Journal

We were out when the call came in tonight. I treated at Burger King and we sat in the parking lot enjoying our repast and flinging fries to the seagulls, or as Danger-Boy refers to them, flying rats. It seemed the perfect time to check in and see how he’s doing. He’s under a LOT of pressure lately, with moving his mother here, issues with Debbie, all the legal stuff, DSS, rehab, school and finding a job. And I know he’s feeling guilty about me supporting all of them. The man’s got a lot on his mind.

He seemed different today. More quiet and inward looking. Less playful. Imagine my surprise at the what he said when I told him I’d noticed the difference and asked if he was doing okay. "I’m not drunk or stoned", was his reply. It hit me like a ton of bricks. You know, I really don’t know him sober.

Later, we drove over to the beach. It wasn’t the same. First, there were only two of us. Willie, although present in spirit, was truly missed. But there was more, I could feel it. He steered the conversation back to it. "You know," he said, "if I had a quarter for every beer I drank on this beach over the past 20 years, I’d be a very rich man." Me too. Although my beach is Hamlin Beach State Park, 20 miles west of the city, instead of Durand-Eastman right in the city.

He kinda milled around for a while, hands thrust deep in his pockets, head down, kicking at stones. Finally, staring deep into a puddle, he half-leaned, half-sat on a post and told me, "This morning at ATI [Alternatives to Incarceration] they asked me what I do for recreation. I had to tell ‘em I didn’t know. That’s when it hit me. Exactly how much my life has revolved around staying drunk and stoned."

It seems we’ll both be discovering the new and improved Danger-Boy.

Well, maybe a few more of us than two. He took the car tonight because he and his mom have a 7:00 appointment tomorrow morning, and he could see I needed the sleep. Debbie called as he was pulling out of the garage. She was drunk, or stoned, or both, and wanting to know where he was and why he was so late.

I explained the events of the afternoon, (he’d stopped over at around 1:00 to fill them in, but they were still sleeping.) And I said that 8:00PM is a lot earlier than 3:00AM, so although he was late for dinner, he was getting home a whole lot earlier than he ever did before.

Now, she was intoxicated in some manner, and has a bit of a speech impediment, so maybe I did misunderstand her. But I swear she said, "Don’t lie to me." I didn’t misunderstand what she followed it up with. "You tell him it’s over. I don’t want to see him ever again."

If asked, I’ll swear it was "toughlove", but in reality, I lit into her. The gist of it went something like this:

"Now you listen here missy. Your man was out all day doing the things he has to do so he can provide for you." And I repeated this in case she missed it, "Your boyfriend is now a college boy. He’s doing this so he can give you a better life. Kick him out if you want. But before you do, look at his mother. Is that the way you want to wind up in 30 years?" [The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.]

From the way she giggled, I doubt anything sunk in. But for me, it sure felt good to be yelling about him, not at him. And if felt even better still to be putting the word "college", instead of the word "rent", in front the of the word "boy".

I promised take some time to rave over the cable modem. This is what the internet is all about. But first, a bit of history.

I’ve been online since 1982. That’s when I got my first CompuServe account. Back then, 1200 baud (1.2kbps) modems were brand new, and priced around $500. I couldn’t afford it, so I had a 300 baud unit. My first really fast modem, was 2400 baud (2.4kbps). Compared to the first one, it was a real screamer. It was an off-brand though, (all I could afford, $329) and it was a real piece of shit. It wouldn’t connect at 2400 half the time, and I had lots of disconnects.

Back in those days, everything was text based, and you paid by the minute for all your online time. As I recall, CompuServe’s rates were $6.00 an hour for 300 baud, and $12.00 an hour for 1200 and 2400 baud service. You could set your CompuServe account to send things to you a screenful at a time, or just stream it to you. I always used the streaming mode, so naturally I was delighted to have a modem that brought up text as fast as I can read.

When 9600 baud modems first became available, I had one of the first. Of course as head of the computer department at work, it came as a company benefit when we replaced all our 2400 baud units. There were no standards for 9600 baud at the time. You could only connect at 9600 if the modem on the other end was the same brand.

USRobotics managed to capture quite a bit of the market through their aggressive marketing of their Courier HST modems to the BBSs, (Bulletin Board Systems.) Lemme tell ya, Those Courier HSTs were a damned fine modem. Fast, rock-solid connections, and you could save multiple configurations in it. You had to because there were no standards anywhere.

In the 90s, standards finally tamed the online world, and I stuck with USR modems. My fave was the Courier Dual-Standard, about $500. It supported the 9600 baud v.32 standard, and USR’s proprietary HST, which by then was smokin’ at 16,800 (16.8kbps).

I skipped the 14.4 modems because I already had the fastest around. Because economics had forced me to off-brand internal modems, I went through a few 28.8 units, false economy there. But I still drooled over USR’s flagship, the external Courier v.Everything. It was a no-brainer when my ISP started offering 56kbps x2 service last year. I went right out an got myself the v.Everything.

And you know, USR still leads the way in technology. That x2 was the best connection I EVER had. Then international standards mucked things up with the new v.90 standard, which blows dead rats underwater with a straw. I haven’t had so many disconnects since that piece of shit 2400 baud unit I bought 13 years ago. That "upgrade" ruined my all-time favorite modem. Still, fast as it is, 56k really didn’t change my online habits. Dial-up, do my thing, wait around a lot, and log off, say "Shit I forgot …", dial-up, etc., etc.

Right now, Time-Warner has it throttled back to 1.5mbps. If you know the buzzwords, you’ll know a T-1 line is 1.54mbps. How many ISPs have you heard of that flaunt their fast T-1 links to the net? I’ve got the functional equivalent to just my little PC. In other words, I have more bandwidth to my apartment, than many ISPs have for all their customers!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Words and graphics are neat, but I really wasn’t prepared for the whole experience. I usually had a subjective feel for who had fast servers and who had slow ones. It’s no longer subjective. The fast commercial sites pop up in the blink of an eye. My site pumps data in here in the upper 400s and lower 500s. I’ve had downloads come in here at 800kbps and faster.

And the installers said it should be faster still! So they’re sending a line crew out to replace some cable from the basement to the second-floor wiring closet which is out of spec. They already ran a new line from my apartment to the wiring closet earlier in the year when I was having trouble Music Choice, also a digital service.

How does it effect real world stuff? Well first, I’ve put the Road Runner software in my Startup group. As long as my PC is on, I’m connected. I’ve found myself bopping back and forth between applications and the browser whenever I feel like it. I’ve visiting all sorts of sites I never did before, because I have the time now, and it’s easy. I’ve never put a lot of links in my pages because it was too much of a pain. Now, the browser is just a click away.

At home, I never used to do two things at once on the ‘net. Like surf and check mail, or surf and upload to the site. It just wasn’t practical. Just for grins last night, while I uploaded yesterday’s entry, I was chatting on ICQ, checking mail, and browsing all at once. No problem. Piece of cake. Never noticed a difference in performance. In fact, when it comes to FrontPage uploading to my site, my processor is the what slows me down now.

I put Eudora, the e-mail package I use, right in the startup group too. I set it to run minimized and check mail every five minutes. Not including Hotmail and AOL, I have five e-mail addresses. It used to take 30 seconds to a minute to connect with each one and check the mail. Now it just happens, while I’m doing other stuff on the net. I never know it’s there until Eudora plays it’s little music to tell me I have mail.

We needed that concert Friday night. I did a major bad on Thursday. I’ve been forgiven, but it still weighs upon me. He doesn’t need that extra pressure. Yet I was feeling it too and it got to me. What’cha gonna do?

We got out The Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center at what we figured was about an hour and a half before the show. Since neither of us listen to the radio, we missed the ads that said the time was moved up from 8:00 to 7:15. Still, we got a halfway decent seat on the lawn. And what a nice lawn it was too. Long and soft, yet it sprung back into place. It felt good between my fingers and toes.

The only thing I miss about owning a house is skin contact with Mother Earth. You can have all the rest, I don’t want it. Even our little 45’ x 120’ lot was more than I wanted to deal with on a constant basis. Too much of it. Too much of a chore. I guess it’s one of the very few things I enjoy only in moderation.

The whole day was delightful. Mid-80s, less humidity than usual, (although still more than I like,) and only partly cloudy. It reminded each of us of those first really warm days in the desert in spring. Really about as good as it gets around here as far as I’m concerned.

Earlier in the day, we repaired my damage from the day before. Then Jeffrey got his first computer time in. Call it Resume 101. It’s been so long since I had to start a beginner. After 17 years, this sort of stuff just becomes part of you. Like breathing. We started at the power buttons, then the keyboard and mouse, then worked our way up to the NT login and Road Runner login.

This is CTRL-ALT-DELETE. When NT tells you to do that, it wants you to tell it who you are. Login name here, password there, yes the password is case-sensitive, no the login name isn’t. Yes, it is a pain, but you’ll have to login on any shared computer resource so it can put you into your own personal space. Nope, ya can’t fuck the whole thing up, just your own space. Well if you do I have a backup. Well a back-up is …

He’s not quite sure if he likes the wallpaper I chose for him. I scanned it years ago from a Hayes modem ad. It’s a head-on shot of a motorcycle leaned way over in a turn. The colors are knockout, and I scanned it especially for 1024 x 768 High-Color, so there’s no image distortion from stretching it or interpolating colors. On the other hand, it’s the only one I have that’s not a naked guy. J (And no, the Plus! pack stuff (comes standard with NT) doesn’t count. It’s wallpaper, man. It’s gotta be personal.)

Geeze. Just the mouse alone takes some learning. I never really thought about it. Positioning the arrow, or the I-beam, or the cursor, or the focus. Don’t move the mouse when you click, double-click, right click. Move it to drag or right-drag. Run off the mouse pad? Pick it up and pull it back.

Finally got him started in Word. He wanted to start right in on his resume. Okay. I had to reinstall Office with all the templates and wizards. For anyone else, I do a complete install. For me, just the stuff I use. Minimalist. Of course it added the Office Toolbar and Find Fast to the "All Users" profile. You either love or hate the Office Toolbar, there’s no in between. Trust me. I don’t love it. And who wants to extend NT’s already ponderous boot-time with Find Fast inspecting 5GB of files across three hard-drives? Who has actually ever USED Find Fast? How many people who use Office know (or care) what Find Fast is?

Nothing makes you feel better than a weekday afternoon at the beach. Especially if it’s Friday. (Unless it’s a Monday.) We spent the better part of the afternoon sitting on the beach talking. Reacquainting ourselves. Rebuilding trust. Really the first chance we’ve had to really talk since June. The jail isn’t exactly the right place, and with two or three crises popping up daily all week, well the time hasn’t been right. We got quite a few issues settled before heading out to the concert.

The Finger Lakes Performing Arts Center (FLPAC) is between 45 minutes and an hour southeast of town in the city of Canandaigua. But, I’d promised a client’s son, Ron who lives in Geneseo about 45 minutes south of the city, that we’d give him a ride. Ron won a pair of tickets, and I only learned of the concert because he mentioned it when we ran into each other at the Park Ave Fest. So make him what I thought was a good deal. I bought him a ticket for a reserved seat under the shell and gave him a ride back and forth in exchange for the pair of lawn tickets. See? Information really is worth money, or at least upgraded seats and a ride.

Some tours have titles like "Monsters of Rock", or "Lillith Faire". This one could be called "When Cymbals Thud".

Dream Theater’s set was marred by bad sound. Thinking about it, it has to be a sound man’s acoustic nightmare, trying to balance the sound so it’s okay both under the shell, and out on the lawn. I’m sure they sounded fine under the shell, but out on the lawn, it was muffled like someone had thrown all the moving quilts over the speakers. The set itself was far too short. Less than an hour. And given Dream Theater’s propensity for 20 minute medleys and 8 to 10 minute songs, well we fans were just getting warmed up as they left the stage.

Halfway through the set, the opening notes of "Pull Me Under" from the 1992 album, "Images and Words" identified all the Dream Theater fans in the audience. Maybe 20% of us whooping it up for their signature song. Still, seeing Dream Theater made Jeffrey the happiest man in three counties. I know. We drove though Monroe, Livingston and Ontario counties. I didn't see anyone happier. So that made it worth everything.

EL&P’s set was longer, maybe an hour and 15. It too was marred by bad sound. Their sound man got things sorted out maybe a half-hour into the set, just before Greg Lake’s acoustic guitar solo which lead right into "Lucky Man", the opening chords of which were nearly drowned out by the crowd. Even Jeffrey was cheering. In my teens a had a crush on Greg Lake. He’s put on a bit of weight over the years. And, since by then the sound was tweaked properly, you could hear it in his voice.

Anyway, the events of the day, and of the week caught up with Jeffrey during EL&P's set. He said he wanted to go home. We met Ron after the set, and we all wanted to head out, so it was no problem. We left. Perfect timing too. We weren’t more than five minutes on the road when it started to rain.

Jeffrey has a different way of dozing in the car. Instead of reclining the seat, or leaning against the door, he leans over the console and puts his head in my lap, and he’s out in no time. J Occasionally he sort of rolls forward a bit which makes steering a challenge, especially since I drive with the wheel tilted all the way down in my lap. And he’s been known to roll up against the shifter and pop it into neutral, which drives the cruise-control crazy.

Of course braking becomes interesting when he’s sleeping like that. Under even the gentlest braking, I have to reach in front of him with one hand to restrain him from rolling into the steering wheel or the shifter. I try to avoid situations where I have to brake, steer and shift at the same time. And forget about tollbooths! Anyway, he slept like that all the way to Ron’s then half-way back to town.

Thankfully, he was still tired when we arrived at Debbie’s. We decided to call it a night. I was home and in bed by 11:45.

He woke me up Saturday morning at about 11:00. He came in bearing flowers he’d collected on the walk over. I got dressed and found a bud-vase while he checked mail. Saturday was the day we set aside for him to visit his kids, so he took the car, and I went back to bed.

He was back by 3:30. I was still sleeping. There had been no-one over at his boys’ house. He had sat out front for over two hours. No-one came, no-one went. So he’d gone back to Debbie’s picked her up and went to the cemetery. He and Debbie lost their daughter after childbirth just over a year and a half ago.

Jeffrey was not in the best of all possible moods when he brought the car back. He was quiet, mourning Holly Ann, missing his boys. The phone call he made over to their house merely added to his burden. No-one had been home because their patriarch, Bill, had died. His boys had been at the cemetery as well, burying their grandfather. At a time when a father really needs to see his sons, and sons really need to see their father, Jeffrey was told "We don’t need you around here right now" and they hung-up on him.

Later at the beach, my mind returned to part of a conversation we had on Friday while on I-390 heading south towards Geneseo. He asked me, "Have you ever thought about what would happen when one of us dies?" I replied that yes, I had, and I wasn’t quite sure which scenario was worse, he departing before I, or me departing before him.

He’s always saying, "Everyone leaves me in the end." So perhaps selfishly, I’d rather be the one left behind, just so he can see I didn’t leave him in the end. I haven’t yet told him he’s a beneficiary of the life insurance policy. I think I’d like to keep it a surprise, so that if I’m the one who departs first, he'll see I’ll still not have left him.

He didn’t share his thoughts on the matter. But I found myself filled with a strange mixture of gratitude, sadness and comfort, for I now know that I’ll be mourned.

I’m afraid that like me, my friends have already seen too many of our friends pass from this world to be greatly effected by one more. We've become numbed to it I guess. I’m no great loss to my family. My parents don’t give a shit because I’ll never give them grandchildren. My nieces and nephew see me only as a funding source, my brothers and sisters-in-law only call when they need something from me.