Older blog entries for mfleming (starting at number 2)

analog
    spent much of the afternoon argueing with sergent about a new idea on IRC. Finally convinced him. It could change the world. We'll see. But after I was done, I walked to downtown Santa Cruz to get some sushi. I picked up some CD's at Streetlight and then walked to the wharf and got some ice cream. Then I walked along the beach back towards home as the sun set behind me. I love Santa Cruz.

    Yesterday, Dan Bodony and I went riding in Marin. We ended up doing more trail-riding (mostly in the Marin headlands) than I had expected. Should have brought nobbies. Sold my spare tube to some waylaid Germans in the Marin Headlands. I haven't gotten a flat in three years, but I probably will now.

    I didn't realize that I hadn't told my parents yet that I'm joining Tim & Louise in Egypt for a week in June. "oops." They know now.

digital
    I guess I have a 'new' IRC nick now, thanks to sergent. The nick would be "meshguy," the explanation would be not forthcoming.

    The last nick I used (only briefly) was "SNomad," which was derived from a DDIAL handle I once used.

    I am still in flow, but am writing more specs than code. This is dangerous.

<bkrnd>
    tiger lily girl

    standin' cross-eyed in the corner

    tiger lily girl

    standin' toungue tied in the corner

    --Luna, "Tiger Lily Girl"
digital
    sergent labeled my first diary entry as "corny". I can certainly see how that adjective might apply but I'm not going to sanitize it.

    Wow, this is pretty wild. Someone else here at Advogato recognizes Jupiter Systems! I had wondered where all the Apple IIgs modem community went...

    I've been pounding mjs with questions about OAF that I'm running into while trying to build a top-level Eazel Services Nautilus view. I haven't stopped being impressed at the design of GNOME and GTK yet. Which is good, because it serves to balance against some of the frustration that results from working with a system-in-development....

analog
    Saw "The The" Tuesday at the Fillmore with eskil. I almost got killed on the way home (at 1:00AM); someone was driving north in the leftmost southbound lane on CA85! And they were hauling ass! California is druggy.

    Hoping to get some cycling in this weekend. I've sluffed off on my exercise program since coming off my three-month "intersticial" period.

(an introduction)

    I remember desperately holding out against buying a PC. In the late 80's and early 90's, it was the Apple IIgs computer that held my fancy. I wrote shareware programs and demos with a few other friends in the Chicago area. We called ourselves "Jupiter Systems." To me, buying a PC meant being able to play Wolfenstien 3D, but it also meant being doomed to run DOS. It seemed such a complete step backwards.

    In the summer of 93, I gave in and bought a 486/66 I had purpose-built to run NeXTstep/486 that had just been released. I remember installing the SLS distribution of Linux on a partition and being thoroughly unimpressed ("What is this X-Windows crap!?"). I spent 93-97 studying Electrical Engineering at Purdue University. While at Purdue, I remember thinking back at my high school days and feeling so lucky that I had been involved in the tail end of the Apple II hacker/demo/warez scene. "There will never be another time like that" I thought. The rest of the world was running Windows now; the home computer era that had inspired creativity and individual potential was clearly at its end. And I was the last of its generation.

    Forlorn, I graduated from Purdue in 97 (I was still running NeXTstep, although the OS was well on its way to the grave by that point) and went to work for the PC establishment. The hacker generation was gone; all I could do was romanticize those days to the few who would listen.

    But I had forgotten all about Linux. The little PC UNIX clone that I had snubbed my nose at years ago popped back up on my radar screen. I bought a new machine to replace my aging 486 and Mac laptop and started running it again. Then I could see that the hacker generation had not died at all -- Linux had kept the tradition alive! Renewed and invigorated, my mind full off Possibility, I left the PC establishment in January, 2000 to re-join the hacker community.

    And that's where I come from.

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