Like I expected, only more so

[View source for Usenet headers]

Subject: Like I expected, only more so (BAST.BOB report, LONG)
Date: 20 Jul 1999 21:49:40 -0700

TUESDAY

OK, so I went to BAST.BOB, and now I'm back and it's Tuesday and I am dog
tired after three and a half days of more-or-less continuous "partying like
it's 1999", but it was the first BOB I've ever been to, and it's traditional
to post BOB reports in talk.bizarre for the teebeers to read, and I've many
friends and family who do not understand what teebee is all about and want
*some* sort of explanation of how I spent my summer holiday, so this report
is both for us and for them.  I'll let you decide which of those two groups
is "us" and which is "them".

Some portions of this narrative have been edited in the interests of not
scaring them too much.  Don't ask what I left out.  BAST.BOB, for those
who don't already know, is an abbreviation for "Bastille day At Seattle
Talk.Bizarre Outrageous Blowout".  That's the only "for those who don't
know" I'm going to do.  There are points here where I've attributed specific
actions and comments to specific people, and because I always had a rather
loose hold on people's names, it's entirely possible that some of these
incidents actually involved other people than the ones I name.  No
deliberate confusion intended.  But that shouldn't happen much.

The six-word summary of my trip is:
  "Like I expected, only more so"

FRIDAY

I took the Victoria Clipper deluxe passenger ferry from Victoria to Seattle. 
Although of course I know that that's not where the word comes from, I
should have gone Port Out Starboard Home, because all the interesting
scenery was on the eastern side of the boat, but I didn't, I was on the
starboard both ways, and spent a lot of time looking at waves [1].  For the
most part I was pleased with the ferry; it was a little pricey at CAN$99 for
the round trip, but considering that that's direct from downtown Victoria to
downtown Seattle, it's probably a pretty good deal, really.  The food
service was pretty good, especially considering that they don't have a
kitchen on the boat (it's cold items packed on shore), although a little
overpriced, and my bag lunch didn't contain the plastic flatware it was
supposed to contain, and I ended up having to use my pocket knife which
(fortunately) the customs folks hadn't confiscated.  (Yeah, like I'm going
to hijack a boat with a dull 2.5" jackknife).

I anticipated the customs folks might give me a rough time because hey,
young man, travelling alone, kinda scruffy, I must look like a drug runner,
right?  Wrong.  It turns out that US Immigration doesn't *care* if you're a
drug runner.  It's an important part of the US economy, after all.  They
just want to be sure you're not a computer geek.  The US agent on the
Victoria side asked me ever so many times whether I had, or was planning to
get, a job this summer, and checked not only my driver's license but also my
student ID, *and* quizzed me about my research fellowship.  This wasn't what
I expected, but it's what I *would* have expected if I'd thought more
carefully about it.

A young Canadian, obviously smart, heading to Seattle with no present job,
is obviously going to go work for Microsoft and steal a job that could go to
a deserving American, right?  I considered pulling out my Linux penguin
stuffed toy (which was sitting in the top of my carry-on bag) and explaining
to him *what it meant*, but decided that that might be counter-productive.
The US agent on the Seattle side was more like what I had expected: she
searched my bag thoroughly (although I noticed that she checked my film
canisters and didn't check the much-more-mysterious containers holding my
calculator and orthodontic appliance) and then sent me on my way.  Didn't
raise an eyebrow at my stapler [2], rubber nose, or Linux penguin.

On getting off the boat, I spent about a half hour wandering downtown
Seattle getting my bearings.  It was during that time that I got my first
"Hey, I'm not at home any more!" moment: on seeing a patriotic person's
front lawn with flagpole and flag, but *not the flag I had unconsciously
expected to see*.  It started to sink in.

Seattle was like I expected, only more so.  It was a slightly gray and
depressing day, though not too bad, and the city was kinda grimy and scummy
although again, really not so very bad.  Not as bad as I had feared.  The
cities I've spent enough time in as an adult to have an opinion about them,
are Victoria, Calgary, Vancouver, and Seattle.  If I had to rate numerically
how unsafe I felt in each of them, with Victoria (my hometown) assigned a
reference value of 1.0, I'd do it like this:

   Calgary   0.4
   Victoria  1.0
   Seattle   1.2
   Vancouver 3.0

(I don't like Vancouver.)  I lived in Calgary at the height of a very cold
winter; it might have been worse if it had been warm enough for anyone to be
on the street without a damn good reason.  But although Seattle didn't feel
too unsafe, especially for a big city, it did feel pretty grim and
depressing.  Looking at the fog it wasn't hard to imagine this as the
birthplace of grunge musicians who kill themselves senselessly, and the
horror that is the coffee culture, and so on.  Incidentally, if you put the
culture aside and run in fear from all Starbucks outlets, they *do* do very
good coffee in Seattle.

The density of beggars in downtown Seattle is a maybe a factor of three less
than in Victoria, but they're more serious about it, often using visible
real or fake disabilities and/or cardboard signs.  You don't see that here
in Victoria, what you see is guys who look about as homeless and desperate
as I do.  Lots of them.  The pollution level bugged me; I was forever
horking, and shedding tears from irritated eyes.  Wouldn't want to live
there.

It's amazing how much the culture changes.  Just two hours ferry ride, and
on the other end I was hearing totally different accents.  On the bus to the
hotel I was privileged to hear an entire conversation in the whiny "inner
city rap music listener" accent that I've previously heard only on
television shows.  I was looking at a totally different racial mix.  Major
ethnic groups in my perception of Victoria are European, Chinese, Japanese,
Vietnamese (last three numerous enough to be distinct), what we call "East
Indian" which means people from India as opposed to what in the USA are
called "Native Americans" and here are called "First Nations" [3], First
Nations, and a few "Everybody Else".  In Seattle what I saw (whether this is
accurate or not) was White, Black, and a few "Everybody Else".  The fast
food joints are different, and the food itself is different.  They serve
vinegar with fries in Seattle now, the same as they do here, but that must
be a new thing in the last few years - it's a practice that used to vanish
completely, South of the border.  I had "biscuits and gravy" for Saturday's
breakfast, and have never seen that in Canada.  (Would like to.
Artery-clogging breakfest food is something los Americanos do well.)

Because of the vageries of Canada Post it was decided not to send me an
information packet, and so I didn't get the map or the directions (although
the directions started from the airport where I wasn't, anyway), and I had
a bit of a time finding the hotel.  It wasn't too bad once I found a place
where I could buy a map.  Although I was warned about the bus fare system
being nasty, it actually seemed pretty intuitive to me, and the busses were
about as friendly as the ones I'm accustomed to.

The hotel was not in a nice neighbourhood.  There was talk on the mailing
list of "crack whores" who might do unspeakable things to the unwary.  It's
true that there were some scary-looking signs up along Aurora Avenue, saying
that it was a "drug and prostitution watch area, license numbers are being
recorded".  I have a teenage sister named Aurora; I'm sure she'll be
entertained to know that her namesake avenue is a not nice part of Seattle. 
But despite our best efforts, *nobody* actually spotted any crack whores or
other particularly evil characters on Aurora Avenue during the entire event. 
Granted we weren't out on the street during what I imagine would be their
peak hours, and we did generally feel best staying in groups when walking
around there, but still, the concerns of list readers appeared overblown.

I had been told to pick up my information packet at the hotel.  When I got
there, I found a manageress who seemed to have stepped out of a 1959
advertisement for mobile homes.  Some readers may wish to imagine "the kind
of person that Lucille Ball's character was *trying* to be in the movie _The
Long Long Trailer_".  Complete with a working Apple ][ to process the
reservations.  *In production*.  Look, Ma, no Y2K problem!  But she didn't
have any information packets.  The best she could do was give me the keys to
room 104 and a list of where our group's rooms were, all next to each other. 
Here is that list, exactly as she gave it to me:

        100  HEMMING, DAVID
        101  CASH, BRIAN
        102  SCHMIDT, DAN
        103  MARCHESE, MATT
        104
        105  SOLBERG, ANDREW
 NOT IN 106  MARKINGOOLEY

Next thing to do would be find my way to Casa Vogel.  I phoned all the other
rooms, and got no responses.  I also attempted to physically ascertain
whether anyone was *in* the other rooms, but they appeared not to be.  I
phoned Tom and Chris cross-product cell and non-cell (total: four calls) and
got either no answer or voice mail on all of them.  Then I looked up "Jeff
Vogel" in the phone book and got a machine and left a message on it, and then
after dithering around a bit more I phoned the other Vogel who looked to be
in the right geographic area (he was actually listed with Maryanne's name as
well, but I don't remember it) and that one was the right one and I got bus
directions and that was fine.

So I got to Jeff's house and Jeff let me in and Kludge immediately and very
unnecessarily announced "Hi, I'm Kludge!"; unnecessarily because he *looked*
like Kludge.  Only more so.  Jeff also looked like himself, but *more*.  It
was the same story for most of them.  I had expected Markian Gooley to be
younger, and Matt Marchese to be older.  I kept mentally referring to Matt's
wife (whom I hadn't encountered before) as "Violet" and having to correct
myself to "Joyce".  No idea how I got the wrong name fixed in my head.

Genevieve was cute, under whichever definition she would prefer.  So was
Caitlin, although I didn't meet her until a day later.  Tom was more granola
than I expected, but otherwise as I expected.  My brain wasn't quite ready
to process Morissa.  I was very impressed with HWRNMNBSOL's accent.  Chris
apologised profusely and unnecessarily for not picking me up at the ferry.
Let me apologise profusely to the folks I haven't mentioned.

I didn't think that the Boutell rosemary-flavoured BAST.BOB Brew was as
weird as most people seemed to think.  It wasn't all that *good*, but
really, not that bad.  The colon book got old really fast, as did the
silkworm pupa dares, but we mostly had a pretty good time.  It was nice to
see I'm not the only Fundie Archie fan.  If I seemed to be clamming up and
sitting off in a corner, don't worry, that's just what I do at parties and
it doesn't necessarily mean I'm not enjoying myself.  Any party where
"passing around books" is a significant activity, is a good party in my
view.  The Osborne portable computer was fun.  I was a little sorry I hadn't
decided to go with Genevieve's group to the y'allternative concert, but it
may have been just as well because I needed sleep.  (Not that I got it, but.)

On returning to the hotel I assessed the nature of the city I had committed
myself to for these 72 odd hours, by counting lawyers and callgirls in the
yellow pages.  I've read that you can find out a lot about a city by
measuring the ratio of yellow pages listings for "Attorney" and "Escort". 
Cities with a lot of attorneys per escort service are supposed to be more
screwed up.  Here are my results, which have been processed through lossy
manual note-taking compression and so may be slightly bogus:

"USWEST Dex Seattle Metro Yellow Pages"
   "Escort Service - Personal": one half page (in fairness, these were ALL
        "line item" non-display ads, and so the actual count is higher than
        it sounds; I'm guessing there may be some regulatory reason for this) 
   "Attorney": Oh My God.
   "Espresso": one and a half pages

"Victoria Area BC TEL Yellow Pages"
   "Escort Service": three pages
   "Lawyers": 31 pages
   "Espresso": no such listing

Verdict: it's pretty insane here, but it's worse there.

[1] It's really quite interesting; there are at least three very distinct
ways that the ocean looked during the course of the trip.  Most of the time
it had large and small triangle-type waves with a lot of high-frequency
components.  Part of the time it seemed to be only medium and large
sinusoidal waves with almost no high frequencies, looking a lot like the
result of cheap ray-tracing.  Sometimes we got the sinusoids with very
high-frequency ripples overlaid on them, but nothing in between.  And it
changed between the states quite abruptly, although I wasn't actually able
to see a visible *boundary* between them.  Geekgeekgeek.

[2] Some men have muscle cars.  I have a stapler, because sometimes there
are attractive women in my classes who have to staple something they're
about to hand in, and it's nice to be able to say, "Here, use *my* stapler!"
"Ohh, what a big stapler you have!"

[3] Actually, the issue of what we call those people in Canada is a *whole*
lot more complicated than that.

SATURDAY

When I woke up and turned on the television, it was full of some sort of
airplane story.  Knowing that a lot of people reading this are Americans I
don't wish to trivialise the whole thing, but it did seem to me very
characteristic of the way the news media in this part of the world tend to
work.  They put on some guy who was supposed to be some kind of big expert
on airplanes and I thought, great, we're going to find out what might have
gone wrong, maybe see some details of what the radar recorded, and it'll be
interesting.  Geekgeekgeek.  Instead, the alleged techie spent several
minutes spewing verbiage and made only one point: that the now apparently
late, but it was in doubt at the time, John F. Kennedy Junior was proud of
having earned his pilot's license.  The aviation expert then proceeded to
state that, and I quote directly here, "A plane does not float very long, in
water."  Well then, sensible people certainly ought to be flying over oceans
of liquid mercury instead, shouldn't they?  Then the planes would float
longer!  That's when I turned the television off and basically stared at the
wall because it was better, until Kludge showed up at my door with Gooley,
and we marched to Chez Hayes/Lockhart for breakfast.

Breakfast was good.  I liked the food a lot, even if there wasn't really
enough salmon to go around.  The kid running around wasn't particularly
obnoxious, and they often are.  I was amazed that most people had never seen
lychees before; I consider them fairly routine, especially for a crowd like
this one.  I mean, the majority knew about *durians*, for crying out loud! 
Chris went nuts making toast until we begged him to stop.  Gooley brought a
bunch of cool old books and we passed them around and had a lot of fun,
although his catalog of all the substitutes for the verb "to say" in the
adventure novel ("remarked", "queried", "announced", "shouted"...) continued
longer than necessary.

Eventually a small group in the kitchen started on the vodka drinks; the
strangest one actually attempted was the one with the maple syrup and hot
sauce, which was described in eyewitness reports as "like alcoholic barbecue
sauce".  I was inclined to agree with Larry (I think that's who it was) who
said that it'd probably be better as a marinade - although the "hey,
inflammable liquids and barbecuing aren't the greatest combination"
contingent had a point too.  Probably the best idea would be to get someone
indestructible like Kludge to attempt it and see if it worked for them,
before trying it oneself.

I went in the Marchese contingent to the Space Needle, and on the way from
where we parked to the base of the Needle, we passed what was likely the
day's highlight: the Hostess factory, complete with the large
loading-gantry-style pipe from the roof down to the sidewalk, labelled
"GRANULATED SUGAR OUTLET".  That would be for the really *serious* Ho Ho
fan.  I was sorry not to get a picture of it.  Another thing I liked,
although it was really a throw-away interaction, was when we looked at the
radio towers and decided they must be "the Grunge Generators".

The Space Needle really wasn't very much fun at all, but I thought it was
nonethless the quintessential Seattle experience.  We got to the bottom and
Jeremy had to do a bit of verbal fencing with the ticket seller over whether
we could get a group rate and then we stood around trying to get enough of
our people to show up and stay together long enough to count so we could
actually do the group rate thing, while being besieged by three young women
wearing silly hats, who apparently were employees posing as extremely
enthusiastic fellow tourists for our entertainment, with Southern accents
about five times as thick as HWRNMNBSOL's and well past the point where it
stops being cool.

We rode the elevator to the top with an attendant who miserably failed the
Turing Test, and when we got to the top it was all cold and damp and foggy
and we couldn't see anything except the Grunge Generators (which I took a
photo of, or so I thought) and Tom took us on a circuit of the top while
pointing out especially interesting patches of fog, many of which looked
exactly like things out of SimCity.  The whole thing was pointless and
depressing and life-denying and yet nonetheless a little bit cool.  That's
Seattle.

At the bottom, we found we were two people short.  Kludge, of course, was
one of them; I don't remember who the other one was.  Maybe Larry.  Anyway,
it came out that they were buying snow globes in the gift shop, we didn't
have time to wait for them before the monorail would leave, one of them had
a cell phone but nobody knew its number, and we were all starving and we
were right next to the "Taste of Seattle" multi-restaurant food festival
thing, AND we didn't have time to partake in it before the monorail would
leave.  That's Seattle!  We ended up arguing about it for several minutes,
then rushing to the monorail unfed, hoping to find something to eat at the
other end before our reserved and immobile Underground Tour time.  Jeff, who
wasn't doing the afternoon urban deathmarch, was left behind to tell the
missing people where to go.  He's good at that.

As we were getting onto the monorail, our absentees showed up with Jeff and
just barely made it onto the monorail before it left, so we were one big
happy family again.  On hopping off the monorail we started the actual
deathmarch part of the deathmarch, covering a whole lot of territory in as
short a time as possible, trying to get to the Underground with enough time
to spare to get some food before the tour.  It was during this segment that
I had another "I am *really* not at home any more" moment, realising that
not only was I in a foreign country, not only was I being marched at top
speed through a depressing urban jungle, not only was I doing this
voluntarily, but I was being led in this endeavour by a *vegan prochoicer*! 
I have no joke here, I just like saying "vegan prochoicer". [4]  Tom says:
"I just can't bring myself to tell 20 people to jaywalk"; and I'm sure we
can all draw strength from those words.

We got to the Underground Tour with not really enough time to buy food.  I
and a couple others (Jeremy and Dan?) bought take-out gyros and managed to
get back to the tour place just in time to sit there eating while the
introductory section of the tour started.  The gyros were very good.  The
tour was a bit of a disappointment.  It was full of folk etymology: the
origin of the word "crap" as a contraction of Sir Thomas Crapper's name,
which I *know* isn't true, and a description of the original "skid row"
which, although I don't *know* whether it's true or not, seemed about
equally believable.  Other material in the tour seemed similarly to be more
in the "legend" than the "history" mental food group.  The Underground
itself, or at least the cleaned-up parts we saw on the tour, was less cool
than I expected, although the idea is intrinsically cool.  I think probably
the only way to get the kind of really interesting tour I had been hoping
for, would have been to break into the parts that haven't been opened to
tourists and *explore*, possibly with the assistance of someone who was
already an old hand at that.  I'm sure it is done, despite being dangerous
and almost certainly illegal.  I guess I was glad I took the tour, because
it *is* something I've wanted to do for a long time.

After that the group bifurcated again, and the half I was in went to the
Pike Place Market.  I liked that better, even though there wasn't really
anything to do there.  I got to see the fishmongers throwing fish around
(that's their gimmick) and all kinds of nifty food stuff.  I like nifty food
stuff, and it was generally a fun place to hang out.

Next was Uwajimaya, the Japanese supermarket.  Their Sanrio section, which
was what most of us had come for, was apparently not quite up to people's
expectations, although it didn't particularly faze me.  I almost bought a
Badtz-Marru wallet, passing it up only because the coin purse was too small
and that's unfortunately a bigger concern for me than general coolness. 
Matt Marchese was disappointed not to find Hello Kitty sanitary napkins,
which he is convinced do exist somewhere in Japan (as does the Hello Kitty
vibrator), although personally I didn't consider that to be much of a
surprise.  Uwajimaya featured signs reading:

    BY STORE MANAGER
          NO VIDEO TAPE
          NO PHOTO PICTURE
        IN THE STORE
                       THANK YOU FOR YOUR
                       COOPERATION

I rebelled in spirit if not in fact, by going out in parking lot and taking
photo picture of entire store.  However! last laugh on me, as future
describing.  Another high point of the Uwajimaya experience was the whole
goat's head wrapped on a styrofoam tray in the meat department.  The label
simply read "Goat".  There were aisles full of completely unfamilar snack
foods with names like "Baby Seed".  I ended up, after careful thought,
chickening out and getting wasabi/shrimp crackers, which I know I like.  I
also bought another roll of film for the photo picture, because although my
camera was oddly not displaying exposure numbers as it usually does (that's
a clue, kids), I figured I must be getting close to the end of the 36-shot
roll I had loaded at the start of the BOB.  The most horrifying thing I saw
at that place was not Japanese but definitely American: the lottery ticket
vending machine.

I think this was the point where it was discovered that Gooley had left his
insulin at the hotel, and he and Tom went off looking for some before
dinner, causing trouble for those of us who were depending on Tom to
navigate for us.  While we were walking from where we'd parked to the group
dinner, we passed through a music zone in front of a store, and Josh's
lovely wife observed that it was the new trend for store owners to play
yucky retro music in areas where they didn't want troubled youth to
congregate.  "Actually," I said, "I rather liked that music."  "Well,
granted, but it's not old people like us that they're trying to scare off."
"But I'm 22!"  "Oops."  I was gratified that that came as a genuine surprise
to her.

Dinner at Noodle Studio was okay.  The tables weren't really big enough and
we were all crammed in elbow-to-elbow, but that's to be expected with such a
large group.  The food was fine.  Eventually we got into the silkworm pupae. 
Jeff and HWRNMNBSOL had agreed that one of them (don't remember which) would
eat *one*, on condition that the other would eat *two*.  After tasting
silkworm pupa, Jeff declared that "They taste like my grandfather's attic
smells." The pupae look like little Egyptian mummies, with all six limbs
neatly folded on their chests and wrapped in bandages.  After trying one
myself, I can confirm that they taste like they look.  I'd say that eating
the second one would be a lot harder than eating the first, because with the
second one, you *know*.  Morissa later claimed that in fact, these pupae
were bad for being canned, and *fresh* silkworm pupae are much pleasanter. 
I am told that after we'd exhausted everyone's appetite for them, the can
containing the remaining pupae was left as a sort of tip.  It is not
recorded whether we'll ever be welcome back at that restaurant.

After dinner, some people wanted to go listen to swing music, and others
wanted to go for dessert.  I was in the latter category.  We headed for
Dilletante, but it was packed, and several of us ended up getting distracted
by the bookstore next door to it.  Bailey/Coy Books was a bit of an
adventure because although I've spent a lot of time in bookstores, the
selection in this one was completely foreign to me.  I don't know if it's
just because of the international thing, or if Bailey/Coy has special
emphasis different from that of the other bookstores I've been in, or what. 
They did have more books about homosexuality than I knew existed.

During this time lots of our group were wandering around looking for things
to do in the area, and there was a lot of debate as to where to go, what to
do, how to let the others know where to find us, and so on.  Eventually
almost everyone was collected and we made our way to another dessert place
called Cafe Septieme, which was less crowded than Dilletante.

At Cafe Septieme, while noting down the latest events for this report, I
asked the table in general where we were and how to spell it.  "Oh," said
Yong-Mi, "Would you like a souvenier matchbook from here?" "Yes," I intended
to say, "I'll pick one up on the way out," but before I got past the first
word I realised that it had been an offer, not a question, because she was
*gone* to the front desk to retrieve the item, leaving me to sputter when
she returned, "Well, I didn't mean for you to *fetch* it, uh, thanks."
Although I know it's traditional to say "Yong-Mi is cute!", I think this
story illustrates that it would be more appropriate to say "Yong-Mi is
nice!", and I hope I'm not embarassing her too much by telling it.  Of
course "nice" is just as poorly defined as "cute".

[4] And if he isn't, well, his Web page sure makes it look like it.  I don't
mean to offend or start a flamewar.  Tom believes many important things that
I also believe, and I am not in this paragraph offering a particular comment
on veganism or prochoiceism; I just wouldn't be honest if I concealed my
amusement at the combination of these two particular philosophies in one
person, *especially* considering the very famous quote about the opposite.

SUNDAY

The Sunday morning television coverage of the Kennedy story was just as bad
as Saturday's, but on Sunday we also got a selection of televangelists.  I
think my favourite was the one who described, at length, all the tortures to
which some Christian martyr had been subjected when he refused to deny his
faith; through the entire graphic recitation the preacher was doing the
salesman's "trust me" smile, warm voice, firm handshake routine, just as if
he was talking about something that *wasn't* horrific.

I wandered out into the parking lot and chatted with Gooley, who was doing
his "gardening geek" routine, and then Kludge and HWRNMNBSOL came out too. 
I'm amazed that Kludge has enough time to raise tomatoes while doing all the
other things he does.  We headed up Aurora Avenue to "Larry's Market" and
had breakfast.  As I mentioned, I think the USA is a good place for greasy
breakfast food.  Then it was off to Chez Hayes/Lockhart to hang out.  This
was about the point where I noticed that the volume of my notes from the
BOB exceeded that of my notes from a semester's worth of Computer Science
405, by a factor of about four.

We went to the phone museum.  Although some people later said that the
coolest part had been the old guys showing us around, I disagree: I thought
the *equipment* was the coolest part!  We got to see a demo section of a
step-by-step central office, and real working (albiet very small) #1 panel,
#3 crossbar, and #5 crossbar central offices.  (Or was it #3 panel and #1
crossbar?)  Also an ESS that sort of worked, ringing machines, a DC power
controller including 450-amp fuses, lots of PBXes, microwave relay stuff,
radio, television, teletype, and telegraph stuff, fiber optics, picture
phones, and so on.  I clicked my camera shutter a lot of times.  The only
cool phone stuff that wasn't there, that I would have liked to see, was
phone phreak stuff like blueboxes, [5] and I guess it's no big surprise that
the phone company wouldn't put that in their museum.  Oh, and I guess it
also would have been nice to see some more of the early computerization
stuff like the phone exchange central computer with the ferrite-blobs-on
-cardboard memory cards.  But I guess we can't have everything.  There was
an AT&T PC 6300, so now I can tell my Dad that the computer he uses every
day is *literally* a museum piece.

It was hard to tear ourselves away from the phone museum, and indeed, we had
to send in a search party to extract Kludge, but we eventually got everyone
out.  Then we went to the next geek stop: the Museum of Flight (which was
conveniently nearby).  There were lots of cool planes.  I've never been a
big fan of planes, and I don't understand how people can just accumulate
these huge mental databases of different kinds of planes and identify them
on sight (I mean, we aren't training the population as spotters in this part
of the world anymore), but it was still fun, listening to the aircraft
geeking and looking at the hardware.  The Blackbird was probably the coolest
part, and the MIG with all the safety warnings stencilled in Russian on the
side was cool too, and the Aircar was cute.  I exercised my camera a fair
bit here.  We went through a plane that was Air Force One until the current
one took over [6], but it sucked.  The set in the movie _Air Force One_ was
much better.

Then we tried to figure out what to do next.  A tour of the Rainier brewery
was suggested, but turned out to be impracticable.  We eventually went to
the Six Arms pub for Terminator Stout; it was just a short drive away but
Gooley made it feel longer by singing cannibalism-related filk songs until
Kludge threatened to give him a CD from some festival where "They had a song
about PGP, enough said".  There was debate about what to do for dinner.  Tom
suggested a vegan Chinese restaurant he liked, the Tea Pot.  There was
little enthusiasm from the group for this.  Kludge generated some enthusiasm
for just wandering around in the International District and looking at
random Chinese restaurants until we found one that looked good, but it might
be hard to satisfy the vegans with that procedure and we didn't really have
time, so we settled on the Italian restaurant next door to the vegan
restaurant.

The Italian restaurant was closed, for no apparent reason; the sign giving
hours said it ought to have been open, but it was not.  We went to the Tea
Pot.  It was very similar to the Lotus Pond in Victoria, in that it appeared
to be run by Buddhists and it specialised in fake meats made from various
soybean products.  The Lotus Pond also does not use onions or garlic because
the folks in charge believe that those lead to unwholesome lustful thoughts
(though they don't have any problem with hot pepper); I didn't notice any
such note in the Tea Pot menu.  The Tea Pot was full of Orthodox Jews.  I
don't know if the strictures of vegan cooking make it easy to also observe
the kosher rules, or if the Tea Pot management just do extra stuff to target
their market, or if it happened that there was a Jewish BOB-like event in
town who hit that restaurant at the same time we did, or what.  Anyway, the
menu contained a Buddhist religious cartoon (MUCH cooler than the Christian
fundamentalist Archie cartoons we saw at Jeff's) illustrating the lesson
that benevolence is good, but if you need to use it, that shows that the
world is broken, and so we should be "mindless of each other", by means of
the fascinating image of fish in dried-up rivers and lakes licking each
other to stay moist.  I'd certainly agree that it's a good thing for us to
lick each other, to stay moist.

Then we went to Corp's house for further partying.  The highlight of the
trip to Corp's was seeing a pedestrian-right-of-way sign ("STOP FOR ME, IT'S
THE LAW!") which someone had defaced by adding a C in front of the final
word.  The party was fun.  Just like at all our other parties, there were
lots of books being passed around, and I came to the realisation that Jeff
is pretty damn funny.  I loved his Scorched Earth T.BOB-summarizing speech.

Because I wanted to be able to say I'd tried it, I tried the Tic Tack Cane
Spirit.  Now I can personally confirm that the national liquor of El
Salvador is super filtrado, y you better believe it's multirectificado! 
Kludge says that "multirectificado" has nothing to do with converting
alternating current into direct current, but I'm not so sure - something
about the flavour of Tic Tack reminded me of those AC-to-DC voltage
multipliers, with the ladders of diodes and caps, that we used to build to
shock each other with.  It's also got "glicerin" in it for extra smoothness. 
But Tic Tack was one of the few things on this trip that wasn't as I
expected only more so - it was merely, about as I expected.  Maybe even a
little less.

The Wizards of the Coast deathmarchers made it to the party, and we and they
argued about whose day trip had been geekier, but the Mount Rainier
deathmarchers were not present.  We speculated about whether they were
trapped in the snow, eating each other (Gooley just couldn't get out of the
cannibalism groove).  It was generally agreed that the vegetarians would be
eaten first, and that the smart money was on Ms. Burke's survival even if it
meant she was forced to eat all the others.  She might do that anyway,
even if not technically forced to do so.  ("Oh," she'd say, burping
demurely, "I didn't realise they had food in their backpacks until
afterwards.")  Jeff's position as presidential candidate precluded his
showing any outward sign of weakness, but he did in fact display a touching
level of concern for Maryanne's well-being.  "If Caitlin ate my wife," he
promised, there would be Hell to pay.

At the end of the party there ensued a short debate as to who, if anyone,
was drive enough to sober, and as Kludge, Gooley, HWRNMNBSOL, Larry (IIRC),
and myself were being poured into the taxi back to the hotel [7], the
Alpinists arrived.  They had managed to subsist on strangers.  Even Johnny,
the youngest and tenderest of the party, was spared.  In the taxi Gooley had
another of his coughing fits and frightened the driver.

It was not until I got back to the hotel Sunday evening, well, technically
early Monday, and in no condition to handle problems well, that I finally
figured out the reason for my camera's unusual behaviour was that I had
misloaded the film at the start of the BOB, the film hadn't been advancing
out of the pack, and so I had shot several dozen exposures onto the leader
strip at the start of the roll, while all the rest of the film remained
blank.  I was not pleased.  Fortunately, I know lots of other people were
taking photos and will put them on the Web.  I reloaded the film properly,
and started trying to catch up.  No offense, but I'm sorriest about missing
my photo of the 4GHz microwave system, and some of the other images from the
phone museum.  I don't mind so much losing the merely human.  It seems
especially ironic that I didn't have photos and then do something stupid and
expose the film or otherwise *lose* them... in fact, the pictures I "lost"
never existed in the first place!

[5] I'm not saying I approve or disapprove of phreaking; only that I'd like
to see a museum exhibit about it.

[6] Yes, I'm aware that a plane is technically Air Force One only while the
President is onboard, but you know what I mean.

[7] It should not be inferred from this that I consumed an excessive amount
of alcohol.  It's just that I can get drunk on *one* beer under the right
circumstances.  Last time I did, I told Merde what I thought of her, and we
all remember that.

MONDAY

By Monday morning, the news media had decided JFKjr. was dead, and the
channel I watched had even concocted a *slogan* ("An American Tragedy") and
a logo for their interviews of various "man on the street" types, all saying
that he was just an ordinary guy.  They even got as far as noting that it
was also pretty sad that the other passengers on the flight were dead too. 
Nice of them to point that out.  So I watched the Teletubbies instead.  I
never did before, and I think it's a cultural literacy thing.  I wasn't too
impressed with the Teletubbies; it seemed awfully boring.  Sure, there was
some amusement to be had from imagining sexual themes into it, but not
enough to really be worth watching for that.  Also, I noted that Tinky Winky
*isn't* purple (which had up til then been a central point in my argument
that Falwell isn't necessarily completely insane) - he's blue.  The low
point would have to be when they watch the video, then they say "Again,
again!" and watch the *same exact entire video again*.  Maybe that *does*
amuse the intended audience, but it didn't amuse me.

On the freeway ride to Espresso Vivace I saw something I hadn't seen before
- a Linux bumper sticker on a car that *wasn't* being driven by someone I
knew personally!  That was a nice thing to see.  We went to the espresso
place and had some coffee and buns, and that was very nice, and then sort of
hung out for quite a while wondering what to do.  HWRNMNBSOL, Brian, David,
Gooley, and I, ended up in HWRNMNBSOL's car going to the Arboretum.  On the
way we talked about construction set toys.  Teebeeites are a great crowd to
hang out with.

The Arboretum was a nice relaxed way to end the T.BOB; despite having to
listen to Gooley's botanical geeking (which reminded me a whole lot of
Larry's aeronautical geeking) it basically was just a fun walk in the woods. 
Then we had lunch at a "generic, but not fast food" restaurant called
"Zeena's", and I said my final goodbyes and was dropped at the ferry
station.  "If you miss this boat, when is the next one?"  "Um... tomorrow, I
think, but my ticket is only good for this one.  I would sort of like to not
miss this boat."  "It's like a plane ticket, Markian."

Turns out I needn't have worried, because the boat was late arriving, and
there was some sort of confusion at the customs station, and they ended up
just loading us all onto the boat without putting us through customs at all,
after making us wait outdoors longer than was nice.  Back on my natal shore
I did have to go through Canada Customs, and it took me about five seconds. 
Granted, that would partly be because I'm a Canadian citizen, but I think
even if I weren't, they'd be a whole lot easier to deal with.  No problem
with American computer geeks coming to Canada to work - they'd be lost in
the dust of all our people rushing South to work for US Dollars at the 1.5
exchange rate.  (It's a fact, my trip was painfully expensive because of
that, but hey, it's in the budget, I don't do this often, and it was fun.)

And so here I am, diving back into school ready or not.  Mostly not, and I'm
going to have to work my butt off to do the homework I didn't do this
weekend, and catch up with the lectures I missed on Friday and Monday, but
I'm glad I didn't let nobody turn me round.  I *needed* this, and love
you all.
-- 
       Free laser networking and other crazy ideas @
       http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/netfree.html

Notes

A line I accidentally deleted when I posted this, has been replaced in this copy.  The problem is that JOE uses ^K^J for "reformat paragraph", but in PICO, ^K is "kill line" and ^J is "justify".  So it's easy to say "reformat paragraph", and not realise that you've lost a line.  Just to make things more entertaining, ^J by itself means "kill line" in JOE.

I've also corrected the spelling of Caitlin's name; I'm innocent, I didn't know it didn't have a "y" when I posted!

I'll be putting my few surviving pictures online after I scan them.