Wootopia.net

I’m in Baltimore, attending a conference on Academic Computing. I was out for dinner, and as I came back, I had an experience that mystified me for a good thirty seconds. I’m walking in the door, just as another gentleman is walking in, and the doorman greets the other guy with a “Welcome to our hotel, sir” and me with a “Welcome back, sir.” I saw the doorman on the way out, and for a good twenty seconds I was surprised he remembered me. I didn’t think I was that memorable.

And then it occurred to me that the other guy had luggage, and I didn’t, so that I was already checked in was probably the obvious assumption for the doorman to make. Damn, for a moment I felt special…

More pics of my nephew have been uploaded.

Yesterday, I received some very unusual mail. The label indicated it was from my alma mater’s finance office, so I opened it up expecting it to be a bill of some kind. Inside were two sheets, labeled “Federal Perkins Loan Promissory Note” at the top, my signature at the bottom, and “PAID” stamped in red across the body of the sheet.

Back in November, I received the quarterly statement for one of my loans, expecting the usual quarterly payment, but the “balance remaining” also caught my eye. “Hmmm, I think I could pay that off right now, over a year early…” I muttered, and then ambled into the living room to commune with my bank’s website. A few minutes later, “Yup!”

I don’t like to be in debt. I acknowledge it as a necessity of modern life, but I never enjoy the state of financial obligation to others. “I’ll consider this my Christmas gift to myself,” I thought, as I filled out a check for the remaining sum.

I hadn’t thought too much about it since then, until the two notes arrived yesterday. The first one had been signed in 1998, and the second one a year later. These forms have been sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere for the past decade, just waiting to be set free. I thought about the much-younger Woot who filled that form out in ’98, who had no idea of the adventure on which he was about to embark. I sat and remembered for a bit, and then smiled that something, small in the greater scheme of things, I had started ten years ago was now complete. Payback. And then I got to thinking…

As the sun goes down behind it, a door falls off it’s hinge, and a figure strides out in slow, confident steps away from the warehouse. Dark pants, dark shirt, framed by black books, dark hair, and a long ebony coat. Even the figure’s pale face is broken up by large, wraparound shades. He pauses for a moment, 30 yards away from the building, to pull out a pack of cigarettes, draw one out, and slide the pack back into one of the coat’s many internal pockets. As the hand withdraws, the gleam of a shiny silver lighter can be seen. He lifts the lighter to the tip of the cigarette, and strikes.

The warehouse behind him erupts into a fireball, shattering windows for half a block around. The concussion sends burning wood, jagged metal, and razor-sharp glass sailing around the man, slightly tousling his hair. He takes a deep drag, unconcerned about the raging blaze behind him, indifferent to distant sounds of sirens. Standing and smoking, he is an unmoving shadow before the brightly burning blaze.

Finishing the cigarette, he drops it to the ground, then steps on it while turning partway around to look at the building.

“It’s like they say, Federal Perkins Loan…”

The fire roars it’s fury at him.

“Payback’s a bitch.”

He then turns his back on the conflagration and hops onto the waiting motorcycle, and rides the growling beast into the waiting arms of the city and it’s newborn night.

Yeah, I like action movies too much...

Pics of the Campitheatre for my fellow alums are up. I’m trying to decide if I like the Gallery integration with Wordpress or if I should just have the Gallery be separate.

Also, a new post, “Payback!” coming soon!

Ok, image galleries are now working. 71 blurry, low-rez, out-of-focus pictures that were taken five years ago have been added!

My college years were uneventful, so far as web development went. There was an almost palpable disdain for the web from at least some corners of my University’s Computer Science department, and given the wide range of opportunities open to young college aged men, I spent none of my free time investigating web development any further. The web was simply a tool for reading the news and checking up on class assignments, and nothing more.

Of course, the world did not stand still and as the 1990s were replaced by the 2000s, web technologies changed. When, in late 2002, I once became interested in the web, I found that the tools and technologies I knew worked, but seemed… antiquated. I embraced my antiquation with a sense of pride. Driven by both my fascination for “retro” technologies and my indignance that the world had dared to change without my leave, I designed a page that seemed as backwards as I could make it. I stuck with black text on a white background, a simple navbar of HTML links at the top of the page to mark sections, and clickable thumbnails embedded in a table structure for my image galleries – all of it done by hand in Notepad. I’d show them… I’d show them ALL!

I maintained the webpage for about half a year, until mid-2003, at which time I was “downsized” and lost my hosting for the page. Looking back at it – I saved the site to a CD-R for posterities sake – it seems to me that yes, the page looks primitive compared to the colorful, graphics-intensive webpages one saw in 2002, much less today, but it had a certain sleek elegance, and a charming, do-it-yourself aesthetic to it that I miss. That being said, it was ALL very simple HTML, and did not even include such straightforward techniques as includes. Instead of changing one file when I wanted the structure of the navbar to change, I had to change code on EVERY page that included it. Fun times!

My next foray into Web Development would take place just a month or two later, as the life of recently-unemployed Woot took another strange turn. But that’s a story for Part Three…

What a difference twenty-four hours makes! Though it reflects nothing of any importance whatsoever in the physical world, the passing of the date from December 31^st, 2007 to January 1^st, 2008 is of strong cultural importance to Americans. As our perception of the world shapes our outlook, our outlook shapes our perceptions of the world. The change of dates is important simply because we believe it to be.

But whatever our beliefs, 2008 will bring many changes.

Some of us will die, either expectedly at the terminal stage of the human lifecycle, or unexpectedly, struck down by sudden disease or unforeseen accident. Members of both groups of people will be mourned. May we meet again in Heaven, or not at all.

Some of us will be born, either as a consequence of desire and planning, or as the product of accident or muddled thinking. You may not find it to your liking here, but there is nevertheless much to recommend this human life we share. To children born in both camps, I offer you my welcome for your stay here. May you prosper and grow well.