Life Before Google: A short story

I walked into the room and sat down on the couch next to you and said,  ”I just thought of something that I would like to know more about.”

“Well, that’s a damn shame.” You replied.

THE END

–Chuck and Beans Comic–

99 Red Balloons, Minus About 89

Today, my fellow internet users, marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of the internet itself. 

Yes, it has been 40 years since the first two letters (the first word supposed to be sent across the gap was “login” the L and O were sent successfully, the GIN didn’t make it before the system crashed) was sent over 400, from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute miles across the first connection that we now call the internet. What a difference it makes in the world. Going from virtually just a dream that imaginative nerds had in the late 1960s to a tool that is now considered a legal right in Finland. 

Today there was also a contest put on by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to use our newfound connections of the internet to find and pinpoint the exact locations of 10 giant weather balloons places around the nation. The winner was to receive $40,000 USD. 

Individuals were encouraged to find teams to compete with, I chose my very own Nerdfighteria, of course. They were donating all their money to charity, so an obvious choice. A neat infrastructure and social plan had already been in place for years of this team, and they had something already built… a tight knit, but geographically spread community. Yes, we were destined to win.

These balloons (I have typed this word into my browser way  too many times today) were a cause of flurry and focus in the internet communities today. The mark of 10 AM (EST) sent internet users from around the country out into the communities to search for the balloons, and thus started a race of skills, determinations, luck, adventure of unknown places, communication, networking, and using all technological resources possible. 

The most threatening enemy team? Students formed from the prestigious university called MIT. Yes they were trained for this sort of thing, but we, we were different, we were just good on our own.

After searching my own community at 8 AM (MST)  tuning in to the live broadcast by John Green, I found a hacker team of me and about 5 other people to link up with. And our mission began. 

We ended up building proxies, to throw off MIT’s lead finder, which was an interactive map on their team page. 

We. were. good.

At the end of the day, Nerdfighteria got all ten locations found and submitted them to DARPA.

We waited and crossed our fingers, but alas we were beaten by only a couple of minutes by MIT. 

I still consider our day to be a huge success! Not only did I get to serve on the top team of hackers in Nerdfighteria, but we as a whole Nerdfighter community did do awesome!

DFTBA

~Miss Myké

An Excerpt… finally!

     We walked down the brightly lit hallways to our first class of the day in mutual silence after that. Not too many people were in the halls this early, which was good because I didn’t feel like pushing through the people this morning. The doorway to the music rooms was decorated nicely with notes and paintings around the frame. It was a good thing some people in this place had a personality, it distinguished them from all the others, the artsy youth.Yes they were by far the most interesting of anyone here at schooling. 

     I sat down at my individual pod and pulled up my files on my screen. The pods had just been upgraded this year, and were all matching in their qualities. They had nice big digi screens that produced 3-D images for art, science, music, and other such things. Their glass screens were of the highest quality and ultra scratch proof, so even the dumbest youth could not put a dent in it. Just behind the surface were our hover stools that stayed pretty much in place, as long as you had your settings configured correctly. 

     It seemed that everything was being configured into hover something or other these days. The magnetic grid that we had was fantastic, so there was no point in using any other traditional method of suspending things. Even art galleries never used walls anymore to hang photographs and paintings. They were just arranged throughout the room according to what the artist had designed for the pieces. Totally free of restriction. It was kind of an art in itself. 

     I opened the Draw3002 application and began work on a new project I had been thinking of all morning. It was of all the people, in a busy crowded street, but this street was in between buildings, not on top of them. It wasn’t like the subways that we had underground either, it was in the open air. All the buildings had portals that you could just walk through to get inside of them. 

     When I started to draw the people in these streets I noticed a shadow over my pod. I looked up over my shoulder to find my voice professor staring at my drawing.

     “Your here very early this morning dear. That is unlike you! I didn’t know that you were good at drawing Luxia. How come you are in Voice instead of Drawing?” 

     “Well Miss Brochés, I have already taken all the art classes this schooling center offers.” I answered her.

     “More than I have taken! And I love art!” Aéon chimed in from across the room, then dropped her head back down to whatever she was doing.

     “Well you could take them again, and expand your portfolio.” Miss Brochés suggested to me.

     “I have taken them all two or three times. Do you not like me in your voice class?”

     “Oh not at all Miss Luxia! You are a delight in my class, especially when you speak up. I was just wondering why you are fooling around in Voice when you are great at art.”

     “I like Voice very well Miss Brochés. I wish to continue my studies in it for now.”

     “Very well then, I will leave you to continue now, sorry I interrupted.”

     “It’s okay, you can watch if you want, I don’t much notice when people do.”

     I continued on with my drawing, until the clocks commanded that all students had to head to class, then I closed the application and waited for my peers to seep into the room.

     Class commenced. I didn’t know it then, but the beginning of a new life had started for me.

The Key to Stone

Burying something can have a tremendous effect on something. Especially when you have held that thing in your hands for so long. 

I mean, sometimes we may have set it aside, or forgotten about it for a little while, but other times it was the main point of our fascination. It was our light and joy, and a part of us would be missing if we had not found it in the first place. Right?

But stone, that is hard to break into. Its heavy to hold. Its strenuous to lift. And not pleasant to plant in. Yet here we stand, successfully growing a beautiful flower out of the hardest rock.

We may have wanted to give up at times, we may have been frustrated that stone does not take water well, but in the end, it has been well worth it.

And still I bury it in the ground. Not as a farewell to all our hard work, but as a way of handing its well being over to nature to play with. To make grow, or die of its own accord. Yet I think the world is a bit of a brighter place with it there flourishing instead of rotting. 

May we go on to flourish and bloom where we have been planted. Even through rough beginnings, and hard endings, may we flower to the best that is offered to us. Because making the world a more beautiful place is always refreshing and worthwhile.

Miss Myké

Twin adventures :}

Well, another day of my life is coming to a close, and oh, the adventures one might have if they just create them.

I suppose I am going to start with me and my twin and our endeavor to find the infamous Strawberry Puffs candies. Yes, we were bored and they are good. First on the agenda: admiring Brooke’s new car.

She just got her license, and it is quite a quaint, cute little beautifully blue car. And inside contained all the surprises; for one it was clean(surprisingly), for two it had a MP3 hookup, not just for i-Pods, but ALL MP3′s. Yay. And then, there was the cutest little passenger sitting in the front seat, like the teddy was meant to keep her company on long drives by herself. Aww Brooke.

And so after admiring her new mode of trasportation, and our way around town for the next hour and a half, we commence our journey. (looking at the car was a preface to the commencement of our journey) First stop; Smith’s: the ever famous JONES SODA stop of Brooke and Myké. At this location we decreased world suck levels by one shopping cart in a parking lot. Go us! Okay it was Brooke. Go her! Also at this stop we had to make sure they didn’t have any strawberry puffs, while rifling through all the JONES SODA bottles, to get the best picture, and appropriate flavor. Yum.

After concluding our trip to Smith’s with two JONES SODA’s and not strawberry puffs, we continued our quest, in even more distress than when we entered. “Where, oh where Strawberry Puffs could you be!” I wanted to shout to the heavens, but this crazy guy interrupted us talking over the roof of her car with a “Hilarious.”

Yeah, that was not hilarious, but now that I look back on it, we could have made it like that, cause we are twins like that.

Then on to the Grocery outlet. Decrease in world suck points total to date: 2

Then across the street to a gas station, it looked promising, and we were still hopeful. But what took place at this gas station was something even me and Brooke could have never predicted or imagined (I know! Very weird, and hard to do.) We BOTH saw exactly one (1) of our teachers at the gas station (and I go to school approx 1 hour away!) We headed straight out of there trudging to the car as fast as possible while mourning the fact we still ad not concluded our journey in this location. Sigh.

Brooke comes up with the idea to go to Albertson’s. Although I am skeptical about the probability of strawberry puffs at Albertson’s I concur with her that we should try. I was right, but we put our shopping cart world suck decrease points up to four (4)! Go us!

The we get the bright idea to ask ChaCha. They didn’t know what the crap we were talking about, so they declined to answer.

And by this time we are really racking our brains, or well, not really, we were just kinda being spontaneous through the whole journey, but we can say we tried really hard, laugh out loud. But thankfully Brooke’s mother called and after some requests and prodding, we coaxed the information on the location of the beloved strawberry puffs! Finally victory was in clear sight!

We zipped right on over to the gas station in front of Lowe’s and headed directly to the puffs. The epitimy of our evening! Well, okay not really, but still a victory for decreasing world suck at least! One battle won, in the long string of them. 

Ahhh, sweet, sweet strawberry puffs!

Oh the places you can go in life.

I think I will use this as my short story tomorrow in Creative Writing…

Love you Brooke,

Miss Myké