Susan was able to dig up area code data from, of all places, Trieste, Italy- on the Net. It turns out that North America is creating up to 640 new area codes by allowing digits other than zero or one to go in the middle. So there can be area codes like 647 and 329. With roughly eight million phone lines possible per code, "That makes for roughly 5.1 billion new portals to fun."
Karla was relieved that we don't have to have eight-digit phone numbers, "at least until some new, as yet uninvented technology, eats up the old ones again."
Then we digressed into a discussion of how the word "dialing" is itself such an anachronism-a holdover from rotary phones. "Inputting" would be more true. And who came up with the word "pound" for the "#" symbol. Wouldn't "grid" have been easier and more fun? I mean, "pound"!
Or think of how dumb it is too say, "I'm going to the record store."
Technology!
You may
have already won!
Technology of mythic strength given surrealistic applications.
Socially disengaged meritocratic elites.
Sporting goods stores always smell like the most
advanced plastics.
Did the neutron bomb ever actually get built?
SUNDAY
Bug is going to accept Michael's offer. This is out of, character, given that Bug worships Bill and the corporate culture of Microsoft so much. But he seems quite jolly and decisive about the move. I think the fact he was slated for transfer to the Converter Group in Building Seventeen, a notoriously glum Campus locale, added some oomph to his decision. Bug is a good debugger. That's how he got his name, so Michael's probably getting a good deal in hiring him. I still can't figure out why he never got stock options.
Todd, too, has decided to go, perhaps also propelled by his transfer into the OLE Group (Ole'!), over in the Old Buildings.
This is the Object Linking and Embedding Group that writes code for an application allowing a user to drag part of, say, an Excel document into a Word document. About as much fun as it sounds.
Susan's accepting-and she's forking up some of her vesting money as seed capital for a larger equity stake-and she's clinching the title of Creative Director. "I'll be the Paul Allen of interactivity."
Abe, however, is saying no. "What-you guys want to leave a sure thing?" he keeps asking us. "You think Microsoft's going to shrink, or are you nuts?"
"That's not the point, Abe."
"What is the point, then?"
"One-Point-Oh," I said.
"What?" replied Abe.
"Being One-Point-Oh. The first to do something cool or new."
"And so in order to be 'One-Point-Oh' you'd forfeit all of this- Abe fumbles for le mot juste, and expands arms widely to showcase a filthy living room covered with Domino's boxes, junk mail solicitations, Apple haul hats, three Federal Express baseball caps, and Nerf Gatling guns) "-security? How do you know you're not just trading places . . . coding like fuck every day except with a palm tree outside the window instead of a cedar?"
Karla reiterated what she said to Todd, about humanity's dreaming, but Abe is too scared, I think, to make the leap. He's too set in his ways. Repetition breeds inertia.
My computer's subconscious files continue still to surprise me. Who would have known that these are the words my machine wanted to speak? Well, actually, I know that it's me speaking through the computer, sort of like those really quiet guys who go all nuts when you give them a wooden puppet-ventriloquists-and these aspects of their personalities you didn't even know existed start screaming out.
MONDAY
Abe has actually provoked Karla and me into deciding, *yes*. We both gave Shaw our two weeks' notices, and basically he said we might as well leave at the end of the week since we're not currently "with project."
With start-ups: you get a crap shoot at mega-equity but more importantly, it's true, you do get a chance to be "One-Point-Oh." To be the first to do the first version of something.
We had to ask ourselves, "Are you One-Point-Oh?"-the answer is what separates the Microserfs from the Cyberlords.
But beyond this there's what Karla said-about being human, and the dream of humanity. I get this little feeling that we can all of us speed up the dream, dream in color, dream in volume, and dream together down south. We can, and will, fabricate the waking dream.
THURSDAY
Later that week
Preparing for this weekend's yard sale, I found a half-pound lump of hamburger meat in the garage that had been sitting in a Miracle Whip jar for about four months-an experiment I had forgotten about. The meat was still kind of pink, with gray fuzz growing on it. "A test to see if the beef industry pumps up cattle with preservatives," I told Karla.
She looked at the jar. "Your brain," she said dismissively, "during the last half-year here at Microsoft."
Mom phoned. She sounds so much better now that the economic stress is off her and that she's exercising. After a short while I got to asking what it is that Dad does for Michael exactly-"So what's Dad's job, Mom?"
"Well, I'm not sure. He's never here. He's driving with Michael up and down the Peninsula . . . picking things up. Fixing up the office, I think."
"Carpentry?"
In a whisper: "It keeps him out of my hair all day. And he seems happy to be needed." Resumption of normal tone: "So when will we be seeing you down here?"
"Next week."
My body: Today I've been feeling angry all day, and I have to get it off my chest. I went to Microsoft for the last time to clean out my office. Our section, having recently shipped, was unusually empty, even for a Sunday. I was all alone there for the first time, ever, I think.
I got to thinking of my cramped, love-starved, sensationless existence at Microsoft-and I got so pissed off. And now I just want to forget the whole business and get on with living-with being alive. I want to forget the way my body was ignored, year in, year out, in the pursuit of code, in the pursuit of somebody else's abstraction.
There's something about a monolithic tech culture like Microsoft that makes humans seriously rethink fundamental aspects of the relationship between their brains and bodies-their souls and their ambitions; things and thoughts.
Maybe if this thing with Karla hadn't started I never even would have noticed-I'd have accepted my sensory-deprivation lifestyle without a second thought. She's helping me get closer to getting a life-and having a ... personality.
I erased the office voice mail message that has served me well for the past six months:
"Thank you for phoning the powerful Underwood personal messaging center.
Press one for Broyhill furniture
Press two for STP, the racer's edge
Press three for the roomy, affordable Buick Skylark
Press four for Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat
Press five for Turtle Wax
Press six for Dan
Press pound to repeat this menu."
Shaw, of all people, came in, and he made this awkward little speech about how he was going to miss me, but I just wasn't in the mood. Shaw, ever the Boomersomething, says that he never got into Lego when he was a kid. "Too 1950s for me. I liked Kenner's modular skyscraper kits. 'If it's from Kenner, it's fun... SQUAWK!'"
Shaw did point out that now that we're off Microsoft's e-mail system, we're going to get to invent new log addresses.
I think when people invent their Net log names, they reveal more about themselves than their given names ever reveal. I'm going to have to choose my new name carefully.
I figure there must have been a time in the past, like the year 1147, when there was a frenzy of family-naming-Smith and Goodfellow and Green and stuff-not unlike the current self-naming frenzy spawned by the Net. Abe says that within 100 years, many people will have abandoned their pro-millennial names and opted for "Nettier" names. He says it'd be inspiring to see people use other letters of the keyboard in their names, like %, &, and 4J.
Susan asked me later how I ended up at Microsoft in the first place. I told her, "No big surprise: I was 22 ... it seemed like a studly thing at the time. Microsoft got what it wanted and I got what I wanted, so all's fair and no regrets."