Chapter Three, In Which He Went Anyway

A great reason to go to a reunion is to catch up with old friends and see how everyone is doing.  A bad reason would be to despair over missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the sole reason it comes along once in a lifetime.  I went to my high school reunion for the latter reason, and lack the words to express how overjoyed I was that it led to the former reason.

I love the phrase “time heals all wounds”, despite how hackneyed and worn it is.  It represents what I keep forgetting:  The older everyone gets, the more level the playing field gets.  There are people I have met in my professional career that would have never given me a second thought in high school (think “computer nerd meet-cutes head cheerleader”), and every time we interact, my inner nerd simply cannot get over the fact that we are interacting.  It never ceases to amaze me how normally everyone can get along despite dissimilar backgrounds.

There were a few snags; my cell phone broke this afternoon so I had nothing to take pictures with, and there were two people from the high school radio station that I started to talk to but couldn’t because my ears were shot and I just couldn’t understand them.  But those were forgotten to the best discovery of the evening: Viewing myself through other people’s eyes.  We imagine the worst for ourselves, about ourselves, and yet the simplest things can completely turn your entire perspective on life around when you hear things like:

“I wanted to tell you how much your writing influenced me and shaped my own writing.”  (It did?)

“I found people to talk to here tonight, and I wasn’t a part of anywhere near the number of clubs and organizations you were in.”  (I was?)

“I just wanted to let you know how much I admired your character.”  (My what?)

“You need to come over next time [we have a party]; you’d really get along with all the people who come.”  (I would?)

I still find it somehwat hard to believe.  But I’m starting to.

It’s humbling, and wonderful.

Hello Again Everybody

Exactly one year ago, I attempted to change my entire life to get ready for my 20th-year New Trier Class of ‘89 high school reunion.  Brought on by conflicting emotions of wanting to be accepted and faint memories of truly good times, my head was swimming in thoughts like:

“I’m at a good place in my life right now, so I wouldn’t feel ashamed to attend.”

“Some of my old friends will be there, and it will be great to catch up.”

“Hey, I still have all my hair and none of it is gray; maybe if I lose a few pounds I can look closer to how people remember me.”

I can already sense what you’re thinking, and you’re right, but I went ahead with the plan anyway.  I joined Weight Watchers, and worked up the courage to look for a new job that would advance my career while being rewarding at the same time.  Lost 30 pounds.  Got the new job.  Mission accomplished.  Well, the reunion is right around the corner — and I will not be attending.  Why?

While I have some genuinely fond memories of both high school and the friends I met there, it became increasingly clear towards the end (this is the obvious part) that, 20 years later, I was still chasing feelings of inadequacy.  New Trier was (and might still be) one of the most competitive public schools in America, with more than 80% of students scoring well above the national average during the time I went there.   (The top 1/4th of my class had a weighted GPA of 3.9, and the top 1/10th had a weighted GPA of 4.6 which sounds impossible until you realize their entire coursework consisted of AP classes.)  It was one of the largest suburban public schools of the time, with a total student population of nearly 3800 when I attended.  My graduating class was over 800 students, nearly all of them grossly better than I was in almost every area of academia.  And in my head, then and now, I was trying to be accepted by everyone I personally knew, usually failing at the same time.  That’s not healthy.

I asked friends for advice on whether or not I should attend, and got good advice.  When asking ’shouldn’t I go to catch up with old friends, etc.?’ the responses were along the lines of “Isn’t that what facebook is for?” or “You knew them for four years, then didn’t talk to them for twenty; why do you want to go again?” or “My reunion consisted of all the jocks and cheerleaders hanging out with each other while a few people sat alone at tables — just like high school!!”, etc.  The most humbling reply was from a friend who lives within driving distance:  “You don’t need a reunion to catch up with me; stop by any time.”

They’re all correct.  You can never go back, and in my case, I shouldn’t want to go back.  Still, in my head, it stings.

Many of my fellow classmates have gone in enviable directions.  Without naming names(*):

• Our class valedictorian (and a friend of mine) went to Harvard and then scored in the financial industry in the 1990s
• My first girlfriend became a Rhodes scholar and got her doctorate in a literary field and now lives in the UK
• One friend who was always a better programmer than me leapfrogged me entirely by becoming an electrical engineer who also did low-level interfaces for embedded systems (some medical, I believe)
• Another friend got her masters in environmental engineering and is now a director at a California water company, championing water quality
• One of my oldest friends (even before we attended high school) entered one of the most selfless professions and became an educator (say what you want, that takes dedication and cajones)
• My senior prom date got her doctorate in a musical field and has composed and performed music heard by hundreds of thousands people
• One ludicrously talented composer and performer made the leap to Hollywood and married a brilliant mathematician (and actress)

…and the list goes on.  Compared to them, I could feel like a failure.

But I’ve done well too, in my own way.  There is a dumb yet succinct saying that goes “The only person who can make you angry is you.”  It took me a long time to realize that applies to how you feel good about yourself as well.  So here’s where I bring the reunion to me, and tell any fellow Trevians who happen to catch this blog post how I’ve been doing:

• I met my wife Melissa attending Monmouth college.  We were married in 1994, and have two wonderful boys, Sam (b. 1997) and Max (b. 1999).
• I have been working with Unix professionally since 1992, making it my career.  I am currently a senior unix admin at a trading firm in Chicago, working with low latency messaging optimization and capacity planning.
• I started a game history website with another Trevian, Brian Hirt, which continues to be an authoritative resource on electronic gaming info.  Brian was recently married, btw.
• I became involved in the demoscene and eventually had my 15 minutes of fame doing so.  I also co-produced a DVD/Blu-ray series featuring the demoscene.

So that’s me since high school in a nutshell.  Nice to see you again.

In honor of the positive times I had at New Trier, I’ve done two things.  First, I’ve uploaded some photos of me during that time with friends to facebook, and I’ve tried to tag them where possible.  (They should be viewable even if you don’t have a facebook account.)  Secondly, and of substantially more interest to my typical nerdly blog readers, I’ve made available a transcription of the New Trier High School Fight Song played at every home game — as rendered by Music Construction Set running on a Tandy 1000 in loving 3-voice dampened square waves.  Seriously.

Hey, I’ve still got my hair.  That’s gotta count for something.

Jim and Jim^2, separated by 20 years

Whoa — is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?

(*) Names available upon request

And now a word from our sponsor

This is going to be the first and last time I mention The Oldskool PC Store, mainly because we’re short this month and need to pay real estate taxes.

YEAH, I SAID IT.  I AM BROKE THIS MONTH.  (Actually, I’m broke most months, but this month is one of the important ones.)  So if you want some vintage gaming goodness in exchange for a few bucks, check out my store.  You’ll be helping me out, and get some gaming history in return.

Tune in tomorrow for our regularly scheduled programming.

Voter’s Remorse

Nothing upsets me more than political discourse.  And, with that sentence, I have immediately alienated approximately half of my readership — which naturally upsets me more.

Every four years, Americans put themselves through hell trying to elect someone whom they can come to terms with.  There is no perfect candidate; there is no best match (even Mondale got six electoral votes).  I am reminded of Robin Williams appearing on Letterman in 1988 shortly before the election, trying to decide who to vote for:  He likened Bush and Dukakis to a Ford Pinto and a Suzuki Samurai:  One blows up; the other rolls over — so which car do you feel comfortable driving?  I would rather walk, thank you.  But stating that publically gets you treated like a terrorist.  Celebrities mocking you into voting does not help.

This year’s election has many facets, but the most dividing issue in my neck of the woods is war: Defense spending, the Iraq war, the military, etc.  You either believe that attacking threats abroad is necessary, or you believe that it is wrong to pre-emptively strike first.  That’s pretty much it; there’s no gray area.  I mean, sure, there is a gray area, and it’s okay to put yourself in it, but you’d never know it from listening to both sides.

It doesn’t upset me that people choose opposite from me on issues; everyone is free to believe what they want.  What upsets me is how intolerant they are of my position.  In the last week, I have heard some of the most spiteful, pretentious, and downright sarcastic language regarding any political position I may or may not hold; from coworkers, random strangers, even members of my family.  Some of it is motivated by fear — biologically, a great motivator; intellectually, a terrible motivator.  Much of it is motivated by wealth.  Unfortunately, some of it is motivated by race.  It’s all terrible.  If voting for our government is such a gift, why are we made to feel worthless for expressing what direction we want to cast ours?

From now on, I’m keeping my political opinions to myself.  Never before have I been so maliciously scarred for exercising a basic right.

I’ll save you the trouble

As I edit the NVScene video that I shot for nVidia/Demoscene.tv (technically I own the rights to the footage, but out of professional courtesy I am giving them a six-month exclusive license to it), I find myself with a lot of free time, because creating .WMV files for previews requires rendering, and rendering 1920×1080 footage on my hardware takes a very long time.  So I’ve decided to pick another series I haven’t seen completely and watch every single episode in the downtime during the renders.  I did this previously with Star Trek: Voyager and DS9.  This time, I’ve chosen Mystery Science Theater 3000, including the early KTMA episodes.  With nearly 200 shows, at 1.5 hours per show (minus commercials), this will take a while.

So, having gotten through 20 or so KTMA episodes and well into the first proper season, I am going to save you the trouble of watching the KTMA episodes:  Don’t.  Weinstein’s acting and riffing is just horrible, there is no invention exchange (my favorite part of the Joel episodes), and the movies aren’t bad enough to be funny, just bad.  Which makes the whole experience incredibly boring.  I watched them at night because I knew they would put me to sleep, which they did.

There are two KTMA episodes worth your time:  SST Death Flight (for all of the cameos) and Hangar 18, which is silly in the first hour but neat sci-fi in the last 30 minutes.  That’s right: I’m recommending those two episodes for the movies themselves.  Watch those.  Delete the others, and don’t look back.  Start with the proper Season One and just try to ignore Weinstein until he’s gone.

Yes, I am being unnecessarily unfair to Weinstein.

Utterly random observations

I had to kill a mouse this morning before leaving for work; our young male cat catches things outside and brings them inside, and must have forgotten to deal with this one.  It was a young, small mouse, and it was really fast; I did my best to try to trap him such that I could grab his tail and remove him while still alive, but after almost losing him several times I just had to end it quickly to prevent him from entering the bowels of the house.  I am still saddened by this hours later, and I wonder why.  We kill insects and plants daily, sometimes without knowing it; this doesn’t trouble me, but killing a mammal does?  We have the largest cattle rendering industry in the world and yet I am bothered by killing a mouse.  What a screwy society.

George Carlin died today.  This is unrelated to the above discussion, I assure you.

I have reached an epiphany regarding weight loss:  I think it’s truly time to start losing weight when the distance of your belly from your waist exceeds the length of your junk.  (Applicable to men only, of course — I have no idea what the corresponding metric would be for women.)

Despite the above ruminations, I am not depressed.  Just introspective.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before

So there’s a pattern to my cycle:

• View things that should make me feel awesome but instead make me feel depressed
• Stay depressed for a while
• Start to feel moody and angry and obstinate
• Accomplish something that snaps me out of it

I can thank Jason Scott, this blog, and the comments of a few kind people to help me see this. Whether or not it is a cyclical bipolar disorder or something else is a discussion for another day.

So what happened this time? Let’s break things down:

View things that should make me feel awesome but instead make me feel depressed: Unfortunately, this was the result of stumbling across more of Jake “virt” Kaufman’s work. I am in awe of people who are so passionate about a certain thing (in his case, obviously music) that they can, by sheer force of will, become a prodigy in that field through research, experimentation, and sheer practice. I previously felt this way about Mark Brown (maruku barunu) and Peter Habja (Skaven); if you haven’t examined maruku’s techmaru.mod in Protracker as it plays, or listened to Skaven’s Network .s3m, you owe it to yourself to check them out. And keep in mind they had no formal musical training.

Stay depressed for a while: Yes, well… you saw the post prior to this one.

Start to feel moody and angry and obstinate: When I do this I find myself just sitting and doing nothing, listening to music like this:

• Throw It Away by Juke Kartel
• A Girl Like You by The Smithereens
• Celebrity Skin by Hole
• Human by Carpark North
• Cigarette Dangles by The Pursuit Of Happiness
• Dance Floor Anthem by Good Charlotte
• Move Along by The All-American Rejects
• Plowed by Sponge

I can’t tell if this is my “coming out of it phase” or “falling deeper into it” phase.  I think the deciding factor is whether or not I’m singing along to it (“coming out of it” phase).

Accomplish something that snaps me out of it: In my case, I had a lot of help with this step, mainly help from my loving wife, some very kind comments and email from my friends, and then a later love letter from Jason.

Oh, what did I accomplish? MONOTONE now has Adlib support.

It must be my time of the month again

About once a month I look at everything I’ve accomplished, and compare that with everything that I want to accomplish, which inevitably leads to what I can never accomplish, and I get depressed. The frequency of this is relatively stable; what has changed over the years is the amplitude. It is taking me longer and longer to snap back to someone who is simultaneously cheerful and productive. Trying hard not to overstress the metaphor here, but I fear someday I will disappear into a feedback loop and the resulting shockwaves will shake me into a completely different person, one who doesn’t give two shits about all of this and will disappear into a completely useless hobby, like collecting pencils.

Oh, sorry — MORE useless than my existing hobbies.

What I cling to, what I defend to others who don’t understand dorking with old computers and demos and software and oldwarez and gaming, is that my existing hobbies are about creation and creativity. For example, I program old computers, but I am programming them to do things they have never done in their timeframe, and I release the source so that maybe one other person will gain an extra synapse from viewing it.

Three days after returning from Block Party 2008, I got video of the competitions and awards spread across three DVDs. I offered to edit them into separate files and upload them to archive.org. It has taken me nearly a month to do this in my various pockets of free time, not all of them spent wisely. During this time, I witnessed entire events blow by, such as Jason Scott knocking another one out of the park at ROFLCon. Or, more troubling, my looking at ROFLCon and simply not getting it.

The more I work at all this, the more I’m convinced that it wasn’t OOP that stumped me for three months, but rather the fact that I am really just not that good at what I would like to believe I’m good at.

I look around me and I see remnants of at least five different things I’d like to accomplish someday — soundcard museum, writing a real 8088/CGA demo, software collecting, selling excess hardware on ebay, making another MindCandy DVD — and the entire time I know that none of them will probably ever get done.

I need to release some ballast or I’m going to sink. I just don’t know what to let go of.

I’ll bet none of this is making sense to you.

Would you like fries with that?

I found this visiting at my parent’s house for my Dad’s 66th birthday and just had to share it. But first, some background, because otherwise the picture has no meaning.

During my senior year at New Trier High School, our concert choir won a state-wide competition and, along with our “audition tape” singing Handel’s Messiah, we were picked to sing at Carnegie Hall for a 1989 concert. (The conductor and composer was John Rutter; I forget the piece at the moment.) Although the township that New Trier serviced was quite wealthy, it was still a very expensive trip for the entire choir to go to New York, so a series of money-making activities were tossed around to see what we could come up with. Eventually the most feasible ones (ie. the ones that would bring in the most money) were putting together a small group for holiday-performances-for-rent, and a headshot cattle call at a Chicago agency to see if any of us could get some work. The small group idea gelled into a group of six to perform at a holiday party at the Swift mansion — you know, the makers of the sausage — and the cattle call produced a single “hit”: A photo shoot for McDonald’s.

I was lucky enough to hit both of these.

The Swift mansion story is not the focus of this post, but it’s short and sweet so I’ll simply say this: A bass, baritone, tenor, contralto, mezzo-soprano, and soprano all packed into two cars to drive to Lake Forest, IL. Along the way, one of the cars breaks down and we all pack into the other car (a ford escort!) so as to meet our engagement. To all fit into the car, I sat on the lap of a girl in the back seat, and was ignorant enough to not offer her the seat position, and too naive to use my position to hit on her.  (In my defense, she was the one who requested the seating arrangement, probably because she was uncomfortable with the thought of sitting on a boy she didn’t know.)  Once there, we found that the entrance hall had to be at least 2000 square feet and we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. We went directly to the performance room/hall/whatever-you-call-another-2000-square-foot-room, met our pianist, and proceeded to sing about 2 hours’ worth of classical holiday song, including the Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah. It lost a bit of… depth with only six people singing it, but I didn’t crack my high note and overall the entire room seemed to like it. After our performances we immediately packed back into the car and headed home. I saw only those two adjacent halls but I’ll never forget them. I guess sausage brings in a lot of dough.

So. Let’s talk about my McDonald’s photo shoot.

There was (and probably still is) a McDonald’s regional headquarters office building in Illinois, and on the day of the shoot I was to be there at 7:30am. When my mother dropped me off, I was surprised to see that there were a lot of other models already in McDonald’s uniform, hair, and makeup; also surprising was that shooting had already been going on for at least an hour. I was directed to a hair and makeup lady, and she did something to my face and, for “hair” put a McDonald’s cap on me. I was then to wait in the larger waiting area with the others until they called me.

While I waited, I listened to the other talents’ conversations. I was too shy to introduce myself, and I also felt sheepish that I was a complete and total amateur, so I just eavesdropped. The crowd seemed to fit into two camps: Career models (who brought their portfolio with them, which I found odd because they had already landed the job) and people who did modeling part-time for extra cash. One elderly gentleman (whom you’ll see below) mentioned he started taking these jobs after he retired, to supplement his fixed income. After two hours, I worked up the courage to ask a girl if I could see her portfolio; I was surprised to see that it was mostly boring things like catalogs and Sunday-paper-insert stuff. Such is the life of a working model, I guess. One of the older women in her mid-40’s (whom you’ll also see in the photo below) had a small part in a movie where she played a peasant who plants a bomb in a church or something. She was the only one who had movie experience, so she had a tiny entourage of people asking how she got the work.

After three hours, I started to wonder if they didn’t need me, if I would still get money for the trip, etc. when they finally called me over. “We’re heading to the photo shoot.” I started to head for the outside door, thinking that we would be transported to a set, or a McDonald’s that was empty for the day. “No, it’s over here.” She was pointing to the elevator.

I rode the elevator down to the first floor, where the doors opened to a 100% faithful reproduction of a McDonald’s. This literally could have been any McDonald’s anywhere, with the requisite fiberglass tables and chairs connected to the wall and each other, cash registers, griddle, fry station, etc. It even had all of the backroom stuff, such as a dishwasher for trays and a tiny office for a fictional manager. What it did not have was a ton of dirt, grease, grime, angry customers, screaming kids, deep fryer alarms, and an overall sense of gluttony and despair. It was the McDonald’s from AnyTown, USA, and it was suitable for framing.

I spent the late morning doing my best to look like I was paling around with a guy in his mid-twenties in the same employee getup as me. We did our shtick in front of the dishwasher, arms around each other, at one point me picking him up. I guess the goal was to make working at McDonald’s look like great chummy fun, but all I could think about at the time was how to smile without my braces showing. I was also quite unnerved that I had to share personal space with a guy I had just met, and further unnerved by the fact that the photographer coordinating the shoot was obviously not happy with my performance for some reason.

We broke for lunch, and you get one guess who catered our lunch and what it was. I remember eating very slowly and carefully, to make sure I didn’t screw up my makeup. The makeup lady had only worked on me for 30 seconds, but whatever she did, I didn’t want to screw it up.

After lunch, I sat and waited for another three hours, and contemplated other mundane questions: Would I still get paid if my photos weren’t used in the ad campaign? (answer: yes) Would I get to keep any of this money? (answer: no) Will I get a copy of the photos after the shoot? (answer: no) I was trying to obsess with as little motion as possible when I was called back to the AnyTown set for the final shoot of the day. The goal was also to make working at McDonald’s as cheery as possible, but this time it was directly behind the counter and it was a mixture of five AnyTown denizens:

1. An elderly white male
2. An elderly black female
3. A middle-age latina woman
4. A young adult white female
5. A teen white male

The photographer had an interesting way of getting the right performance out of us: He wanted us to take positions from various places behind the counter, and then, on the count of three, run toward each other and collide on our mark. I’m serious: We were to appear in-frame in a split second, usually with a positive “Hey!” or affirmative “Alright!”. This went on for at least half an hour, with the photographer getting frustrated because things weren’t “clicking”. I was beginning to wonder when the elderly models were going to break a hip when, in a fit of frustration, the photographer told me smile wider dammit because the reason I had been picked from the cattle call was because I had a perfect row of braces on both teeth.

They wanted to see my braces? Would’ve been nice to tell me that when I started so I didn’t have to try to hide them the entire shoot! With that limitation lifted, I relaxed a bit, which everyone else picked up on, which made them relax a bit, and the photographer got the shot he wanted.

I never heard from the agency again, although I saw a statement of the money I had made for the school. I believe it was $1500, which to this day still seems like a misprint for so little work on my part. 18 months later, back from college on a break, I was greeted by my own face walking into the local McDonald’s, staring back at me from a pad of employment application forms.

Click and enjoy:

Trixter’s wild compo entry

_MG_5915, originally uploaded by tweakt.

This is what MONOTONE looks like when its author is trying to show it off by holding a mike to the speaker output.

Video to follow.