“Now Caleb, the first thing you do is play cards where there’s a cat. Cats are instinctive. They know who’s going to win the money and how long a person’s going to play before he leaves.”

Caleb listened on with temporary devotion.

“Now you see Ol’ Numbers, there? He’s been here about as long as I have. Now, he weren’t raised no dummy, he knows what he’s doing. ” Mark paused to catch his breath. “Now see,” he said pointing to the cat, “he’s sitting under Zach over there and a-wagging his tail. That means Zach’s gonna win, but he ain’t gonna play for more than twenty minutes or so. You got that?” Mark pointed at Officer Zachary Taylor and Judge Tillett. “Now listen very carefully to what they say.”

Caleb nodded and gazed over at the combatants on opposite stage.

“Alright, Judge,” Officer Zachary said, “you gotta bid.”

“With this hand you dealt me? I tell you, Zach, I couldn’t bid on this pile of refuse.”

“Reh what?” Officer Zachary asked with rapt attention.

“Refuse, Ref- Oh, never mind. From the looks of these beauties, I’m going to have to ask for a schmeiss.”

“Granddaddy, what’s a smiess?”

“Schmeiss,” Mark said, “that means the Judge wants Zach to redeal the cards.” Leaning farther up on the edge of his chair, he continued, “But the rules ain’t important, watch the men.”

“Well, if you’re going to press me like that Judge, I’m going to have to call Diamonds.”

“Diamonds?! Zach, someone is really watching over you today.”

“Why’d he say ‘Diamonds’ Granddaddy?”

“Shhhh. He said it to call Diamonds the trump suit in this hand, but the rules ain’t important. Watch the men Caleb, watch the men.”

“Well Zach, I’ll have to say twenty.”

“No good.”

Judge Tillett began to smile in the little corners of his mouth. “Maybe a ray of sunshine is coming this way.” He then scored himself twenty points.

“The Judge is about to get stomped. You see that smile on Judge Tillett’s face? He thinks he’s got a hand now even though he don’t. Now let’s see what happens to his little smile now.” Three more cards were dealt. “There it went,”
Mark laughed to himself, “He’ll be lucky to take a trick. That, Caleb, is a man with no diamonds.”

Caleb quit enjoying the spectacle his grandfather saw. It was just a fancier way of playing Go Fish to him. So, he decided to put the time he was spending with Mark to better use.

“You and Numbers always lived here, Granddaddy?”

“Yep. We’ve been here our whole lives.” Mark pulled his eyes away from the card game to look at Caleb. “I ain’t never been off of this island except during the war. You’d of loved Paris. About this time of year, all the flowers are in bloom and everybody is outdoors. Those French people are real nice and they were really glad to see us.

You know, I remember my friend Rodney. We’d pile into some stranger’s car and circle the Arc D’Triumph shouting about Hitler and what a windbag he was. Other times, we’d talk to the ambulance drivers, most of them were Americans, and try to figure out what to do before we had to move out to the front. One time, Rodney said, –”

“Said what, Granddaddy?”

Mark breathed a heavy sigh. “It’s not important, Caleb. That was a long time ago.” Looking up, he brightened. “See that? They’ve only played a couple of tricks and the Judge knows that he’s lost big time. You can tell by the way he’s holding his cards. It’s the eyes, too, boy. They never lie. You can always tell about a man by his eyes.”

Interrupting, Caleb said, “What happened to Rodney in Paris, Granddaddy?”

Ol’ Numbers had wandered inside the store to take his mid-afternoon snack. After two more hands of cards, Officer Zachary told the judge that he had some official business to take care of, so the two men parted company after long good-byes. Birds mutely chirped in the nearby trees and the wind produced a small gust causing Mark’s thinning hair to ruffle slightly. Matherson decided to come out on the porch since Officer Zachary had now left. He brought out two Coke-Colas and gave one to Judge Tillett.

The Sun traveled a little less than a degree in the sky.

“So did Rodney die, Granddaddy?” Caleb asked too loudly.

Mark was back in Paris during the war. He remembered asking Rodney if he wanted to play Go Fish to pass the time. All that Rodney said was that Mark needed to learn how to play serious cards. ‘That’s how it began’ Mark mused. They had talked several times of staying in Paris. Rodney was engaged to some French beauty and Mark was trying to court three women at the same time. They had figured on going into business running a nightclub or working for Rodney’s future father-in-law or maybe even moving to Madrid. They had so many plans to take over the world… and it all started when Mark asked if he wanted to pl–

“Huh, what?” started Mark coming out of a dream.

“I SAY DO YOU WANT TO PLAY SOME CARDS?” shouted Matherson.

“Oh, uh, sure, Jeremiah.” He said while traveling back to the present, “Just deal them out,” he whispered.

Ol’ Numbers came out of the big front door and jumped into Mark’s lap. Absent-mindedly, Mark began to scratch between his ears. Picking up his cards, he stared at the fistful of diamonds in his hand.

One word was shoe-horned in. The others I think are more or less natural.

Harold’s not one to mince words. He speaks in a concise sort of way that comes across as terse at times. Those that really enjoy carrying on blathering about nothing at all do not consider Harold a nice person to keep around.

I hate him.

I say that, but really, he is a good friend. He tends to be the level headed one in any circumstance. He is deliberate in speech, practical in thought and efficient in manner. When things go haywire, he is the one the entire family depends on.

This is a good thing. Especially with the situation the family is dealing with now.

Let me explain. The family has a tendency to embellish certain aspects of their history. Normally, this sort of thing is fun at parties and enlivens conversation. It’s not like the rest of us don’t already know that there’s a bit of ‘creative license’ in regaling these tales. It’s just fun to hear most of them. Other times, when Nadine or Harold’s brother Randy starts into some of the symbolism, my mind becomes numb.

The last time Randy started going on about the phases of the moon juxtaposed with the house of Jupiter, I just stood up and left. Afterward, He yelled at me for leaving. He said that there was no need to publicly embarrass him at a good party. I told him, “I’m not the one with the ungodly urge to exaggerate everything. You’re the one that has a fleeting grasp of what the rest of us call reality.”

I was one to talk. I’m off-balance in a few ways that are socially unacceptable. I can admit some of my faults. The others are just new social conventions of the future. I like to think that I am ahead of my time in some ways.

As I was saying, when Nadine or Randy start talking about the weird symbolism of their family history, the mild terror descends on me like that feeling I left the stove on at home. When Nadine is ‘in her element’, I usually convince myself that I not only left the stove on, but a curling iron, the washing machine, five or six televisions and the Christmas lights.

Yes, I have Christmas lights in July. As I said earlier, I’m ahead of my time.

Nadine is not the astrologer, she is the failed actress trying to compensate for lack of talent. When she talks about Uncle Charles being chased by Aunt Ruth’s father with a shotgun, she gyrates about the room in her effort to ‘heighten the tension’. I understand that shots were fired and that Uncle Charles discovered his sprinting abilities that night, but it’s too much. The last time she told that story, she knocked over a couple of tables and shelf of porcelain figurines on the wall. (You know how much some of those Lladro pieces cost?)

I say the last time, it is actually this time. Everyone left pretty quickly. Maybe it’s like watching a car accident, I forgot about the curling iron I left on at home and stayed to see what happened next. I surveyed the damage while waiting for Harold to show up. The dragon was Misty’s favorite. The cheap dollar-store angles, though, are remarkably intact. I think you could shoot those at point blank range and still only manage to scratch them.

I knew that Misty was going to be really upset. I had this image of the police searching her apartment for clues.
“When was the approximate time of the incident in question?”
“About 1:30 pm,” I’d say.
“Was there alcohol involved?”
“No, at least not for those of us under 21?” I’d say to the imaginary cop.

When she finally found us crossing the state line into Connecticut, she had only ruptured a blood vessel or two. I’ll get to that, hold on.

Harold show up about half an hour later. He just calmly strolled in and began to assess the damage. I think he’s become really comfortable handling a crisis. I don’t think he raised his voice even once.

“Tell me what happened,” he said to Nadine. She said that she was talking about how Uncle Charles met Aunt Ruth. He asked if she mentioned the ‘stumbling through the bushes part’. She said that she did. He asked if she mentioned that it was midnight and pitch black. She said that she did. He asked if she mentioned the shotgun and again she said yes.

After a bit of a groan, he asked Randy about what happened. He was curled up in a corner turning a sickly shade of green. He didn’t handle a crisis very well. His usual method involves throwing up, something he hadn’t bothered to do, yet.

Harold went back to Nadine and gave a glare that said, “I can’t believe you mentioned the shotgun again. Can’t you tell this story like a normal person?”. His eyes locked on to his sister as he asked the obvious question, “Who broke Misty’s stuff?”

Nadine said that if the party hadn’t been so crowded, she would have had the room to tell the story properly. She talked about how she stumbled over two or three people. She talked about trying to avoid everyone’s drink and that she thought the living room was plenty big enough…

Harold’s gaze got narrower. Nadine was trying really hard to blame everyone else for knowing over Misty’s collection. I thought she had a good point or two, just Harold wasn’t in a place to put up with it. “Nadine,” he said after a long pause, “Misty is going to blame you, not the folks at the party. Besides, they weren’t supposed to be here in the first place. You told her that the party was at our house.”

“But she won’t know it was me, the only two people that saw it that are still here are Randy and Gladys. She won’t say anything, she’s my best friend.”

Gladys. I’d rather be named after my Uncle Charles.

“Nadine,” he said too calmly, “there’s more than enough evidence to incriminate you. It’s not an issue of covering it up. We need to replace some of these things and apologize to her.”

“We could go to Woburn Mall,” she offered.

Ignoring her, he told Randy that he should stay behind and clean up the apartment. Harold didn’t want the inside of his car ruined when Randy finally decided to throw-up. Besides, Harold has those thick shaggy seat covers that never come clean. When Randy finally did the deed a half hour later, he went to great pains to describe the “fountain of bile jettisoned into the bathtub.” I just shrugged and said, “whatever.”. Who needs to hear about all of that?

Harold, Nadine, and I got into Harold’s car that’s about as large as a postage stamp. Nadine and I got our big butts in the backseat and Harold sped off to Woburn Mall at break-neck speed.

We got to the mall and found the place that had Lladro stuff. They had everything but the dragon, so we bought what we could. The woman behind the counter said that there was a dragon like the one we were looking for in a store in Hartford. She called and had it reserved for us. I thought that we were in for smooth sailing. That was the time that Nadine remembered that she hadn’t called Misty, yet. This was also the time when Nadine told us that the $20 she thought she had must be in another purse. This presented a problem to us because now we’d have enough money for the trip as long as we didn’t stop.

I was already hungry.

Here we are on a trip to Hartford that will take a few hours, we might not get to the store before they close, we’re paying for stuff until she can pay us back, and NOW we find out that there’s no money for food?

Harold yelled at us from the front seat to stop goofing around. He said that he was having trouble driving with all the movement. Nadine croaked that she was having trouble keeping me from tearing her favorite cotton blouse.

About then Misty called as sure enough, she was really mad. I mean really really mad. After we told her that we were going to Hartford to replace her dragon, she got really quiet on the other end of the phone. Before she was growling while exhaling. Now she was not making much noise at all.

Then she started laughing really really hard. I was worried about her. These mood swings aren’t healthy for anyone, you know. Maybe she broke something inside with all that anger switching to laughing really quickly. It’s just a theory.

When she could speak, she asked, “The two of you in Harold’s backseat?” She kept going, “Has Gladys killed you, yet?” She kept laughing to the point that I was still pretty worried about her. “I find Randy, passed out and asleep in my unlocked apartment. My stuff is broken and the furniture is scattered around. I thought someone broke in and killed Randy.” After that, she started laughing again. “You know I’m going to kill you when you get home?”

Nadine was laughing with her at this point. She said that she was ready to face the firing squad when she got back. The two of them descended into best friend chattering. Misty saw some cute guy, Nadine was talking about something she saw at the shoe store in the mall while Harold and I were trying to match phone pictures of broken figurines to a catalog. They kept going on for awhile until Misty asked,

“Were you telling the story about Uncle Charles?”

About halfway to the entrance, he began to get a dull headache behind his eyes. As a distraction, he pulled out a coin from his coat pocket hoping it was a quarter. He didn’t collect the 50 state quarters, but he found it distracting enough to see which states he had collected while going about everyday life. He hoped it would be a new Montana quarter.

To his surprise, he found the weathered image of King Kamehameha I staring back at him. Reading the state motto, Ua mau ke ea o ka
‘aina i ka pono, his headache worsened when he considered its meaning. Pausing to get a deep breath of the chilly morning air, he put the Hawaii quarter back in his pocket and fished for ibuprofen in his other pocket.

“Looks like a three-pill day,” he muttered to himself as he swallowed them. Rick did not like swallowing them without a drink of some kind, but there’s no water fountain or anything else until he comes off the stairs on the third floor.

He thought to himself about the assorted paper-pushing projects sitting on his desk and let out a groan. He comforted himself that it was Thursday and that the weekend was near. Walking steadily, he made it to the front door and turned to take the stairs alone.

Blogged with Flock

Some believe that Komodo is a myth and various individuals have claimed to attack government servers without ill effect. Others talk about friends or friends-of-friends that had their computer overheat, holes appear on their storage drives, and other bizarre things. Various bloggers and blogger syndicates agree that Komodo probably exists, but its reported powers are the stuff of urban legend. They agree that software doing physical damage with software is almost impossible, especially in the five second timeframe that many ‘victims’ describe.

On secrets.blog, there’s at least one person that posts everyday about being a victim of Komodo. There’s also at least two people posting daily that they have circumvented Komodo. Roger had even posted once that he may have been a victim of a non-government Komodo project. It was because of that post that he met the person that he only knows as “Grah”. (It’s a slang term used to refer to a good friend, but it’s fairly common to use it for all friends.) Grah had posted a reply that was a manufacturer’s defect. When Roger asked Grah how he knew, Grah began to explain the results of a scan he had done on Roger’s computer right after he listened to the post. Roger didn’t consider himself a security guru, but he knew enough to protect himself from various kinds of exploits. He decided that if this person calling himself Grah wants to be helpful, he would let him be helpful.

On the plane to Alexandria, Roger looked at the news. Tom hadn’t explained the reason for the sudden flight, as usual, so he scanned the news for clues. Live coverage was focused on Northern Virginia where three military drones crashed. One crashed in Fairfax, another crashed in Alexandria, while the third crashed in an undisclosed location. Unconfirmed reports believed that the third plane crashed at Quantico, though one report claimed it crashed into the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. Roger didn’t think anything of it until a military spokesman claimed the crashes were caused by computer failures. That’s when Roger knew why he was flying out in the middle of the night: the Department of Defense had been cracked.

As they stepped out of the limo, their waiter met them with wet handcloths and a mint. “Welcome to the Stratosphere, your suite is ready.” The waiter stepped to whisper in Roger’s ear, “No video, sir, I hope you enjoy it.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Roger trying to mentally juggle his finances in order to tip the waiter appropriately. “Thank you for arranging it.” Roger was also upset that he’d have to tell Grah that the gig was off. They were going to hack the feed to their suite in order to turn the monitors off. The Stratosphere was the most challenging and Grah always complained about not having a challenge. Touching the dialer just below his temple, he said, “Quick Note, No Deal. End.”

“Were you and Grah up to something?” asked Cherise.
“Maybe,” he grinned, “but I don’t need it now. I have you.”
“That’s sweet of you to say, thanks..” Cherise replied. She thought it was cute when he said what he thought she wanted to hear. It’s not that she wanted him to stop. It’s just that he was trying and she appreciated the effort. She was afraid that if she let on, he would stop trying. She thought that it was good for him to say what he thought she wanted to hear – it keeps him focused.

Once in the suite, the waiter presented a choice of chefs for the evening. Without video, the automatic selections for drinks, appetizers, and entrees weren’t available. The waiter was ready with menus after Roger and Cherise made their selections for chefs. Before leaving, the waiter provided his personal IP and said to call if they needed anything.

At last, Roger and Cherise had time alone. As they chatted about various topics, the discussion moved into the topic of their relationship. Cherise was hoping that Roger would talk about something moving it to the next level. She wanted more time that wasn’t arranged around conferences. The two weeks a year, one in California, the other in Arkansas were great. With only two weeks, though, it was hard to be close. Their relationship needed something that wasn’t video files and airport schedules. She wanted to have some sense of familiarity that her parents talked about when they started living together. They remembered a stair that creaked and a small lake within walking distance of their apartment. They placed so many memories in tangible, familiar objects. She wanted what they have. When she thought about it, she just wanted to come home to him, not a video file.

Roger was thinking about what he wanted in the relationship. He had not thought about many of the details, but he knew that he wanted to be with her. He thought about the changes in his life whenever the next step comes, if the next step comes. Thinking about the next step made him afraid that they may not work out. He thought, “what if we move to the same city only to have things fall apart?” He considered that their relationship was doing well for right now and he didn’t want to mess it up somehow.

As they talked, Roger was beginning to think that she wanted the next step to be right now. He wasn’t ready to think about the next step happening this soon. He was thinking about the new studio condo he wanted next month and the season tickets he wrangling for center court. He felt guilty that he was thinking the wrong things and he cursed himself for being stupid.

In mid-sentence, Roger heard a ring and sat upright from being startled by it. After a second, Tom’s voice came in saying that he had to fly to Alexandria tonight. He asked to stay thought the end of the conference, but Tom responded by becoming more agitated.

“Get you tail on a flight to Virginia, now!”
“Fine, call you when I land.”

Cherise felt crushed by the call, but her own call came as Roger was finishing his. Tom had ordered her to cover the rest of the conference alone. He added that if she wanted to spend her own money to go the Virginia, that was her choice. The last sentence felt like a lash as Tom snarled and sneered the words, “that was her choice.”

Upset at the lost chance to discuss their future, Cherise began to have watery eyes and allowed a small tear to escape. At this moment, she hated their separate lives more than anything else, but fought hard to hold herself together. Her and Roger argued briefly over the last thing that were talking about before they were interrupted by Tom. She was upset that Roger immediately called the waiter while she was talking to Tom instead of waiting until they finished their last thought. As they grew more upset, Roger placed both hands on her shoulders and kissed her.

“I love you, but I have to go.”

The waiter arrived and whisked Roger to the airport. Cherise took some time before she moved.

“He said, ‘I love you’,” she thought, “and he kissed me.”

Before leaving, Roger filed his report on MCS to his unofficial private blog. The story about the Xperience was filed on his official private blog and the overall conference report was filed for work. His unofficial personal blog was audio only, of course, with the voice modulated up to be ambiguously male or female. He was just one of many on secrets.blog. Even Cherise didn’t know which one was him – of course, he didn’t know which one was her, either.

He called the Stratosphere and ordered an ambience of candles and pink noise. He had asked for all the monitors to be turned off, but the maitre d’ said it took a full day advance order to have a no-video suite. Roger said that he would settle for a video ambience of ocean sunset, instead, because he didn’t want to be any trouble.
“No trouble at all sir, we’ll see you at 7:30,” said the maitre d’. Roger made one more call to his buddy, Grah. After that, he went upstairs to change into his tuxedo.

“Roger?” she interrupted, “you hear me?”

“Oh yeah, Cherise. Sorry about that,” he lied, “I was a bit distracted. I’ll take a peek at that later. Everyone’s here talking about games. I’m more interested in MCS at the moment.”

“Ok, but Tom’s not thrilled about supercomputers like you. I hope he doesn’t mod you down on that.”

Roger frowned thinking about Tom. They used to do these trade shows together, but Tom prefers the Skybox and seeing a few celebrities these days.

“You’re right about Tom,” he said. “So,” he said to change the subject, “you want to hit the afterparty or something more personal?”

Cherise thought to herself that she really loves Roger, but his constant deferring to her was becoming annoying. “You pick,” she said crossing her arms.

“We’ll go to the Stratosphere,” he replied, “and I’ll wear a Tux. I figure that after that we can do a little dancing. Let’s get away from the tech stuff for awhile.”

Roger was glad that Cherise is a part of his life. “Tom may have celebrities,” he thought, “but I get to be with Cherise all over the country. Office romances aren’t that bad.” He smiled thinking about the phrase ‘office romance’. His office is in San Diego, hers is in Arkansas.

“You want to get any from tech?” she asked loudly. “You, Roger Tannarick want to get away from tech?”

“And I want to spend time with you,” he interrupted. “Sometimes it is all business at these things and there’s no time for just me and you.”

Cherise had a hard time speaking for a moment. On the one hand, she was thinking that he just wants to leer at her. On the other hand, it is just want she wanted to hear. She thought to herself that he actually smiled when he mentioned getting away. She thought about how different Roger had been at this conference and she hoped he would continue to be more assertive.
“Uh- yeah,”she finally said, “that sounds wonderful.” Smiling, she stretched her arms out and walked to Roger, “That was just what I wanted, Roger. Thank you so much.” They held each other a bit more than briefly and parted with a kiss. Cherise moved back towards the game section to finish her story.

Roger panicked trying to figure out how to get a table at the Stratosphere. He tapped his jaw just below his temple and said aloud, “Tom”.

The NLC: No Link Content. Organization formed as a backlash against the shrinking number of actual content providers and the mushrooming number of sites that simply link to content and offer commentary. Joss Whedon is actually involved with this group.

Wikipedia and Wikipedia2 are constantly involved in political discussions. Wik2 was formed under the idea of an editorial board and writing standards. There are endless fights about control of information in the discussion forums of each.

Broadband has expanded out into the 20MB upstreams/10MB downstream speeds available as wireless almost everywhere. Purists search for a wired connection whereever they can. These connections are called ‘cabled’ connections. Fine hotels offer free wireless or cheap ‘cabled’ connections for privacy.

Phone companies offer cellular and home services in addition to internet. Phone companies are still trying to figure out a way to generate TV like content and make a profit. The first attempt at digital content by a phone company was a game show created by AT&T. Two players competed for cash and prizes by solving Sudoku puzzles in turn. The idea may have taken off more had an executive called it by its proper name, “Sudoku Solvers” instead of “Sudoku Samurai”. The idea that advertisers could offer prizes is being tried by Sprint, WalTel and others. (The home game plays a lot like Battleship™.) The first round had traditional 5 by 5 board. The second round had irregular shaped regions. The final round was a contest for each person to solve their own 3 by 3 board by taking turns. Each player could not see the others Sudoku. The audience at home, however, saw both boards on the screen at the same time.

The United States has begun the descent into second class citizens of the world. The EU has more political capital worldwide and the US has begun to stop offering troops worldwide. Gas is still about 2.85 a gallon – everyone uses hybird cars or retrofits their cars to be hybirds. Nascar has a Hybird division that races on Thursdays – detractors call it the “Golf Cart” series.

Large US Cities have begun to discuss offering fuel cell depots. Many large cities have specialty vehicles that run on fuel cells. The fuel is generated from converted sewage treatment facilities. It is advertised as greener, but its effects are disputable.