@DanEngler i realize you are aware of a logical inconsistency here, but perhaps you should review your findings – 12:45 AM GMT
I miss oldtime Boston-area blogger Gummi Bear, who had a compulsion to eat obviously moldy food from the back of the fridge. /eats moldy nnn – 01:58 AM GMT
@hell0jed houndstooth? – 01:59 AM GMT
urgent midnight call from prospective client’s wife, an intense, organized person. – 07:28 AM GMT
wants to know if i presented some portfolio work to mutual contact, asks me to use a set of pdfs she has prepared when i do. – 07:30 AM GMT
their little girl in the background, fussing. wants to know when daddy’s going to be back. client’s wife sighs, consoles kid. – 07:32 AM GMT
“where is he?” i ask, politely. “at sea,” she says, putting in his shift on his employer’s south china sea data center. – 07:34 AM GMT
he works for a large local multinational data services and ecommerce company you have surely bought something from. – 07:35 AM GMT
She’s kind of complaining. “they quit, you know?” the on-site guys, after they get there, after a couple weeks. not what they want to do. – 07:37 AM GMT
they’re not military, and they have to work with the company’s on-site military subcontractors. the what now? “the military guys.” – 07:39 AM GMT
i’m like, wtf. the how’s that? apparently these guys are there to tend the defensive missiles on the data center. the WHAT? – 07:41 AM GMT
So the problem is that the local site PM, that’s her husband right now, is supposed to be the effective military commander of these missles. – 07:42 AM GMT
He’s never spent a day in any military. the military guys seem to know what they’re doing but it undermines his authority to the tech team. – 07:44 AM GMT
So he, like lots of his predecessors, is thinking about quitting to come home. the whole korea thing isn’t helping. – 07:45 AM GMT
her anxiety about this portfolio business is displaced anxiety about her husband and korea, i realize. we get off the phone. – 07:47 AM GMT
then i woke up. the whole thing was a dream I just had, every bit of it. i have a new client and a business call first thing. – 07:48 AM GMT
it’s my anxiety, not hers. after i figured out it had been a dream, i thought, wow, that’s a pretty good sf story. write it using tweets. – 07:50 AM GMT
And so i have. Title suggestions? – 07:50 AM GMT
To reiterate: no south china sea data center. no ecommerce zaibatsu missiles or mercs. no midnight client’s wife on the phone. no client. – 07:52 AM GMT
@DanEngler i am amused by what my subconscious did with Bezos’ rockets. – 08:07 AM GMT
@DanEngler and I can sleep soundly knowing Stephenson has nested in my head forever, keeping the datasphere safe for the corpocracy. – 08:11 AM GMT
BIG COLD WAR BONUS BEAT: the dream is implicitly a nuclear annihilation dream, something i haven’t had for over a quarter century. – 08:13 AM GMT
@anticdent yay – 01:57 PM GMT
@arthurwyatt I heard Howey (the Wool guy) on the radio the other day, discussing this deal. – 03:13 PM GMT
@zipties have been thinking about a prose rewrite. that might cascade forward. – 04:17 PM GMT
some of the details from that dream that I left out: the layout of the portfolio pages, nothing special, clearly recalled. – 04:19 PM GMT
offered to run them on her office Tektronix color printer. I don’t even know if Tektronix still exists. Used to rely on a wax-based model. – 04:22 PM GMT
Imaginary sea-based datacenter one of a global network, apparently, implying secret private army and navy for imaginary ecommerce zaibatsu – 04:24 PM GMT
not clear if sea-based NOCs are seagoing ships or semipermanent anchored installations a la oil drilling platforms, suspect both. – 04:27 PM GMT
seaborne nonsense appears to be sourced in the @samuelpepys twitter feed, in which Sam has just been given the task of ordering the Navy. – 04:30 PM GMT
@arthurwyatt la la la la we cant hearrrr him la la la shutup shutup – 04:34 PM GMT
@arthurwyatt I lived in Chile in 1969. I have an anonymous currency-propaganda book, published by the regime after the overthrow in English. – 07:24 PM GMT
Thanks, Roger. – 08:26 PM GMT
@arthurwyatt I was pretty little, mostly I remember the moon landing and some scattered scenes. I have some taped letters my dad recorded. – 09:01 PM GMT
@arthurwyatt like, walking around with us in the town on a weekend, taping a sunday brass band concert in a park, like – 09:02 PM GMT
@mubay well done Midge! – 09:05 PM GMT
Hypothesis: Uncle Wiggly was correct concerning his rheumatism and the weather. – 09:56 PM GMT