Fortune

Sarah had to run off to Greek Theology as soon as physics ended, but I had another hour to kill. With nothing better to do, I headed for my dorm room. Not a place of great excitement, but at least my computer was there, and let me be the first to tell you that with a computer and an internet connection, the entertainment possibilities are virtually infinite.

I was in for a mean surprise, though. Mike had taken a quick break from the paper and was lounging on his bed with a magazine and a pile of textbooks. When I walked in he was more chipper than usual. It didn't take me long to find out why.

"Hey Brian! How are you?"

"Meh. You?"

"Well... I was wondering if you could enlighten me on a particular topic."

"Mike, asking permission to ask a question is stupid and you know it. Just spit it out."

"You know that girl Sarah? The one who got you to do the interview?"

I stared at him. I don't like answering questions when I don't need to. I hate excess.

"Do you know much about her social life? Is she... attached to anyone?"

"No to the former. And to the latter - have you seen any Siamese twins around campus?"

"Is she emotionally attached to anyone?"

"Not as far as I know. Why?"

"Awesome! Thanks, man!"

Mike was out the door and halfway down the hall before I could yell "Why?" after his retreating back. It wasn't worth the effort, though, so I opened up my laptop - a ThinkPad from the time when they were still branded IBM instead of Lenovo. It wasn't the brightest bulb on campus, but it had crashed only twice in two years and hardware problems were minimal. In the Linux world that's a pretty good record.

Jasper - I named my laptop Jasper, goodness knows why - popped himself out of hibernation and informed me that the wireless internet adapter was unplugged. The wireless adapter - a purple box tied by its short wire antenna to a ceiling hook - was plugged in. I opened a terminal window and tinkered with the kernel module settings, then disconnected the USB cable, said a prayer to the god of compatible hardware, and jammed it back in the socket. Victory: I had internet.

Jasper informed me that I had no new mail. The news looked even more boring than it had that morning. Left without anything else to do, I opened a terminal - the most basic form of interfacing with the computer. There were neither buttons nor menus, just a simple prompt:

brian@jasper:~$

I typed "fortune" - a command that reads random fortunes out of a database - and hit enter.

"There are more things in heaven and earth than any place else," it told me in monospace font. And, the next time, "Marriage is an institution in which two undertake to become one, and one undertakes to become nothing." The fortune database has a weird sense of humor. Probably because it's authored mainly by hackers. Not hackers in the way most people know of them, not the ones responsible for viruses and broken passwords. Those, a true hacker would tell you, are crackers - short for "criminal hackers." A true hacker is a tinkerer, someone who likes to take things apart and modify them. They are responsible for clever programming and innovative software. They can mix two seemingly mundane programs and whip up something new and unique. They have their own culture. It is a rather unusual culture though, and thus fortune occasionally comes up with such gems as "There's only one everything."

I get along with hacker culture quite well, though. Even the little voice in the back of my head likes it.

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Word on the street is that I now have two readers! Thanks to both of you - now I have more reason than ever to be on time with new installments. Which leads me to note that this evening I am less than an hour late! Someday I might even build up a buffer - what an idea!

But I was going to talk about some serious stuff this week, if I can remember what it was... Ah, yes, I remember! First, I have changed the navigation bars again, this time to images created with Blender, an open source 3D modeling program. If you don't like them please comment on the fact.

And I still can't remember the second thing I wanted to say. Everyone have a nice week and enjoy what remains of Labor day weekend!