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On Thu, 17 Jun 1999 15:36:54 -0500, Sean Hayden wrote:

On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, nom_de_plume@altavista.net wrote:

[...]

First off the following paragraphs make a great introduction, buut, maybe
something to denote it as the beginning of the story, I thought they were the
authors notes. :)

That's about what I thought, too...

I don't remember the URL. I didn't bookmark it either, and in
Lynx all pages look more or less the same. Alta Vista, Excite and
Infoseek provide no clue whatsoever. I just downloaded the
program from one of the millions of sites out there.

"Check the source and compile" is my rule of thumb, but I was
very tired that night, and I didn't want to bother wading through
the code. I knew it was unwise to simply download and execute the
binary but, Bliss notwithstanding, there are no Linux viruses,
right? I decided to take my chances.

/*
"I knew it was unwise to simply download and execute the binary but as far
as I knew, there aren't any Linux viruses.  I decided to take my chances."

Bliss notwithstanding? Er. It doesn't make any sense in the context.
*/

// No viruses, but trojans aplenty.

There was a Mac virus on the Linux CD I got yesterday.  I'm going
to not think about this one; I really don't want to know.

Big mistake.

// Not as big a mistake as trying to upgrade your system while being lit on a
// litre of Sake.

Watch out for that state dependent learning; I knew a pair of driver
coders who couldn't do a thing with printers unless the two of them
were bombed out of their skulls.

                         Computer Girl Lan

// The introduction is a little sparse. It doesn't set the scene...

It seemed fine here.

[...]

My hands trembled as I held her waist and carefully rolled the
girl over. I guess the cliched description of how pretty she was
goes here, but it really wouldn't do justice to her delicate
beauty anyway. And, like I said, I had other worries.

// I'd scratch, "And,"

// if (beautiful_girl_on_geek == 1)
//	geek_flustered = 1;

I think
	if ((beautiful_girl_on_geek != 0) && !coder_trance) {
		geek_flustered = TRUE;
	}
is a bit more accurate.  :-)

A bundled sweater provided an impromptu pillow. I held my wrist
close to her perky little nose. A tiny spark from its tip shocked
me a bit. Damn static. The face of my watch fogged slightly as
her breath periodically moistened the crystal surface.

// Perky and little is kind of redundant.

Not necessarily.  (Don't ask, ever.)

[...]

I got up to check my computer. A brand new AlphaStation, my pride
and joy! Did the monitor just flicker? I held my breath as I
faced the screen:

// Whoo hoo! Alpha!

Got one of these in yesterday.  The Wizard is still setting it up though...

error: core dumped
_

I typed "ls -alt" and pressed "Enter". Much to my relief, a
directory listing appeared. I let out a loud sigh. So far so
good. Hmmmm, no core file. Strange.

// What? No pipe to more? Big console, eh? <g>

There could be habitual use of scrollback...

I was about to execute the command when the unexpected happened.

    "BAKA!!!"

// Ok, I'll bite,  what's with the Japanese at this point?  I think some more
// reasoning on this would be justified other than, "She watched my anime
// collection.

I'd expect language to be tied to the current locale on the
Workstation, if nothing else.

[...]

    "Well, I... um... I could turn my computer off?"

// "And umm, I could use this Alpha Station as a really keen bookend!"

'Bookend'?  I do not understand this concept. :-)

[...]

Winter nights are pretty bloody cold in these parts. I had a good

// Ah hah! Canadian!

It can get that way here too, and I'm not in Canada.

[...]

    "Aaaah! How I _love_ snow!" she cooed.

Me too.  I really like the way it squishes between my toes.

[...]

    "That must be really inconvenient."

    "Tell that to the Windows and Mac CGs! Poor girls never
lasted more than a couple of hours. We had to discontinue support
for those platforms...."

// *chortle*

They actually tried?  Wow, must be some impressive coders
working on this project.

I simply nodded. While normally not a problem, I had just
downloaded a new beta kernel a couple of weeks ago. It still had
a few bugs, though, and had a tendency to crash after three or
four days. I had had to reboot that same morning, but I didn't
want to tell this to Lan, who clearly had a a screw or two just
slightly loose. I glanced at my watch: 1:05 am. I was very tired,
and hadn't eaten in over twelve hours. I decided to take it
slowly for the time being.

// Bad! Bad! No use development series on production machine! Bad!
// ^_^ Oh well, it makes for good drama though.

So who says it's a production machine?

Still, it *will* have a stable kernel when it gets moved to
production, *right*?

[...]

// Could be worse.  It could be, "freezing your ass off, trying to code in
// VBSCRIPT or somesuch.

That's much to horrible for words.

[...]

    "Coke. Diet."

// Uh huh. ^_^

Okay, everybody who saw that coming...  Skip it.

[...]

For what must have been the first time that night I had a chance
to calmly analyze her features. My descriptions have so far been
accurate, but perhaps a bit vague. Light brown hair framed her
face, consisting mostly of two large greyish eyes over a tiny
nose and a small mouth encircled by her thin, pale lips. She was
a bit on the short side, no more than 155, and rather thin, at

// 155 what?

Centimeters.  I thought it was fairly obvious from the context,
but it is still polite to be explicit with things like that.

[...]

    "Not again!" she exclaimed, rolling her eyes. "I told you
_twice_ already, I'm Computer Girl Lan, Digital Alpha Linux
version 1.0.0a, build 215, first public release. I was compiled
by the Master Programmer three hours, six minutes, and nine
seconds ago, and posted on the trans-dimensional webpage one
minute later. As luck would have it, you downloaded me and here I
am!"

// "Luck? I'm my experience, there's no such thing as luck."

But there is!  You just have to make sure that
	luck = -1;	/* Good */
rather than
	luck = 1;	/* Bad */
or you're in BIIIIG trouble.  (This particular sign usage
stems from some rather crufty old code, and is retained
because it would take too much work to change everything.
This has been known to cause trouble on compilers where
luck is implemented as unsigned.)

[...]

    "Ahhhh, your bakaness is truly amazing! Of course not! There

// Nitpick... The "baka"-this and "baka"-that is a little, umm. Irritating
// after a bit.  As the saying goes, "The once in a blue moon, Mein Gott, goes
// a long way in establishing the Germanic tongue in prose.  Just don't start
// loading the dialogue with every german word you can think of."
// Ok, it's not a saying, but I just made it one.

Cool, that's a good new traditional saying.  I'll have to save it
somewhere.

[...]

An hour later we finally stood up to leave. Upon opening the door
for Lan I heard "Forever Young" playing softly in the background.

Damn.

// Damn?

That would follow, yes.  At least in certain areas.  I think it
assumes too much about the reader's background though.

[...]

not. ^_^ Maybe I just liked the story. 6)  While I understand what the top and
ps output means, I doubt that there are more than a dozen people who are avid
fanfic readers do.  You may want to consider condensing and clarifying.

I suspect the absolute count is rather high, but the point still stands.

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