C00LeS WaReZ UNiON MeMOiRS: cHApTER #0x98

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0x98  -  Jyväskylä  -  myXTer  -  1998-07  -  603 lines
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It would soon be year since we moved from Lietevesi, and we hadn't seen each other properly ever since. This is a topic that came up several time on #cwu during the spring and summer. We were really craving for a meet-up.

Many were interested in going to a demo party, at least one that wouldn't attract Quake lamers and other "LAN gamers". It would be convenient to organize our meet-up in conjunction with some bigger event, since people were coming from all over Finland anyway.

Meka, of course, thought that most parties were already ruined by Quake lamers, so we should ignore them at least that year: Juhla, Abduction, Assembly, Plutonium, Proxy, Absolute. The Motorola Inside Amiga party in Lahti would have been an exception, but it was so PC-hostile that they even threatened in their invitation file to destroy all PCs brought to the party hall, so we ruled it out as well.

Luckily, there was another exception: Skenery'98, a PC/Amiga party held in Jyväskylä. It even advertised that there was "No Quake network". The venue was a dance hall called Lutakko, where you could probably even get drunk better than at some school-based party. So, that's where we're going!

Travelling to Jyväskylä were me (myXTer), Jyri (dArK sTuFfEr), Meka (mR.mEgAsTuFf), Kassu (DaRK FuCKeR), and DiCKiNSTASiA. Jussi (wArlord) had already stated firmly that he wasn't interested in demo parties anymore, so we couldn't talk him into it. But luckily, we got five CWU members to come along.

Even though we had chatted on IRC practically every day, a lot of our party talk was just catching up. I guess we humans have that urge to do it whenever we see each other in person after a long time.

DaRK FuCKeR: Yeah, I'm still at it until next week... and then I'll have enough money to upgrade my 486 into a proper Pentium!!

DaRK FuCKeR: Well, at least for the Pentium Pro motherboard, you can get the cheapest one from EXE 2000...

myXTer: I wouldn't recommend getting anything from a mail-order firm, especially not from EXE 2000, which is known to be a total scam...

myXTer: They don't even ship those parts to anyone, they probably don't even exist! The company isn't even officially registered anywhere, it's a total scam!

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Figures. I wouldn't buy anything from any piece of shit mail order either. Gotta see the product live to make sure you actually get it...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Well, yeah, if you compare it to that fucking scam price. So, just check the real price out and recalculate your strawberry pickings accordingly...

DaRK FuCKeR: I've already saved up enough to buy that motherboard! But I also want a Voodoo card, not just some cheap basic SVGA!!

DaRK FuCKeR: Yeah, but the Voodoo gives you better graphics for so many games!! Better FPS and all sorts of cool transparency effects -

dArK sTuFfEr: It is truly pathetic to acquire hardware solely for gaming purposes. It is still somewhat acceptable to acquire it for demo creation, even though 3D-accelerated demos are lame.

DaRK FuCKeR: Shut up already!!! I'll decide what I buy myself and ignore your complaints!!

mR.mEgAsTuFf: I agree with dArK sTuFfEr that you shouldn't get those lame Voodoo cards unless you want a seriously lame reputation for yourself!! Besides, if you have a fast enough processor, it'll run those same effects as the Voodoo...

DaRK FuCKeR: Well, yeah, if you've got something like a Pentium II, like you do...

DiCKiNSTASiA: Or a hell of an AMD 3DNow processor that probably blows right past any Voodoo -

DiCKiNSTASiA: The guy's a total yuppie now, seriously!! Buying a Pentium II just like that, and even a freaking GSM phone, you're a fucking YUPPIE!!

mR.mEgAsTuFf: I don't know how things are in your backwoods in Kuopio, but back in Helsinki, GSMs are pretty normal for working people!! You're just a jealous loser...

dArK sTuFfEr: myXTer has been working during the summer as well, but he doesn't seem to have any intentions of investing his earned money into a deplorable bragging rig.

myXTer: Well, I was thinking it'd be better to save that money for next semester...

myXTer: It didn't actually need that much money, since I looked through recycling centers and junkyards and Keltainen Pörssi and put together a working 486SX from the almost free parts as long as they just worked...

DaRK FuCKeR: But it was still a 486, right? Didn't Jyri think those were some yuppie vanity crap as well?

myXTer: Well, a 386 would have been enough for me, as long as Linux worked, but I just happened to find a working 486SX motherboard from a "broken" computer where it was just the power supply that was broken...

DaRK FuCKeR: What!? Someone actually threw away a whole computer just 'cause the power supply was broken?!

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Yeah, all those backwoods idiots buy PCs from milk stores nowadays and then can't even fix them themselves!!

mR.mEgAsTuFf: So, what's the deal with Samppa's summer job? Does it end when school starts, or are you planning on staying there even after that...?

myXTer: It's technically still valid in the autumn, but I already told them I probably won't have the energy to work there during the school year...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Okay. I was just asking because if you happen to need some extra cash sometime in the fall or winter, you could very well do some freelance code for our firm...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Okay, okay then, screw you dammit. And I guess asking Jyri ain't even worth it...

dArK sTuFfEr: I certainly shall not submit myself as a slave for the market economy, especially regarding anything WWW-related. I am above the filthy matter and all the decay projects.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Fine, be a freakin' MSX commie then - you probably think you're gonna fare with your 386 for the rest of your life...

dArK sTuFfEr: I will not succumb to the mass consumerist upgrade frenzy. If I ever acquire a more powerful computer, it will have to be RISC-based, not some IBM PC clone reheating 70s misunderstandings.

DiCKiNSTASiA: But aren't those RISC-based Unix workstations pretty fucking expensive compared to PCs?!

dArK sTuFfEr: Alpha motherboards and 32-bit SPARC workstations can be obtained quite affordably from Damicon Kraa, for example –

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Yeah, like for a few thousand for some fucking obsolete 100-megahertz pieces of junk!! And you're saying you can afford that without any work?!

dArK sTuFfEr: My speculation was situated in a vague future, possibly even more than ten years from now. By then, I will certainly have devised a way to earn money in a morally sustainable manner. If decay has progressed sufficiently by then, used Unix workstations may even be available for practically free.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Okay, fine, not gonna try to turn your head, dammit. But I'm just saying that we would have a fucking ton of paid work for you as well! Think about it, we would've even taken Kassu in based on his graphics skills!! We're seriously that short-staffed...

DaRK FuCKeR: I'd rather pick strawberries than sit inside with a computer all summer, fiddling with some boring website buttons!

DaRK FuCKeR: You can make enough money picking strawberries, too! And there are girls there to get laid with!!!

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Goddamn it then... and Jussi apparently has a girlfriend now, too! So, the only ones in CWU who still have our virginity are just me and Dikkis!?

dArK sTuFfEr: You weren't really paying attention to IRC back then, but DiCKiNSTASiA actually managed to get laid with a Kuopio woman back in the autumn. It was all over our IRC channel.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Well, I must've missed it! Spill everything NOW, Dikkis! Who the hell would even give it to someone like you!?

DiCKiNSTASiA: It was some forty-year-old, chunky hag who I ended up going after one night as she came out of a bar... It was a pretty rough experience, but at least I don't have to worry about losing my virginity anymore, you know!

DiCKiNSTASiA: Well, aren't you gay anyway? Join #fingay and find someone from there.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: I'M NOT GONNA JOIN ANY GAY CHANNELS, DAMMIT!!! YOU'RE THE GAY ONE!!!

mR.mEgAsTuFf: I'm now so sick of this conversation and your insults that I'm opening a new beer.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: GET FUCKING LOST! Just keep being a HOMO with your own booze, you FUCKING HOMO!!

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Well, you should've bought some beer, you have the cash from your summer job!

mR.mEgAsTuFf: If you'd come to work for us as a freelance graphic designer, you'd have all the money you need for your "Pentie" and still have some left over for beer...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Yeah, I know, you did make that embarrassingly lame homepage for yourself, for the fuck's sake.

dArK sTuFfEr: DaRK FuCKeR's homepage is truly something that makes me ashamed of being a CWU member.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: You should've made it ironically at least!! But no, you SERIOUSLY made something that looks like some fucking junior-high kid's homepage, a total GIF animation hell!!

dArK sTuFfEr: When dealing with WWW lamers, it certainly must be made sure that no infection from their values or worldviews shall take place. I am deeply disappointed at your spiritual decay, DaRK FuCKeR.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Right, dammit! If Kassu continues decaying like this, then he'll be just like that Synus guy who believes everything we say no matter how over-the-top stuff we make up...

DiCKiNSTASiA: I wouldn't believe either that Kassu could ever become as lame as Synus...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Right, I don't actually believe that either, because Synus is so deeply in his own lameness class, dammit! It's so unbelievable how much we can troll him and he still ACTUALLY BELIEVES everything!! Like, the thing that we had found some alien satellites in the orbit and we could use them to scan any position on earth at some 1000 dpi resolution!!

DaRK FuCKeR: Yeah, and when we trolled him that we would've told some Japs how lame he is, and they would now be designing some SYNUS TAMAGOTCHI!!!

DiCKiNSTASiA: Or that we could sell him the kind of super-custom GSM phone that runs QUAKE!!!

dArK sTuFfEr: Playing Quake on a GSM phone is not actually a very far-fetched scenario.

DaRK FuCKeR: New GSM phones will probably have a surprising amount of processing power in the near future. Besides, Quake is coded surprisingly well given how bad it is as a game. It is possible to compile its source code for the VAX with very minimal changes, for example.

dArK sTuFfEr: Not all VAXes are "museum pieces", but perfectly useful and reliable devices for IRC among other things. For example, the Aaro guy who hangs around on #linux.fi has said, that Quake -

mR.mEgAsTuFf: What the fuck, weren't you suposed to be firmly against Quake and GSM phones!??

dArK sTuFfEr: I am, but it is more related to the surrounding culture of lameness than the technology itself. Any argumentation that speaks against the x86 dominance is always welcome.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Yeah, right, but I think you sometimes sound like a fucking hypocrite when you're talking -

dArK sTuFfEr: I definitely do not. Hypocricy is a Judeo-Christian characteristic.

DiCKiNSTASiA: But for fucking real, that Synus guy! How can somebody be something LIKE THAT!?? There are no lamers NEARLY as bad as him on any boards, but Internet is full of that grade of folks nowadays!!

DaRK FuCKeR: Indeed. As the Eternal September gets deeper, individuals with increasingly low IQs find their ways to the mainstream Internet. Every time it feels like the maximum of lameness has been reached, there will be a new generation of users that will surpass it.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Now the web page clowns have gotten the idea that a homepage should be a kind of PORTAL, something you can set as your browser's start page. Then they register domains such as BEGINNING DOT NET where they always link in the daily-changing picture from the Iltalehti tabloid that has the day's frontpage in it, and then the weather map from the Meteorological Institute...

dArK sTuFfEr: That kind of pages are indeed completely useless especially without any server-side functionality of any kind.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Right, hear that! My start page is Google, dammit, and no fucking useless "portal"! Whenever I start up a web browser, it's usually Google that I need...

dArK sTuFfEr: I have actually been using a shell alias that starts up a Lynx instance that executes the given Google search. Free-form search is indeed required much more often than collections of link lists.

DaRK FuCKeR: But for real, listen to me now!! I made my own homepage JUST BECAUSE I WAS BORED!! And not because I would want to be friends with Synus at some Internet lamer circles!!

DaRK FuCKeR: I didn't bother to!! There were no good games for my 486 either!! I couldn't really concentrate on anything else either, because I was just thinking about Babylon 5 and how it's gonna continue...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: For real, you're still thinking about B5 all the time even though it's having a summer break now??

DaRK FuCKeR: Of course I do!! Because it's the best series ever in my opinion, and it got stuck in such a thrilling position!! I've been so damn thrilled because now they're soon gonna reveal what the Shadows are like and what kind of cool wars and space battles they're gonna have then and -

myXTer: I think the summer break was tactically put in just before the hyped-up PLOT will start FOR REAL...

DiCKiNSTASiA: Yeah... luckily I've got a VCR so I've been able to rewatch the old episodes again and again...

DaRK FuCKeR: I ain't even got no VCR! I just keep reading all the Finnish B5 websites again and again!! So unfair!!

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Couldn't you change for another topic with your thrillings? Like, switch back to thrilling about that it's soon gonna be year 2000...

DaRK FuCKeR: Oh, yeah, right!! It's ONLY A BIT OVER A YEAR AWAY!! And then it's gonna be THE FUTURE!! I had almost forgotten how thrilling that is!!

dArK sTuFfEr: I actually think that if anything will happen at the turn of the millennium, it will be more related to the Y2K bug than to any hypothetical start of a "future".

myXTer: I really hope that they'll get those bugs fixed... that VAX-Aaro from #linux.fi has been fixing some banks' COBOL codes to be Y2K compatible...

myXTer: Yeah, I've heard that... he actually thinks Linux is so lame nowadays because everyone has it, and even proprietary UNIXes aren't true enough. One should have at least some OpenVMS or rather some damn AS/400 even...

DS I heard he would have even gotten a PDP-11 for free from somewhere, but he couldn't fit it in from the door of his flat apartment.:

DiCKiNSTASiA: But ain't it actually good if Internet went broken in the year 2000, given how full of lamers it is? The tough guys would just return to the BBSes again...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Fuck's sake, I would lose my job if the Internet were gone! Lamers are needed in this world, at least for paying for the life of the elite...

dArK sTuFfEr: I actually believe that if Internet stops working because of the Y2K issues, a new golden age of BBSes would begin in the world.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Fucking "golden age of BBSes"... FUCK'S SAKE! What the fuck even wants some fucking boards back anymore dammit? Even the messaging was so sickeningly slow then... we sometimes needed to wait like a week before some guy replied to some message, dammit!! There's gotta be a proper Internet, and a fixed connection on top of that!!

dArK sTuFfEr: Even though Internet has brought fine possibilities in my life, I still argue that BBSes are more meaningful and important for me. If they disappeared from my life, I would also lose an entire way of existence and self-expression.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Bullshit! Internet has everything that the boards got, but many times better, dammit!!

dArK sTuFfEr: I think the good thing in BBSes is their constrainedness. On the Internet, everything drowns into the same "information super-ocean", but every BBS has a clear essence and clear boundaries. I appreciate the BBS culture above all, and I particularly respect the dedication that wArlord has shown in keeping Frontline BBS operational despite the Internet imperialism.

DiCKiNSTASiA: I actually try to care about it as well, but I can't always make it... after all, it is usually the Internet that usually responds to the dial first, and then I end up spending the whole night there rather than any BBS...

myXTer: I don't actually even have a landline at my Oulu apartment, but Jussi sends me QWK files by email and I mail my own reply files back... because I'm still actually interested in writing messages there.

DiCKiNSTASiA: It would be so much easier if he'd sometime bother chaining his board to a TCP/IP network, like it was before the Generator party!!

DaRK FuCKeR: Right, hear!! It'd be so much easier to call it and download the packets...

DaRK FuCKeR: Despite all the problems, I appreciate wArlord's principles regarding this issue. It is good that there is at least one BBS in the world that does not pollute itself with the hectic rhythms and limitlessness of the Internet but firmly remains on its own subtler cosmic level.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Okay, you may even appreciate the subtleity of a fucking piece of turd, I don't care...

DiCKiNSTASiA: But Jussi's principles even prevented him from coming to this party!! I wonder what he was thinking...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: I guess demoparties are also part of the same Internet crap he is against? He should fucking limit his stubbornness dammit -

DaRK FuCKeR: I think wArlord's "stubbornness" is very admirable, even though I do not always agree with him either.

myXTer: I guess his party boycott is mainly because his respect towards the demoscene dropped down to zero after the Generator fiasco...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: I don't care, I just think he should be here boozing with us dammit!

DiCKiNSTASiA: Yeah, he really should!! This party has been so damn cool so far...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Right, we can even get our booze inside the venue, and there's no Nazi jumping on our throat about it!! I have never been to a demoparty as relaxed as this one before!!

myXTer: At one point of time even cops visited the place, and the orgas just told everyone to hide the bottles...

myXTer: I guess it makes sense to let them in to be sure, even though they wouldn't have had to, because it's a "private event"...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Hey, don't you get why they asked everybody's realnames at the ticket desk?

mR.mEgAsTuFf: Well, you kind of become a member of a "non-profit organization" when you buy your ticket, and the party is officially like a private event for the members of that organization...

mR.mEgAsTuFf: You don't need to care about that, it's just some shit they say to all the bureaucrats and other adults. And I guess they also have an age limit of 18 even though nobody has asked anyone for an ID yet...

dArK sTuFfEr: It is an entirely appropriate way of using the bureaucratic machinery itself to bypass oppressive legislation.

dArK sTuFfEr: I still think that, despite the liberality of this party, we should organize an entirely separete CWU meet-up of our own, if we want that no CWU member has any problems with participation.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: As long as we're not gonna have it in some fucking Lietevesi! I'M NOT GONNA GO BACK TO LIETEVESI DAMMIT!!

dArK sTuFfEr: Lietevesi wouldn't even be a very justifiable location for a CWU meet-up. It is considerably difficult to reach because of the lack of a railway station and the weak bus connections.

mR.mEgAsTuFf: I think we could have that meet-up in our Käpylä apartment. Osmo has been recently talking about moving back to Lietevesi when I turn 18, and leaving me to live alone...

DiCKiNSTASiA: That would be so damn cool!! It'd be your 18-year birthday and a CWU meet-up at the same time!!

dArK sTuFfEr: Indeed. That would be a CWU meet-up to beat all the other CWU meet-ups, even the 1995 one.

dArK sTuFfEr: I actually meant to say that we can now freely forget about praising that particular meet-up, because the 1999 CWU meet-up will be so many times better.

DiCKiNSTASiA: Jussi could come there too, and even make that fly agaric kilju of his, so that we'll get like delirium-wasted!!

dArK sTuFfEr: Fly agaric kilju would definitely make the event sacred and meaningful. Perhaps that experience could even give us insight into CWU's role in the new millennium.

dArK sTuFfEr: Well, in that case, it is particularly important to be able to have a thorough and proper meet-up before the end of the world.