COSMIC TRANSLATION CLASS 15 - the Ringworld stories (and others)


 RINGWORLD STORIES

    .......
    which had already, through the couple of weeks prior,
    gone to stage three needing only our final signatures to be
    officially incorporated as University policy and we would soon be
    rich. That was the fantasy. But, no hay, the man sounded more and
    more brillient as he made more and more fundamental mistakes trying
    to fathom how we didn't understand that you would just put the four
    diskettes in the disk drive all at the same time to run the program.
    He had never used a PC and heisted himself to a world class expert
    by the time we folded the vibrations. His name was not Jay, who
    chaired the department at Carlton University who had offerred
    the contract to market an all-purpose editor I had designed
    myself (and still use daily cir. 2002), named RingWorld.

    The Ringworld/Carleton project folded because the associate put
    in charge by the university president (not Jay), and straight
    from the Atomic Energy Commission nuke labs at Chalk River, had
    never used a PC (only mainframes), and was not, in any way you
    can imagine, ever going to admit to anyone such a shortcoming
    as to not know how to use a PC desktop for everything except
    mainframe brains, even at that, his only language was Fortran
    already becoming an historic retiree. Peter principle at its
    worst, he is one of the best I have ever seen, not at his job
    or abilities, but, at how to use the peter principle. (He was
    not Jay).

    Jay you see, was the first in the world to set up international
    connection through Freenet, being the second in the world into a
    Freenet operation through the university in Ottawa in which he was
    a faculty chairman. Jay was no stray cat playing with peers
    who were lions, he was one who didn't seem to make devastating
    mistakes or waste time in advancing good ideas to a finish,
    many of the Freenet solutions quickly working over into
    general Internet adaptions. Jay was an influence in realms
    international, no question, and very much liked the whole idea
    of RingWorld.

    Interest in RingWorld spread advancing beyond Carleton University
    to the Treasure Board of the Canadian Federal governemt.

    Unknown to us it was first choice for seven whole months waiting for
    us to come up with a french keyboard interface but having no money for
    french interface programer skill lined up waiting for cash the job
    suddenly went to Word Perfect to outfit the entire federal
    government of Canada. Oh alas if only we'd known we were
    the only choice on the short list for seven months, how
    fast would the dough have been begged borrowed and
    stealed honestly to get that french interface ready.

    RingWorld was put to use by me to, with additional design
    modifications and interfacing modules, to become (besides
    RingWorld) another whole program called The Equalizer which
    could take files formatted and written in any word processing
    or editing format (peppered with strange ascii codes and
    line ends which didn't end for instance), then run it
    through options in The Equalizer taking but moments or
    two and pass the result into any other program syntax
    desired. It worked, translating from an early government
    laser printing word processing into (say) Microsoft Word,
    was taking two to two and one half days by manual typing
    and operator interpreting the document's bullet codes,
    only ten to 15 minutes using The Equalizer, with no
    knowing and interpreting of a particular form of
    bullet codes or hidden codes needed. It took
    five months of around the clock nonstop
    effort until working in foolproof ways.
    I thought we were going to become rich,
    (familar story).

    Because of underfunding, or lack of a large choice of business
    offerings, we'd had to settle for a final business plan and
    signing ceremony coming our way. The final business plan, hacked
    together by a chartered accountant who had been in the picture
    from the start, had myself coming in on salary at ten dollars
    an hour eight hours a day five days a week while manning the
    company hot line 24 hours a day including weekends. The deal
    we were supposed to sign also had us getting only 65 dollars
    a pop per sale of the 1,400 dollar program the rest going
    as profit to the investors, and everything I thought of,
    created, or did for the next three and one half years,
    including equations in fundamental physics, became the
    exclusive ownership of the company. A standard business
    deal between creative people and money business interests,
    in other words, including big ones like Northern
    Telecomm, this is the kind of contract their
    creative sources must sign in order to quarantee
    a pension many years later. Glen and his wife
    Penny, my brother, and I, all shot glinting
    eye glances around the room the moment the
    deal's papers were laid bare on the table
    and the chartered accounted stopped yumming
    and yahing enough to answer a couple of questions
    straight across. Without a single word the four
    of us stood up abruptly and left the room, leaving
    the business mogals to sit blankly at table wondering
    what had gone wrong with this 'fabulous' deal, for
    them. It was Glen and Penny's house, and they had
    just left it, we were all standing outside laughing
    at the idiocy of what had just been proposed as the
    serious business plan inside. That was how good the deal
    was after five months of pulling it together and a lot of
    work. Nick was not in on the final action, he was in
    favor of our side all the way. But, had to put aside
    his visionss of the money he would make along with
    our prosperity, and turned back full time to his
    new chip making plant coming together over in
    Quebec along the shore across the Ottawa River
    from Ottawa.

    I include this at some length because of the number of
    indivuals who recognize the plot, trying to muster action
    for a good creative idea or invention or technology while
    trying to interface without greed or gile to business mogals
    who see no other virtue but greed lust cunning mind and guile.

    Ivan had sat at a centeral keyboard and monitor in a central
    position when an Appolo landing flight to the Moon went arry
    and the crew circled the moon in makeshift use of the landing
    modules before landing safely back on Earth, only an hour of
    oxygen remaining as the module parachuted down through the
    atmosphere into the ocean.

    Now resurface Ivan 15 years later, now an employee of Canada's
    biggest high tech company on salary with low edges for retirement
    to come, setting up the company's brand new network interfacing
    everything in computerology the company owned world wide. At
    the moment Ivan stepped into the picture to collaborate with
    me on a whole new editing idea to replace RingWorld boosted
    to edit raw ascii codes and compiled source codes as easily
    as typing words in a test editor.

    Ivan had been, in Appollo time had been reputed one of the three
    best mainframe programers in the world. When I knew him later,
    You wouldn't see this in his normal looks, but Ivan would suddenly
    sit to the keyboard and for hour after hour dish out codes typed
    none stop and flawless no spell errors as fast at the fingers
    could type then just as abruply hit the go key and up and walk
    away, leaving the new program to run, flawlessy, the whole composed
    down to the last single character in mind before being typed, which
    is why the reputation. That same could not be said for Dos, by the
    time Ivan started to cross over into Dos domains his has-it mental
    picture box approach was absent what it took to do the same in Dos.

    On the other hand Robbie was not without validity. One afternoon
    earlier on while passing an hour before an incoming phone call
    Robbie and my brother wandered around the local ball parks for
    something to do, Robbie wanted to see them, having been into
    baseball on university scholarships, once upon a time, so he
    said. Sure.

    Coming to one of the ball fields, two senior high schoolers were
    practicing, one lobbing hitable pitches from a pile of hard balls
    on the ground, to a batter also with a pile on the ground, the hits,
    about 1 in 3 or 4 swings, grounding out short distances, occasionally
    an impressive hit lofted about half way to the end of the field. Turned
    out this was the large high school's top batter and was concidered a
    top knotch jock.

    After about 5 minutes standing there watching, Robbie stepped
    forward saying 'hey babe mind if I hit a few?' 'Uh, sure' uh',
    said the guy handing over the bat. Robbie tossed a ball in the
    air and taking a long step back took a mighty swing that
    launched the ball to the end of the ball park. Woah said
    me. Woah said both high schoolers, the batter moving out
    half way to center field the other back nearly to a low
    knee-level wooden fence that ran along the strip of street
    between two ball diamonds. Robbie meanwhile had picked up
    another ball and tossing it up in the air a few times getting
    ready stepped back and taking a mighty stride send the ball
    high into the air across the road into the next field. The
    guy moved back into the next field. Robbie conked another hit
    that sailed high over the head of the guy in the other ball
    field, who just then sat down to watch, as did the other
    guy. The three of us watching, Robbie honked another
    into the other field, another even deeper,
    another even deeper. Nowhere reports my
    self have I ever seen anyone hit like
    that except in the movie 'The Natural'
    starring Robert Redford.

    On the 13th hit Robbie missed. On the 14th a grounder flubbed
    past the pitcher's mound. Robbie said 'let's go babe', laid
    down the bat, then walked away. After a moment I got together
    wits to ask 'how did you do that' to which Robbie replied 'I
    was definately off form, must be my age'. And discussed it not
    another word. We took a short cut between two houses on giant
    wide apart lots with a small path winding up between to the street
    beyond. Robbie following. By the time they got to the street Robbie
    was ballistic, 'don't you ever, EVER, put me in jeopardy like that
    again!' 'Huh', said me. Apparently it had something to do with
    being spotted on possible private property, or something like
    that, an absolute no no in Robbie's lexicon of behavior nodes.

    Oh, I could mention, 1,000, then 4,000, then 10,000 copies of
    my Look.exe editor, went to Russia, installed as part of the
    package in the hard drives in new PC's going to Russia under
    contract from one of Canada's larger upcoming high tech firms
    owned by Canada's richest man. I never got paid a cent for this.

    Publicity and promotion throughout Russia's higher levels in
    government was supposedly the pay. Not a word has ever been
    heard since about it from there. This was circa the late
    80's. Not a single word, not even one. Except, reports
    talking online to Virus Alert clients around the world
    and up comes my suggestion to use Look.exe for a kinky
    hard core codal problem, that I would send them the
    Look.exe editor by bulletin board, and oh no need
    I already have it use it all the time was hear over
    the long distance telephone - Look.exe was a shareware
    in uses to those who knew about it world wide and I never
    recieved a penny, not even one. Not a word of praise ever came
    back from out in the wild either, those advanced skillworthys using
    it just never did make the simple association between that important
    little Look.ex editor, and myself who wrote the assembly codes self
    taught to create it from a barnstorming saga of urgent ideas.


 BALDING RUSHES - featuring another Jay

 - computer genius's remark about the loss of vibes watching
 the bald patch at the back grow inevitably larger as the months
 progress into those middle age years when the rich head of hair
 becomes a baldy -

 - Jay's Sulfoam Shampoo - (another Jay he in Vancouver circ the
 latter 1950's) playing big band swing drums taking the best gigs
 Gene Krupa could not play, he said - this, from a short jovial
 middle age jewish fellow behind his pharmacy counter, even,
 he said, in the movies in hollywood in early 40's movie, the
 scene with wildly drumming short fellow with big nose is friend
 Jay the middle aged neighbor up Vancouver way, who said his family
 did not like him drumming as a career which is why he went into
 pharmacy and cosmetic research, lo, however, a very good drummer
 he was. You should have seen him beat the drums el la swing at
 its best generating real steam in long scenes in that 40's
 black and white movie me watching it over 50 years later circ
 the late 90's on late night TV while sipping a quiet can of
 strong beer.

 Hippies of the 60's did not use Resdan. Hippies knew Resdan caused
 your hair to fall out forcing everyone new to using Resdan to use
 more Resdan because it was advertised guaranteed to handle dandruff.
 The point is that Jay (the pharmacist ex renouned swing band drummer)
 had invented a sulfur based new kind of shampoo that did cure dandruff,
 smelled sulfury, and effected not a single strand of hair to depart
 it's follicle. Jay had marketing completed saturating the Vancouver
 and Fraser Valley areas then on down into Seattle progressing toward
 Tacoma ready for US national distribution when out came of a sudden,
 Resdan, advertised hour after hour day after day on every channel,
 such a massive saturation that suddenly there were no more sales of
 Jay's Sulfoam Shampoo to speak of and Jay had to fold the enterprise
 he himself had creatively unfolded and expanded, lost to a scam that
 even hippies knew caused your hair to fall out by the handfull so
 suckers would buy more Resdan hoping to stop the fallout. Nowadays,
 circa 2002, it the fallout would simply be called a side effect with
 users advised to temporarily suspend use of Resdan if hair begins
 to fall out by the handfull. This is no exaggeration, I saw a
 hippy drummer circa later 1960's loose a wad of his 21 year old
 hair to an open glistening bald patch at back in just 3 months
 until a fellow band member discovered this and began to hoot
 maniacally in disbelief that the drummer (vanity winning the
 round) had been using Resdan to try and make his long flowing
 locks look shinier onstage. The drummer had fallen into a
 giant sucking sound in the evil empire, using up to a
 bottle of Resdan a day, coping with dismay whose
 sucking sound was starting to sound like a
 mile wide tornado.

 - The disposable diapers (circ 1962)

 In Quesnel BC as emergency hired new wet behind the ears weekly
 newspaper reporter who from the start was acting editor when the
 owner/editor landed on back in hospital with a major heart attack,
 were friends in Quesnel from Sweden now living in a two room old
 log cabin purchased for $600 with an acre of land trying to get
 back on their feet after a devastating mistake getting sucked
 into the maw of the credit system filling a new home (no more)
 with expensive new furnature and appliances. Here, now, circ
 1962 in Quesnel, were these two friends a very together
 couple who finished each other's sentences and rarely
 ever spoke in crossfire to each other, both now 30,
 both born on the same day in Cancer what a find of
 a co-incidence anyway talks about how we all might
 make some money instead of the daily grind at
 poverty level earned incomes, talk turned to
 Sweden and the fact that Swedes have been
 using a paper sheet baby diaper for decades
 while north america still used cottons no
 paper products for babies had yet been
 introduced (this was well before the
 time of Pampers). Thoughts led to
 action to where, one day, on
 the rickety kichen table
 in the log cabin using
 my portable smith
 corona typewriter
 purchased from the local
 Simpson Sears catalogue outlet
 managed by a mutual friend of ours, Bill
 and Margurita Cheka began to compose a letter to the
 general manager of Sweden's largest paper mill which supplied the
 bulk of Sweden's paper baby diapers trade. The letter was being written
 carefully, word after word, after finding a name for the proposed north
 america import, the name was 'Snow-angel' which had suddenly popped
 from my mouth the three of us sitting at typical beer parlor table
 in typical small town beer parlor circ 1962 trying to think of
 a name as days passed and that was it, Snow-angel, these
 sheets of which you used several thin sheets at
 a time now had a name. The letter went
 from BC old log cabin to the general
 manager of Sweden's biggest large
 paper mill, and in astonishment,
 only a few weeks later back came
 a letter from the Swedish general
 manager stating that first production
 was already finished a loaded cargo ship was
 on its way to Montreal and the new mail contained a
 sample of what was on that ship, it was the size of a large
 pack of toilet paper rolls, it contained sheets of pressed paper like
 toilet paper but much more firm in texture (it didn't tear) in
 its own packaging of pinks and blues with the large name
 'Snow-angel' glowing across the top of the package,
 my name. We all felt good, very good. But, how
 to pay for a cargo ship coming into port
 on the east coast we on the west in a
 $600 log cabin reading the mail from
 Sweden. The manager of the local Simpson
 Sears outlet (a long ago sliced away relative
 of the Loblaw family) whose last name was Loblaw and
 was operating the top Sear's catalogue store success story
 in canada from this little city in central BC called Quesnel with
 a 4,000 population, this Sear's guy, named Bill, and my Swedish
 friend named Bill, together made contact with the management
 of Super Value BC's largest grocery chain headquartered
 in Victoria, down there the two Bills went met in
 head office in Victoria the contract signed at
 once, the cargo load in Montreal on its way
 to BC, the contract first stage paying all
 of expenses including purchase from Sweden
 incurred so far and this was to be the start,
 the very first step to riches already imminently
 possible no fantasy needed. Except, the cargo went into
 a warehouse and was never seen again. Super Value it turns out
 was by share and stock ownerships tied in with one of Canada's largest
 paper manufactures who were getting ready soon to launch their own
 disposable baby diaper, these as pads, not sheets as from
 Sweden the canadian version costing a small fortune per
 package compared to the pennies per package the
 Swedish version cost even after import. The
 buggers had stolen the whole Swedish idea
 and sample of displayable product and stuck
 the entire into a warehouse shutting down the
 competitor completely in a manner so subtle, so
 slick, the two letter writers whose mail was so well crafted
 it prompted a whole ocean freighter loaded with ready to sell cargo
 as first response to their letter to Sweden, and Canada's top catalogue
 store manager, had both been slicked like a dog licking glass by
 pirates of profit cunningly operating as BC's biggest super
 market chain. Stories like this are all too often, they
 can get fatiguing in hind site when over and over
 they seem to happen to the same people, good
 souls trying to traffic positive change
 for Reality while temporary sojourning
 as born incarnated body world beings.

 - Jane's bleach

   Jane, a real cookie looking her best in wide brimmed designer
   hats and aspiring to be a fashion hats illustrator, was always
   experimenting with ways to make her hair have more allure
   peeking out from under her wide brimmed hats. One day after
   not seeing her for awhile (this was the very early 60's) I
   did see her and noticed she had cut her hair back in an
   arc across her forehead. That is not what happened, she
   said, being told by friends to use bleach for the toilet
   bowl to blond hair across the front of her forehead she
   did, except the hair came out, instead of turning blond,
   all of it, every last strand touched by the bleach, she
   had used it in a wrong mix so strong the hair never did
   come back not even one strand. Shrieeeek! was what she
   said was her first repsonse as the first tads of front
   hair come out as she tried to comb it after the bleach
   had finished perminently cooking the follicles.

   Add the above stories to your growing list of evil empire
   practices so you can help to translate the practices out
   of Earth, freeing the people. You might include Robbie
   the baseball batter storied above, since Robbie, it
   turned out was otherwise a con artist in and out of
   the pen all too often. He didn't need penning up he
   needed help at the kindest of levels he was boarder
   line schizophrenic the kind authorities like to
   punish the most because this kind (like Robbie)
   are not openly schizophrenically dangerous, the
   evil empire who keep punishments rather than cures
   are splits in personality and actions of a far worse kind
   and dangers from them, those who serve in the evil empire,
   are everywhere.

   Why in blazes did you con causing so much anger even the
   judge is rednecked, having troubles managing your mental
   emotional confusions here let us help is what they could
   say, but don't the pen is easier for them since money is
   made by them sending away these momentary lost souls for
   another meaningless stay in stir. In meaningful counting
   nobody wins in the evil empire, nobody.


 (-finis-)

 Greydie@look.com