- Mar 8, 2003
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my dad says he hopes that it does not end up to be an autobiography, was originally going to be the introduction to a scifi story i was writing, but i gave up on it and merged what i had wrote together into this. here it is:
?Are you Oreo?? asked the man who had been snooping around the room for the past few minutes. Roger responded by saying that he had know idea what he was talking, with the exception that Oreos were mighty tasty. At that time the man glanced at the students computer monitor as he was trying to shut down the browser windows and caught a glimpse at what he had been doing. The man then said, ?no need to panic, what?s done is done and you have some explaining to do?. ?I am Jim, the network administrator for this university; I have been keeping my eye on you for some time. The amount of data being sent out from our computers is staggering and it?s slowing down our lines. I knew that some student had installed some kind of distributed computing program because of the way they data went out, in chunks that is. So, I went to various computers and then I find that they have had SETI clients installed on them with programs to mask that they were even there. I opened the account and the address was to Oreo, I saw a pattern emerging from the computers that were affected and learned that you had been using those around the time they started up?. Roger relaxed a small bit and leaned back in his chair, he knew he had been beaten. He had not prepared for someone being steps ahead of him; for you see he was in the mindset of most people that are fluent with computers, that no one is smarter than themselves. The Network Admin informed him of the punishment of installing unauthorized software on the campus?s computers and the punishment was stiff indeed.
Roger was now forbidden to use any computer on campus, being caught using one meant being placed on immediate probation. Imagine what his friends would say. Some of his friends had already been banned from the use of internet accessible computers for their downloading of music and movies, but not Roger, he got banned from using the computers because he was running SETI clients looking for aliens, man oh man, is that ever going to make him a hit with the ladies. His rank was very high in his SETI team for the few months that those clients that he deployed remained active, but one by one, they were disabled and his rank sank. Roger did manage to get most of his work done at the public library?s computers in the city in which his university was. From there, he got more involved in the research of extra-terrestrial life. All of his papers for then on were about aliens and flying saucers. His classmates even gave him a new nickname, Roger Wilco, after a character in an old science fiction game. Roger felt much ridicule for his obsession with the paranormal, his number of friends drops as he dove deeper into his obsession. Girls began to shy away from him as he became weirder and weirder in his classmates? eyes. He switched major to Astronomy. He then focused more on his studies in order to complete his miserable college career and begin working. He graduated in the top five percent of his class and got a job at a radio observatory. Roger?s obsession with extra terrestrial life led him to study abnormal radio signals for patterns rather than do his assigned studies of certain stars. He stored all of his recordings of the radio telescope for future analysis. This routine worked for several months until his supervisor examined his time cards and found discrepancies. He then investigated the matter further and reviewed logs of the radio telescope that revealed Roger had clearly not been doing his job. His supervisor confronted him with a stern warning for him never to use the telescope array for personal ambitions, for it was being paid for by the university to collect data for their research. Roger agreed to straighten up, but the search for ET had become his life. So, he continued to collect data and feed it into his various external hard drives for later analysis. His supervisor caught him again and Roger had a very nice set of words for his supervisor that did not share his vision for what radio telescopes were for. He was then promptly fired. Roger took the many hard disks that his data was on and left. He owned a small house that was not far from his observatory. As a matter of fact, you could see the array from the back of his house. He took the disks back and plugged them all into his computer and began the long process of analysis. In the mean time, he had finally calmed down and realized that he had no job, no friends, and no girlfriend. He was in complete isolation, but the isolation did not bother him as bad as the realization that he could no longer do what he loved to do, that is astronomy. He had saved a good bit of money up over the years, for he had no real expenses. He spent many days sleeping in his office at work. One could say that he was an extreme workaholic. But, it was too bad that his work that he was addicted to was not the work he was supposed to be doing.
Overpowered by thought, worry, and regret, he turned to a comforted friend of many people in such situations, he took to drinking. He went and purchased a few bottles of vodka and drove home to enjoy them. Intoxicated by the distilled potato whiskey, he decided that it was getting awfully warm in the room and ran a bath to cool off. He entered the bathtub fully dressed and filled with his liquor. As he lay relaxed he knew that no one could reach him. He had no phone, for no one ever called him and he never called anyone. With the comfort of being out of range of the world, he succumbed to the intoxicating beverage and fell asleep. He slowly slipped under the water, and that night, Roger gave up his life to the same thing that made up most of his body. His eyes could no longer see and therefore he died without knowing that the screen on his monitor shown an announcement that it had registered a pattern in the radio telescope observations he had recorded for the past months.
?Are you Oreo?? asked the man who had been snooping around the room for the past few minutes. Roger responded by saying that he had know idea what he was talking, with the exception that Oreos were mighty tasty. At that time the man glanced at the students computer monitor as he was trying to shut down the browser windows and caught a glimpse at what he had been doing. The man then said, ?no need to panic, what?s done is done and you have some explaining to do?. ?I am Jim, the network administrator for this university; I have been keeping my eye on you for some time. The amount of data being sent out from our computers is staggering and it?s slowing down our lines. I knew that some student had installed some kind of distributed computing program because of the way they data went out, in chunks that is. So, I went to various computers and then I find that they have had SETI clients installed on them with programs to mask that they were even there. I opened the account and the address was to Oreo, I saw a pattern emerging from the computers that were affected and learned that you had been using those around the time they started up?. Roger relaxed a small bit and leaned back in his chair, he knew he had been beaten. He had not prepared for someone being steps ahead of him; for you see he was in the mindset of most people that are fluent with computers, that no one is smarter than themselves. The Network Admin informed him of the punishment of installing unauthorized software on the campus?s computers and the punishment was stiff indeed.
Roger was now forbidden to use any computer on campus, being caught using one meant being placed on immediate probation. Imagine what his friends would say. Some of his friends had already been banned from the use of internet accessible computers for their downloading of music and movies, but not Roger, he got banned from using the computers because he was running SETI clients looking for aliens, man oh man, is that ever going to make him a hit with the ladies. His rank was very high in his SETI team for the few months that those clients that he deployed remained active, but one by one, they were disabled and his rank sank. Roger did manage to get most of his work done at the public library?s computers in the city in which his university was. From there, he got more involved in the research of extra-terrestrial life. All of his papers for then on were about aliens and flying saucers. His classmates even gave him a new nickname, Roger Wilco, after a character in an old science fiction game. Roger felt much ridicule for his obsession with the paranormal, his number of friends drops as he dove deeper into his obsession. Girls began to shy away from him as he became weirder and weirder in his classmates? eyes. He switched major to Astronomy. He then focused more on his studies in order to complete his miserable college career and begin working. He graduated in the top five percent of his class and got a job at a radio observatory. Roger?s obsession with extra terrestrial life led him to study abnormal radio signals for patterns rather than do his assigned studies of certain stars. He stored all of his recordings of the radio telescope for future analysis. This routine worked for several months until his supervisor examined his time cards and found discrepancies. He then investigated the matter further and reviewed logs of the radio telescope that revealed Roger had clearly not been doing his job. His supervisor confronted him with a stern warning for him never to use the telescope array for personal ambitions, for it was being paid for by the university to collect data for their research. Roger agreed to straighten up, but the search for ET had become his life. So, he continued to collect data and feed it into his various external hard drives for later analysis. His supervisor caught him again and Roger had a very nice set of words for his supervisor that did not share his vision for what radio telescopes were for. He was then promptly fired. Roger took the many hard disks that his data was on and left. He owned a small house that was not far from his observatory. As a matter of fact, you could see the array from the back of his house. He took the disks back and plugged them all into his computer and began the long process of analysis. In the mean time, he had finally calmed down and realized that he had no job, no friends, and no girlfriend. He was in complete isolation, but the isolation did not bother him as bad as the realization that he could no longer do what he loved to do, that is astronomy. He had saved a good bit of money up over the years, for he had no real expenses. He spent many days sleeping in his office at work. One could say that he was an extreme workaholic. But, it was too bad that his work that he was addicted to was not the work he was supposed to be doing.
Overpowered by thought, worry, and regret, he turned to a comforted friend of many people in such situations, he took to drinking. He went and purchased a few bottles of vodka and drove home to enjoy them. Intoxicated by the distilled potato whiskey, he decided that it was getting awfully warm in the room and ran a bath to cool off. He entered the bathtub fully dressed and filled with his liquor. As he lay relaxed he knew that no one could reach him. He had no phone, for no one ever called him and he never called anyone. With the comfort of being out of range of the world, he succumbed to the intoxicating beverage and fell asleep. He slowly slipped under the water, and that night, Roger gave up his life to the same thing that made up most of his body. His eyes could no longer see and therefore he died without knowing that the screen on his monitor shown an announcement that it had registered a pattern in the radio telescope observations he had recorded for the past months.
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