At around 7pm I arrived at Phillipes in downtown LA, right on time. I began to search the area for people who might be part of the illusive and storied membership of 2600. I made certain assumptions about what the arriving group might look like. The lines were long so I had time to speculate for 30 minutes before the counterman took my quick order, lamb, slaw, lemonade. I had a ten dollar bill and it was a cash only counter. I wanted cheese on my sandwich but I couldn't afford it without going first to the ATM for more ducats. I didn't dare to leave the queue and wolfed down what I could afford only having identified one sure suspect. As soon as I saw him, I knew. He looked familiar and the only name that jumped into mind was RU Sirius, but he was too young to be him or to be Bruce Sterling. But he had the classic hacker look, a studied monastic perfection coupled with bohemian flair. Black circular glasses, dark clothing with many pockets, long hair pulled off the face, attentive posture and that combination of nonchalance and awareness of a mind idling and musing in casual surroundings that at can any moment be brought to laserlike focus on a subject of interest. He was my white rabbit.
It turned out that we never spoke through the evening although we exchanged glances and I could tell that at least one time he managed to hear and get a joke of mine. It reminded me, this kind of nervously energetic conversation which proceded through the evening in the company of the two dozen, of the way I spoke in highschool. Excited and not excited about complex arcanities, and drawing divergent kinds of thinking and ribald humor into conversations that studiously avoid the pedantic. You want to be a know-it-all, entertain people into your sphere, but not offputting without a smile. It's the way geeks talk, depending on their attitude. Tonight there were multiple flavors of geeks. It was a stew I didn't expect.
So the evening began after my meal, in the back room of Phillipes at a long table. The man to my left was Jose. The man to my right was Orange. I introduced myself as Michael to several whom I still don't properly know but recall as Checker, Orb, Orange, Middle, Santa, the previously known Rabbit, The Adjunct, and two or three others.
Jose was visiting from down south where he is involved in a project involving microcontrollers. He had a very dense understanding and immediately reminded me of the sort of programmer's dyslexia which is axiomatic of a chaotically creative mind. When you are full of *do*, and this is especially notable in young people who are not yet responsible for communicating the import and details of their work, words collide in the output queue. It's an interface problem that it took me many years to build when it came to my technical passions. I had but one question which after a few minutes of exchange between Jose and Orange seemed ever more trivial. I picked up one key term which I have only seen written down the past few days. Arduino. Jose might be interested in checking out my old associate at Henry atRacemanager as regards the finer points of telemetrics and capturing sensing data.
Orange was the first person I asked, along with his disappearing friend who was billing an hour of consulting on his Trio tethered ThinkPad, if I might find Emmanuel Goldstein around here. And he was also one of the first to greet me on the 2.6K IRC and whose profile I was able to find relatively easily. If Rabbit gave the visual clue, Orange was the one that immediately made me feel welcome, now in two dimensions of presence. Although it was probably more brownish, Orange wore that color sweater. He sported a fine watch and had an excellent leather satchel out of which he periodically presented a wonderous assortment of gadgets and tools, including an iPad and a set of Wiha precision screwdrivers. I also noticed via a quick glance that he had three identical pens at the ready.
I described to him at perhaps a boring length, during which he kindly provided the iPad as a whiteboard, the architecture of data warehousing and the prospects held by new technologies like Hadoop, columnar databases, new open source products and new devops methods. He in turn described some of his successes in the thin client map business. It might not have been an exciting discussion but it does provide grist for the mills of us geeks. So I expect that there is much for me to learn by my new associations at 2600.
Orb reminded me of an old friend of mine who was a huge fan of New Order, The KLF and of course, The Orb. He could have been his big brother. My old friend was a geek of the first order whose company I often abandoned for the sake of partying with people I thought I'd rather be around. He was an excellent keyboardist and shamed me in many ways with skill carved out of time I would have spent in the streets pursuing lighthearted adventure. Although I wasn't, being around him always made me feel like a spoiled, rich playboy. I didn't get a chance to speak much with Orb, and only heard him sideways, but I did spend a lot of time with Middle who was in awe of what Orb knew. When we got to Denny's later on in the evening, it seemed that Orb was going to speak and I would get a chance to hear what's new, but there were no speeches at Denny's. But I know to listen next time.
Checker was the boisterous kid who thought up the idea of hacking pixels for low level video drivers. If you were the user of such a driver and you looked close enough to their screens or have Superman's vision you would see that your graphics consisted of interlaced pornographic icons in place of what you would expect a normal pixel to be. Simply imagine at the lowest level of resolution that a single pixel looks something like a plus sign. Instead of a plus sign, it could be an inverted T that without much imagination one coulds see (ahem). Instead of pixels, dixels. Checker brought his iPad and regaled us with many videos, including some machinima staring Transformers. I didn't quite catch the orginal joke, but I was a little shy all evening.
Hanging out with The Adjunct allowed me to speak a little about my purpose for attending 2600 meeting. The Adjunct had been around for over 7 years, but had missed a few meetings recently. I was informed about whether or not this was a decent turnout or relatively small. (It was decent, but there were larger), and learned some of the more senior members. The Adjunct was the second member to smoke Camels. Apparently, the world is not dominated by Marlboro Lights.
Most of the evening, however, I spent talking with Middle, the middle child of seven children who turns out to be a literate scholar of Faulkner. Middle was there to figure out what other machine he should buy, not that his Macbook had been stolen and needed a replacement. I suggested an iPad. I was more fascinated, however, with his trips to Cuba and his impression of the people and system there. We both sought to avoid a political discussion and it took a bit for me not to be philosophically judgmental, but that's how I think. We talked a bit about writing and I'm hoping that he starts a blog once he gets his new machine. I definitely want to send him some traffic. Next month I hope to see him again and maybe I can even talk him over into a philosophy meetup.
At Denny's we hung out and ate and smoked and snarfed some free *old* books that were brought over by one of the senior members by the box load. I got a copy of a speaker building manual from Radio Shack. It happened to have a receipt in it from a pizza joint in Fullerton that was dated 1999. It turned out that the joint still had the same phone number. Thanks Google.
That's about it. Can't wait until the next meetup. I'll unleash a little more personality, and maybe I'll figure out Santa's story.
