On being old and geeky.

Over at Therefore, I must Blog, I realized, in passing, that one day soon we'll have people who won't recognize the term "the tube" to describe a television, because they won't have tubes anymore. (Unless I really have the technology wrong.)

It reminded me of one of my favorite jokes and a "you had to be there" anecdote. It's one of my favorite stories and I guess it should be plunked down somewhere permanent-ish, if only to guarantee that I never be elected to public office.

Actually, this one isn't so bad. Remind me to tell you about the time I met Death.

Anyway, back in college, 1992-'93 or so, I was heavily involved in an online role playing game called Kobra. It was a MUD, a multiple user dungeon/multiple user dimension, basically a role playing game where the NPCs and die rolls and what-not were run by a program and people could log in all over the world and wander around this fantasy world, interacting with each other and all the various monsters and items and completing missions and quests. (I believe the host computer was [and still is] located in Sweden.) It was the forerunner on the online videogaming in much the same way that AD&D was the forerunner to Final Fantasy. Kobra was based on the Star Wars universe, allowing you to kill jawas, encounter droids and familiar characters, and travel deep space from Alderaan to Dagobah to Tatooine. The more foolish of us even dreamed of one day wielding a lightsaber. The game grew very quickly (it was created in '91) grew to include planets with themes from any number of s/f sources. There was the Hitchhiker's guild, the Predator Armour, and ad2029, where you could get mercilessly slaughtered by Terminators.

Turns out Kobra is still alive and relatively well. There are horror stories about the "cannon wars" that resulted in loads of great programmers packing up and leaving as TPTB decided that non-cannonical s/f works were no longer welcome and everything that wasn't Star Wars kosher had to be dumped or recoded so it only vaguely resembled the dreaded non-SW worlds. They also changed things around so giving mission info was illegal. When I was around, you could give a walkthrough over the public channels. The decade also saw the rise of the evil creature known as "Balance", which is Kobra-speak for "Players are getting too good, killing too many things, and getting too much money, how can we make it harder for them?" There isn't a single recorded instance of "balance" resulting in the game becoming easier for players.
On the other hand, there have been some wonderful new additions to Kobra. There are armour and weapon types that will make s/f fans drool. The worlds are bigger, the guilds more varied, and the rewards more rewarding. To top it off, lightsabers are fairly easy to get and use, and there are even more wicked and powerful lightsabers available. Yes, I am a geek. A total geek.

Recent years have even seen another shift in the power structure. In a desperate attempt to keep player interest up, and the fact that those who thought it was a good idea pretty much moved on, the canon-only rule was ditched and some of the old worlds are slowly making their way back.
I am also proud to be the chief instigator of the return of legal mission info. An acquaintence who'd been there forever told me that he'd helped every Jedi (as you complete missions and gain experience and skill, you rise in rank until you become a Jedi and have a say in the coding and running of the mud. Geeks, I tell you) who had Jedi'd since mission info was outlawed had received mission info from him and others. I happened to be running my mouth about it during one session and some Jedi took an informal poll and realized it was true. Mission info is now legal.

Anyway, to back up, after college I had no computer access. I remained mudless until I got a computer and went online in 2000. I eventually made my way back on the mud and even today I'll pop in every now and then and kill a few jawas.

But a couple years ago, I'd gotten pretty heavy into playing again. I'd be on for hours and hours and would sometimes regale my comudders with tales of the old days. Every chance I got, and I also used it on usenet and posting boards as much as I could, I'd throw in my favorite joke, "I was on way back in '93. 'Course back then we all had Commodore 64s and connected to our modems via rotary dial."

Seriously, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed that joke. It makes me smile even now. A couple of people even understood it. It was a couple years after I started making that joke that someone on Kobra asked, genuinely clueless, "What's a rotary dial?"

And that was when I knew I'd become old. I not only remember rotary dial phones, I've used one. One of my favorite toys from my maternal grandparents house on Lee Street was there big black rotary dial phone. I was fascinated with it. You stuck your finger in, pulled the dial around, let go, and it made such a wonderful sound as it wound back to its starting point. I even figured out that you could dial a number without touching the metal finger guard if you stuck your finger one hole past the number you wanted and stopped one hole short before hitting the guard. Forget Fisher-Price. Ma and Grandaddy's big black rotary dial phone taught me cognitive reasoning skills.

And now I have to come to grips with the idea that in a few years, people won't realize you used to "dial in" to your modem.