

Dot Commie: Implement!

BY

ALLOMETRIC

TCP & IP:

INTERNETS

\--

2012

-Preface-

Dot Commie:Implement! is a work of fiction inspired by my experience working in San Francisco during the dot-com boom of the 1990s. The story follows a young nerd who explores the grand city of San Francisco and his personal limits through work, drugs and mischief. Enjoy!

It was the mid-nineties; the 80s were an embarrassing memory.

High-end weed producers were finding their stride. Raves were stylish. Punk rock had gone emo; Hip hop was its successor. Brain supplements were vogue. Doc Martens were made in the UK. Movies were stored on VHS. Music was burned on CDs; a five disc changer was DOPE! Nintendo 64 had awesome graphics, Jurassic Park was blowing minds and the internet was for nerds. I happened to be one of them. Gopher, pine, telnet, kermit all good friends of mine and my Performa; Required nerd skills for nerd school.

There was one project in school that had me write a program to calculate the equilibrium of complex aqueous geochemical solutions; a slow process by hand that required several iterations of calculations but could be done quickly with a computer. It was written in some programing language of yore in a unix environment. This was the speck of dust around which my life would crystalize. After graduating BS Environmental Science, I moved to the outskirts of San Francisco with my wife. I really didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I was supposed to go to college, get married and now I'm supposed to get a job. What's a 23 year-old babe in the woods to do? Jobs were scarce and jobs in the environmental realm were even more scarce. I remember applying for jobs at Enron and Bechtel. HA! I ended up working temp gigs: Charles Schwab, Academy of Art College, wells Fargo, random law firms. They all sucked except for the AAC. I was the gallery administrator and got to do cool arty things and it inspired me to find a job in the art realm. FAO Schwartz had a huge millennium falcon on the ceiling which you could see from the ground floor. custom made. a lot of work. I walked in with my portfolio and got a job as a display artist. The pay sucked but it was a fun job. During this time... somehow, somewhere I got a call asking if i was interested in a job doing tech support at this ISP. slop.web was the name. It was regular work. The pay was mediocre but there was a lot to learn and it was a unix shop, so it was also familiar. the office was a good stroll from BART into the 'South of Market Area' (SOMA) but I had a portable compact disc player so it wasn't so bad but it was a bit of a slog overall.

5:45: ALARM!

6:15: Board the BART train.

6:40: Start walking.

7:00: Boot, Login, Headset and then wait for calls.

Seven A.M. Zero seven hundred hours. I'm not a morning person. I never was. My brain doesn't work well so early and I'm rather grumpy and apparently I was not alone. Around this time it seemed ever-more socially acceptable for people to take happy pills to make it through their miserable day: Prozac, Xanax, Ritalin, valium, whatever. Perhaps everyone was always taking pills and I wasn't paying attention but now there were advertisements.

PRINT "Ask your doctor about "$DRUG;

It did explain a lot about the way people behaved. Illogical lumps of consciousness. All around me, people going through life against their will, against their gifts. I rejected the entire concept as being too New and too Brave. At the University I determined MDMA (as well as video games) was the DEVIL!

"SOMETHING IS WRONG! IT's NOT RIGHT! NOONE SHOULD EVER FEEL THIS GOOD! EVER!"

My psyche simply rejected the concept of a forced well-being on all levels. It was unnatural.

Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.

I, myself, likely had ADHD and some rage issues topped off with generous glaze of existentialism which I dealt with by staying active, preferably with some element of pain, risk of pain or death; exhausting the mind and body into submission so that after-all I would not have the energy to do stupid shit faster than the speed of thought or excessively ponder problems that were beyond my control.

Also: weed.

Sweet, sweet cheeba.

It helped.

At the University...

If I hit a wall studying. Smoke.

If I had to stay up writing a paper. Smoke.

If I did not want to go to a boring o-chem lecture filled with 300 disgusting hyper-nerd assholes. Smoke.

Stoned-me was far less troublesome than sober-me. Stoned-me got things done. Sober me was inclined to hucking molotovs. The lazy-stoner stereotype never stuck with me. If I got stoned before bedtime I could not sleep. If I got stoned in the afternoon I could not slump on the couch all day and watch movies. I had to do something; A project or several simultaneously: laundry, jogging, cooking, anything(s).

Once the excitement of the new job wore off and the dull-ache of full-time work set-in, advertisements relentlessly reminded me of all the people around me who decided that "life is hard; I need pills." I even started to become sympathetic to this way of thinking. Every time I encountered a 'respectable', 'productive' citizen, confused, disheveled, uncoordinated, slow, pensive or even just seemingly contented I would assume they were on some prescribed Soma-holiday, every day. Some folks I knew were taking pills, others just drank. If these people could guiltlessly breeze through the day thinking pain is a delusion, something to be extinguished, dismissed, forgotten with the consumption of drugs then I too shall endeavor to become medicated and delusional.

Doctor Dre, what do you recommend?

5:45: ALARM!

6:15: Board the BART train.

6:40: Start walking.

6:45: Smoke.

7:00: Boot, Login, Headset and then wait for calls.

...

The day to day of the call center was straight-forward. Check account, check password, check OS, spew-forth the script; people were mostly civil and obedient.

"Go to the start button.

Open up control panels.

Open up network.

Right click dial-up networking.

...

"Your other right, sir."

....phone number, DNS, username, password, and so on.

*CLICK *click *CLICK!*

"You're going have to hang-up to try this out. Call back if you have any problems"

I loved that pause of silence. The user calculating, knowing that if there were problems they MIGHT have to be on hold for a SECOND TIME! The vibe and timing of this moment was what I would imagine matched other numerous resigned, unfortunate moments.

-I'm sorry but fluffy haz advance renal failure; we're going to haz to put fluffy down.-

-your kayak is well-patched! The rapids are your only way out.-

-You're going to need a round of antibiotics-

-We only have 20 minutes of air left.-

-It's not you it's me...-

-It's gangrenous-

"ok..." they would say softly, .

Others seems pissed off that they had to wait on hold for several minutes while configuring DUN was so fast and wanted to stay on the line to extract some kind of return on their few minutes on hold.

"ok..." they would snap with an incredulous frown.

Another favorite activity to pass the time was looking up the user website; each account came with web page. You could peer into the users' twisted narcissistic minds as you talked to them, smeared with insane ramblings, animated GIFs, midis and banner ads. "This person sounds so sane on the phone but the website indicates otherwise." Must.Not.Snark.

Sometimes I'd have to investigate a problem that was beyond a simple misconfig.

"I'm going to put you on hold and check on something. I'll be right back."

The headset we used had a mute-button and functioned in such a way as to let you hear the caller but they could not hear you which was mostly unremarkable but you did catch an occasional gem.

"dude, are you cleaning up or looking for weed?"

"uhh, both?"

Mostly it was the sound of someone relaxed and safe, behaving as if god did not exist and could not judge them, but I could.

nose whistles.

mouth breathers.

chewing with their mouth open.

large swigs of fluid.

mumbling.

groaning-pain

groaning-pleasure

scratching.

crumpling of trash.

shuffling.

a weird rubbing sound.

It was as if I had bugged Jabba the hutt's private home theatre and he was watching que-ball-tranny ewok pr0n. NUB-NUB!

Who knows what these people were really doing. Changing diapers, doing taxes, polishing their weapon, brushing the cat, receiving oral sex, doing lines or shooting up, and whatever they were doing, they were doing it in varied states of dress. I was sure of it.

Obviously, the cocktail of Chronic, rote, and internets was fertile ground for my imagination. If it was slow we would perhaps give advice on ftp, html, PERL or other internet conundrums.

"A gay porn website came up last night when I was on the internet. Does that mean I'm now gay? Will they really tell my wife?"

Characters

Dent.

Dent was the founder and owner of the ISP. He had grown the ISP from a swinger's BBS back in the Permian Era of the internet and financed the growth with digital porn distribution. He was a ringer for Lundberg in "Office Space". A lot of people didn't care for him but I never found him to be outrageous; he just suffered from short-arms and deep-pockets. Thanks-A-Bunch!

The Limey Bastard.

He was originally from England but somehow never left San Francisco after visiting for vacation. One of my earliest memories of helping train The Limey Bastard is when he came aboard the ISP.

ME: "Yeah, we're done with that. You can throw it in the rubbish."

LB: "I have been in the States for some time now. I DO know what GAHR-BAdGE is."

LOL.

After that quip we became fast-friends. We had a lot of common "interests".

Work.

Weed.

Travel.

Alcohol.

Motorcycles.

DOOMED marriages.

Contempt for authority.

The limely bastard and I would often take lunch together. One fine sunny day while walking back to work from our routine 'lunch with a side of greens' this homeless man ran up to us from behind, lept into the air, executed a forward flip, landing on a thick rolled-up sleeping bag and pad which was strapped to his back. The bed-roll compressed, then sprang him to an upright and slightly crouched position.

We stopped and stared.

He spun on one foot to face us; he was holding his left arm up as if to support an invisible rifle and with his right arm he clutched a hen neatly to his chest. The hen was rust colored, calmly peering out at us, unflustered by the gentleman's acrobatics.

The man appeared to be around 35-40. He was a bit grimy, wearing an old m65 army jacket, high-waters and tan work boots. His grooming and mannerisms suggested Old Dirty Bastard. His eyes searched the street for enemies encroaching from all directions.

"SIR! SIR! I have bad news from sector 7!" he shouted, as if to be talking over some great deafening noise. He looks west, down Bryant and sees them; his eyes now fixed. He crouches lower and gently sets the hen down, raises the invisible rifle to his cheek and takes aim.

"PEW! PEW! PEW!" He scurries backwards to take cover around a nearby corner.

"Sector 7 is being over-run. We NEED REINFORMENTS! PEW! PEW PEW!" The hen now strutting about in front of us; pecking at cigarette butts.

"We need HELP! WE NEED HELP! PEW! PEW!"

Help indeed.

LB and I looked at each other, smirked, and continue walking.

Ohhhh-kaaaaay.

"PEW! Pew! pew! pew."

We encountered a lot of characters in the SOMA area. SOMA at the time was an old warehouse district. There were no apartments or houses in this area. No landscaping. No PacBell park. There were a few crappy restaurants but the area was mostly habitat to the homeless who took shelter in the numerous crevices of the I80 leading up to the Bay Bridge.

Gold-Miners\- This was a term coined by my old friend 'gnash'. These were the avid recyclers who captained shopping carts from trash bin to trash bin in a quest for aluminum cans. Gnash espoused they were the souls of prospectors who engaged in the genocide of Indians during the California gold rush, doomed to live life as they always had: homeless with a lust for mining metal from their environment.

Frank Chu\- While technically not a character of SOMA he did protest often on south side of Market and I liked him. He was voted 'best protester' in y2k. His picket sign read:

Impeach

Clinton

12 galaxies

Guiltied to a

Zeganatronic

Rocket Society

I was always at a loss to formulate a valid counter-argument. His wiki page says he's a republican so keep an eye out, he could be the GOP's next rising star.

Angry Jesus\- I'm guessing this was the Jesus republicans prayed to. He looked like he'd bomb the shit out of some atheists to make a quick buck if he could. He looked pretty much looked like white-hippie Jesus that lived an actual Bronze Age lifestyle; I thought it gave him some Jesus-cred. He didn't wear robes just regular filthy 90s clothes (he was too tall to be Kurt Cobain though). His teeth were stained and a bit crooked and he appeared under-nourished. His hair and beard were unkempt and greasy. He always sported an intense scowl, even on his day off. When he was working he would stroll about, FUMING with rage, yelling at people, buildings, cars, the sky. You name it, he had some beef with it and he was going to let them know; scolding them about how wrong they were, and why they're pissing him off so intensely, pointing and shaking his finger. No specifics as what they needed to do differently or improve, just wailing at the world as he saw fit. I always made it a point to say 'hello' in passing, never 'hi' to avoid confusion with 'high'. He never once yelled at me. Praise Jesus.

Folding Chair Boy\- this guy was a real go-getter. He looked like an extra from ZARDOZ: dark hair, clean shaven, slacks, scuffed white button-down shirt, black worn-out Clarks on his feet. FCB would spend his days transporting folding chairs in a shopping cart. I saw him most often walking south on second street. His cart piled high with folding chairs, metal ones, like the ones schools used to put out for an audience or the kind used in a melee on WWE. Due-south on Second Street was a slight hill. He would enthusiastically pull his cart up this hill, swinging one arm as counter-balance to his stride. His face crumpled with effort. He would roll right past you at a good clip as if you weren't there. I never saw him anywhere else or heading north ever and as far as I could tell they were never the same chairs or perhaps they were just packed differently each time. I also never saw a giant floating head. What was his deal? Selling them? Performance art? Was he prospecting a secret folding chair mine? A full-service hobo catering and wedding planner? I had designs on following him to find out but... I never did. His alternate name was 'Sisyphus 2000' but that seemed too bleak and depressing for me.

Soilie Crater\- If ever there was a group of people in SOMA who were living large and loving life it was these folks. Soilies, gutter punks, whatever, often dressed in skinny jeans, black hoodies, dreads, piercings, etc. who enjoyed hating on everything and getting wasted as much as possible. Proto-hipsters that existed without benefit of hot topic, text-messaging or steady cash from mom and dad. Soilie crater was a large sunken section of soma about 4 metres deep, located at 2nd and mission. It was obvious a large building was once there, it was also obvious that aliens had ripped the building up by its foundation and took it up into space. Somehow, I didn't hear about it. The side walk and tarmac went right the edge dropped straight down. The crater was delineated buy a tall chain-link fence with tarp draped on the inside. I would often take the time to peer through the numerous holes in the tarp. At the middle of the crater was a large midden, composed mostly of discarded fast-food and alcoholic-drink containers. Along the wall, up against the concrete and tarmac, there were large dark cavities that penetrated deep into the earth. Sometimes, you could see some soilies perched on the edge of one of these cavities, peacefully husking a bacon double-cheeseburger, grinding a freshly gathered tar ball or fashioning artifacts from dead lighters. It was like being at the zoo or in star trek. I could observe all I wanted but mustn't disturb these soilies in their natural habitat. it was later discovered several years later when they cleared these guys out that the site was more like Canyon de Chelly. Deeper in these cavities were rooms under the streets and buildings, complete with electricity and running water poached from Soilie Crater's neighbors. HA!

The Method

After eight months Limey Bastard and I had become tech-support veterans; the turn-over rate in the call center was grotesque. We heard a million and one complaints and endured the business end of human-nature for money; perhaps like a prostitute but with less pay and self-respect. At least people wanted to interact with a prostitute. We were the last option for our customers, people reluctantly came to us for help or to vent... but at least we weren't in billing.

Working at this place was like one of those Japanese game shows from the early 90's when they were fun to watch.

You ate the raw monkey-brain the fastest; congratulations RED! You are now the Domain Mistress(registrar).

You were able to lay in an ice rink as it froze while other got up; congratulations! You are assistant supervisor!

You lasted the longest hanging upside-down in the sun while people burned your nipples with magnifying glasses; congratulations! Call-center supervisor.

Basically if you could endure more pain than those around you, show up, and form complete, intelligible sentences you were bound to go places in this company. I learned not to take work personally; binge drinking and smoking weed on the clock helped as well.

I believe in about 1.5 years I had survived long enough to become the day-shift supervisor. I was in charge of hiring, firing, employee retention, customer satisfaction, training and quelling call-center insurgencies.

Everyone knows that for a department to function well, you need a great team. To create a great team... you need to pick your people carefully.

I had seen what others had done during my time in the call center. The prick non-technical boss-man. The awkward CS graduate trying to be a 'people-person'. Mostly, it was people with a huge hard-on for professionalism and an exaggerated fear of the ISP's owner, trying in vain to bring sanity and order to a situation where it did not apply.

Fortunately, I didn't care about any of those things.

Hiring:

I would consider anyone. I didn't care about long gaps of unemployment, sketchy or non-existent references, grooming, immigration status or professional experience; in fact working at some 'respectable' setting was mark against you. It meant you expected order, reward, praise and punishment; I could offer none of that. I was looking for internet urchins, aspiring script-kiddies, online-gamers, hackers, geeks, pirates and trolls; people who knew about the sweaty unwashed taint of the internet and loved it at 36kbs.

The interview always included reference to these numbers of things: weed, drunkenness, porn, deviant sexual acts and technical prowess. They would be working in and around the internet so I thought it to be prudent to make sure applicants could handle it, sort of like a reverse MSDS. I always omitted the customer service aspect of it.

"How would you handle a difficult customer?" LAME! It told you nothing. Anyone can regurgitate an appropriate answer.

I thought mentioning such taboo subjects during the interview and how they responded was enough; they were interviewing for a job after-all and had to put forth some measure of professionalism.

"What are the steps you would take if an angry customer called claiming to have trouble accessing oiledmidgetorgy.com?"

Firing:

I don't think I ever had to do that. Usually people would gain their experience and move-on or enjoyed working with our happy free-range team and did their job adequately.

Customer Satisfaction:

This was the mission of the call-center.

Our motto: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Internet, and he won't bother you for weeks!"

I felt technical knowledge and training went a long way in this area. The team knew their way around internet technologies and served as friendly guides for the most part. Problem diagnoses were accurate, precise and timely; this was a product of picking the right people. The sysadmins liked this as well.

Employee Retention, Training & Quelling Insurgencies:

This solution I discovered by accident but likely an ancient solution to an ancient problem... CHURCH.

Church was actually code-name for Zeitgeist, Friday after work specifically. Zeitgeist was an authentic dirt-bag biker bar. LB had first invited me to this location. he loved his bike; a GS1100 believe. It wasn't one of those biker bars populated by CPAs and doctors playing dress-up, driving a couple of blocks on their polished-chrome Harleys to have a couple bud-fucking-lights. NO! FUCKNO! the sidewalk outside was cluttered with all manner of motorcycles in all states of disrepair, all appeared to have been dropped, cracked, rusted, worn, zip-tied and taped. These bikes were loved. At Church the mixed drinks were strong and well-executed, the beers were 'craft' beers. The bathrooms: disgusting. The food: highly edible. The patrons, for the most part, resembled their bikes. They also had hooks to hang non-motorized bikes. Bike messengers were still clinging to existence at this time; they also frequented this place and, they too, looked just like their bikes.

Most of the bar was outside. A gravel lot with rows of picnic tables, enclosed with high cinder-block walls and a rusted 1950's tow-truck decomposing in the corner. On the north wall was there was a moderately vandalized mural representing Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson riding that iconic chopper toward the crowd; done perhaps with a slight nod to R.Crumb. For some reason someone had scrawled an arrow to a small ice-chest on Jack Nicholson's lap and labeled it "David Crosby's liver".

In a short amount of time people from work started to gather for church regularly. Sysadmins and programmers began to show as well. The pitchers of beer sloshed before us in an endless stream and you could smoke marijuana in situ with impunity. This is where the magic happened. Everyone could vent, discuss the week, lick their wounds and spackle their egos.

Tech support cursed the username of a difficult client.

Admins explained the nuts and bolts of a service interruption and its resolution.

Everyone was buzzing about their new gadget, website back-end or that horrible video clip that could not be un-seen.

We were all roughly talking about 'work'.

Training, therapy and medication.

Team-building... and it didn't end until the weekend shift supervisor was puking his guts out.

We always left with a deeper understanding of the ISP and each other.

This was all I could offer or encourage.

There was no promise of a raise, no pension, no delicious carrot to look forward to... just Church.

If you see your mom this weekend, will you be sure and tell her...

SATAN!

SATAN!

SATAN!

Mr. Evens was the evening call-center supervisor; he was an odd character. I felt it an honor and a blessing to have met this magnificent bastard. He used to work as a developer for Atari. A composer of music and sometimes did soundtracks for porn movies. A role-model for not-giving-a-fuck. To epitomize his wit and impropriety I refer to this interaction:

ME: Such-n-Such educational website is down. I'm about to take off but could you follow-up on this please? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

Mr. Evens: Nope. Sorry, I can't do that. When I think of the children I get a hard-on but I'll follow-up on that website.

Or... Mr. Evens talking to a client about a modem negotiating a connection. "OK... I hear the modems sniffing each other's butts... CONNECTED!"

He also relentlessly regaled us with his adventures of living in the tenderloin which I doubt were entirely true, but they were entertaining. A favorite was his difficulty in soliciting prostitutes in the 'Loin; specifically, whether they would end up being male cross-dressers or actually female prostitutes.

"C'mon NO WHAMMY! DAMN! oh... well..."

He was master of inserting horrible imagery into your mind but he was a fair soul.

Once we split a block of hash; we chopped it up at work on his desk and right when we were deciding if the 2 piles were visibly even, Sleepy Steve stepped up with a work-related question.

Sleepy Steve: "Hey guys... I have this user who..."

Mr. Evens: "WAIT! STOP! Does this look even?" Motioning to the piles of hash.

Sleepy Steve: " yes... I guess. WAT iZ Th@t?..."

MrEvens: "ok. Thanks. Nothing. What's going on with this user then?"

Through Mr. Evens I crossed paths with the local Satan-worshiper crowd. Nice people, actual Satan worshipers. It wasn't the BS that mirrored the church's BS that you would see embraced by tweenies to get a rise out of mom and dad. Actual Satan worshipers were often vegan or vegetarian, supporters of animal rights, champions of individual liberties and freedoms; an easy-going group and funny as hell... so to speak. Since I didn't really believe in the invisible sky wizard or any other religious franchise in particular I decided that hanging out with these guys was the same as hanging out with Baptists, Masons, Hippies or Goth kids. It all seemed like different sides of the same coin; a coin which I did not believe existed.

The reason I had crossed paths with this crowd was that Mr. Evens knew I was an artist and Native American and introduced me to Steven Leyba, also an artist and Native American. That's about as far as the similarities went. Steven Leyba was a Satanic priest ordained by Anton LeVay. His greatest shame and secret was eating steaks behind his wife's back. He was an Apache Indian who turned head-on into the notion espoused by Christians that Native Americans were satanic heathen spawns who needed saving; an interesting position and not wholly illogical. I had to check out his work.

Thanksgiving weekend: Bondage-a-Go-Go; Mr Leyba's "Un-Thankful Thanksgiving" performance piece. Mr. Evens was doing the sound for the show. Mr. Leyba started the show off with a wonderful ghost dancer performance with a headdress of his own design complete with rubber gimp mask and bondage-themed dance. Afterwards he came on stage dressed only in an American flag wrapped draped around his waist. He engaged in some spoken word about the Thanksgiving holiday and its true meaning whilst his lovely assistant started carving a large spiral into the flesh of his back with an Exacto knife. His fist clinched and his voice wincing from the deep wounds as he read. Blood flowed down his back in thick streams and was absorbed by the Flag at his waist. When she was done he turned to the crowd, produced a very large dildo, took off the blood-soaked flag, wrapped the dildo with the flag and squatted upon it forcing the Flag and dildo up his anus. He then pulled it out and evacuated his bowels as he dropped it all to the stage floor.

TAH-DAH!

A bevy of attractive females filed on stage and proceeded to urinate and expel enemas onto his prop in an unsanitary display, the likes of which, have not since been matched.

I could not look away. It was an impressive exhibition of will and depravity. Bravo... I guess.

After the show on the roof I overheard him talking to friends "Sorry I couldn't say 'HI!' right after the show, my hands were covered in shit!?" as if it were somehow a surprise or unexpected. Hilarious AND disgusting. In the years to come I'd see Steven at local pow-wows or bars and he was just a nice regular guy who did strange things for a living; just like all devotional workers I suppose.

Mr. Leyba

Adrift

We were all doing all that we could to make this miserable job as entertaining as possible. As supervisor and tech-support veteran I knew there was a point when all that could be done had been done for the user and that the problem was beyond our purview.

I fashioned an install CD to serve as a random spinner device and sectioned off portions of it with common solutions to intractable problems: Water in the lines. Re-install Dial-up networking. Too far from the CO. Update drivers. etc. If a tech who knew his stuff was against a wall with a client, I'd spin the wheel, and repeated whatever the wheel landed upon in generic professional voice.

I let the staff pretty much do what they wanted. If needed have a look at someone's screen on the call-center floor to help out I would pass behind everyone's back and have full view of whatever nonsense they were engaging in with the portion of their brain not used for regurgitating configurations; I did not want to know what was going on. I would announce "ALT-TAB, ALT-TAB, ALT-TAB, ALT-TAB, ALT-TAB" as I walked the aisle giving everyone a warning to hide their online game, IRC raunch, hot line, /alt/binaries/latinas/bigbutts/ downloads or their Web-Design business they were running out of the call-center. I did not care. As long as they kept the call wait time low it was all good.

I did once have to call a meeting to define some clear limits about smoking weed at work. At certain times there would be large swaths of the staff that would get up to "check their tires" which was code for going outside to smoke weed and look for chalk marks on their car tires to avoid tickets, and it sometimes affected call wait-time. It was also bad form. The meeting was short and I'm sure perplexed the staffers who did not know what "checking the tires" meant.

"It does not require more than three people to go outside and check your tires. If there are more than three people checking tires I had better be there as well. We need to keep the phones adequately staffed. That is all."

We also had fun with vendors who would come in, present a 'class' on the internet and how their technology or service could help us out. Some director would set these up as like free training or whatnot but it was more often than not covering subjects we all knew about. Once a vendor was presenting to the day-shift and I was sat up front close to the presenter. He was up there like he was special guest on the electric company; talking about the most basic concepts rather than the internet minuTEH we were promised. We were all just tolerating him from the beginning...

"... is a network of computers talking to each other...."

"a web browser is blah blah blah"

"modem is blah blah blah blah"

"blah, blah blah blah"

"so does any know what protocol is most commonly used on the internet today (children)?" he asked.

"thc/ip" I whispered to myself as a joke, but the fucker heard me.

"That's right!" he boasted, pointing at me and repeating "TEE. H. CEE. EYE. PEE." to the room.

The day-shift roared with laughter. He looked at me, I smirked and shrugged. He was visibly embarrassed but then chuckled and continued on with a less-belittling tone and more technical content.

...

What is going on out there?

There was a rising tide of events that signaled something was up but... what? I was hemorrhaging smart folks to new and better jobs; not that I blame or discouraged them. It was just unusual. Users would call-in and reveal that they were getting paid wads of cash for seemingly ordinary computer/server maintenance. The oddest was receiving recruiter cold-calls at my house. HUH? The jobs were mostly venture capital startups; and they seemed sketchy.

"SOoooo.... I'm going to be paid in banner ads?"

No thanks.

...

The Secret heart of Slop.web

The slop.web server room was everything a server room should not be.

First off... it was carpeted.

Second... there was no air conditioning.

Third... well... everything else came in tied for third.

The entrance was on Stillman; an old narrow road, asphalt crumbling at the edges revealing its cobblestone heritage. beyond the door facing the street there was a hallway and in the back was a cheap hollow door, like, a door you'd put on a closet in a housing project or a McMansion. No signage. Painted the same bone color as the hall. Enter a code... open the door and a palatable wall of sounds, heat and scents tumbled into the hallway. There were modems clicking, screeching and dialing. Fans of all shapes, sizes and rpms furiously churning the air. The smell of cooking electronics, PVC, dust and ozone. The room was a dry 80 degrees. The space itself: one large room and 2 smaller rooms in the back. Old office space I guess. A functional toilet hidden in a server cabinet would have been awesome but ... this was not the case.

If some machine-race had an old-town or an endangered species 'nature' preserve organized in chronological order... I'd imagine it to look like this server room.

The first row of racks were populated several Livingston Portmaster 2's supporting analog phone lines; 28.8 MAYbe 36.6 kbps at best. Some colocation machines and at the far end was likely the first speck of dust from which the ISP bloomed; A squatty black cabinet that housed DENT's "cash cow". A huge tower PC with a column of CD ROM trays filled with porn. Atop this was the monitoring robot. A DOS machine that zealously dialed all our access numbers, authenticated and pinged core devices as put forth by scripture. If anything part of that process failed a page would be sent. The second row had some Portmaster 2e's, several 3comm Hyperchassis and networked storage. The third row supported all the core routers, more network storage. The fourth and last row in this group was where t1s and other lines were brought from the demarc to csu/dsus, dsx panels and other layer 1,2 business. This is also the last indication of sanity, forethought, concern for safety or dignity.

Along the north wall there was a huge backup battery; large enough to support all the equipment for about 15-20 minutes. Next along the wall was provider demarc. This was truly a sight. Huge bundles of wire came in the room from splice boxes, holes in the dry wall, ceiling tiles representing all manner of gauge, technology, and manufacturer. These bundles separated even further into tiny strands of wires that connected to a wall of 66 blocks. Every 4 wires were tagged with what looked like toe-tags with circuit IDs and provider information. To connect our gear to these drops... we took our cat5, crimped one end with an rj45 and punched down rx1, rx2, tx1, tx2 directly to the 66 block cross connect. This had been happening for years... fast, prolific growth. Layers on top of layers until it resembled the undergrowth of a rain forest... a machine-race rain forest. Just past this sight was a row of racks supporting all the web, radius, mail servers; mostly sun sparc units. They were all named after "animals you could put up your butt", as Mr. Evens would put it. mouse, hamster, gerbil... etc.

In the far back room was the telephone switch and numerous point-to-point customers and each one seemed to be a different technology terminated by a different manufacturer with different administrative interface. Fun.

If you touched anything metal in this room you would discharge a visible, audible and smarting shock. I always used my keys to discharge to avoid the smarting bit.

It was a lot to take in and some couldn't or wouldn't do it.

One weekend we came to work and the on-call sysadmin clipped the pager to a plotted plant, sat it on his chair with a note that read:

"I have quit. Please refer to my vegetative replacement for any problems you may be experiencing."

Little did I know that I would soon experience the horrors that transformed this admin into a potted plant.

...

For several weeks strangers in suits had be filing through the office checking the place out. DENT was selling the ISP. When it was done I'm sure he was a rich man and in a very good mood. All the employees were also in a good mood as our stock options had yielded a few thousand in the transaction.

He arranged a celebratory cruise around the bay on a chartered boat, food, open bar et al. It was a cool, calm evening and the skyline was picturesque; worthy of a postcard. Once on the water, everyone proceeded to get shit-faced. I remember people puking over the side. People's significant-others in disbelief that this was our professional work culture. The bartender letting us drink straight from the liquor bottles. Limey bastard's bear-rape joke and somewhere around the bay bridge I remember hearing the captain's booming voice over the ship's loudspeaker.

"Stop smoking weed or we'll call the coast guard. It's illegal."

hahah... who's the crazy person trying to smoke weed? Prolly the programmer.

Later on the cruise I'm in back with Dent and others toking on a joint. ahahaha!

"Stop smoking weed or I'll head back"

I was too late. We already rounded Angel Island and were heading back anyways. ahahhahahahaha!

Thanks a bunch for a wonderful cruise Dent, I had a great time from what I could tell.

...

The ISP had been purchased by a larger startup that was headquartered in Denver and their plan was to collide 2 local ISPs, slop.web and cereal.web, into one and integrate them into their larger ISP-colliding scheme.

"It's the largest start-up EVAR" was the buzz.

It sounded like a plan overheard from junkies who sauntered about my neighborhood.

"what we can do is... hobo-tech... since we're out here anyways... people could pay us to keep an eye on their car or business, maybe do some recycling, wash windshields and stand in parking spots to save them for our subscribers. We'll get uniforms and shoes. It's a cinch!"

Yes, you could dress yourselves up in a costume and provide a service but no one is going to rely on crackheads to be anything but crackheads.

Yes, you could connect all these networks together but details like duplicate usernames, incompatible authentication and server platforms, DNS schemes, customer support, tracking and billing would make the plan.... effort prohibitive. It would require a lot of retooling and the gains would need to be made in new customers; existing customers would likely leave if having to take the pains of changing their routine. Resource consolidation and economy of scale were not going to work in an industry experiencing such a technological flux. IF that really was their actual plan. It really seemed like a grandiose and audacious plan to cash in on venture capital; just like those people who planned on getting rich off banner ads and a website but multiplied to some incalculable level.

People started to jump ship faster than normal at the news. Others had renewed hope that they'd get rich on the generous stock-options or at least be seated with a stable well-paid job in the new "dot-conomie". UGH. I hated that word... mostly because the 'dot-conomie' was mostly based on "marketecture".

Around this time, I overheard someone, somewhere, say the phrase "you fucking dot communist!" but what I think he meant was "new-money-fascist!" Communism is an economic system and not necessarily totalitarian, then I got to thinking... he may be on to something.

DOT-COM STARTUP: A nascent, lawless organization that brutalizes its workers in exchange for the promise of great common worker wealth at some unspecified time in the future, all financed by other people's money.

I was now officially a dot-fucking-commie.

I knew it to be doomed from the start.

It was going to be chaos.

I wanted to see it.

It didn't scare me.

I liked it.

Game.

On.

...

Cereal.web

Mr. Moustache was (from what I could discern) the facilities and telco guy at this other ISP. I couldn't really say where he fit in the org-chart because no one ever communicated that to me. We were all kind of on our own after the merger. He looked like that SNL guy that lived down by the river. His only skill he ever demonstrated was carpentry, hoarding lists and yelling. If a T1 was in alarm he would put a loop on the DSX panel, call the provider and yell. I never saw him login to any equipment or received and email from him, in fact, he could barely type. He was always wandering around meeting to meeting, probing for a crevice to fit himself in under these new circumstances. He was scared.

MOE: He was imported from some frozen Midwestern state. I think he may have been the only person who was crazier than me. His laugh was like a slipping power-steering belt. I'm pretty sure he didn't have a girlfriend and he could be a weapons-grade asshole. He didn't smoke weed but he was rumored to have unusual appetites. I liked him well enough and he was now my boss.

HAL: a middle aged guy, lived with GF, knew some Cisco CLI and red hat. A bit on the boring side but not judgmental.

Everyone else in the group jumped ship pretty quickly and I didn't really get to know them.

...

The first salvo in this merger took out most of the sysadmins, tech support, sales and marketing. Many simply packed up and left. Jobs were fairly easy to come by at this time. There were now half the people to do twice the work. There were rumors this was happening simultaneously in Texas and on the east coast; ISPs were being mashed together all over the states. In the call center for slop.web things were steady-as-she goes. We actually got more bored than normal but it would not last. After a few weeks I was given a field promotion of sysadmin/network engineer; I was given all the root passwords to all the boxes, a pager, a Motorola i1000 and tossed into a cubicle upstairs. Mr. Evens also received a field promotion. We were tasked to keep things up and running. Mercenaries from Toast consulting worked on reverse engineering then integrating/migrating services to new equipment, new data centers, and new architecture. They were cool kids and we got along. The systems group (me and evens) were now doing the job of 5 people before the merger; before all these changes. There was always something going on. Always a page to check on. Always something to restart, delete, LN or mount. At first we joked that we were UNIX dirtbags but after some time we felt more like UNIX janitors.

Pager: BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Clean up in aisle /var/adm/wtmp on hamster.

Pager: BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Customer assistance needed in /etc/init.d/ on gerbil.

BEEP. BEeeEP. BEEP. beeeeep. beep. beeeeep.

The pages came in cryptic numeric codes and you have to cross reference their exact meaning from a paper list before you could get an idea of what to do next. It was like trying to wage war in ww2 submarine by yourself, receiving orders from HQ in bleeps and codes, running from compartment to compartment... ALLAAAARMMM!!ALLAAAARMMM!!

It was a lot to take in at first but it was rather exciting. The ISP claimed to service 10,000 people. The internet was still quite fringe and I was right on the bleeding edge. People were afraid of it and rightfully so. Encryption and security were afterthoughts. Businesses hadn't quite bought into the concept. It was admittedly quite dangerous to put your stuff out there but individuals loved it. It was wild. Love and Anarchy. It allowed people to share and gain access to the information they loved without rules (try masturbating in the library sometime).

!PORN!SEX!PORN!SEX!PORN!SEX!PORN!SEX!PORN!SEX!PORN!SEX!

The technology that can deliver better and more realistic porn to the masses will flourish. Cave paintings, crude carvings, hieroglyphs, drawings, Realism, photography, stereoscopes, flipbooks, movie houses, film, Betamax, vhs, DVD and now internets. There was a vast undying demand for it and if you could somehow deliver porn better, faster you were gold! I was helping in this progression; delivering convenient anarchy and fetid depravity that was the internet straight to people's homes. 10,000 of them. I took great and solemn pride in that fact. Also, I got to play with a lot of cool technology.

-A CoLo... Somewhere.-
Swept Away

For months now I've been in the throes of the dot-commie lifestyle, taking refuge from my personal life in work and all of its excesses while quietly resigned to this way of life. It was the most money I've made in my life and I would routinely live paycheck-to-paycheck. I'd spend most of it on some shoes, travel, food, beverage and other buzz-inducing products; the rest of the money I wasted. I spent the night at work or worked in a maintenance window 1-2 times a week. Weekends just meant I didn't need to put in any face-time. I did a lot of consolidation, upgrades, followed by decommissioning remote sites that were now redundant.

I was always on call.

Startups didn't want to spend money on more admins and if they could manage to lure someone in, the hire would be off to greener pastures before they could take up a pager rotation or they were IT mercenaries. Consultants. Forbidden to be on pager-duty. I was the pager-punk, primary or secondary. I heard every page. Always.

I was always in a fight.

Everything had to be done. Everything was unique. Everything was in production 24 hours a day. If I wasn't fighting these goddamned machines it was the brain-dead customers who somehow got a hold of my cell number or the fucking service providers unable to find my circuit and repair it.

I was always out of the house.

Around the time of my promotion, I moved into a rent-controlled flat in the Mission District with my wife (now separated in concept) and a common friend from college days around the time of my field promotion. It was small but the price was right and just a couple blocks from BART and Valencia. My pad was 6x12 "room" with a closet tucked under the outside stairs leading from the stoop to the 2nd floor flat. I crammed my single bed into the closet so I could close the door sleep any hour of the day in darkness. This space also served as my art studio. Between work, the living accommodations and the ex who seemed to confuse calculated emotional manipulations with healthy human interactions, it was no wonder 'home' was never a great draw for me.

My life had become a marbled mash of responsibilities, plans, expectations and excesses which made it out to be more like some twisted human experiment than a career. It's hard to describe how I felt. I had the freedom and cash to do the things I wanted to do but circumstances didn't always allow it; I never knew when I would have to get up and fight another fire on this vast network that stretched from Santa Rosa to San Jose and across to Stockton was made up of new/varied technologies and built on a shoestring. Nothing was ever deemed obsolete; everything was in production until it died. There were many opportunities for many things to go wrong and they did. A reboot would often help, maybe even an image or memory upgrade but things would break. I didn't take it personal when that monitoring robot reported something didn't holler-back. The telcos I'm sure where going through the same thing, rebooting shit, interrupting connections and bringing them back quickly.

Motivated but dispassionate might describe how I felt. How can you get pissed at a machine? It doesn't care. You can't hurt it or make it feel bad; it's just doing its job as best it can just like I was. After all, what else was I going to be doing?

Blank.

This was my goal. I was not motivated by the need to feel joy, love, despair, anger or disappointment.

Just blank.

I had perfected blank. Normal human aspirations had long ago been extinguished, delegated or banished in my marriage and was now a convenient match to this new 24/7 lifestyle. All of these elements were dead weight; I really didn't know what to do with them. They weren't going to help me build out a colo or crimp these cables. Work had been a fine distraction from all of this for some time but there was still a whisp of my former self; emboldened by the move, pending-divorce, the new job and a flush of cash. I could see it in a laugh or a glance. An echo of a time when I wanted to have sex and people wanted to have sex with me. The years of living with the wife had acclimated me to a sexless existence on a vast, vapid plane of nothing as far as the eye could see. Alone.

10 wake up.

20 walk.

30 lie down.

40 sleep.

50 GOTO 10

I did try to walk in a straight line for the most part, doing the right thing... thinking that eventually I'd come across a landmark, a road, circling buzzards, a pizza crust, anything.

Eventually, something did happen.

10 wake up.

20 walk.

30 get divorced.

40 lie down.

50 sleep.

60 END

From that day forth I lived in the middle of a fecund, lush jungle, just as lost as ever but now... options. Every option. A straight path no longer required. A straight path impossible. The wife's matching carry-on and rolling suitcase now lost in the undergrowth. Compost. I really hadn't considered dating, I was really busy working and taking it quite seriously at this point. Who had the time? A relationship, sex, to me, was something... less-than-real. Something that existed in stories, "the past", it was history with no direct practical application to me, and as an abstraction it was easy to let it be until it became real again.

It was a normal weeknight, I worked late, ate late, drank late, and I had gone to bed in an empty flat. The Ex let herself into my room sometime in the night and woke me up.

"hey. ... HEY. do you have any condoms?" she whispered.

I could smell rum on her breath.

REALLY?! Did I just hear that? I had better be fucking dreaming! W.T.F. is this fucking GODDAMNED bullshit?! Is this really happening? Here I am, quietly enjoying my bed under the stairs, cuddling with the pager, minding my own business and you come in here, reeking of booze, interrupt my sleep, to ask for fucking condoms? I'm not your fucking boyfriend anymore. I'm not here to help you get laid! This sounds like a new-boyfriend job to me, ER-fucking-GO, why the FUCK are you bothering me about COnDOMS?! ...and, yes, of course I have condoms.

"Nope." I said without stirring.

Wait...

Why?! Why ~DO~ I own condoms?

My first instinct was that this was a calculation; a maneuver to elicit a response out of me: A provoked, premeditated fight about nothing as demonstration or evidence that I still 'cared'. This is something the EX loved to do while we were together. then again, we weren't together anymore... so... maybe they really were pathetic enough to go door to door begging for condoms... either way, one thing was absolutely clear... people were having sex right across the hall.

Sex was here, in the house, right now.

Sex was no longer a ghost.

Sex was real.

Oh...

Bother.

I could no longer let it be.

It was time to re-consider sex and its trappings.

I did not have time for this. I felt it was more effort than I was willing to spare... it was going to be like getting another job.

Ugh.

Chickadee: This girl resembled a fluffy Easter chick; short yellow hair, tiny cute nose, dressed like she shoplifted from goodwill. I'd see her at parties and she cornered me once and asked why I never made a pass at her. Aren't you homeless and/or a lesbian?

PASS.

WWE chick: This girl was an unashamed WWE fan with fake tits and was married. The boob job intrigued me and married women need love too but... WWE? Really?

PASS.

Neo-lithic girl: She didn't have an email address. WAT!? Even homeless people had email addresses in SF! I presumed she also used a coal-fired brass dildo and lube made from whale oil. I was vegetarian.

PASS.

Metro girl: Her room resembled a rodent cage and her girlfriend (an adult) looked like a 12 year old boy; baseball hat, chucks, et al. Think Asian Beaver Cleaver with determined nipples. I didn't want to explore the sensation of being a pedophile or step foot in her room.

PASS.

Box girl: This girl had moved into her apartment months ago but had too much stuff to unpack into her space. A hoarder and likely sentimental.

PASS.

Tattoo make-up girl: Hated dot commies for all the right reasons before she knew I was a dot commie.

PASS.

Hush-Hush girl: She had pierced nipples but looked like Quentin Terantino with a weave.

PASS.

Wholesome White girl: Crunchy and waaayyy too groovy. Also, jam bands.

PASS.

Cougar co-werker: I had a firm no-coworker rule at the time.

PASS.

Indian girl: Dots not slots. Lived in the east bay.

PASS.

Brazilian girl: Too Beneton.

PASS!

Gap girl: Too catholic.

PASS!

Art girl: Her art sucked.

PASS!

PASS!

PASS!

PASS!

PASS!

FUCKING PASS!

FUCK THIS! I'm going to paint and hang out with lesbians.

I liked hanging out with the girl's girls. It was the best way for me to meet other genuine human beings. We were mutually-assured not to have an agenda in play. You could have real interactions without pretense or subterfuge. They weren't trying to impress me, change me or sometimes, even acknowledge me. I suppose I should clarify that the pretense and subterfuge was not absent, just not directed at me; the boy. The girls were not ginning-up a display of credentials, sluttiness, coolness, brains or any other qualities straight girls might put forth in an effort to anticipate my desires. It was hard to actually meet and hangout with a straight girl, sure, they were there, in front of me, but I felt they really weren't 'there'; they were always pretending to be someone they thought I wanted to meet.

Another factor was that I was bit of a germophobe. I knew dudes. They think they were invincible and were full of themselves and would put their dick into any moist cavity or integument !ALSO! They don't wash their hands...and if heterogirls had sex with them that meant it was like hooking up with some gross dude. I preferred to be invincible in other ways that did not involve other people and their germs. If anyone asks, I recount this attempt at sluttiness today with just a gesture. I raise a single finger and push a point in space with a disgusted snarl on my face. Much like a child or a life-long vegetarian pushing dents into a wad of ground beef in the supermarket. I did eventually succeed in eroding this hang-up with alcohol and other drugs to perhaps a 'normal' person's level caution.

...

So how does a germophobe make it in the city? Especially San Francisco, a city full of groping single people with extensive access to public transportation and an INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT?!

SICK!

My goal was not sterilize everything in and out of sight; those people are crazy.

I went with segmented-yogurt technique.

Gloves. I think gloves were key and I had several pairs. I wore full-finger synthetic mtb gloves even if wasn't riding a bike. Bart had places to lock your bike so no one would know you just walked to the station. I could safely touch anything; buy a ticket, hold a hand rail, open a door, etc. I think it worked, you just needed to be mindful of cross-contamination. Don't touch your face, ears or any food items. Germs that cause disease are quite delicate so you just needed to deny them a safe transport from their source to your membranes. I wasn't of the opinion that my gloves were germ-free; they were habitat to germs that could live on gloves and disease germs had to compete to survive against them in this ecosystem. ENTOSIS PRO TOTUS! Hand and glove washing were part of the scheme as well. The gloves also staved off the chill of a San Francisco summer and server rooms; for me, they were essentials.

Wash your hands! Ok... so you didn't piss on your hands like a normal adult human being when urinating. great. Fan-fucking-tastic. Here's a goddamned cookie. That doesn't mean you shouldn't wash your hands. You likely touched the door handle on the way in, so now your scrotum particles are on your hands as well as every other dude's scrotum particles who did not wash their hands and touched the door handle. If you want strangers' scrotum particles covering your hands I'm sure there are more entertaining ways to accomplish this. Just wash your hands, dry your hands, use your wet paper towel to open the door on your way out and we won't have to suffer the scrotum dusting you're offering up.

Pens: Carry your own pen. Never use anyone else's pen. Ever.

Restaurants: Watch closely for cross-contamination. A pitcher touching the edge of you glass or a straw during a refill... FFFFUUUUUUU!!!!! Why don't I just make out with everyone at the neighboring table?!

Handles of serving utensils or bare hands touching food.

Thumbs in a dish being passed around.

Menus.

Trays.

Baskets.

Money or credit card transactions... all potential sources of cross contamination of GERMS!!! SICK!!!

Dive bars. Obviously I couldn't wear gloves ALL the time. I thought of dive bars as inoculations. old, grimey, dank, populated by people who did not have their health at the forefront of their minds. Here I could come into contact with weak, poisoned, demoralized germs that are easily defeated and registered in my catalogue of antibodies thereby preparing me for an encounter with a related swath of hearty germs fresh off someone's unwashed scrotum hands.

Chewing gum. Making out with a girl would noticeably alter the ecosystem of my mouth. This introduction foreign mutant Midwestern germs was not necessarily bad for me, just unpalatable. Chewing gum did not prevent this, it was merely meant to obfuscate the petri dish that was my mouth until it reached a stable ecological state.

Breath through the nose. This was also a calculation. Taking air through your mouth allowed a large volume of air to pass relatively unimpeded to your lungs and allowed germ ladened dust well past your defensive perimeter. Your nose was designed to slow and trap particles in an effort to filter out foreign matter. There was also a better chance that foreign matter would have a fatal encounter with nasal lysosomes. This practice lead to an odd habit, I called it wake-sniffing. I'm not sure where I got the idea, maybe 'Perfume' had planted the concept in my head long ago. It started out innocently enough. I would see an obviously diseased human being with no regard for his fellow man, out in public, spreading his germs, on a proximal trajectory to my own. I would judge his shape, speed and prevailing winds to estimate location of his wake as he passes. If I had to pass through his wake... hold. your. breath. A slow exhale would work too. Sometimes you could feel passing through the wake, other-times, you would just have to guess. Over time I used this talent to engage in a sort of olfactory voyeurism. If I saw someone who was curious, interesting or attractive I'd calculate their wake and take a sample as I passed through it, just a small sample. I'd move about 5 cubic centimeters of air into my nose, smell it, and blow the sample back out. A girl with wet hair was always good as were sweaty girls, others were just random.

laundry- fresh and dirty.

perfumes of all sorts.

petroleum products.

cleaning supplies.

packing materials.

tortilla chips.

potting soil.

cedar chips.

malt balls.

moth balls.

cigarettes.

kitchens.

animals.

pantries.

bedding.

alcohol.

cheese.

bread.

latex.

roots.

weed.

nori.

ass.

The practice did have its hazards.

Germs were not the only hazard in the city that required special technique and gear to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience.

"Wear protection in all activities" was my creed and it came in numerous forms. Condoms, obviously. Helmets, I felt I had done too much schooling, drugs not to wear helmets. I liked my brain. Gloves, good for avoiding divots in your hands... Actually every method, act and accoutrement ended up being thought of as some form of protection, otherwise, why bother having it around?

Cloaking device:

An essential item for city living is what I call 'the cloaking device'. Working in customer service deepened my loathing for people at large and, if you're good at something, never do it for free. If I wasn't getting paid to listen to random strangers spout irrelevancies at me, why bother? The cloaking device was just sunglasses and headphones but it worked just like a cloaking device. You could walk through an Amway convention populated by scientologists and no one would bother you. Proselytizers, prostitutes, crack heads and schizophrenics didn't even attempt to peddle their crazy at you. The sunglasses deflected eye contact and the headphones shielded against any verbal communication. The headphones didn't even have to work. If you ran out of battery just put them on anyways. They didn't know. If, on rare occasion, someone did try to talk to you, remain calm, maintain your stride, raise your hand slightly and give a nod. Dismiss them from your sight like you were Louis fucking Quatorze.

Shoes:

Good shoes are essentials for a pedestrian city. Fluevogs or Doc Martens were my shoes of choice. Durable, comfortable and able to transition from your conference-call to last-call without flinching. Boots were good too if you were frequenting gross parts of the city; they kept the grime and vomit off your ankles.

Transportation:

Bicycles are the way to go. The city is only seven miles across. Hills, traffic and trust in your fellow man were your main hazards. Once you found the sweet-spot you were golden. 6 bicycles were sacrificed in search of this sweet-spot. Too expensive and they were stolen too fast. Too crappy and they weren't fun to ride... and then they were stolen.

CroMo Sapien

Fuji Mama.

Chode Warrior.

Chump Humper.

Death Blossom.

A new Kona stolen so fast I didn't get a chance to name it.

Melee the Prophet.

Melee was the only one that survived for some reason.

Motorcycles were a good option too. Parking was easy. The city is so congested with traffic and traffic controls that it was hard to get up to 'lethal' speeds. You were dealing with traffic in the 25-35 mph range rather than the 40-50 mph range you'd see in urban sprawl. I had an 86 Honda CBR; no fairings and spray painted black to cover the rust. It spent more time in the limey bastard's garage awaiting repairs than out on the road.

Bart and MUNI, your friends.

They came to be my mobile temple of sorts. Once you were on all there was to do was zone-out, relax, people watch, listen to music and/or read. The exception was rush-hour on a rainy day then it felt more like a scene from Soylent Green.

Dating:

When dating it is essential to correctly identify SFO dwellers and their preferences. It's a diverse crowd and all is not always as it seems and everyone had to guess from time to time; I myself, was often mistaken for gay. You could not rely on cultural norms to ascertain who was gay/straight/boy/girl. One place to start is geography. Castro: GHeY! and... well... beyond that all bets are off. Places of business are also good start. The tranny shack: OBVIOUS. Eagle tavern: might fool some out-of-town Harley CPAs until they saw the mirrors above the urinals. If you liked heavy drinking, ranchero music and were from another neighborhood Esta Noche could be trouble. You just had to have your wits about you.

I had heard of people getting lured into such situations; victims of an elaborate and convincing deception or maybe they just didn't care. I had one brush with this situation. I lost focus, I wasn't paying attention, I thought she was just really butch and fit; I just didn't do the math until it was too late. She was a competitive kick boxer, flat chested, same height and build as me, same clothes as me, boots, dyed bright red buzz cut and could easily kick my ass. Her motorcycle jacket was leather, mine was Cordura. So... we're making out for the first time and this possibility pops in my head.

SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING. This is a man. A very sweet, tender, smooth-skinned man with nice lips-

...

-and IT'S TOO LATE NOW! You're already kissing him!

Panic? no. no. no. NO!

I decided to go with my instincts...

c'mon! be female....

making out...

making out...

groping...

making out..

groping...

groping..

NO WHAMMY!

YES!

A VAGINA!

BONUS:SHAVED!

To this end of honing this skillset and avoiding such awkward moments, my friends and I would gather after work or early on weekends at the Casanova bar, sit at the seats facing Valencia, watch people's cars get towed from the median and play gay/straight boy/girl. We would try to guess if passers-by were gay/straight boy/girl. It never plays well in other towns; there's no subtly. It's always too obvious or lacking. Sooo... it's always "fuck/marry/kill" instead.

Even if you want to avoid this dating mess you may still be preyed upon. You may meet a nice man who seemingly wants to drink and play pool but he may have designs on making you his six-drink boyfriend; he'll work to get you really drunk. He'll lay forth a logical and convincing argument as to why you should let him suck your dick. I always liked to imagine what these pitches would be like if they had access to a white-board or were able to give a PPT presentation complete with animations and laser pointer. I did always kinda feel bad (yet flattered) for turning them down but, whatever... I'm sure it worked more often than not... I also felt it a lesson in what females must relentlessly endure when venturing out.

The Changing City.

The city had changed. It was no longer the same city I would ditch class and visit every other week during school. It was frothy with steamy venture capital cash. Everything and everyone was for sale. Every shithole with a roof was given a fresh layer of polyurethane and put on the market as "live-work space" to circumvent zoning laws. There were no more artists' studios or rehearsal spaces; most of these types of activities were forced to the Eastbay or farther. The Kilowatt was forced to stop hosting bands. Lofts were being built in the middle of some of the most blighted parts of the city. Bars were crammed into odd-shaped hallways. Kitschy specialty restaurants sprung-forth next to the grimy the Chinese food joint that specialized in crackhead chow. Everyone was decked out in their azure button-down shirts, tan khakis and leprechaun dress shoes all sopping up that venture capital. There were a lot of cool people too from all over the world and it made for a great party. Thursdays were the nights to go out; the bridge and tunnel crowd were still wherever the hell they were and the city was not overrun. Fridays and Saturdays were a madhouse. My quiet Valencia 'hood had people spilling into the street. A LINE to get into Casanova? Really? ... and don't even think about trying to make a call on cell phone or find a cab. Everything was becoming increasingly scarce and expensive; this did rub some long-time residents the wrong way and rightfully so. If you weren't into making loads of cash you were screwed and abused by all these out-of-state wankers. I didn't concern myself too terribly with these changing demographics as I was well-occupied... but some were concerned about me apparently.

One sunny Saturday morning I got a page indicating the SF Guardian's office T1 was down so I headed to the server room to take a look and call it in. When making my way to the office I picked up the latest guardian; it was the 'we hate dot-com douchbags' issue and it had ME on the cover! Well, not exactly me but someone dressed exactly like me, exactly the same black motocross jersey, levis, chunky red wingtips talking on a nextel, smiling into a planner. Admittedly, I may have occasionally dressed like this douchebag but I would attribute it more to laziness than premeditated douche-baggery; lack of clothes shopping, laundry et al. He was wearing a beanie which I never did however. When I called the guardian office up I wanted to ask how they came to the conclusion that this image was somehow came to represent a 'dot-commoner'; I knew what those fuckers looked like and that was not the look. He had to AT LEAST be wearing some khakis AND his smugg was not convincing. I just presumed I secretly gained the ire of someone on their artistic staff. MEH! It was actually quite amusing... and I suppose it could have nothing to do with me at all.

...

GTFO

There were several rounds of lay-offs. Sales. Tech support. Middle management. Wiped clean in a few short months; causalities of consolidation. Those who weren't laid off quit. I felt somewhat bad but I knew everyone would be better off and there was nothing I could do to prevent it... aaaaannd... I got a raise each time either in cost saving or the talking heads were keeping my salary bay-area competitive. The SOMA office was a shell. It was pretty weird to show at this place once active and alive and now... empty. Alone. Everyone had a least 6 cubicles to themselves. If there was a problem I'd ride over the server tomb just to get out of the office. It was depressing to see your old space a husk of what it used to be.

...

Entombed

Server rooms or server tombs as I called them were unnatural places and spent a lot time in a lot of different places around the bay area. They were chilly. There was no place to sit. Overly-lit. Cramped. Cold. Loud. Windy. I'd generally settle-in legs crossed, on the floor leaning back on a rack post with the laptop between my knees. Gloves. Earplugs. Hoodie. It was sorta like sensory deprivation or rather sensory jamming. All your senses were pegged at an intense consistent level. Time stopped. It turned into just how you felt if you bothered to pay attention and I'm sure my Circadian rhythm was fucked from spending so much time in such an environment.

22:34: raining and miserable. Not in the server room.

09:45: beautiful and sunny Saturday morning. Not in the server room.

14:23: hungry and past lunchtime. Not in the server room.

01:45: plans for tomorrow. Not in the server room.

It was its own little unchanging world. Population: ME. Problem solving, tinkering, and creative thinking mixed in with intense moments of uncertainty and panic... it could be overwhelming at times but who would I go cry to? There was no one else. Denver? SF-Core? HyperTerminal? HA! HyperTerminal hated you! Look at all those special characters it inserts into your captured console sessions. HyperTerminal was definitely against me.

on/off

none

one

eight

nine six none none

I fuck you just for fun.

It seemed to me, long exposure to the sustained and loud breath of the server tomb gave the mind odd powers. One was echo-location; another was intense-super-brain. My theory was that since the mind did not need to process and differentiate various senses, the mind reassigned this resource surplus to other pragmatic resource-intensive brain functions; 'Thinking' being one of them. Whilst crimping cables or waiting for a long file download or process to complete, a child-process would spawn in my mind and churn CPU cycles in the background between work-related thoughts and If I wasn't careful it would sometimes derail my whole train of thought. Sometimes I'd think about perhaps... the life of electrons. The infinite and undying symmetry of the universe. Balance. Matter/Antimatter. Laws by which all things must abide including metaphysical concepts like numbers or consciousness.

Well...maybe not numbers. Numbers obviously existed in the spiritual plane but consciousness, however, had a material component...

I would need a unified theorem to explain how consciousness came into existence and its machinations. Axioms of spiritual and material properties would need to be incorporated. If consciousness' foundation is in knowledge then there too must be anti-knowledge; these particles must be formed in the mind by splitting...?

...?

Spirit particles!

Spirit particles are inert forms of consciousness. The more you learned the more the more anti-knowledge particles you radiated. These particles, once free, would be naturally attracted to other knowledge particles held in the minds of others. Variance in anti-k particle radiation from everyone's mind would and destabilize the mind's radiation field and allow anti-k particles to interact with extant k particles in the mind and form inert spirit particles and diminish one's own consciousness. It was therefore crucial to keep learning and experiencing life and keep a strong emission of anti-k's. Everyone's mind was in a constant state of flux, constantly exchanging k and anti-k particles; dynamic equilibrium was the minimum state anyone would want to be in. If your accretion of anti-k's started to erode your ability to learn it could have a cascade effect; diminishing your anti-k radiation and allowed for an ever-increasing rate of accretion of anti-k particles, much like the formation of black hole. Ultimately reacting K and anti-Ks to form spirit particles and ejecting your consciousness bit by bit.

Could your life's knowledge and experience be sequestered and live-on in the inert spirit particles formed upon one's death? Are your thoughts and intuitions transported from Beyond in spirit particles that drift the cosmos and fall to earth like abyssal snow?

This theorem would explain scholars who were sedentary but learned a lot; they had strong anti-k radiation. Sedentary lumps who sat on the couch and were spoon-fed TV for 6 hours a day had weak anti-k radiation and were more feeble-minded. It would explain depression, academics, esprit du corps, creationists, serial killers, am radio, mullets, NASCAR and bingo but did not reconcile meditation, sleep or humanity's evolutionary stable strategy.

HOST$ scp FILE.tar support3@192.168.10.10

Using keyboard-interactive authentication.

Password:

FILE.tar | 2091918 kB | 1747.0 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100%

HOST$

"OH! ok... It's finished... next."

In addition to my hobby of decoding the secrets of the cosmos I was experimenting with outsourcing segments of my life, nothing major, just laundry, housekeeping and my personal life. My experience of over-thinking all things great and small had left me exhausted and the results were hit or miss. At least I could extinguish some measure of exhaustion in my life through outsourcing because, obviously, it was my personal life that was problem.

ASTROLOGY.

I had friends that enjoyed dabbling in the subject and would often learn about the current state of my planets, houses, stars but nothing about my solar wind, sun spots, coronal ejections, spy satellites or extraterrestrials though. I tried to keep it as vague as possible. If I was indecisive about something I'd recall my cosmic condition, interpret and decide. The experiment revealed that I had a good time and/or had learned something (WHICH STAVED OFF CERTAIN DEATH!!!) no matter if the path it took was decided via astrology or my own free will. I felt no more or less inconvenienced by the experiment.

I also began to suspect that work may be getting to me.

My mind is going.

There is no question about it.

I can feel it.

I can feel it.

Weird.

"Hi, I'm calling about circuit I.D. MNX85321-1357. Yes. I'll hold."

?How Far Would Be Too Far?

Should I stop? Slow down? Change my ways? How far would be too far? These people seem to have no limits in pursuit of their goals. Where are my limits? All my friends have been forced-out, fired or laid off. These suits have their schemes, why shouldn't I? I am always wary of asking the universe to define something for me because often... you will get an answer. wu wei- fear not... ask no questions... et al. I didn't quite ask but I was curious... but the Great Magnet could not resist a good show and demonstrated the limit for me.

On some random morning before work the ex decided she would force a neonatal kitten into my care for the day as she would not be able to care for it. I was highly annoyed she assumed I would do it. She was, however, correct. These goddamned neo-nat kittens needed feeding every 2-4 hours and it's hard to resist the little bastards. Despite my wanting to deeply disappoint the ex she did make one last point...

"You can show the girls at work."

DONE!

The thing was actually quite troublesome as expected and wasn't very cute; it resembled a dead baby bird. Just before lunch it woke and needed to be fed again. Its tiny claws scratching at the cardboard walls of the banker's file box under my desk. A slow weak scratch as if the kitten had only enough strength to lift its wee arm and let gravity drag its claws down the wall. Sccrraaaaaaaatch. Punctuated with a tiny gasping 'meow.' -no prob- I'm here basically alone on the floor. The consultant admins won't care... and they were in another room. So I prepared and put forth food for the ittah bittah kittah.

...

om.nom.nom.nom.nom.

...

silence.

...

I open the box to see the cat a complete mess. The food knocked over and spread all over the box. The kitten had food caked on its face, arms and chest. Shit covered the underside of its tail and the back of its legs.

ugh.

I wrapped the wee beast in a small towel and took it to the men's room. The restrooms required a key so I was reasonably sure that no one could just walk in. I turned on the water, adjusted the temp and started washing the cat in the sink; hand soap was going to have to do. During the rinse I hear a key, then the door opening. BUST-ED! It was the Limey Bastard.

"Why The Fuck are you washing a Furbee? ... oh... Why The Fuck are you washing a cat?"

I explained and he was highly amused at my self-inflicted circumstance.

"Well, meet out front when you're done with your hot Furbee lovin'; i have something for you."

I bagged up the shitty bedding, put down some new towels and set the cat in box. I didn't like the soiled bedding to be so close to I moved the cat and the bagged bedding under the empty desk behind me. Everything still smelled like "cat" to me.

-The area will air-out in a bit-

I went outside to meet Limey Bastard and we took a stroll around the block. He presented and an eighth of fresh, fluffy, norCAL green buds as per my request earlier in the week. We, of course, had to sample it. We circled the block and were on the front steps smoking the last bits of our beedis, chatting, when DENT came out and had heard there was something up with the network. I was surprised to see him. He didn't own the place anymore and had some other role within the new organization and generally was quite scarce these days.

"OK" I extinguished my beedi and went in alone.

Waiting for me inside it was DENT and 4 big-whiggs from the central office in Denver. Anyone of them could stomp me out with a single email. A great wave of anxiety put the hairs on my back upright, then it was, multiplied by one stinky kitten all in brackets with an exponent of high-at-work.

Walk competently into their midst.

"Someone, from somewhere, said something wasn't working" one of the suits said.

That's not what they said exactly but that's my stoned network engineer translation.

"OK, what sort of problems are they having?" I asked leading them to my desk.

They weren't a technical group per se ... so I was going to have to flush details out with precise, yet simple questions; likely a series of them, as if I was playing a game on some fucked up road trip.

"One of the phone numbers isn't answering" another suit said.

"Do you know which one?"

There was a pause... I assume they all looked at each other and shrugged behind my back.

"We don't know. Oakland I think" the suit said.

login as: support3

Using keyboard-interactive authentication.

Password:xxxxxxx

sf-pm6#attach C28

ATZ

OK

ATDT5105551234

dialing....

username, password

"Looks ok to me, let me take a look at some other things." I said facing the monitor. I could feel them watching each keystroke echo back, past my head to their downturned faces. I also noticed another variable; my desktop. It was an image of 4 tiny life-sized hits of acid with Japanese Mon imprinted on them. The coarse perforations clearly visible. Tiled to cover my entire screen desktop. Just beyond the clicking of my keyboard... I could hear the wee beast's tiny claws on the walls of the box....

Sccrrrraaaaaatttch.

\- ?how can they not hear that?- I needed this to be done before it starts to meow.

"Lines are up, routes look good... authentication looks good. I see users passing traffic. I'm not sure I'm seeing a problem."

I closed out all my sessions, spun around to face all 4 of them and leaned back in my chair. The rows of florescent lights on the ceiling behind them, strobing. vibrating. buzzing. My heart pounding in my ears. I could feel my pupils contract to shade out the harsh artificial light. My cranium framed by a glowing 1024×768 sheet of acid tabs behind me. My hands in tight fists. My skin tingling in anxious waves. My jaw clinched and disguised with a smirk and an "aw-shucks, mister" expression in my eyes. I was there in my job-well-done pose for praps 3/4 of second and I felt it come loose. The zip-lock with the weed. I had rolled the excess bag material around the product, folded it in half to make a tight U-shape that fit perfectly in breast pocket of my button-down shirt. The U shape had snapped into an L shape the roll was now straightening, sliding up, poking its way up out of the top of the pocket. There I was, high as B-Real, sitting in a cloud of kitten formula, cat shit and fresh green vapors. don't. move. a. muscle.

Sccccrrrraaaaaatch...

With my beedi-weed breath I uttered.

"I can call Jim at the Fresno call-center and see if he's heard of anything."

"Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks!" and the suits went on with their day.

"No problem." I sighed.

I caught them in the hall after lunch to let them know all was ship-shape. They scarcely recognized me. We chatted about their schemes, goals, marketecture. The scope of their undertaking was so vast, so problematic that I knew I was near invisible under these conditions. I was just the drone that kept the bay area up and running and as long as everything was working... and once they were on that flight back to Denver; I knew could do whatever the fuck I wanted. The great magnet wanted to be entertained and I was going to have to give it a show.

By now the odd-schedules and interruptions were so common and a part of my life that I didn't differentiate between work hours and not-work hours. I even spent the night in the office at least once a week. I was always kind-of at work and kind-of not at work all the time and I was determined not to stop living my life. I just did more math.

Pager: BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

-booty call received.

-activate.

-10pm meet at the Cell for a Burningman party. 4 ppl + 3 MDMA pills = 3/4 dose: snorted = 3 hours dancing + 1.5 hours romping...which should bring me up to the maintenance window; the strobing and groping should diminish enough for me to ride to the server tomb, upgrade the sf-pm4-1 image and fix that memory leak.

-sleep under desk.

It wasn't -ALWAYS- so extreme but such behavior did not provoke any reservation or anxiety anymore and I did always factor in distance to an SSH session. I always managed to stick the landing. Figure it out. It wasn't always pretty, efficient or proper but things always got done. The consultants helped me out a lot too. It was not uncommon to receive a page, walk home, restart a service or call in a circuit, have drink, smoke a bowl and walk back to the club or if it was early enough I could find a 'quiet' corner of the club, phone the call-center and have them help me out.

"DEEE EEFFFF!"

"ELLE ESSSS!"

"PEEEE ESSSSS SPACE MINUS EEEEE EEEFFF!"

"ESSSS YOOOOUU SPACE MINUS!"

and so on...

I did manage to make use of the frequent pages. The obvious use was to use it as an excuse to leave any situation. "This date is excruciating.... please, please send me a page so I can get the hell out of here." The secondary and more functional use of the pager was camouflage; it allowed me to move about freely without examination or discord. In an effort to avoid cellular rudeness I had people page me if they wanted to get ahold of me. This was at a time when cell phones were just becoming ubiquitous and cell phone etiquette, I felt, was yet undefined. I went with this equation: cellular phone conversation = stinky or audible farts.

If you have to talk on the phone go outside or away from other people, we don't need to hear you screaming about what you're having for dinner or what fucking VHS tape you want to watch, you fucking self-centered, entitled POS. I soon discovered that I was able to leave any situation for any number of non-work related reasons disguised as urgent and work-related. I didn't even have to lie.

!PAGE! I would leave the room and make a call out of ear-shot (fart rule).

"It looks like something's up. I gotta go. Good to meet you."

Which translated to:

"Girls are meeting up at the NOC NOC. I need to go get them drunk and make out with them. Nice to meet you new-boyfriend of ex-wife. Cool story bro."

It worked in most situations but not if Mr Evens was around because he got all the work-related pages I did.

!PAGE! Phonecall.

"It looks like something's up. I gotta go. See you all later."

Mr. Evens would expertly translate aloud...

"It looks like something's up. I gotta go. SF-Vagina-6 is wet."

...

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

A couple of seasons have passed since my promotion. I was now a techno-zombie. No down-time. I was in production 24/7. No real hanging-out with friends; our schedules were mostly incongruent and I used any spare moment to just be empty. If I had a spare moment I needed to hurry-up and relax. FAST! Before someone calls or that fucking robot hucks another page at me. No time to converse or talk about current events that I knew nothing about. No enriching my own life. I was burned up. I was the steel ball in a pinball machine; bouncing here or there according to suggestion or circumstance; outwardly reflecting distorted images taken from my surroundings. I was in the game and maintaining but at what price? Where was my mind? What was I thinking? What's the plan? What was I looking for? I couldn't say exactly, there was no time for that. I can only provide evidence that I was reeling along where most people cared not to tread.

Sometimes after working overnight I would go for a bike ride. The consultants were in the office and could extinguish any fires that may arise and I could take the battery out of the pager for a few hours and clear my head...

I would ride up to Golden Gate Park, maybe grab some food and a drink or two en route. Golden Gate Park at this time had large swaths of overgrown landscape dotted with homeless camps, junkie party spots and dudes milling about with their hand down their pants looking for anonymous gay sex. It made the thought of touching the ground abhorrent. Serious motivation to stay on the bike; I imagined crashing in some spots picking myself up covered in candy wrappers, hypodermic needles, condoms and human feces.

!UGH!

The mornings were generally calm. Everyone was at work. It was cold and foggy. Still. Empty.

The south trail was good for getting a lot of speed. The north trail was more obstacle-prone... either way faster was always the answer and speed was the goal.

PEDAL FASTER!

Threading trees.

Hopping undergrowth.

Ducking branches.

Large airborne glides.

Buzzing homeless camps.

Dodging the crotch-grabbers.

My intent was to willfully and purposefully take a crowbar to my Hierarchy of Needs. A simple pedal through the park would not suffice. I needed to pit my primal need of self-preservation against the torrent of thoughts and emotions that distract, sabotage and exhaust my mind. Each near-injurious slip of the tire or branch raked across my person knocked another obsessive bit of clutter from my mind and replaced it with something relevant to my current circumstance.

"Breath!"

"You're TOO TENSE!"

"Pay attention!"

"That seemed dangerous."

"WTF did I just see? You're high, keep riding!"

"This thought is unrelated to this moment... PAY ATTENTION!"

"My front tire keeps fucking me up; I need to keep it off the ground."

"Don't fall down now; You may never get up."

At the end of it all I had succeeded in transforming myself in an exhausted, salty, hypothermic lump of flesh. If there were a pier that allowed me to ride from Golden Gate Park into the Pacific, I would have hucked myself off the edge of Western Civilization and into the surf to be eaten by sharks.

The sand interrupted this frenzy.

Soft.

Warm...ish.

Calm.

Accommodating.

Waves.

Ever-lasting waves.

Solace.

All the bullshit that festooned my life was gone. None of it mattered... in these few moments.

The Pager.

Email(s).

Migration Project(s).

Server Patch(es).

Appliance Upgrade(s).

The ex-wife roommate.

401k(s).

The girl(s) I should be falling in love with.

My own health and well-being.

The future.

...

Blank.

Clear.

Free.

...

I never crashed too badly. I would occasionally get flicked off the bike and fly into the brush like a wad of Her Majesty's Chain-Shot but I lived to ride another day. I did manage to destroy numerous tubes, 3 rims, 1 fork and 2 helmets.

Bravo... I guess.

Eventually, I would have to come to the surface, recover, and take a breath.

Get back to my life... whatever it meant.

"Steel your volition and survive the day."

Drill it OUT!

It was time for a dental checkup. I picked the dentist out of the provider book who was the absolute closest to my house and en route to work. The dentist office waiting room was in need of renovation and visibly in a state of disrepair. The chair and the work area looked ok though. The hygienist did the cleaning and the x-rays. Fine. Moments later this sick-fuck of a dentist, whom I never met before, came in with the developed x-rays and stated I needed a filling and then suggested executing the procedure without anesthetic since it was a shallow cavity and would not breach the dentin of the tooth. WAT? Anesthetic was cheap. He could probably even use a topical and not consume a syringe. Was he out? Was he cheap? Why would he suggest such a thing? Was this guy even a real dentist or some sort of 'mob-dentist'?

"ok..." I said.

WHO'S THE SICK FUCK NOW?! HUH!?

The tooth was an upper molar; a tooth attached directly to my skull. The first few of seconds of drilling were pretty intense, definitely uncomfortable, but once he started revving up the drill and grinding out the rotting enamel the pain was bright, dazzling and sharp as a laser, and it went straight to the back of my eyeballs. The frigid water sprayed forth from his pneumatic drill, that washed away the tailings, chilled the tooth and cavity, kicking up the pain even more. The frosty effluent on the tooth drill-area felt as if he was freezing my tooth from the nervy-tender-pulp insides on out. It was electric. Crisp. I closed my eyes, rolled them to the back of my head and a single tear from each eye ran down to my ears. The loud vibrating sound of the drill spinning and grinding delivered straight to my skull. Don't move. Just. Breath. He drilled for 2 or 20 minutes; I could not tell. By the time he was done I was covered in a thin salty glaze of cold sweat and when he started scraping and picking at the hole with his steely hooks it felt a relief.

"That was intense" I remarked when it was done.

"Not too bad eh?" he replied.

I just smiled back. I didn't want to ruin it for the next guy.

Surely, I must be out of my mind... I need to start getting tattoos like a normal person.

...

After a period of time, all of the cereal admins had moved on and the divide in our new happy ISP could no longer be a cereal/slip divide and had to be split between network and servers. Mr. Evens took over all their servers and I took the network. I didn't mind; the servers were a real pain in the ass but now there was no longer a backup admin. I was primary and secondary pager punk. No more "days off". If something went wrong there was no one else. I was responsible for every page, every service interruption and (most) every question about the bay area network. By this time all web servers had been migrated to a colo in Santa Clara so only the network gear remained.

The cereal server room was an actual server room was located at 6th and mission. This area was a grimy, horrible few blocks. The living dead shuffled, zipped or danced about, 24/7 and I was frequently offered drugs. Liquor stores and pawn shops lined the streets. The front entrance appeared to be a deceased car garage; open the door with key and it revealed an ante room. Empty. Another door, scan a badge and you had access to a bright clean, chilled room. A bright happy hum echoed in the room. Towards the back was giant chain-link cube which contained all of our equipment. Wires and their terminations were orderly and neat. There were no piles of deceased equipment. No burning smell. There was a row of locked cabinets that customers could store their servers onsite just in front of the cube. Beyond a narrow space between the wall and the cube were some short stairs and some other doors. One bathroom, the door to the garage downstairs and to the south was the door to storage. The storage room looked like old gum-shoe detective office space; wooden floors and two proto cubicles made of wood and frosted glass that didn't quite reach the ceiling.

This is where the dead/retired gear was stored in piles. The old Portmasters, some old BSD/sun web servers, cables, racks in heaps. 2/3 of the room was open space with giant sunny, south facing frosted windows. In the back corner was a large closet that housed the server room's cooling unit which constantly moved warm exhaust out into the alley. This site was un-manned. No one came here unless they had to, especially since it was in a genuinely disgusting part of town.

Once I took the two network engineers from Denver to this site. They were visiting all the acquisitioned ISPs and meeting all the local talent. Sooo.... after the tour and having a few laughs at the contrasting cereal/slop server rooms one of these guys noticed one of those green JCDecaux self-cleaning public toilets. The toilets were relatively new in SF and I had always thought of them as a euro-thing. I think SF installed them in an effort to tidy-up these gross patches of the city. Outwardly curious, the engineers went up to it, dropped some coins in to see what it looked like inside; the door clicked then slid open to reveal two men. One man was standing and the other was on his knees facing the standing man's crotch. The standing man was holding a belt that was noosed around the kneeling man's neck. They didn't move, they just peered out, heads turned towards us. The engineers, stunned, didn't move either; they just stared into this pay toilet. After a few long seconds the door clicked and slid shut and my co-workers turned to me in unison, aghast at the sight they just witnessed. Their mouths poised to say something but nothing came forth. They were some real sheltered squares.

"I never use those things." I shrugged and started walking back toward their hotel. I never saw or heard from them again.

When I got back to the SOMA office I realized -that storage space was perfect-. It was unmanned, protected by moat of filth and depravity. Offered natural light, open space with no furniture, I had the only key AND it simplified my life immensely. I had to make it so; it would be an insult not to do it. The great magnet demanded it.

Rebel Base.

To make this space a great space I needed my coconspirators: gnash and JQ. In school we would always get together and paint in the most unlikely of spaces; basements, garages, underpasses, culverts, closets, condemned buildings, etc., but actual studio space was rare. I hadn't painted for months and had a hankering. We gathered our paints, cleaned our brushes and set our plan in motion.

We named it "Rebel Base" presumably because of the junkie-proof 2-car roll-top garage door and its illegal, covert operational status. The garage door was large, heavy, and really, really loud; like a blast door on a starship. Very Sci-Fi. It opened to an alley nested in one of the worst neighborhoods in town, populated by people on other planets. Very Mos Eisley. It made a great studio. Definitely in the top 5 places I've ever arted-out. A mostly-used spool of 25-pair cable was our table. Port master 2e's were our stools. Gutted, stacked 3comm total-control hyper-chassis served as shelving. Network card packaging served as mixing bowls and palettes. 2 post racks made excellent easels for stretched canvas. We also had primed un-stretched canvas tacked to the walls; huge 84x84 panels, 4 or 5 of them. The large refrigeration unit regularly evacuated heat-waste and air away from the server room and into the alley. We could smoke, spray and petroleum-distillate all over the floor and walls and the air stayed fresh and able to support human life. It was a secret, messy, orgy of art.

The lagniappe for this setup was that Pearl art supply and BART stations were 2 blocks north with a liquor store in-between.

The three of us had the technique of starting several painting all at once using prepopulated palettes; all the same colors on each pallet so all the paintings were intrinsically matched by color. We'd work on these painting for half an hour, give or take, the at some point trade paintings. The process advanced the paintings immensely. It eliminated a lot of decision-making and increased the chance of capturing inspiration. Colors or technique you would not consider were used in ways you would not consider. Paintings went in directions you might not expect. One thing was for sure: the results were consistently awesome. A 'conversation' is the 'official name of the technique; a technique I'd recommend to anyone.

Infinite diversity in infinite combinations; Spock would approve.

After work or on weekends we'd routinely disappear from or lives, converge at the rebel base, paint, smoke, drink, listen to CD's or NPR. A classic was the "Your mama" game whilst listening to NPR.

"your mama's up next"

"your mama's a best seller"

"your mama's a 3-D rendering"

"your mama's teeming with life"

"your mama's a capsized battleship"

"your mama's an enigmatic strongman"

"your mama's an emergent technology"

"your mama's a world war 2 prison camp"

"your mama's Don Johnson's second home"

"your mama's a crumbling infrastructure"

"your mama plays a crucial role in evolution"

"your mama's a rugged landscape, hostile to life"

"your mama's the largest human-made object orbiting the earth"

"your mama's the oldest ancestor to modern man yet discovered"

and so on...

"I'm going to head to the mission colo this morning to let a pacbel guy in to take a look at a t1 in alarm." which translated to " I'm going to grab some coffee, let the pacbel guy in, smoke some weed and paint for a couple hours. I'll see you after lunch. Maybe."

We did a lot of good work there. I was likely needing to show here anyways to deal with the inevitable page but now I wanted to be here and where else was I going to go?

Work? I was already there. Home? nope. Bar? UGH! Booty call? praps... or I could stay here, shut-in, and get things done. Paint and pager-punkery. It was perfect and this amalgam of elements had me feeling ok. Good. A long-absent sensation. It could have used a shower but no need to be greedy; it did have a flushing toilet after all. Sometimes I'd sleep on a loosely rolled chain-link fence covered in cardboard to smooth out the pointy bits. It was actually more comfortable than some of my backcountry excursions. This setup lasted from early-spring to late-summer; the sun beaming its warm happy rays down upon our work. Good times. All hail the Great Magnet!

...

Whilst I was hatching the Rebel Base plan the corporate world was churning. From what I could surmise Dent had been snubbed, miffed, irked or otherwise aggrieved by the powers that be. In response he opted not to renew the lease on slop.web original server room space. Now everything had to be physically and logically moved from this space. DEATH TO THE MONITORING PAGER ROBOT. Hundreds of circuits needed to inventoried, documented and moved to the 6th & Mission server room.

It was the summer of painting and cut-overs, followed by eerie, errie silence. Circuits were consolidated and terminated with modern, stable network equipment. No more DOS dialing robot. No more pager buzzing at my hip. I had bowed out of the dating in favor of rebel base so girls weren't even paging me. In a way I missed the whimsical and sadistic mind of our system monitoring robot, I was used to it, and I guess you can't help but miss that which you get used to. I also found it un-nerving. Something always needed to be wrong and if the pager wasn't going off... there must be something REALLY REALLY WRONG! But in reality everything was just working properly and that just did not seem right; my personal and professional life had sync'd into a tasty suspect wave that I would ride for another six months until it all sank'd.

...

The office had slowly become my home. I was often at the soma office late for some reason; perhaps even for the slightest reason. It was quiet. Isolated. I was guaranteed to be left alone for several hours. I'd casually look at disk space, traffic graphs, watch movies and wait for something to break. BAM! I would already be there ready to fix it. Spending the night had become pervertedly common. I had a pillow and toothbrush at work. When people would starting coming in for work at day break it felt like a violation of my space. "Don't you people have something better to do than show up for your shift at Ye Ole Packet Mill? GO HOME!" So it was late-late one evening and I had resigned once again to spending the night. I was playing StarCraft and decided that I did not want to go outside to smoke weed, I opened the window to the atrium behind my desk and attempted to blow the weed-smoke out in the building's narrow atrium. It didn't work; the cold air just pushed the smoke inside. MEH. It'll air-out before morning. I went back to my Zerg herding and after about 10 minutes I heard the beeps of the office door opening. I turned off my monitor, sat on the floor and peered across the atrium to the other side of the darkened office. I could make out 2 figures silhouetted in the doorway by the outside hallway lighting. They stopped just inside the door looking around nervously; unsure about committing to closing the door behind them. FUCK! The place reeked of weed. ...I got some 'splainin' to doOoO...

They weren't cops and weren't management and I was the only person who had any business being here at this hour. I decided to confront them. It was one of the consultants and her girlfriend. They were there to pick at the mountain of unused computers and parts stacked high to the ceiling. The lay-off tailings which had been sitting there for close to a year (7 years in internet years) and were fast approaching obsolete. We were all mutually busted and got a pretty good laugh. "WTF! WHY does it smell like weed in here? We're just here to steal computers not get busted for smoking weed at work." After picking out a few computers and putting in for an eighth weed, the consultant informed me the office was closing down.

The consultant gig was coming to an end. Of course I had not heard of anything. I didn't have a boss to tell me these things but it did confirm the sensation that things were crumbling. My ship was about to sink. I could potentially stay on until the bitter-end but I felt it was time too. Rebel Base had me sticking around longer than I had expected and now that was threatened. My circumstances could only deteriorate from this point out. I was also beyond done. Done being the pager punk. Done with broken sleep. Done with broken weekends. Broken brains. Finished. Ash. Snuffed-out by the years of all-out brawling with the great and whimsical ISP Beast. In retrospect, all the tweeking, kicking, biting and scratching I did with that ISP Beast could have been mistaken for extremely, demanding, dirty, rough, and confusing sex. My own personal Venus In Furs... and now all I wanted to do was wipe my dick on the curtains, wash my hands, roll-over and goto sleep. My impression was that this was not the average experience for a half-breed-not-yet-thirty male but never really paused to consider the context of the experience. This was all I knew for years and now all of my efforts were dust or becoming dust. What were the other possibilities I might have pursued? What other things could I have accomplished? Had I just wasted years of my life? I felt I needed to engage in something more permanent and meaningful than willfully entering into a cage-match after cage-match with internet technology. I emailed my 'boss' in the morning. A short email, 2 lines communicating that I would be quitting.

"I understand." was his reply.

Huh.

I was going to sleep for a week. Contiguous sleep, as much as I could stand, however, about 3 days into my drift I get a call at the bar. It was the limey bastard.

"I need a network guy right fucking NOW! We have a provisioned T1 but need it run to our office. People are moving in tomorrow"

I pounded my beer, picked up my punch-down tool and headed out. No problem. I showed and 5 persons I knew from slop.web were there working at conical.web. WTF is up guys?! They were hanging out drinking beer and prepping for server moves but had not got the T1 going yet. I went the basement and punched down 4 wires.

Serial0/0/0 is UP.

Line protocol UP.

Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 192.168.1.1, timeout is 2 seconds:

!!!!!

Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 1/1/4 ms

MEH.

We drank and hung out on the second floor of this warehouse that would soon be office space. Having saved their butts that night the guys kept on about me taking over the networking for the startup. The combination of alcohol, peer pressure and large shovel-fulls of venture capital cash begrudgingly convinced me to abandon my plans of profound slack and carefree sunny days in the park. I probably should have stuck with my original plans but... I didn't.

...

In my between-job state I had heard rumor that slop.web's core router ( a 7200) was fried in power surge; that pretty much left all of SFO dead in the water. Management did act quickly to replace it... with a catalyst switch. ZING! They were down for an additional several days waiting for another 7200. whew! That was a close one and gave thanks for having dodged that bullet.

...

conical.web

The new gig was fine. Static routes. ACLs. HRSP, load-balancers and firewalls. Pre-meditated. Simple. Controlled.

The place did require more face time than I was used to and it was weird to be in the midst of a real stereotypical dot-com startup. The break room had beer, foozball, pool table, pinball machine and bubble bobble. Our desks were doors straddling 2 metal filing cabinets. Crisp, clean, happy people all dutifully ticking away at their desks. Real dot commies peeled straight from the dot-com temporary tattoo book; polos, khakis, bebuckled leprechaun loafers, assholes crammed full of sunshine. They had it all.

"I really should not be around these people." I kept thinking. I was not one of them and I had gone rather feral working out-of-sight, beyond inspection under the floorboards, at my last job.

I had seen the trend of crumbling startups from the inside; first with the ISP itself but also all its clients that I supported. Also, many of my friends said things were cooling off. Outwardly the dot-com thing seemed almost main-stream. I presumed from the beginning conical would be no different; I refused the stock options and took the bump in pay.

I worked on getting up to speed with the plan and the architecture. There were fewer pages but still a lot to be done in the middle of the night during maintenance windows. I now had an SLA to coddle. UGH! Conical had one CoLo cage in Santa Clara and had plans for a second cage in a few months time.

Up until this second build-out I had been in a maintenance and tuning role. I was not the architect; they intended to hire someone else for that and were having a hard time at it. Perhaps about a month before the go-date this guy was hired and came on board. He seemed legit. He talked the talk and was very comfortable working with all the network equipment. He had the problem of being an utter flake. He showed 3-4 times in two weeks and was impossible to get ahold of... "oh... uh.... traffic jam... uh... car accident... uh...my hamster died." The project manager gave him the boot. In this awkward and nervous space it was decided we poach the domain registrar/network operations person who used to work at the slop: Red. I'd guestimate that we were still junior/middle status in the admin spectrum. Red had more schoolin' and I had a lot of experience in the field and what was ahead seemed reasonable, controlled. When the project manager asked if they should hire a consultant for the lead in the project we agreed that we could probably handle the build-out. We did ask a vendor to setup the FW/Load balancer for us since it was new to us and we were out of time. The rest should be no problem. VLAN segments with some ACLs; A little nmap, a little netcat; no problem. We could definitely out-pace the Windows server installs. Having to be hitting the space bar thousands of times really slowed those guys down.

The day of the build I woke up ?anxious? it was a high-profile push to build out this cage. The Big Irons (which we called el-rons because the 'I' looked like an 'L' in network diagrams) load-balancers, routers were in place. The servers still needed to be built and tested. VLANs and ACLs had to be implemented and the FW vendor tech was there to config the FireWall appliance; a GUI interface, no problem. I was going to be a large undertaking over the next 3 days. It was almost overwhelming. I was talking to the FW guy though the architecture, IP addressing, Vlans, protocols and such when toward the end a sudden wave of weakness, nausea and fear washed over me. Wait... what is this? panic? I kept talking, my throat tightened as if holding back vomit. This isn't good. I kept talking. My eyes welled up with tears and my voice trembled out the last of my dissertation. I'm going to faint.

I inhaled. I swallowed. I reached up and steadied myself on the overhead cable run.

"You need to go home, man." was all he said.

I exhaled out of my nose in resignation and nodded.

He was right.

I slept for the remainder of the build in the hotel room whilst Red did all the work. I had a fever and could not keep down food. I was able to consume tea from the cafe across the street. I was so weak I needed to rest at the cafe, recoup my strength before I could venture back to the hotel. What the hell was going on? How am I THIS sick? I felt poisoned. Fractured. Broken. Shamed. An EPIC UNPRESIDENTED FAIL. I could not get this one done. My will could not defy this. Unpossible! How could this happen? It must be all in my mind. Did my mind do this? I just have to think my way back to health. THINK! The more I thought about it the more I could not tell if this was psychosomatic or was I really sick? Did my rotten traitorous brain pull the emergency brakes on my crazy train? Why?

I don't know.

I could not tell.

I could not say.

Maybe?

Probably?

...

Fuck.

In retrospect I'm sure that was that I was actually quite physically ill but either way, the terrifying fact that I could not discern my condition at the time meant I was really not well in the head and had represented myself as such. I was pounded-shit before I quit my job with slop.web but I jumped back into this game anyways. That was what I was uncomfortable about. I would be fine in time but it was very embarrassing to wipe-out so spectacularly in front of all your friends. They may not have known the full extent of the event, but for me it was a ghastly and profound mind-bending psychological implosion.

I needed to stop.

I did indeed have limits.

When we got back I asked to be part of the next round of down-sizing. I lasted just under a year at conical. Conical didn't last too much longer after that before being bought out some corporate giant and moved to the east-coast.

So goes another dot-com startup.

Implement

— n

1. a piece of equipment; tool or utensil

2. something used to achieve a purpose

— vb

3. to carry out; put into action

On the other side

I eventually made good on my threat of contiguous sleep. Rest. All 7 layers at rest. Interrupted only by my cat Fritz who would purr at any stirring and wake me; I could feel his purry vibrations and mistake it for the pager going off. I'd come to, feeling around the bed... pager. PAGER. where. is. pager? WHERE? DUMBASS! You have no job, much less a pager. Get back to sleep! I likened the whole experience to the summer of 1969, the 80's junk bond bubble, and Stalin's 5 year plan; all happening, all at once but with cell phones and instant messenger... and now I was done. Unreal. I had some serious drinking, lounging, and a 2-week trip to Couzumel to look forward to in the next few days. Then after that? What's next? What. Is. Next?

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."

-Tyler Durden

wife? check.

job? check.

pager? check.

sanity? check.

dignity? check.

give-a-fuck? check.

All systems lost.

Initiate launch sequence.

I decided I was going to become an artist: full time. It was something I had always wanted to do and now it was time. I was rested and ready. I painted 13 Native American corner crosses (swatiskas) for my own personal start-up launch party. Let's see what happens.

Ready...GO!

Other happenings in the blurr...

  * Strip Dredel.

  * High-rise roof-top partys.

  * Rebar magic wand.

  * The Domain Mistress' Cat5 o' nine tails: ouch IN CNAME safeword

  * Deadly nerf mods.

  * Community theatre.

  * Golden-Tee at the Uptown. Classic.

  * "See what I mean?!"

  * Vanilla Stoli and IBC. never. again.

  * "What's this? Scooter patrol?"

  * Werkstat sidecar races.

  * BART strike.

  * Lethal drive-bys on Shotwell.

  * "I should be in a body-cast but the margaritas saved me."

  * Lots and lots of great people.

  * Lots and lots of pool-playing.

  * Lots and lots of excellent food.

  * Stevenson Alley periscope of depravity. I couldn't look away.

  * The dirty leather couch.

  * Deadly gel wrist rest attack.

  * The peace nazis.

  * Motorcycle weed-delivery guy.

  * Rolling black-outs: electrical

  * Rolling black-outs: physiological

  * Stealing booze during rolling blackouts (electrical not booze-induced, mostly.)

  * Lost in the 1 market colo catacombs or maybe just really high.

  * Lunch specials at the Gold Club. Awkward.

  * Boot camp in the server room.

  * Dos tacos vegetarianio con frijols negro. gracias.

  * Teletubbies, mushrooms and dinoflagellates. Facinating.

  * Attacking drunken robots with rolls of quarters.

  * Sunny, mushroomy days at the Botanical Gardens. Recommended.

  * Random out-of-control art shows/parties.

  * TAMALE LADY!!!!

  * Threesomes ruined by vomit and/or boyfriends. THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!

  * Smoking weed on grand staircase in the rotunda of city hall.

  * The guy who rid himself of lice by repeatedly stabbing his scalp with a pen.

  * The cursing midget who escaped the basement of the Chinese food place in the middle of lunch.

  * Climbing shipping container loaders on the bay after last-call.

  * Severely bruised pelvic arch in motorcycle crash. "I swear it's not an STD."

  * Cracked coccyx in MTB crash. Perfect posture for weeks!

  * Cracked rib in harrowing and daring razor stunt. No laughing for weeks!

  * CAT5 office chair human sling-shot into piles of trash.

  * Margarita-fueled MTB free-riding; flights of stairs was the favorite

  * 9/11 2001. "I suppose SF is up next. I don't know what the day has in store but I'm sure I'll be needing coffee; I better get out of bed and get some NOW... and maybe a bagel."

TIP YOU BASTARDS!

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