One day at the Computer Gym

[Mdlftr]

O.k., gentlemen, you MADE me do it!


Here, in a salute to our own Evolution Forum, is a day in the life, one day like any other, .....

One Day At the Computer Gym
by MDLFTR

Two computer jocks, Ted and Ned, are standing around in the gym. Ted, a baby-faced red head, with the requisite freckles and green eyes, is about 6 foot even, 200 chiseled pounds of sinewy muscle. His buddy, Fred, is a brunette, with hazel eyes. He stands a lanky 6 feet two inches, 185 pounds. His chiseled good looks remind a casual onlooker of a slimmer Ben Afflick. They are getting drinks at the water fountain.

Ted speaks first.

Ted: ?Man, did you see me on that last set? I deadlifted 7 PC/Macs, in good form, for 10 reps! I?m feeling strong, man!?

Fred: ?Dude, you?re an animal! I thought you were gonna drop ?em!?

Ted: ?Nah, I?m feeling pretty good since that latest system upgrade. Bring ?em on, I say!?

Fred: (with worried look on his face) ?Dude, ANOTHER upgrade?! That?s your third in six months! You?d better watch it! You know what happened to Ned!?

Ted: ?Ned?? Wasn?t he that short dude with the serious guns and pecs? He?s an animal! Hey, how?s come I haven?t seen him around lately??

Fred: ?You mean you haven?t heard? He had a system crash. He went blue screen for almost 5 minutes. His operating system had so many patches, he was unstable. They had to do a major re-boot, and he lost a LOT of data. Way I heard it, he even lost memory. He went from 512KB down to 256. He?s a twig compared to what he was!?

Ted: ?Ouch! Still, serves him right for trying to take shortcuts!?

Fred: ?Short cuts? Look who?s talking! You just got another system upgrade, and you?re blaming Ned for taking shortcuts?!!?

Ted: ?Hey, I?m just bullsh*tting ya?! I wouldn?t ever get a system upgrade unless I knew where it came from! Besides, I?m not like Jed!?

Fred: ?Jed?oh yeah! He was a real risk taker. Way I heard it, he?d go slumming for open source code, and he wasn?t too particular about where he picked it up!?

Ted: ?Yeah, he was a real code slut. He went in for some rough trade. It?s too damn bad they didn?t come up with the patch before he crashed. He fragged so bad, they were never able to put him back up. He?s blue screen for good.?

Fred: ?He?s what LG calls a ?good bad example?.?

Ted: ??LG?? Who?s ?LG???

Fred: (eyeing Ted incredulously) ?You know, ?LG??.?EL Gee??the owner of this gym? You know, Leather Gryphon?!?

Ted: ?Oh, LG! I gotcha! I couldn?t think what you were talking about!?

Fred: ?Only the best computer gym owner on the planet, and you can?t remember his name? What kind of dork are you? (Gives Ted a playful shove with one hand)

Ted: (Shoving back) ?Hey, I?m beat, man! After all, I just deadlifted 7 PC/Macs, remember!? (smirks and spreads his lats)

Fred: (Rolls eyes) ?Yeah, yeah. So impress me! It?s not like you?re any OttoMund!?

Ted: ?Yeah, now there?s a dude with big guns?..and a nice A**!?

Fred: ?God, man, why don?t ya just go over and drool all over him?! You?re such a homo!?

Ted: ?Nah, I just have good taste. Speaking of good taste, did you see who just walked in: BigSteve6foot3 and Massing UP??

Fred: ?Whoa! I wondered why it got dark in here! They?re covering up the sun!?

Ted: ?You think THAT?S good---look who just walked in behind them: Brent and Ethernet_Jock! Gonna be some serious lifting tonight!?

Fred: ?I heard B challenged E to an operating system showdown!?

Ted: ?I heard! Should be awesome!?

Fred: ?They?re starting out with PC/Mac squats, then moving on to Deadlifts and finishing with benches! Look, they?re warming up with Harris T2000 curls! Let?s go check it out! Oh, sorry dude!? (He pats a fellow gym member on the back and helps him to his feet, after accidentally knocking him down.)

MDLFTR: (Brushing himself off) ?Why don?t ?cha watch where you?re going, man? You almost crashed my drive!?

Fred: ?Um, yeah right. First time here, right??

MDLFTR: (Sheepishly) ?Well, not quite. But I haven?t downloaded in a while?.?

Ted: ?Don?t worry! You?ll get the hang of it soon! Just take it one email at a time! Go ask Arpeejay?he?s good with the newbies! Him or Glammaman2000?.(to Fred) Now let?s go watch ?em lift! (Calls across the gym) ?Hey, BigJoey! Let?s go! They?re starting!?

Fred: ?No, they?re waiting for SexyScriptor. He?s keeping track of the lifts.?

Ted: ?No. Corin?s keeping track. ?Scriptor?s checking their lifts against the gym records.?

Fred: ??Kay. Say, isn?t that Muscle_D_2000 over there in the corner? What?s he doing??

Ted: ?If I know, him, probably deadlifting a mainframe!? (Laughs)

Fred: (Grinning) ?That boy?s gonna do hisself an injury! Good thing BuffDoc?s here!?

Ted: ?Yeah, it?s nice to have such a collection of talent around!?

Fred: ?You said it! Now let?s go watch some lifting! Five bucks says Ethernet_Jock cleans Brent?s clock!?

Ted: ?No way! Brent?ll wipe the floor with ?em! Did you see what he did last week during the Zottman curl showdown with Jace??

Fred: ?Ah, he just got lucky! Besides, Jace totally RULED with shrugs! He can beat anybody---?cept E_J, of course!?

Ted: ?He can not!?

Ted and Fred saunter off, still arguing.

MDLFTR: (Calling after them) ?Later, dudes!?

Just another evening in the computer gym??


-END-

[wbhunk]

MD, that is, bar none, the most creative thing I have ever read. I about laughed my mouse off! )

OK, I'll byte, watt overriding power made you generate that? You gave a lot of us a good Word. Thanks, you Excel. Perhaps we should take up a collection and give you some cache for your effort. This little bit of humor is burning out too much of my ancient memory but I think I said the core of my idea.

[arpeejay]

That was VERY suite, thanks!

1.0.1.0.1.0

richard

[ethernet_jock]

hahahahhaha

dude, that was AWESOME. By far the best story I've read on this board so far.

:P

or maybe I should say:

%49%27%6C%6C%20%77%69%70%65%20%74%68%65%20%66%6C%6 F%6F%72%20%77%69%74%68%20%42%72%65%6E%74%20%61%6E% 79%20%64%61%79%2E

[brent]

Cute, I had a lot of fun reading it and couldn't help but think of how fun it would be if all the regular members here could workout together occasionally... Could someone smarter than me please get busy on that transporter beam?

*Getting out Unicode chart to look up EJ's responce*

[brent]

Despite the fact that EJ should have used a 6F instead of the last 61, he will have a LOT of work to do to get to that point!

Just remember: 49%20%63%61%6E%20%62%65%6E%63%68%20%45%5F%4A%20%74 %6F%64%61%79%21



Note: for less geeky members, click here for a key.

[ethernet_jock]

yes - well - I suppose you could, couldn't you? over and over again, actually... that would probably just be a warm-up for you.

argh... dammit

and unfortunately, the best I could do would be like an ottomun or maybe slightly heavier on a very good day. I couldn't even do myself

Ahhh well... right you are... it will take me some time... but some day I will be able to do that. Just more incentive for you to keep ahead of me. :P

plus, there's that whole martial arts thing that helps too.

[Mdlftr]

HI Guys,

Thanks for all your kind comments!

This story was inspired by the "computer-geek-speak" outbreak by Brent and Ethernet_Jock. It seemed to have NOT produced the "suppression" effect I was looking for, and has now made ME curious:

What do the strings of code translate to:

Originally Posted by brent

Despite the fact that EJ should have used a 6F instead of the last 61, he will have a LOT of work to do to get to that point!

Just remember: 49%20%63%61%6E%20%62%65%6E%63%68%20%45%5F%4A%20%74 %6F%64%61%79%21

Note: for less geeky members, click here for a key.

I had a lot of fun writing this. You guys are a natural source of inspiration, so I might think of a few more ideas.........

Mdlftr

[brent]

Originally Posted by ethernet_jock

... but some day I will be able to do that. Just more incentive for you to keep ahead of me. :P

plus, there's that whole martial arts thing that helps too.

Yeah, I think you are close to my warm-up weight, but it took enough work to encode what I did, so I was going for simplicity. In the future, I'm sure you will be able to mop the floor with me, because you have a larger frame, but for now I think you'd find the effort futile.

As for the martial arts thing... In the words of one character in the crappie 80's movie, Uncommon Valor, "Boy, using that Chinese bullsh*t will get real expensive!

[BigSteve6ft3]

Wow. Thanks, Mdlftr, for that extremely weird little outburst of imagination. LOL

And thanks for including me as one of the stars. I'll be signing autographs after the show...

EJ and Brent, behave yourselves! You know, if you're going to start posting all your messages in hex-encoded ascii, we might start ignoring you. Don't know about the rest of these guys, but that's definitely not my mother tongue.

But geek-speak aside, you've got me curious now. I'd like to see that Brent vs EJ contest. Not sure where I'd place my bet. Hmmmm.

Mdlftr, I'm looking forward to whatever else you might conjure up.

Steve

[brent]

Originally Posted by BigSteve6ft3

...
EJ and Brent, behave yourselves! You know, if you're going to start posting all your messages in hex-encoded ascii, we might start ignoring you. Don't know about the rest of these guys, but that's definitely not my mother tongue.
...Steve

It must not be since EJ used Unicode. I don't think ASCII has a need for using hexadecimal numbers, because it contains so few characters. as for the fight, this fag ain't afraid o' kick'n some breeder butt! I'm kidding, but I could have meant it earlier this week...

Brent.



P.S. Don't blame the Unicode on me. I just bit back (someday soon I should try to develop self-restraint. Usually I would have just put some lame, over-used joke at the end like, "There are 10 types of people in this world, those who know binary, and those who don't."

[BigSteve6ft3]

Originally Posted by brent

It must not be since EJ used Unicode. I don't think ASCII has a need for using hexadecimal numbers, because it contains so few characters.

Well, I decoded it just fine using good ol' ASCII. For the standard Latin alphabet, Unicode=ASCII. In fact, as far as I can see, for any character for which and old-style ASCII code exists, Unicode=ASCII.

As far as I know, the alphabet (together with the other characters on a standard keyboard) has always been encoded using two hexidecimal digits, or eight bits, hence the standard 8-bit byte. One byte gives you 256 possibilities, which is about right for upper- and lower-case letters, plus decimal digits and other standard typewriter characters like ?, !, @, #, $, etc.

Unicode expands that to four hex digits to accomodate a much bigger character set. All the ASCII characters appear in unicode with two leading zeros, e.g. 0041 for 'A' in stead of just 41 in ASCII.

Damn! I'm going off on geek-speak again! See what you've done?!!

[brent]

Originally Posted by BigSteve6ft3

Well, I decoded it just fine using good ol' ASCII. For the standard Latin alphabet, Unicode=ASCII. In fact, as far as I can see, for any character for which and old-style ASCII code exists, Unicode=ASCII.
...
Damn! I'm going off on geek-speak again! See what you've done?!!

OK, you're probably right. I always thought that ASCII used values 1-256, but that there were no need for hex. I do know for a fact that ASCII is a subset of Unicode, but I'd never seen hex used in it.

BTW, what have I done? I made you show that you are not only bigger than me, but also possibly smarter than me too. If I were you, I'd get over it quickly, but that's just me.

[ethernet_jock]

*observes for a moment and then returns to reading "x86 ASM for dummies"*

[BigSteve6ft3]

Brent,
I'm over it. Just couldn't let that little jab slide. Actually, since I only hack when I absolutely have to, I'm sure I could learn a thing or two from either you or EJ.

This thread, and the previous one where you and EJ were at each other's throats, brings to mind one of my favorite Weird Al Yankovic songs. It's on the album "Running with Scissors" and it's a parody of the rap song "It's all about the Benjamins." If you haven't heard it, this song alone is worth the price of the CD.

So now, for your enjoyment . . .


It's All About The Pentiums
by Weird Al Yankovic

It's all about the Pentiums, baby
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
Yeah

What y'all wanna do?
Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers
Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?
9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?
Workin' at a desk with a dumb little placard?
Yeah, payin' the bills with my mad programming skills
Defraggin' my hard drive for thrills
I got me a hundred gigabytes of RAM
I never feed trolls and I don't read spam
Installed a T1 line in my house
Always at my PC, double-clickin' on my mizouse
Upgrade my system at least twice a day
I'm strictly plug-and-play, I ain't afraid of Y2K
I'm down with Bill Gates, I call him "Money" for short
I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support
It's all about the Pentiums, what?
You've gotta be the dumbest newbie I've ever seen
You've got white-out all over your screen
You think your Commodore 64 is really neato
What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito?
You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh!
Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?
You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette
You're the biggest joke on the Internet
Your database is a disaster
You're waxin' your modem, tryin' to make it go faster
Hey fella, I bet you're still livin' in your parents' cellar
Downloadin' pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar
And postin' "Me too!" like some brain-dead AOL-er
I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller
You're just about as useless as jpegs to Hellen Keller

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)

Now, what y'all wanna do?
Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers
Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?
9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?

Uh, uh, loggin' in now
Wanna run wit my crew, hah?
Rule cyberspace and crunch numbers like I do?
They call me the king of the spreadsheets
Got 'em printed out on my bedsheets
My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
But it was obsolete before I opened the box
You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique
Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great
If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight
My digital media is write-protected
Every file inspected, no viruses detected
I beta tested every operating system
Gave props to some, and others? I dissed 'em
While your computer's crashin', mine's multitaskin'
It does all my work without me even askin'
Got a flat-screen monitor forty inches wide
I believe that yours says "Etch-A-Sketch" on the side
In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user
You've got your own newsgroup, "alt.total-loser"
Your motherboard melts when you try to send a fax
Where'd you get your CPU, in a box of Cracker Jacks?
Play me online? Well, you know that I'll beat you
If I ever meet you I'll control-alt-delete you
What? What? What? What? What?

It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
It's all about the Pentiums! (It's all about the Pentiums, baby)
Now, what y'all wanna do?
Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers
Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?
9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?
What??

[brent]

Originally Posted by BigSteve6ft3

Brent,
I'm over it. Just couldn't let that little jab slide. ...

I was using terms like, "I believe", etc. so I didn't mean it as a jab. Trust me, if I get ticked off, you will know it!

Take Care, Brent.

PS Thank you for the lyrics, they were funny!