[!CrackMonkey!] [harrismh@us.ibm.com: RE: [Klug] For java enthusiasts....]

[Miles Nordin]

>>>>> "b" == Bad  <mr.bad at pigdog.org> writes:

     b> Hey, is that the truth?

Damn straight it's the truth.  I am a card-carrying member of the
Ricochet Advisory Group.  Member #13, since 1996.  It says, ``please
report loss or theft of this card to: Metricom, Inc., (408)
399-8200.''  Go ahead, try the number.  It's our secret hotline for
when security of the group has been compromised.

They used to have these sort of Communist Playboy meetings in their
Los Gatos Headquarters.  The meeting was held approximately monthly,
starting at 23:00 when the moon was waxing-crescent (1/4), but nobody
could figure out all that moon phase crap so they were announced the
night before by an alternating green-yellow flash of your radio's LED,
if you had the Beta firmware.  The guy who told me about the meetings
said they tried to get the buzzer to play the Communist anthem, you
know, ``Arise, ye pris-ners of starvaaaaaaa-shon / a-RISE, ye wretched
of the earth / For jus-tice thunders condemnaaaaaa-shun / a better
world's in birth,'' but I guess the buzzer circuit was just too lame.
Right.  so, you had to show your Advisory Group card at the front
desk, and then this sexy hostess would come out to escort you to the
solarium where they served champagne, Doritos, and Life Cereal.  They
had a Ricochet-enabled milk dispenser for the cereal, inspired by that
finger-able soda machine, remember that?  'finger' was not quite so
old back then, in the days before AOL Instant Messenger.  On the old
network, all the radios had names as well as numbers (mine was named
SHAI-HULUD) and radios could call each other through the network with
ATDT, old-skool BBS terminal style.  Because you could use your
Ricochet radio to login to Compuserve and stuff.  so if you typed 
'ATDT MOLOKO' on the old network, it would tell you the temperature
and weight of the milk bag in the solareum milk dispenser.

There were about 30 or 40 Advisors, but most of them just came for the
party.  The marketing guys were really interested in what we had to
say---we used to have these hour-long hand-flailing discussions with
them.  Most of the other advisors were IT directors, but there were a
few other weirdos: one weasely guy from Mosquitonet, a rich marijuana
czar from somewhere north of the Golden Gate, who I don't think even
had a Ricochet radio, a sort of pruny Hugh-Heffner--lookin' guy, and a
blue-haired Japanese girl from KDD (as in Au, Tu-ka, and DDI-Pocket)
who didn't speak English as far as I could tell, but maybe she was
just sick of geeks and neckties hitting on her.  Man, that chick used
to get _sloshed_.  You probably think Japanese girls are all giggly
(remember, this was six years ago when Japan was all mysogynist), but
that's just _before_ they get drunk.  She was frightening, I kid you
not.  She had some really good ideas for someone who couldn't
talk---the ``SX'' radio was her idea.

Some of their chief scientists used to come to the meetings, but they
were all so tired they just wanted to enjoy the booze and women and
relax in the hot tub.  The scientists were the best because they were
shaped sort of like Sees candies.  There were tall skinny ones where
you could see their ribs, sort of like the caramel-sliver candies.
pear-shaped fat ones, like the standard round-truffle candies.
sausage-balloon-shaped fat ones, like the double-wide rectangular
solid candies.  and lastly a couple of these shifty hunched-over
unshaven East German types.  All sorts!  It was wild, man.  And I
swear to god the scientists always got the best weed and the best
chicks, but they never, _never_ talked about their work for the
Company at the Meetings.  I still don't know why.

And of course they had their ``unlicensed cat,'' which they called Los
Catos because of the Japanese girl.  Okay, see it's like this.
Whenever the cat came nearby and then walked away, someone would say
``no cat!'' and that means everyone has to drink.  Stupid fucking cat.
What a bunch of psychos.  Anyway, I still have dreams about how the
Japanese girl used to say, ``No...Ka-To...''  And we were in Los Gatos
and I guess Ga and Ka are the same letter in Nipponese except Ga has a
little dot or something, so, Los Catos.

Yes, the glory days of the Ricochet Empire.  And now they've been
bought out by dark fiber railroad tycoon wankers in Denver.  That's
right, Denver.  Humiliating.  All because they foolishly ignored _me_,
Advisor #13.  Of course those Stanford MBA dorks who switched them to
the nerdy footprint logo couldn't have helped, either.  What a bunch
of assholes.

They ignored ALL my advice, almost as if I were giving them
antiadvice.  I advised them to set up service in Boulder, Colorado.
They built out the entire Colorado front range, covering housing
projects, interstates, track-home commuter villages, way out to
Broomfield within 10 miles of Boulder. Then stopped.

Now guess what city has a wireless freenet project, and what vast
wasteland that is Eastern Colorado past Boulder doesn't.

Eat my shorts, Metricom fux0rs.  Those parties may have kicked ass,
but I still *R00L U*!!11!!1111!!

-- 
Klar, Entlueftung, Zuendung, Vorstufe, Hauptstufe.