game. I
explained that it needed a hostess, and Mark had volunteered Kathy for
the job, but Kathy kept putting him off. Nobody volunteered on the
spot, but several women took home copies of the Hostess's Manual, so
with luck it will happen fairly soon.
Chris Mohney had a questionnaire with really goofy questions. I
liked it. I was a little concerned about it in a superstitious way,
though. The ancient Israelites used to take their censuses just before
the plagues, and we've had things like that with the BTN surveys, too.
The Connection was voted worst BBS just before its big surge in
popularity. Dean Costello was voted Most Popular User just before he
showed everybody how bigoted he was about the South. What will change
after Chris's questionnaire?
Randy asked me about a message I didn't leave on his board. I'd
announced that I wouldn't respond to any more idiots on a particular
political topic. Then he answered one of my messages and I didn't
respond. Was he one of the idiots? I tried to explain what I'd meant,
which was completely different, and in the back of my mind a new idea
was forming. What happens if you tell somebody you won't leave him any
more messages because he's an idiot, and then you don't leave him any
more messages no matter what he does? You've insulted him worse than the
most insulting message you could leave! Because the long strings of
messages, even the "you idiot" messages, are a form of social
agreement!! You're telling him he's worth talking to, that his opinion
matters!!! Even if you utterly disagree with everything he says!!!! It's
a peculiar form of friendship. But when you ignore him, you're telling
him he's really an idiot. He might believe it's because you aren't
logical enough to argue with him, but that's not what you're telling
him. But the method doesn't always work. I suddenly realized that
nearly a quarter of the people on Randy's MetroNet Current conference
had left me such messages and then ignored me, and I hadn't noticed.
Because I was looking at the arguments and how they fit together, and
ignoring questions of who "won".
I'd expected that some guys would ask how to get into the C&C game,
but nobody did. The answer would have been that they had to get a woman
to invite them. The game hadn't even started yet and my social
intuition was already proving very fallible....
The bobcat's husband came to the party late. His son ran to him
joyfully and started hitting him. The father gave him a severe
talking-to on his method of greeting.
Some of the kids wanted to tell jokes, but when I heard their jokes
I realized that I'd completely forgotten how to tell children's jokes.
Their jokes didn't seem the least bit funny to me, and I figured they
wouldn't get my jokes either. I shifted gears and tried to remember
some grape jokes or elephant jokes, but I couldn't remember any. Then
Velina told a Knock-Knock joke, and I found out I could make up those
jokes pretty fast. Here's one:
Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Boo.
Boo who?
Oh, I'm sorry you're so sad.
And my very best one:
Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Knock-knock.
Who's there?
You're supposed to say, "Knock-knock who?"
Oh.
Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Knock-knock.
Knock-knock who?
Knock-knock jokes don't have to make sense!
It doesn't seem that funny now, but at the time it went over real
well. Maybe you have to eat 10 or 15 candy bars first....
Ed O'Neill was playing a flirting game with Kristina from TOPS BBS.
He'd pretend to grab her in a drunken embrace, and she'd scream and slip
away, and she'd run off and ask somebody else to protect her. Then she'd
look back at him and smile, and giggle, and when he came to her she'd
scream and run away again. It's just like a game my guppies play. It
looked like fun.
"That looks like fun, may I play too?"
She smiled and giggled. I gently tickled her flank. She screamed
and ran, and got behind Dean Costello. That seemed really humorous,
asking Dean to protect her from me seemed like a case of "out of the
briar patch, into the frying pan". She played the game exactly the same
way with me as she did with Ed. Except her screams seemed louder, her
motions more jerky, her giggling more hysterical. She couldn't have had
much to drink, she was so graceful. For that matter, Ed was pretty
steady on his feet. She followed exactly the same flight path each
time, which would have made her easy to intercept except according to
the game I was supposed to follow the same path too. She got behind
Chris Mohney and shrieked for him to protect her, but then darted back
to Dean again. She rolled her eyes and gave some signs of distress.
"Are you OK? Are you enjoying this?"
"Stay away from me! Leave me alone!"
She turned sideways and threw her shoulders back and took a deep
breath. She turned her head away and looked at me sideways. She giggled
and ran off. I'd seen this sort of thing before, although I'd never
played it myself. The rule is that the woman can't admit she knows what
she's doing. She seemed to be giving some mixed signals, though. Her
screams sounded kind of sincere and she ran jerky, if slow. But when
she stopped her smiles and giggles seemed sincere, too. Then suddenly
she broke the pattern. She ran screaming into the house, calling for
her friend Tamara to protect her. I walked after her and stopped 8 feet
away. (For Americans the distance is supposed to be 6', but I'd
approached a timid cat that morning and for cats it's 8'.)
"You look like you want to quit the game. So why do you keep
signaling that you want to keep playing?"
"Stay away from me! Help! Everybody leave me alone!"
"I'm over here I'm not getting any closer what's wrong?"
She gave a long giggle that ended in a sort of sob.
"I'm not giving any signals! I'm not doing anything! Just go away,
don't talk to me!"
I went away. Was it possible she didn't understand the game
either? I hate games where people can't even discuss it afterward. She
might not even know the signals that told us to keep playing, but she
didn't want to be told about them. And I might have given wrong signals
too, maybe I didn't smile enough or act drunk enough or something, and
she wouldn't tell me about it. How do you get better when you can't see
the results? Oh well. Chris and Tamara took her home. Somebody asked
Ed if he was serious about catching her. He said something like, no,
she was under the limit, he'd have had to throw her back. But he played
with her anyway.
"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."
Lee Harden got to the party late and Maggie greeted him joyously. I
didn't notice her hitting him, though.
The people in the computer room kept playing games and looking at
GIF files and talking about programs and protocols I'd never heard of.
They played with Mark's peculiar disk drive, which sometimes grabs
diskettes and won't let go. You have to reach your hand into its mouth
and tickle it just so to get it to spit your diskette out. Kathy had
hidden the Crunchy Frog keyboard, probably for security reasons.
Somebody logged on and did a Page to get people to Chat with him. He
knew the computer room would be full of people, but nobody would talk to
him at all (not without the keyboard, they wouldn't). He started
cursing them out at the Command Prompts. Later he came to the party and
laughed with them about it.
Lisa Patterson and her boyfriend spent most of the party out on the
porch. They both looked like they could be fashion models. I didn't
catch their names when they were introduced, but somebody told me Lisa's
name later. I never got his name, everybody always referred to him as
'her boyfriend'. They drank tequila. By the time I talked with them
their personalities had degraded pretty much. I didn't understand much
of what they said, and I got the feeling it was mutual. Lisa said
something I didn't understand that sounded something like: "When I was
in high school I had to pretend to be a bubblehead when I was around my
friends, or they wouldn't have anything to do with me. But I could be
myself around my teachers." I tried to ask her why they were her friends
if she couldn't be herself around them, but I couldn't get it across. It
might not have had anything to do with what she really said. I was
pretty wired by that time. I started thinking. A complex person can
pretend to be simple, just like a sober person can pretend to be drunk.
But a simple person can't successfully pose as complex, except to other
simple people, just like a drunk has trouble posing as sober. On the
other hand, a thin man can disguise himself as a fat man, but a fat man
can't put on a thin disguise. Anybody should be able to pretend to be a
bubblehead, but a bubblehead can't pose as anybody else. So -- and this
is the important part -- if a computer nerd can't pose as a human being,
does that mean he's less than a human being, or maybe just different?
After all, humans can't pose as computer nerds, except to other humans.
But clearly, a computer nerd who can convincingly act human, must be
more than human. The Turing Test is truly appropriate here. I don't
think any of this got across. I probably talked much too fast, and they
were pretty simplified by that time. And like I said, I was wired. At 3
AM Kathy was lying on the floor resting. People kept wanting to answer
the phone, which rang pretty often, and she kept telling them not to,
and they kept not understanding. They were simplified to the point of
answering phones by habit, and they didn't get the logic of it: Most of
the people who'd call the Maisels at 3 AM are people you don't want to
talk to.
At 3:30 Richard Foshee came by with a pretty woman whose name I
didn't catch. The party was mostly wound down by then.
About 4 AM everybody who was awake went off to Denny's or some such
place to eat. I went home. They locked the door, so anybody who got
there later than that probably decided the party was over.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
WWIV: Part 1 of ??
By: Duck The Everpresent
Co-Sysop: The Cathouse
About three years ago, a new bulletin board system entered on the
scene by the name of WWIV Net software. The first version was in
Q-Basic, and wasn't really all that powerful. As time has passed and
the versions have piled up, WWIV has become one of the most powerful
pieces of BBS software available. It can be registered for a meager fee
of $50.00, which entitles you to the source code and any new updates.
You can also run it un-registered, but unless you know someone with the
source code, you'll have to run it unmodified. The latest version is
4.10. During it's progression, WWIV has come to be programed in C, a
diverse programming language. WWIV is easily modified, provided you
have the source and the ability to program in C. If you can't program in
C, there are many pre-made modifications that are available for
download. In the next few articles, I will attempt to show off some of
the unique feature of WWIV, as well as how to get around in the system.
The first place to start is the logon sequence.
When you log into a WWIV net system, you are greeted by a prompt
asking if you want ANSI graphics or not. If you type Y for yes, the ANSI
screen will appear. (Alternately, if you type N for no, a text screen
will appear.) Both of these screens can be aborted by pressing the space
bar. Then you are met with a prompt that looks like this:
PW:
At this time you will be able to type in your user number, alias,
or new for new users. If you are a new user, you will have to go through
the usual registration process. Be sure to read and follow instructions
carefully. If you don't, you might be auto-purged by the computer. On
the board I'm Co-Sysop of, for instance, it is modified where if you
skip new user feedback, you are auto-purged immediately. Many WWIV
boards have modified the logon screens.
Now that you are in, you will probably be met by one or more of the
diverse modifications that can be added to the post-logon jargon.
Quoters, date and time information, and ANSI art are just a few you
might see. At the end of this you are given your status on the board,
then shown the main menu. The next thing that is essential information
is how to send mail.
The mail system on the WWIV system is one of the easiest to use I
have encountered on any BBS. You simply press E (you don't have to press
the <CR> key, it does it for you), and it asks for the users name or
number. If you only know part of a users alias, you can type in that
partial and it will spot-check all the names in the system for you. Once
you've found your user, it asks for the title of the message and then
you can enter your message up to 80 lines long. After you are through,
typing /S will take out of the mode. Depending on your security, you
might be asked if you want to post anonymously. WWIV also can have a
full-screen text editor, which you can bring up with the defaults menu,
which will be covered at a later time.
The public message system is accessed one of three ways: 1) By
pressing the corresponding number of the sub you want to be in and
pressing S for scan.
2) By pressing the corresponding number of the sub you want to be in and
pressing Q for Quick Scanning that sub for new posts.
3) By pressing N which will Global Quick Scan all the message bases.
The Global Quick Scan can be set to only monitor the message bases
you wish to scan in the defaults menu. Entering a post is easy. If you
Q-scan or Global Q-scan, at the end of each message base you will be
asked if you want to post in that sub. If you see a post you want to
reply to within a sub, type the number of the post in at the message
prompt and then press W (with regards to). After that simply input the
reply and press /S. (If you want a list of available commands at your
disposal in the message base, type /HELP).
Well, that's it for now. In my next article (Mark permitting), I
will go over some of the options of the other important part of a BBS:
The transfer section. Also, will review some more of the unique features
and modifications that WWIV offers.
Until next time.......
WWIV Bulletin Board System copyright Wayne Bell 1987,1990.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CONVERSATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATING
or, How To Gain Sheer Fame and Adulation
Without Really Improving The Quality of Your Normal Life At All
*** Tyros ***
People walk up to the street and ask me about my status in the
Birmingham BBS community. No, they really do. Wearing gray woolen
coats and little baseball caps that say "CAN IT", they come running up
to me on the sidewalk and demand that I tell them a multitude of things,
among them how I manage to keep in the forefront of Birmingham
telecommunications culture without even posting all that many messages.
And now YOU would like to know the secret. Of course, you do, or you
wouldn't be reading this article. Yes, yes, I know that it was embedded
inside an issue of BTN, but the TITLE of the article, as well as my
name, was listed in the Table of Contents, and if you DIDN'T want to
read my article, you'd have spotted the listing and skipped over it,
right? You'd have skipped right over it. You either did or did not want
to read the article, make up your mind. Well, forget it, it's too late
now.
Anyhow, the point is, when people read messages on a BBS, their
attention span fluctuates as the messages scroll up the screen. It
happens to everyone. Heck, I even fall asleep sometimes. Whether the
message is part of an on-going discussion, a request for technical
information, or complete nonsense (Crunchy Frog users), the awful awful
truth is that NOT ALL MESSAGES ARE AFFORDED THE SAME AMOUNT OF
ATTENTION. And the ones that stick in peoples' minds are the ones that
will have roses on your doorstep.
Okay, so the trick, obviously enough, is to fix your message so
that people will remember you. This is a daunting task, because
scientifically speaking, there are hundreds and hundreds of BBS users
and only a sharply limited amount of brain storage per each average
user. There are two basic keys to spicing up your messages: Style
and....um.. Style. Yes, that's right - two different contexts of the
word "style". It means two different things.
The first style is the kind of style you learn about in journalism
class at college. This sort of style is not what most people think of
when they think of style (i.e. "flair", "nuance", "soul", etc.). In
fact, journalism has absolutely no style of that kind, so they teach you
something else and call it "style" to compensate. What I'm talking about
is simple technique - punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and all
that. The idea here is simple: Do it all. I mean it. Type two spaces
between sentences, one space after commas, the works. Another awful
truth is that if you don't at least put in a moderate amount of
technical work into your typing, you tend to look, well, illiterate. You
people who saw Dean Costello's messages when he was laid up with a leg
injury know what I mean; because Dean didn't think it was worth it to
strain and make sure all of his messages presented his usual high
technical standards, he ended up looking sort of like he had suffered a
blow to the head, if you catch my drift. The amazing part of all this
was that I talked to him on the phone and he sounded just as he always
had! His typing style, even though I knew better, had fooled me into
subconsciously thinking that his thought processes has similarly
suffered. The reason for this was because messages that are poorly
typed look as if that hardly any effort was put into typing them, and
thus there must not have been much on the sending end in the first
place. Here's an example:
murray you promissed you were going to give me that disk now
where is it at.
steve
Ecch! Horrendous. Note that not only is there no capitalization or
correct punctuation, but there is a misspelled word! Now, a great myth
that has allowed to be festered in the BBS scene is that message
misspellings aren't anything to worry about, and people who point them
out are dictionary fiends who sit at home with their index finger roving
the terminal screen just looking for these things. The awful truth
(another one) is that misspellings really do jump out at people. It's
extremely easy to correct misspellings, and it makes a world of
difference. And for god's sake, if you're not sure about how to spell a
word, don't cop out by using that annoying appendation "(sp?)" !! Either
look it up and find out how to spell the word, or TYPE OUT "I'm not
exactly sure how that's spelled" (or some palatable variant). Using
"(sp?)" merely calls attention to the fact that you're a lazy apathetic
goof who only wants to avoid getting jumped at instead of trying to
actually solve the problem. Trust me.
Notice also, in the above example, that "Steve" apparently doesn't
respect himself, or his friend for that matter, enough to capitalize the
name. (At least we assume they're friends. Doesn't sound much like it,
does it?) Now, to correct the technical faults in that example, you
would type:
Murray, you promised that you were going to give me that disk.
Now, where is it at?
Steve
Mmm. It's still not much of a message, is it? Which brings us to
the second key: Style. Yes, this time I'm talking about the REAL style,
the way you express yourself, the words you use to make you you. You.
Or whatever.
There really isn't a whole lot of straight bread-and-butter tips I
can give on this one. Everyone has a style all their own, and the awful
truth (jeez, another one!) is that if you have a lousy conversational
style, you're likely to translate that to the screen, unless you have
some sort of repressed split personality. Someone I know types with a
decidedly egocentric lilt to his messages, a little arrogant and leering
- and that works for him. (I'm not naming any names, but I will say
that his name has been mentioned in this article already and it wasn't
Murray or Steve.) Myself, I try as much as possible to translate as
direct of a rendition of my conversational style as possible. The way
this works is that when I type something, whether it's a new message or
a response to someone else, what I type is close to what I would
actually say in person. This often includes little unnecessary words
like "well" and "uh", but often that's the sort of feel I'm trying to
get across. I've seen some people even word their messages as if they
were being charged money by the line, like a want-ad. Boy, I hate that!
I enjoy humanizing my messages so that it actually sounds as if it's
coming from a real person, rather than the elaborate mobile computer
simulation you see slurping up all the Dr. Pepper at BTN parties. Here's
a revised version of the above example.
Murray, you lousy mole, you have something that belongs to me
and I think you know what it is. Yes, it's a DISK. Everyone:
Murray is a rabid thief who makes promises only to break them,
and that includes to his women. Murray, go eat moss and die.
Steve
Okay, so it's not all that hospitable, but you DO remember it! And,
I think if truth be told, this little missive does indeed reflect the
spirit in which the original, above, was written.
So the idea is to make your messages interesting by putting as much
of yourself into them as you can cram. At this point, you may be
asking, "Why the hell do I have to go through all this crap just to make
my messages look better? All I want to know is if anyone has a cheap
2400 baud modem for sale." Well, if that's all you want, type any way
you want to. But if you want splendor, admiration, friends, notoriety
without peer and people to buy dinner for you, you have to work at it.
Be personal. Type clearly. Spout pithy sayings. Make witty
rejoinders. Study up on your vocabulary so you can find out what
"pithy" and "rejoinder" mean. Before long, you too will have people of
the opposite sex begging for 3-inch cut swatches from your wardrobe, so
be patient.
Thank you and good morning.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
& This article was typed in personally by the author on his own &
& brand-new personal PC-compatible machine and his own personal &
& fabulous 80-column word processor. Keen, isn't it? &
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
BTN Party Questionnaire Results
by Chris Mohney
On the twentieth of June, 1990, a ragtag collection of people
assembled at the Maisel fiefdom for a long-overdue celebration. There
were deviants and bizarros of every stripe; there were even a few normal
people (but these were asked to leave). Never before have I seen as
many strange people or flying Milky Way bars as I saw on that night.
Still, I had a plan. I would force these creatures to fill out a
questionnaire, meaningless in the extreme but nontheless very
thought-provoking, to judge from some of the answers. Surprisingly, most
obliged ... and so, I have tabulated the most amusing and/or original
answers to the 13 questions I asked. Originally I had thought to
publish the top 10 responses, but varying numbers of good responses
crowded me out of that, as I wanted to put in too many. Ergo, you'll
see the "Top Responses" to each question, the responses being in no
particular order because I was simply at a loss to come up with a system
to rank them. Approximately 25 questionnaires were answered in all.
First off, I warn those of delicate temperament to seek
entertainment elsewhere. I actually have chosen very few of the viler
responses, but nontheless I wouldn't want to offend anybody (snort), so
if you are one of those who is easily offended, go watch Joanie Loves
Chachi or something.
Also, this is not a survey, poll, or what have you. It barely
fits a loose interpretation of "questionnaire." I imply no fairness or
equality in my choosing of the answers to be published here; it's all
completely arbitrary.
If you see an answer here that looks like yours but might have been
edited a bit, there are several possible reasons. Some of the scrawled
answers were hard to read, and I had to do some guesswork. Sometimes
the questionnaire was crumpled, or had some strange unidentifiable stain
that obscured the writing. I suspect that severe inebriation also
contributed to distorting the answers of some. Nevertheless, I think I
have remained true to the "spirit" of each answer.
If a particular response appeared more than once, its number of
appearances along with any other extraneous info will be in parentheses
( ), while editorial comments from yours truly will be in brackets [ ].
I also think I am unconsciously cribbing from the style of that Grand
Surveyteer, namely Tyros. But what can I say?
Onward!
T H E R E S U L T S
Question #1:
-------------------
Just who do you think you are?
-------------------
Top responses: