Microserfs

never felt the crush of a football. There’s this senssation that something weirds going on, but you can’t articulate it, because the weirdness is 9too deep.

Once you leave the Camino Real, the main strip, the city becomes deadly quiet, exept for the occasionnal BMW, Honda or truck carrying 50-foot lengths of PVC tubing encasement for optical fibers.

I broke down and asked Dad today, “Dad, what exactly are you doing for Michael?” and he said, “Well, Daniel, I haven’t really signed a nondisclosure form on the subject, but I did promise Michael I’d keep it top secret until it was time to reveal.”

Gee, thanks.

Susan and Ethan are actually united on an issue — a local crusade against leaf blowers — the gas-fired kind. The noise from them is, I have to agree, something shocking. They phoned Palo Alto City Hall and got some poor civil servant on the line and harangued them. Ethan screamed, “After a certain point, decibels turn into BTUs. We’re melting here.” Susan phoned up and screamed, “Is Palo Alto Spanish for leaf blower? Ban these things NOW!”

It’s fun to watch your friends get random. Especially when they’re ragging on something that’s a direct metaphor for their personalities.

I have noticed that on TV, all of these “moments” are sponsored by corporations, as in, “This touchdown was brought to you by the brewers of Bud Lite,” or “This nostalgia flashback was brought to you by the proud makers of Kraft’s family of fine foods.”

I told Karla, “I’m no sci-fi buff, but doesn’t this seem like a dangerous way to be messing with the structure of time — allowing the corporate realm to invade the private?

Karla told me about how the city of Atlanta was tampering with the idea of naming streets after corporations in return for paying for the maintenance of infrastructure: “Folgers Avenue; Royal Jordanian Airlines Boulevard; Tru-Valu Road.”

“Well,” I said, “streets have to get names somehow. The surnames Smith, Brown, and Johnson probably looked pretty weird when they first started, too.”

Karla said, “I think that in the future, clocks won’t say three o’clock anymore. They’ll just get right to the point and call three o’clock, ‘Pepsi.’”

During tonight’s massage lesson, Karla said, “Remember living in that enormous furniture-free rancher up in Redmond with all the rain clouds and everything? It feels like a long time ago. I sort of miss it.”

I said nothing. I don’t miss it. I prefer the chaos of here to the predictability of … there.

My body felt like overcooked spaghetti after tonight’s session. Yeah!

I tried Ethan’s theory about copy-and-pasting. I was mesmerized by the results — think and grow rich:

money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money

I stared at an entire screen full of these words and they dissolved and lost their meaning, the way words do when you repeat them over and over — the way anything loses meaning when context is removed — the way we can quickly enter the world of the immaterial using the simplest of devices, like multiplication.

SATURDAY

Poor or not, life has become coding madness all over again — except this time we’re killing ourselves for ourselves, instead of some huge company to whom we might as well be interchangeable bloodless PlaySkool figurine units. We began coding the day after we arrived. Michael’s code is elegant stuff — really fun to tweak. And there’s certainly lots of it. No shortage of work here. And there’s so much planning, and we all have our milestone charts pasted up on our booth walls.

And once again, work is providing us with a comforting sense of normalcy — living and working inside of coding’s predictably segmented time/space. Simply grinding away at something makes life feel stable, even though the external particulars of life (like our paychecks, our office, and so forth) are, at best, random.

Bug has surprised us with his untapped talent for generating gaming ideas and coding short cuts. Ethan called him a Burgess Shale of untried ideas. He’s blossoming — at 32!

Michael has an office more or less to himself, behind the bar, and walled off with sound baffles. He shares it with Ethan, who visits only twice a day for “face-time”: first to talk with Michael in the morning — and then once in the afternoon for a wrap-up. The downside of a closed door office is the overaccumulation of dead skin particles. With Ethan’s dandruff, the floor looks like Vail, Colorado.

Not infrequently, Michael locks himself inside and geeks out on code. We call this bungee-coding. He always does his best work when he really geeks out. Nobody’s offended — it’s the way he is.

I asked Mom what she knew of Dad’s work with Michael. She