The biggest thing that concerns me about my recent Linux Journal article, is that people might think my hair is normally like the photo… 
If you’re looking for a laugh at my expense, feel free to click through.
(And please Digg the article too, if you like it and know what Digg is…)
It’s officially official. Actually, it was official when I paid my registration fee a few months back, but it’s super ultra certain now. I will be at the Penguicon this weekend in Troy, Michigan. This revelation means that I got my truck running after sitting all winter in the driveway. I’m a bit giddy to drive the old girl again. I miss driving a stick shift.
I’m going to bring a video camera, and hopefully upload some footage and photos to the Linux Journal site (and maybe here too). If you’re going to be there, please be sure to look me up. We can be geeks together!
(Read here for links to the whole story, and why it’s being written)
Blink/Sophie sat in as fetal a position as possible in the corner of a phone booth outside of Negworth, Amsterdam. Their recent merging was, of course, successful. Both minds were now in perfect harmony, and mostly open to one another. Therein started the awful realization.
“Blink, it’s so hard because our memories don’t line up exactly right. Is that because we interpreted the situations differently?”, thought Sophie.
“Well, normally I’d say yes”, thought Blink, “But our memory divergence goes far beyond what differing points of view would explain. Apart from our thread-bonded love and compassion, everything seems different in our pasts. Even our recent past.”
“Blink, we’ve both changed. I’m a little girl living in the head of… of… well, we’re in the same head!”
“I know sweetie, and I’m so happy to be merged with you.” Blink emoted love to Sophie. “Travel back in our memories though. I’m not even sure what a coconut is, and yet, you remember — no, experienced — us both living on them. Sophie, I’ve never been to a desert island.”
Blink could feel fear well up inside Sophie. Horrible scenes of Not-Sophie, emotions of pain, and crippling terror were flooding their consciousness.
“Sophie! Wait!” Blink solidified their thread-bond, and opened his entire consciousness to her. “I don’t want you to think I’m anything other than Blink. Sophie, you can see everything that I am. I love you. I can’t lie to you. I will not hurt or deceive you.” He could feel her calm down, and relaxed himself too.
Blink/Sophie worked together, slowly piecing together the horrible truth regarding the sterilization fleet. It was Sophie that first realized the fleet wasn’t destroying planets, but rather, terraforming the galaxy piece by piece into parallel universes in order to create the perfect Tragethen empire. Why destroy a planet, when enough dimensional shifting would bring forth a slave planet?
“Sophie!” thought-shouted Blink, “That explains their need for a dual mind!”
Blink/Sophie began to realize the futility in the way the Space Force was trying to defeat the Trageth. Amassing armies was pointless, and the SF officers with their single minds had no way of knowing the Trageth were just trying to keep them all busy. Just as Blink/Sophie started to plan their next move, the phone booth seemed to change.
Yesterday, Linux Journal let me go crazy with an April Fool’s Day joke. I came up with the idea to switch our focus to an old operating system, BeOS, and pretended to seriously report on things pertaining to BeOS. The whole LJ crew got into the fun, and we ended up with quite a round of shenanigans throughout the day.
The downside is that I started working at Linux Journal a couple years too late. April Fool’s website spoofs aren’t nearly as popular as they once were, so the word didn’t get out like it might have even as little as one year ago. Still, it was incredibly fun, and for the most part was taken well by the audience. I particularly enjoyed writing the absurd little “articles” that posted on the front page. They’re very short, and linked below if anyone wants to see them:
The funniest part of the day was that a comment on the youtube video appreciated my humor, and thought my geeky hairdo was “staged” for the spoof. Uh… That’s just how my hair looks.
Thanks to all that played along, and thanks to Linux Journal for allowing my idea to overtake the website.
You have to be a geek to appreciate this…
This post is part of a multi-blog, round robin, create your own chaos, short story write-a-thon. It’s sorta like Ficlets, but on a larger, less organized, slightly longer form. You can still play if you’re reading this before noon on Sunday, just go to Nathan’s blog and he’ll add you to the pool. It should be tons of fun.
Link to Sophie from Shinola, Part 1 (The story starts halfway down the page)
Sophie from Shinola, Part 2:
Objectively, Sophie knew that the real SpaceForce wasn’t all adventure and excitement, but compared to Chenolla VI, anything had to be an improvement. “Jeez”, she thought, “What’s taking so long?”
It was easy enough to take this little girl’s body over, but over the past few months, the Trageth officer had begun to sympathize with her “family” on Chenolla VI. Why aren’t these idiots preparing for the battle? Yes, the Space Force is powerful, but they can’t defend all the human planets at once. When the sterilization fleet comes to this planet, the best defense the humans will have is fishing poles!
All the preparations were made in the beryllium mine, and the accelerated decay was already spewing beryllium ions into subspace, signaling the start of the first wave. If Sophie didn’t get accepted into the Space Force, and off this planet, she would die with all the stupid fishermen.
“Why are they making us wait, Mom?” Sophie muttered, nervously.
“They’re warming up the brain remover, dear.” Said her mother, as she casually flipped a page in her magazine.
Sophie panicked, and almost suicidally released the real Sophie to avoid the torture herself. After a moment, however, she realized the mother was playing the human lying game. Some humans lied like this more than others, but Sophie’s mother was particularly evil. The past few months had taught her how to deal with situations like this, but with her current stress regarding the interview, she momentarily slipped. Thankfully, the mother hadn’t noticed.
“Shut up, Mom, they already removed my brain in school.”
“Nice, Soph. Nice.” her mother chuckled.
It was reasons like that which required the humans to be destroyed. They lied to their own nestlings! How could they ever be trusted as allies? Sophie was even more determined to get accepted into the Space Force and help destroy these evil creatures. They’re so seductive! So many times I’ve wanted to suggest a peace negotiation, and then they lie for nothing more than evil pleasure!
“Mom, what are you and Dad going to do when I go off to the Space Force?” Sophie asked.
“Oh, I think we’ll be fine, dear. The one I’m really worried about is Blink. Are you sure you don’t want him to stay here? No one is really sure if they can survive off planet, and you might not see him for months.”
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t
matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
Yesterday was an interesting day for my website. A large number of people “discovered” my site, and more specifically, they discovered my Shawn’s List of Rules post. That was the first thing.
The second thing that happened was a bunch of people got offended. Unfortunately, there was a subset of those people that truly shouldn’t have been offended, because I wasn’t talking about them at all. I make no apologies, but I realize not everyone knows all the details. Even those directly involved. Since I can’t publicly give specific details (I’d very likely get sued. Really.), I will tell a story. Below is the parable of the Raccoons and the Brussels Sprouts.
Once upon a time, there was a family of raccoons. This family lived near a fancy restaurant, and would often have a well balanced meal in the evening. The restaurant was really upscale, and its patrons were frivolous spenders. Due to the vast quantities of leftovers, the raccoon family was able to eat meat, pasta, veggies, fruit: Everything a raccoon would ever need.
Then one day, the restaurant burned down. All the rich patrons went elsewhere, and the poor raccoon family started to struggle. They were a wise and frugal family, so for a while, their reserve food kept them healthy. Unfortunately, the restaurant owners never rebuilt. After a while, even the stores of food weren’t enough. Some raccoons had to leave. Some even died. It was a very sad time in the raccoon family.
Then, a farmer moved into the vacant property where the restaurant used to stand. The farmer grew a variety of vegetables, but his main crop was Brussels Sprouts. It turned out he was able to grow Brussels Sprouts very efficiently, because the ashes from the burned down restaurant provided fertilizer that Sprouts thrived in. Unfortunately, the raccoons didn’t like Brussels Sprouts. They were used to a well balanced diet, and Brussels Sprouts alone weren’t enough. They were part of a balanced diet — but the raccoons knew they wouldn’t be able to thrive like they had in years past.
In fact, the raccoons began to despise the farmer. They were angry because all he grew were Brussels Sprouts. Sprouts weren’t nearly as tasty. Surely, with only Brussels Sprouts, they would all perish. They ate them, because they had no choice, but the raccoons were not happy.
Meanwhile, the farmer tried to grow a few other crops, but he really couldn’t afford much else. As it were, the farmer bought the field in the first place, because he really liked raccoons, and wanted to do everything he could to keep them alive. Few raccoons realized that. He kept planting Brussels Sprouts, because he knew they could live if they ate them — but the raccoons kept getting angrier. The farmer and the raccoons couldn’t speak to each other, of course, so both the raccoons and the farmer got frustrated.
A few years went by, and the raccoons started to see that although they lost some weight, they were able to live relatively healthy on Brussels Sprouts. In fact, some raccoons even liked the Sprouts. About half of the raccoon family even went to the farmer’s house and scratched at the door to get the farmer to give them more Brussels Sprouts. The farmer soon was planting more and more Brussels Sprouts to keep up with demand! He got to see the raccoons preparing Brussels Sprouts in different ways, and he was very impressed with their creativity.
Sadly, a part of the raccoons that scratched for more Sprouts ended up piling them in a corner. Those Brussels Sprouts began to smell bad. Even though they wanted the extra Sprouts, the raccoons blamed the farmer for the smell. They told other raccoons that they never wanted Brussels Sprouts in the first place. The smell leaked into all the raccoon houses, and all the raccoons forgot that it was those very Brussels Sprouts that had been keeping them alive for so long.
So what was the farmer to do? The raccoons that scratched at his door for more Sprouts were now angry because they had them. The raccoons that were happily eating their share of Sprouts were getting irritated by the smell of the rotting vegetables coming from the other raccoon’s houses. The farmer got angry because he had invested everything he had into a Brussels Sprout farm to keep the raccoon family alive, and all they did was hiss at him. Some would even bite him.
The farmer began to dislike raccoons in general. Not all of the raccoons were mean, but when all the farmer saw day in and day out were hissing, biting raccoons — he had a hard time trusting any of them. He still grew Brussels Sprouts, and he still fed raccoons, because he’d made a commitment to himself to feed them. Sadly, however, he found little joy in farming any more. If it weren’t for his friends, family, and hobbies — the farmer would probably just have moved away and let the raccoons fend for themselves.
In the end, the farmer kept feeding the raccoons. He’d share his frustrations with his family and friends occasionally, because he was unable to speak raccoon. He figured that even if the raccoons thought he was mean for feeding them Brussels Sprouts, at least he was helping them stay alive.
The End.