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1993-07-16
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65 lines
Modeming
by Joe Palooka
Oct. 15 1992
I don't know how other people live, so that they have
time to explore the Exciting Worlds of On-Line Information.
I have an Image before me now - Mr. Sleekancool in his comfy
book-lined den stands in cozy housecoat, pipe in hand, to
draw down the diskette chock full of recent BBS discoveries
and explorations. Nearby the children play on the rug, the
dog twitches in hunting-dreams before the fire, and Adoring
Wife in Apron brings a tray bearing cinammon rolls and
steaming toddy to put beside his elbow.
Ha!
My boy falls down the stairs, my wife screams that she's
going home to Mother if I don't get off that F@#$? computer
this minute, the cat walks over the keyboard and knocks my
cold tea onto the diskettes, and my daughter climbs up and
down the back of my chair, swinging from my tattered sweater
and singing a song with no plot line, of her own composition,
memorable only for garble and volume.
I gave up on doing this modeming business on BBS's from
at home in the evenings after I discovered that the distraction
that was interfering with my concentration upon the keyboard
during one particularily intense session was a combination of:
my son bouncing his ball off the side of my head while my
fallen cigarette smouldered upon the rug and the smoke alarm
upstairs spasmodically exhausted its feeble batteries with
brief outbursts. The lengthening intervals in THAT distraction
were only the batteries summoning up the dregs of their resources
and my son breaking off his activity to toddle to the kitchen
for small glasses of Kool Aid with which to douse the rug.
Now I try to do my "modeming" at work on the spare computer
in the back, after everyone has gone home. My wife mutters
about Other Women but it is only the siren song of 2400 Baud,
the ties of the Electronic Umbilical, the seductive curves of
Harlan Ellison's Glass Teat, that hold me in thrall now.
This alternative has its disadvantages. The spare computer
is located underneath an industrial strength furnace by the
back wall. Imagine trying to remember what one said in one's
last message when the furnace starts up. Dust, styrofoam
peanuts, bits of grit pepper the face as the hot wind roars
past, blowing one's hair about, ripping the printouts from
one's hands, thundering with all the savouriness of an exhaling
Trannosaurus Rex within chomping distance, and at about twice
the volume. From time to time the building trembles as the
Heavy Equipment Company just behind decides to reposition its
array of humungous machines. The nearby shelves loaded
with 200kg crates sway threateningly while one wonders whether
someone in his ten-ton steel behemoth will ignore the approach
of your back-wall because something else is on his mind. If
the BBS then starts inserting threatening messages that your
time allotment is nearly up, in the middle of your lines, the
totality of your satisfaction with On Line Activity lacks only
an angry shipper working late and wanting to use his computer,
a red-faced supervisor telling you to get the hell out of his
warehouse and a transport truck belching diesel fumes through
the nearby door, and then your subsumption in the World Of
Ideas will be complete.