Category: Nostalgia

The Child is Father to the Man

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Almost 30 years ago probably one of the more formative events in my life occurred. My father left my mother, and shortly thereafter my stepfather entered my life.

Independent of any other emotional or parental changes, one singular part of that transition has affected me above all else: My stepfather introduced me to rock and roll.

I’m overstating it a bit, I’d been soft rocked by adult contemporary as a child.  But regular rock and roll was the devil’s music, and I was repeatedly told by my father I was going to hell for purchasing my very first cassette tape: Queen’s The Game.  In our house it was mostly gospel, Mickey Gillis, the Gatlin Brothers, The Oak Ridge Boys, or Streisand and maybe, just maybe, those out of control rebels The Bee Gees. Neil Diamond was also allowed, sparingly.

When my mom first met Ted, my eventual stepfather, we were still struggling as she was a single parent trying to cope with her new situation and raising three boys.  Once they started dating, we got to visit his apartment.  At that time, I believe Ted’s album collection had reached close to 1000 albums. 

You have to understand just how much physical space 1000 vinyl records takes up.  It’s just gargantuan. His entire place seemed to be one large record storage area.  And he was a fan not just of classic rock but of the modern stuff I normally wasn’t allowed, some classical, jazz, etc.

When I was 11 I got my own self contained record player with speakers.  And Ted immediately began to give me all his older stuff (so that he could justify buying new copies).  His system was a high-end adjustable automatic turntable with tracking, connected to massive Cerwin Vega speakers via an amp.  Mine was a two speed manual unit with small tinny built in speakers, so the fact I had hand me down worn copies of his LP’s really didn’t matter.

What mattered is that while I wanted Michael Jackson and Taco, what I got was Jimmy Buffett, Bruce Springsteen, Poco, and an education into classic rock and roll that, lacking the albums I wanted, I had to play because they were the only albums I had.

Over the next year I bet I was the only 11 year old in early 1984 listening to Dylan, Brinsley Schwarz, Jethro Tull, Beatles, Stones, and my Stepdad’s favorite, It’s a Beautiful Day and Blood Sweat and Tears’ “Child is Father to the Man”

Fast forward to today, my stepfather’s marriage to my mother lasted almost two decades, but they eventually divorced.  But he’s probably one of the most profound influences on my life and my appreciation of music.  I still remember once I got a cassette recorder system that recorded from the phonograph.  I made a general mix tape for myself of my favorite stuff that got spied by an older kid in middle school who grabbed my walkman. 

“Cream?  Led Zeppelin?  not exactly new age music” he mocked as he read the tape label I worked so hard on.  My Depeche Mode and Duran Duran cassettes were in my backpack still but that was ok.  I look back on it now as a validation, not that the modern music at the time was bad, but that I was capable of enjoying it all.

This Christmas I thought of that time in my life.  My stepdad’s vinyl collection is long since sold and he’s relocated to his hometown of New Orleans. On a whim I hit Amazon. I sent him the following:

An Audio Technica Automatic Turntable (has an amp)
Logitech 2.1 Z323 speakers (has inputs for the turntable amp)
Blood Sweat and Tears, Child is Father to the Man

Along with cables to make sure it would all work.  I sent him this note:

Almost 30 years ago, you introduced me to so much music via your record collection. Included in this package should be everything you need to start your record collection over again. Much love and merry xmas, Stepto and Rochelle.

I hope he likes it as much as I think he will.

I hope he knows just how important his gift of music was to me.

I hope my brothers remember to send him more albums as their part of the gift.

I hope.

Quakity Quakity Quakity

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In late February 1996 I was working on what would later become Windows 95 OEM Service Release 1 and Windows 95 Service Pack 1.  We’d learned a lot since the shipment of Windows 95 six months earlier and there were a number of updates and fixes being prepared for the market. Working in our Las Colinas support center, I was one of the leads on developing Product Support Boundaries (meaning, where did product support define where our support ended and someone else’s began) as well as testing for the new software. This involved a ton of research and technical writing, and as well a lot of online support for the hardcore beta testers via Compuserv, Usenet, and other online forums.

OEM service releases were versions of Windows specifically for companies like Dell and IBM and other companies to pre-install on computers and were slightly different than retail copies of Windows in that they were specifically tailored for the hardware the OEM was shipping. So unlike the high of being a part of the development of Windows 95, the following service pack and OEM releases were more boring than an often used metaphor.

One more interesting tidbit in this sea of historically tech mediocrity trivia, I had just been issued a brand new Gateway Pentium 233mhz machine with a 720 megabyte hard drive and 32 megs of RAM. Meaning that, at least for gaming, the machine was significantly more powerful than my home machine. This coincided with the release of Qtest.

It’s safe to say my life would never be the same. Over the next several months I would stay long past normal work hours playing Qtest on my hot rod work machine until I spent some bonus money to trick out my home rig to play it just as well.

Of course I had played Doom point to point over Modem, and even played a 4 player game over LAN.  But Qtest showed everyone the power of the Internet as a gaming platform, and just a few months later Quake was released. Quake put forth the concept of a player “user name” on the internet for online shooters.  For a long time mine was “Poppin’ Fresh Dough Boy” and my signature rocket kill taunt was “Nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the oven!”  But of course I eventually reverted to “Stepto.”

Ping times.  3d cards for glquake. Custom skins.  Mods. Rocket Arena. Installing an ISDN line in my apartment to run servers. Capture the Flag. Team Fortress. Grapple monkeys. Gibs. Rocket Jumping.

15 years later.

I’ve never laughed as loudly as I have during Quake matches.  The combination of over the top gibs and blood sprays still to this day strikes me as funny.  The action of Quake 1 was fast paced and unforgiving.  People learned the rhythm of maps first on Quake, how to time getting the rocket launcher then jumping round the corner to nab the red armor and the quad damage just down the hall.

In celebration of Quake, I did some idle querying to see what it would take to run a server and have people connect for nostalgia.  I was chocked to discover there is a modern Quake movement out there to update the game and keep its original roots. 

Therefore I have set up a Quake server on Stepto.com.  First, you will need a copy of Quake retail, specifically its .pak files.  You can most easily get this from Steam for $9.99.  Second, go here and install the engine for your platform (Windows, Mac, or linux). I chose the Dark Places engine because it is cross platform, free, and dead easy to setup and it looks amazing if you download one of the texture packs for it.

Last, just point your Quake multiplayer game to the address Stepto.com.

I dunno how long I will leave the server up, and for right now it’s only running a very basic standard map rotation. But I played with some randoms last night and had a blast.  I might add some maps and bots such that anyone can join and have fun at any time.

15 years ago an amazing technical achievement was released.  If you’ve never played it, check it out.  You’ll be glad you did.

An Argument between 10 year old me and 38 year old me: Tron Legacy

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[WARNING: THIS ARGUMENT CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS]

“You’re going to be nitpicky,” 10 year old me said, “I’m really not interested in nitpicky. I like movies based on where they take me, not how they take me there.”

It was just before the opening 9:30am showing this morning of Tron: Legacy. I’ve loved Tron since the first time I saw it in the theaters.  But in my jaded adulthood I’ve distanced myself from its bold visions based on growing older, and in that growing older gradually shoving my 10 year old self further and further back from my now atrophied sense of wonder.

“It’s preposterous!” I said, more than a little bit justified in my adult non-wondrous anger, “I mean even in the original Tron it’s silly.  How could such primitive processors create a world and AI of such complexity? Sure it’s pretty, sure I love it for nostalgic reasons, but the entire premise is unrealistic! And in this new movie the computer is 1989 technology and isn’t even connected to the Internet? It’s probably just a late term Matrix copycat.”

10 year old me paused, “Matrix?”

“It’s like Star Wars with computers, if Jedi had ended with the Emperor and Vader signing a non aggression pact with the Rebel Alliance.”

10 year old me looked really confused.

Crap, I thought, Jedi came out when I was 11.

“Never mind, I’m just saying I know more now. Plus, how in the world does a spontaneously appearing algorithm cross back physically in our world huh?  Tell me that Einstein.”

10 year old me sighed a sigh my mother was probably quite familiar with.

“You were fine in the first Tron with Flynn being digitized?” he asked. 10 year old me was speaking casually.

“Well of course it’s fiction, but it was based on the fundamental concept of sampling which we accept today.” I replied. That was a good response.  I felt safe there in pointing out it was bullshit, but fundamentally sound bullshit.

“Hrmm and you are ok with Flynn’s son being sampled in the same way?” 10 year old me replied.

I was sensing a trap, but logic forced me to answer: “Well I guess since Flynn perfected the sampling technology such an act would make sense in the universe.”

“Universe ah.  Interesting.” 10 year old me replied.  Now he was walking alongside me like Morpheus in The Matrix, hands clasped behind his back. “So in a world where the deconstruction of physical matter into a digital environment is plausible if obviously fictional, wouldn’t that same principle apply both ways given enough study on the other side of the equation, as CLU has clearly done?”

I cursed knowing too much of the plot ahead of seeing the movie.  10 year old me is wily, and well versed in realms of amazing stories as opposed to worlds that were merely plausible. That is why he is 10 year old me, and I am 38 year old me.

“Let’s imagine,” 10 year old me continued, “That in the original Tron, a fictional universe was created where Encom designed a supercomputer capable of manifesting The Grid. And that ancillary technologies like laser sampling linked it to our world.  Let us further suppose that Flynn found a way to reliably and repeatedly meld the two.  Let us finally suppose that these developments are unique to Encom’s technology, therefore the advancements have nothing to do with the Internet or other processor or computing advancements. In other words today’s advancements are there, but not important to the story being told.”

I fell silent.

“Let us realize,” 10 year old me said, “that maybe like most things Disney is good at, they have created a world just slightly alongside our own where you can overcome your knowledge of what is possible in our world, and enjoy a world where that knowledge is transcended merely with good story telling. Oh, by the way, did you like Cars?”

I bowed my head. I did indeed enjoy Pixar’s Cars. It’s the lower of the Pixar films, which is like saying this amazing Scorecese film is good, but not his best. IT’S BETTER THAN 99% IN ITS CLASS.

“So you can be less nitpicky then. But for this, you’re are nitpicky,” 10 year old me said, “I’m really not interested in nitpicky. I like movies based on where they take me, not how they take me there.”

10 year old me was fading for some reason, and I didn’t want him to disappear, but he had one last point to make.

“Just shut the hell up and enjoy the story being laid out for you.”

38 year old me turned off my smart phone, with more processing power than that would be required to create the world envisioned in this film.  I relaxed in a stupidly luxurious reclining leather chair and put on a pair of Roy Orbison 3d glasses.  And for the next 2 hours fell in love with a mental space I have not been in for far too long.

I loved Tron: Legacy, every second of it.  And I have a young version of me, and a well designed original vision to thank for it.

A Moment… July 2010—July 1984

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July. 

July.

It was crisp today, cool and clear. High of 70, and puffy clouds here and there. I still cant get used to it, although I love it deeply. I’d finished up some work on what we at Microsoft call a “Vision Document” which is often a critical component of driving new features and change in our products and often requires a lot of work and research.

At the same time, in some other place, it’s 100 degrees in Dallas, Texas and 12 year old me is on my bike.  I was proud of my bicycle, a two handbrake model with a reverse chain mechanism.  Hardy and well built, I had a water bottle attachment and special racing pads on the cross bar to help prevent testicular impalement upon hitting too sharp an incline. Toiling against both humidity and heat, I headed past the local Mister-T convenience store to break all the rules my mother had laid down regarding my roaming territory so I can reach the 7-11 across LBJ Highway 635 at Abrams road.

Both of me in this story suddenly need, need, a slurpee.

In the present tense, I had missed 7.11.2010, free slurpee day. In July of the year of our Reagan/Apple/Orwell 1984, I just loved slurpees and was willing to break the rules to ride way beyond my mother’s rules for my addiction. 

In both cases I have a dollar in my pocket.

I pumped my car full of gas, present day. I smelled the same fumes and exhaust my 12 year old self smelled on that long overpass over the highway. Under a bright sky that might as well have been a Texas one, sans the heat, I put the pump back in the lock. Just a walk away was the slurpee machine.

You parked your bike ahead of the door back then. There weren’t lock slots. Bike’s didn’t easily give up their wheels to take them inside. Every time you ran into any convenience store you ran the risk of losing your ride. In that world, your bike was like your horse in the old west. It was your companion through thick and thin. Quad plastic spokes on cheap rubber tires. A metal frame adorned by cheap foam circular padding.

In one world you ordered the slurpee, in another you make it yourself.  In both cases I hand over a dollar for a coca-cola flavored slurpee.

In 1984 I sip it slowly outside the 7-11 while I watch my bike and risk brain freeze.  In 2010 I remember that moment and take a short draw through the straw while I hope the wormhole opens.  It does, in a way I didn’t expect.  It opens like coke silk, the freeze smoothing out the carbonation along the tongue to a clean finish.  It’s a taste time trip, and I even close my eyes and think about how later the spoon shaped tip of the straw will mean I can’t finish the drink with it, because of how it will melt such that the suction wont work anymore.

It’s 2010 and I’m 37 and my car is in sight and I am holding a slurpee, a drink I have not intentionally bought in probably 20 years. It’s 1984 and my bike is next to me and I have only a few more minutes to drink my slurpee before I can race back such that my mother didn’t know I was outside her clearly defined roaming zone.

It’s cool.  It’s hot.  It’s now, it’s then.

I get in the car and sit for a moment, then turn the ignition. A comfortable hum settles around me, my iPhone starts playing the music I had been listening too before filling up.

But with the sugary cold taste in my mouth now, I feel two young hands wrap around plastic knobbed grips and slightly metallic hand brakes and the Texas sun blazes and all at once in both worlds, everything’s all right.

A Moment… July 2010—July 1984

0

July. 

July.

It was crisp today, cool and clear. High of 70, and puffy clouds here and there. I still cant get used to it, although I love it deeply. I’d finished up some work on what we at Microsoft call a “Vision Document” which is often a critical component of driving new features and change in our products and often requires a lot of work and research.

At the same time, in some other place, it’s 100 degrees in Dallas, Texas and 12 year old me is on my bike.  I was proud of my bicycle, a two handbrake model with a reverse chain mechanism.  Hardy and well built, I had a water bottle attachment and special racing pads on the cross bar to help prevent testicular impalement upon hitting too sharp an incline. Toiling against both humidity and heat, I headed past the local Mister-T convenience store to break all the rules my mother had laid down regarding my roaming territory so I can reach the 7-11 across LBJ Highway 635 at Abrams road.

Both of me in this story suddenly need, need, a slurpee.

In the present tense, I had missed 7.11.2010, free slurpee day. In July of the year of our Reagan/Apple/Orwell 1984, I just loved slurpees and was willing to break the rules to ride way beyond my mother’s rules for my addiction. 

In both cases I have a dollar in my pocket.

I pumped my car full of gas, present day. I smelled the same fumes and exhaust my 12 year old self smelled on that long overpass over the highway. Under a bright sky that might as well have been a Texas one, sans the heat, I put the pump back in the lock. Just a walk away was the slurpee machine.

You parked your bike ahead of the door back then. There weren’t lock slots. Bike’s didn’t easily give up their wheels to take them inside. Every time you ran into any convenience store you ran the risk of losing your ride. In that world, your bike was like your horse in the old west. It was your companion through thick and thin. Quad plastic spokes on cheap rubber tires. A metal frame adorned by cheap foam circular padding.

In one world you ordered the slurpee, in another you make it yourself.  In both cases I hand over a dollar for a coca-cola flavored slurpee.

In 1984 I sip it slowly outside the 7-11 while I watch my bike and risk brain freeze.  In 2010 I remember that moment and take a short draw through the straw while I hope the wormhole opens.  It does, in a way I didn’t expect.  It opens like coke silk, the freeze smoothing out the carbonation along the tongue to a clean finish.  It’s a taste time trip, and I even close my eyes and think about how later the spoon shaped tip of the straw will mean I can’t finish the drink with it, because of how it will melt such that the suction wont work anymore.

It’s 2010 and I’m 37 and my car is in sight and I am holding a slurpee, a drink I have not intentionally bought in probably 20 years. It’s 1984 and my bike is next to me and I have only a few more minutes to drink my slurpee before I can race back such that my mother didn’t know I was outside her clearly defined roaming zone.

It’s cool.  It’s hot.  It’s now, it’s then.

I get in the car and sit for a moment, then turn the ignition. A comfortable hum settles around me, my iPhone starts playing the music I had been listening too before filling up.

But with the sugary cold taste in my mouth now, I feel two young hands wrap around plastic knobbed grips and slightly metallic hand brakes and the Texas sun blazes and all at once in both worlds, everything’s all right.