.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

Fermius Firefly

A Dream Log, whenever I remember the dreams I've had.

My Photo
Name:
Location: San Marcos, United States

Fermius is a pen name drawn from a series of short fiction I wrote when I published the small press magazine Stellanova (on paper.) I play RPG games to escape from my daily grind as a technology wage slave for the state of California. I eat out a lot in order to do my part in supporting our increasingly service level economy. I am butler to 2 feline masters. If you ask them they will tell you I'm not very good at it, late with dinner, don't have enough hands with brushes in them, and sometimes I even lock them out of their office.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Dreamed the can't go here because... and N Showering.

            In this case, the toilet was one of those funky handicapped toilets with the super seat on it. I hate those, you have to work to keep from splashing yourself.

            Meanwhile, N was taking a shower in the mostly open shower. She was the size she was when I met her, yummy.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Convention Dream, Hottie Homework Hotline, Steam Train Car

We were at a Science fiction convention, checking in, eating munchies in the pro hospitality suite, greeting some of our heroes, a little awed that we were in the same room with some of the all time Science Fiction greats. I didn’t even mind being treated like the new kid.

            Our Hotel Room turns into Math Homework Hotline. The blonde beauty doing her math homework needed some help. I wanted her to finish so we would have some time to take advantage of the hotel room while we had it to ourselves. So we had a common cause. Get her through her Calculus homework, fast. We finished and had just started to celebrate, when the suite door opened and some of our convention roomies came in to get ready for the masquerade.

            We broke off and helped one another into costumes for the Masque.

"Get a room!"  From our suite mates.

            I pointed out that it was our room. The five of us walked back to the convention.             The Masquerade contest was held in a semi outdoor amphitheater building near the convention. We stayed for the after party, waiting for the crowd to thin. Unfortunately we waited too long and the last shuttle had left.

            I asked everyone to wait while Mike and I go back to the hotel to get the car. The car was a converted steam engine, Telephone book burning, fuel oil burning, partly electric. The large iron wheels were covered in thick rubber and it had a bumper and lights mounted on its cow catcher.

            Taking the Steam car back to the Masque to pick up the rest of the group was a fun trip. No one on the streets could believe what they were seeing. A police car followed us all the way to the convention. I stoked the fire about half of the trip then stopped, thinking that would give us enough pressure to make it back to the hotel.

            There was not enough room for everyone, so we hooked up to our passenger car, which was parked in a nearby lot. When we pulled in front of the convention center, there were even more people waiting to ride with us. The girls had invited everyone who had to go back to the hotel to ride our "train". I expanded the passenger car (it telescoped out like one of those collapsing camp cups.) I was in the cupola driving the back end like a Hook and Ladder truck. We were a little worried about getting back to the hotel, we might not have made enough steam, and I wasn't there to stoke the boiler.

Fortunately the trip to the Hotel was mostly downhill, and we made it without trouble. It helped that the police cruiser went ahead of us and turned the lights in our favor. We thanked them when we arrived at the hotel, and then gave them a ride around the block. I showed one of them how to drive the back of the train and the other rode in the cab with Mike. It took us a bit to find a parking place for both parts of the train. Finally we had to de couple the two and collapse the passenger car to fit it into a normal sized parking space as there was only one bus space left. The Police officers stayed and helped push it back together. They got a call and had to leave just before I got out the giant spanner and tightened everything down.

"Sure, cut out for the hard part!" We wished them a safe evening and they promised to stop by tomorrow if they could.

            Mike and I wondered how many of the folks we gave a lift to were now hanging out in our suite. Neither of us had a lot of energy left after packing up the train. Mike called S on his cell phone to find out.

            "Like we're going to do anything different no matter what she tells us."

            "Fine, I'm not telling you what she says."

            I shrugged and headed into the hotel, stopping in the bar to pick up a couple of adult beverages for the remaining couple of us who drink.

            I woke up before finding out who was there. I'll have to call Mike and ask.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Alternate Reality, Japan and a Work Dream


      I was shot down over Japan.
      I crawled through brambles and mud to make my way to a hillside with a bombed out construction site. I took over a crane/bucket dredge and opened up a tunnel into the hillside. I'm not sure how I knew there were tunnels there, but I did. Several days later, when I realized the construction crews were not coming back, I started construction of a large house on top of the hill. There was an array of rebar that I connected to a radio receiver. It gave an early warning of approaching bombers. I managed to warn the nearby town and evacuated everyone to the tunnels under the hillside. After the bombing raid, I helped with the rebuilding of the town, allowing the homeless to live in the tunnels until reconstruction was complete. Soon the war was over.
      I married a half-Japanese woman. The townspeople had pretty much shunned her until we started dating. We had three children, two sons, both with black hair, one with blue eyes and one with brown, and a daughter who was blond haired and blue eyed, but still with a Japanese looking face and skin.
      The dream jumped forward well over 20 years from the time I landed in Japan. We had made a good living from the tunnels under the hill, growing mushrooms and selling them around the world. I had retired, and was looking for a project when I came across the old dredging machine. I rebuilt and restored it in the bomb crater where it had been buried during the war. I had built a large hanger type structure over it to protect it from the weather. There was a walking path that went to the house from the main road, and I paved a spur into the hanger. Many of the villagers stopped by to visit, and sometimes to help out.
      A gentleman arrived at my home with his 17 year old son in tow. The gentleman was a decade or more older than me. He was also retired, but looking to find all of his company's old equipment, which was lost during the war, in particular he was looking for the old dredging machines. He had been one of the engineers to design them.
      As I walked him to the crater, my daughter, who was also around 17, took pity on the son, and offered to show him around the house, and to get him something to eat and drink. They headed into the main house. The gentleman and I reminisced about the war. Both of us amazed that I'd never been captured. After working so hard to save the citizens of the town from destruction, with his company's abandoned equipment, they hadn't the heart to turn me in. We stepped into the hanger and there was the dredge, fully restored, with a paint job both cleaner and brighter than the day I'd found it.
      The gentleman was stunned. He started taking shots with his digital camera and talking excitedly. I had a plaque at the base of the dredge that told the story of how it had saved the town. The plaque was in both Japanese and English. He offered to go back to his company and arrange a sponsorship for my little museum. Before he left, I fired the engines up and let him run the crane up and down and lift a bucket load and release it from the test yard. He left with tears in his eyes.
      Back in the house my daughter came running to me. Also in tears. The son had kissed her. That wasn't the problem though, she'd wanted that. But he'd also pinched her cheek. She'd scolded him for that, then he swatted her butt for scolding him. That had caused her to kick him and storm out. I didn't ask where she'd kicked him. She'd been taking martial arts since she was three, I'm sure the boy had been well behaved after that. She wanted to know what to do.
      "Well, if you see him again, though I don't pretend to know why you would, only that you have it in your eyes to do so. Please, let him know that your daddy is not the sort of man to trouble law enforcement to settle his complaints. Let him know that my daughter's health and safety are worth more than his." I smiled at her.
      "Daddy!" Her eyes grew large, as she could tell I meant exactly what I implied. Then she hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. I returned the kiss and she jogged off, happy again. In that moment she reminded me of her mother. I made a note to run a discreet check on the boy's school records. I headed up into the house to check on dinner and to greet my sons who were due to arrive any time. My wife would be happy to know that my little retirement hobby was about to pay for itself.

      My DSP still seems to be based out of Japan.
      
      This morning I dreamed that I was working on some sort of batch import for our new work order tracking system. It kept missing a certain table. My boss and I finally decided we needed to take a break, so got up to go for a walk.
      It was a very detailed dream, the test lab was actually almost the size of a classroom. There were about a dozen workstations and rack with half a dozen servers in the corner. I could feel the keys on the keyboard clicking under my fingers. Hear the cooling fans. All of my co-workers were talking with one another or on the phones, also tapping away out in their part of the room. I'm not positive, but I think this is the first full on work dream with a "regular" cast that I've had in awhile.
      A small part of my brain noted that we were no longer in the offices at the end of the warehouse dock.

      If I were not so lazy, I would categorize my dreams and then I would be able to do a search on them.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Dream City Mall

Vivid dreams this morning, at the Dream City Mall. I walked up the stopped escalator to the second floor. There were dozens of nearly empty shops. Each shop had one person in them. I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. I walked the length of the mall's upper floor. There'd been a furniture store at one end, but it was closed. I turned around, and headed back for the escalators. I realized then, that the people in the store fronts weren't just the owners of those spaces, but also the products. They each were available to join the dream in progress.

            I didn't recognize any of them. Thinking about it now, I know I wouldn't have recognized them; they were "new" people.

            I window shopped for a bit, but couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do. They weren't imprisoned or anything, just available, although I didn't see any prices.

            The dream shifted and I was back on the lower floor of the mall, in a computer shop. I was playing around on a system that was supposed to be 100% Malware proof. I went to a couple of web sites that downloaded crud onto the system. It slowed down to a crawl.

            The shop manager came over, irate. "What are you doing?"

            "Testing your system on a real site that loads crapware."

            "You've screwed it up! What did you do?"

            "I just went to this web site."

            The manager shut the system down and re-booted. It came up, clean as a whistle.

            I asked him where, and how, user data was stored, and how could the system protect it from being snooped, corrupted or deleted.

            He didn't know anything, other than the data was on removable media of some sort, but it wasn't installed on the demo model.

            It seems the system was running like one I proposed for our school district. The OS loaded into a virtual disk from write protected media. The custom parts of the environment being configured from a network connection. All user data was in network storage (internet in the case of this dream) an applications were either preinstalled or loaded from the network/internet. When the system was shut down, the alterations and changes any malware, or user, could make were gone. Apparently I think there are still issues to be worked out.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Interrupted Dream, Rafting with Bast

            We interrupt this dream for an important announcement. This is a test of the emergency dream interruption system, if there had been a real emergency, you would have awakened confused and sweating, possibly dead. You may now resume dreaming.

            I was so amazed that I couldn't continue where I left off and awoke confused and sweating. So, was there a dream emergency? I think I am still having trouble with my DSP (Dream Service Provider.) I don't seem to be Japanese, like for the first three nights after my first DSP was bought out, but things still aren't quite up and running smoothly all the time. I also haven't seen some of my dream regulars since the change over, and one of them looks decidedly different. (Not in a bad way, just different.)

I did have another dream for the short time I slept before the cats belly-flopped on me from the headboard. (Their charming way of letting me know they are HUNGRY.)

In the dream I was floating in the ocean on a small raft like construction, looked like it was made of throw pillows and milk cartons. There were singing fish flying through the air. I couldn't make out what they were singing because it was in Japanese. I had a couple of the cats with me; they were struggling to climb up high enough to stay dry, which meant they were mostly climbing on me. Bast was there as well, she was also not happy about all the water, but wasn't making a big fuss about it as long as I told her we were headed for land. I got the cats off of me and then slipped into the waves, towing the raft to shore. I didn't plan on staying on the island I’d spotted, as it looked more like a sand bar around a volcano. I couldn't see any vegetation, and only birds for animal life. The fish all floated out of the water into the sky, still singing their song.

            The cats and the cat-woman/goddess were happy for the presence of fish and birds. "Yum." was pretty much her comment. I spotted some sharks in the air in the distance, but they didn't seem to have any interest in us. I just hoped there were none in the water. I wondered if there were birds flying in the water like fish were swimming in the air.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Big old Dream Warehouses with Amusement park Conveyor Belt

            Myself and several unknown and unknowable others were running around an industrial park, up and down ramps, in and out of large warehouse like buildings. Finally found ourselves (The cast was continually mutating from one person to several and the people didn't maintain their identities from one moment to another.) on a dangling feet type amusement park ride, but it wasn't fast and didn't even have any sharp turns or twists. The ride went on and on, the cast becoming more and more naked. Finally I started to worry that we were in some sort of large alien food packing plant, and that we were the food items.

            As we came to a part of the ride where there was a concrete landing I forced the bars up with the help of the rest of the car, and most of us jumped down off the ride and scurried off into the warehouse.

            I started looking for the controls to shut down the production line. Soon I was alone, and there were Indiana Jones style Nazis chasing the others. I tripped one and stole his keys and a belt with a big red button. It looked important, but, the button, being big and red, I didn't really want to push it. I wandered around, avoiding patrols, finally coming to a control booth type room overlooking the whole warehouse. I snuck up the stairs, distracting the guards by throwing the belt out past the staircase.

            The control room was empty, there was a large monitor mounted in the desk top. It showed the whole warehouse operation and the train station outside. I managed to figure out how to send the still full train on its way without unloading. I then figured out how to stop the conveyer and open up the safety bars. I then found and opened up all the large doors to the outside.             All of the people running from the guards were able to escape, as most who'd been captured were being held in rooms with huge rollup doors that suddenly opened, revealing freedom, or weapons caches, both good options at that point. I found a microphone and told them to arm themselves and make a break for it. "Don't let yourselves be recycled into food!"

            Unfortunately, talking on the microphone got me noticed, and the guards, who'd been looking for the owner of the belt, I suppose, suddenly started running back towards the control booth. They had very dangerous looking machine pistols. I started looking for cover, and that's when I realized that the entire room was made of balsa wood and paper.

            Meow meow. That didn’t really fit. But Miranda was hungry, and N wasn’t responding.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Monday, May 22, 2006

Soggy Former Work Site

            I was working again at Meadowbrook. The Old AV shop had been retrofitted to be a tech repair shop again. This time there were only a small set of shelves along the back wall, a pony wall separated the work area from the media library area. I was working on the counter next to the sink when I noticed a dripping noise.

            Opening the cabinet under the sink revealed a world of wet plaster and soggy flakes of drywall. You could see the green board in some places. I wish I had the words to describe the rich smell that greeted me when I opened the cabinet. The smell was a mix of highly chlorinated water, paper and plaster, wet gypsum, rust, bug poop and old dish soap. There was a hint of WD-40 and soldering flux as well.

            I wanted to shut off the water, but the water shut offs were what was actually leaking, so we needed to shut the water off to the building.

            I didn't know where the shutoff was located, neither did the custodian. I got the bright idea to go online and look up the plans. I found them, but they didn't include changes that had been made during the rebuild. I told the custodian that it would be unlikely to change the location of the water shutoff. We went outside to the end of the building where the water shutoff should have been. The shutoff had a concrete bench on top of it. We couldn't move it, the bench was bolted to the sidewalk and into the wall.

            I went back to the shop and cleared out the cabinet.

            When I woke, it was raining.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Pirates


      Dreamed I was captain of a wooden sailing ship, we were moving slowly out of port on just the Mizzen and Jibs. Before we sailed past a frigate at dock, a small schooner entered the harbor, with the skull and crossed sabers flying over it.
      The Frigate, being on the lookout for pirates sprang to life. She had no sails aloft, but didn't seem to need them, as the schooner was sailing right into her broadside. I suppose the captain of the schooner thought he was going to sail right past them. I sighed and turned to my first mate.
      "Run up our battle colors and launch our boat to pick up survivors. Get the sharpshooters into the rigging."
      I called up the gunner's mate. told him to move the crews to their stations, but quietly.
      I watched helpless as the frigate's gunner's mate called out "Rake the waterline!"
      A full broadside rippled the waters of the harbor, and holed the schooner so thoroughly that it began to sink on the spot. The Schooner survivors jumped into the water. Their captain climbed atop the boom as the hull sank.
      Our colors were up, a brown flag, the color of old blood. (It may have, in fact, been dried blood.) The device was a four-pointed chess queen symbol in mustard atop an overturned chess king symbol in black.
      I hailed the Frigate and asked them to stand down and allow us to pick up survivors. Though we were a tad smaller than the Frigate, we were almost directly astern of them, and they only had one or two guns pointed at us, un-crewed, at that. I pointed a single finger at my gunner's mate, and our bow gun, a three inch, blasted a hole through the captain's stained glass windows and into the stern of the ship. "That is my only warning, and need be the last shot fired today, sir." Since they were still tied to the dock, my ship about to sail 20 guns unanswered across their stern, and my marksmen already in the rigging, they struck their colors. I saluted then went over the side on a rope ladder. I rowed out with my crew to recover our countrymen. All the time we pulled the crew out of the water, I had left the captain of the schooner holding on to the top stays of the last nine or ten feet of his sunken ship's mast. He'd managed, up to this time, to stay dry.
      The crew of the Frigate were all on deck laughing at him. To be fair, so was my crew.
      I drew within 10 feet of him and stopped the boat.
      "Thank you, sir. I despaired of rescue and these boots are new."
      "Well, sir, you have some choices. You can hang here, then hang in France, or you can swim over here and get a chance to make up for this stupidity."
      The expression on his face, when he realized that there were only two people on the harbor not smiling at him: one, captain of the now trapped frigate, the other, me, was priceless. Though for different reasons, the captain of the French frigate and I both felt he deserved the same fate. I guess it was obvious in my expression.
      He didn't say another word. The dandified captain just jumped into the water and swam over. No one on my crew offered a hand to bring him aboard. I reserved that honor for myself, I was none to gentle about it, either.
      Of his crew of twelve, I'd only been able to rescue five. If he didn't make the number a nice even half, I would have turned him over to the French captain. We were not at war with the French. I had letters of Marque from the French Government. (Though they would happily send any pirates they found to the bottom. It wasn't an easy relationship.) I had my midshipmen put the schooner captian in irons and we rowed next to the French vessel. Through an interpreter, I apologized for messing up the captain's cabin. He apologized for sinking the schooner. I believe he really was sorry; partly because he was trapped until the schooner could be raised or towed away.
      As we rowed back to the Bonnie Anne (my ship) my prisoner started to get nervous, I hadn't removed the chains.
      "Aren't we going to rake their decks with grape and take the frigate, we'd have half again as many guns."
      "If you don't shut up, you'll be dangling from a yard before we make the breakwater." I was thinking I might do that anyway, even though I wasn't happy about it.
      He shut up.


ad astra per technica
FF

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Puppet "Rocky Horror Picture Show" Dream

I was performing in a puppet musical: "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." I was singing the part of Frankenfurter as well as Dr. Scott. Oddly enough, I wasn't working the puppets. (Usually I am working the puppets and not saying or even singing anything in dreams like this, or I’m forgetting my lines completely.) I was just in a booth off to the side of the stage with another half dozen singers and performers, reading lines and singing the songs. We were all on stage and visible to the audience, but the main focus of the lights were on the puppets on the stage. There was a full orchestra in the orchestra pit.

I knew that in two weeks we would be doing “The Secret Garden”. We’d rehearsed about a week. The audience was small, about 120 seats with 100 or slightly over filled. This was our third week, we only had one more week to go, then we would be dark for a week. During the dark week we would rehearse the next show (although we did open the theater for rehearsals at 1/3 the normal ticket price, ½ price for the dress rehersal.)

It would be fun to do a performance like this, I wonder if we could draw an audience?

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Monday, May 15, 2006

Moving Day for Mom and Dad, Space Traders

            Mom and Dad moved into a new house that was then condemned in order to make a road up to the water tower on the hill overlooking their property. Fortunately the recent sale of the home allowed us to go to the city and get not only the fair market value of the home, but all moving and other expenses. We were sitting in the back yard with my old telescope looking at the road work going on up the hill. Then we left for their new home.

            Once we arrived the movers helped us set everything up. Mom and Dad seemed to like the new house even better than the previous one, and since it was at the edge of a forested area, Dad really liked it. We got the telescope out and started looking around the hills for signs of deer and other critters. There were lots of indications of trails in the nearby hills.

            Mom was happy to find there was a store a few blocks away, and a level walk. "Not that I'll probably ever walk there, but the grand kids can walk to the store." I couldn't really imagine any of my nieces or nephews walking that far to get to a store, except one, and I knew that one wouldn't likely be visiting.

 

            I was involved with a trading operation that included a three way swap between worlds in a single solar system.

            The three-way transfer was starting to look like it was coming unglued. I finally had to contact all of the participants and get them to meet in deep space, we moved the cargo containers out of our hold then picked up the second player's containers. I unloaded them into space near our first batch. We then moved the third party's goods into our hold and transferred them to the holding area. Both parties then inspected the piles, everyone was happy, but decide to pay us to load their ships. So I had my crew loading both ships simultaneously. I flew our ship right over the pile of goods we were getting out of the deal and closed the hold doors over them. With some grumbling (I think one or both of them were thinking of cheating us out of our cargo) the two headed back to their worlds. We had another trade to make with our cargo.

            One of the neat features of this dream was that there was no such thing as artificial gravity. We only had "gravity" while under acceleration; the entire transfer was done in zero G, lots of cool swooping and floating around. The other neat thing, the cargo loaders were all robotic exoskeletons. I was sad a bit that I didn't get to operate one, the crew looked like they were having fun. A couple of the crew were actually not human, they were AI enhanced Chimpanzees. One of the ships in the trade would only let my human operators load and unload cargo.

            One of the first things I'd done when I'd purchased these ape haulers was to emancipate them. I think that was the real issue, I wasn't their controller. Even though the apes were as intelligent as some of my human crewmembers some cultures were against them being treated as equals. I knew that ape intelligence relied on a man made device, but it was surgically installed as part of them, so to my way of thinking it was a part of them.

            The "Crate Apes" agreed to stay on with me, mostly because they didn't have any other real working opportunities other than to go to the ape retirement world and provide services for the older apes. That didn't really appeal to them.

            There was a third event that included much loud noise, music and running around. I can't remember the details at this point. The Blogger email address was part of it, though. I was glad to be waking up because our bedroom was peaceful.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Little Red Bugged by HOMERs

            We were in a huge parking lot outside a convention. S and I were sitting in Little Red (my Honda Insight) talking about the show. I was driving around with SCV, backwards, with the lights off to avoid detection by Homeland Robotic Security. (HOMERS)

            HOMERS would fly or roll past every few minutes. I had a radar detector type device that allowed us to know when they were coming by. We would be silent at that point. While the vehicle keys were on, there was a microphone in the car that transmitted any conversation to the nearby robotic security forces. We would move the car, then talk a bit, then move the car again so even if there were traces, the signal would be coming from different parts of the parking lot. I'm not sure how that would really work; because the radio could easily identify the vehicle it was coming from no matter where we were parked.

            Eventually I made it to a parking space next to a large group of power and data boxes. The RF interference was quite loud. We talked a bit more, and then S left for his panel. Somehow I found myself in the passenger seat.

            Angel Boris (her stage name) climbed into the driver's seat. (She’s a B movie actress and model.) We spoke for a bit, then I was back in the driver's seat and she was outside my window. She leaned in for a kiss. Her hair was soft like our Ginger's hair. Smelled like her, too. (I'm thinking the cat was being cuddly.) Angel transformed into an alpaca. She head bonked me and trotted off, not wanting to be late for her panel. That was a good trick.  

I decided I'd better make my way back to the convention and make sure our booth was doing all right. (There were Shirts and Posters mostly with drawings or photos of S and me behind microphones.) We also had two CD’s of shows and several of S’s chapbooks, maze books and a copy of our novel in hardback, signed, of course.

            In the hallway outside the dealers’ room I ran into John Gorman, a former drama student, leading a dance troupe. The dancers I didn't really recognize, though they were all in their twenties and all nicely stretched their spandex outfits in interesting ways. They performed a routine for us, right there in the hall. I had my .mp3 recorder and interviewed them afterwards, for our show. I got to autograph their warm-up shirts. That was fun.

            A well rounded Blonde struck a "take me now!" pose at end of interview. "Too bad this isn't a camera." I referred to my .mp3 recorder. Several folks were around and promised to email their photos to the show’s email address.

            After hugs and kisses, I walked back to the dealer's room and said hello to the crowd outside our booth. I was obliged to sign several shirts and a couple of books. Everyone seemed to want to know where S was. So I pulled out a schedule and sent them to his panel. When the crowd had thinned, somewhat, I noticed a HOMER hovering over the crowd in the intersection, I smiled and waved.

The alpaca came back and asked if she could be our booth babe for a while.

Who am I to say “No” to a talking alpaca? Thankfully, she transformed back into a woman and seemed to draw an even larger crowd than we had before.

            I sure like spandex, and dancers, and models, and alpacas...

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Restaurant Dream, Tornado Aftermath

            Jerry Reyes was the entertainment, juggling, telling jokes, etc. We were discussing Duke Cunningham when the restaurant manager came over and insisted that we move to the back room, away from the other customers. They were ordering way more expensive food items and were insulted by our conversation. They moved us back into a room where they were putting tablecloths on top of 50 gallon drums with a piece of loose plywood for the table. Real elegant.

Jerry finished his routine and joined us. We decided to leave rather than eat in the stock room. The manager tried to tell us we couldn't leave without paying. I pointed out there was no table for us, and no food, so let the folks who insisted on moving us pay for us, they would be happy to pay for us to go, I’m certain.

 

            The second dream actually started after the tornado. I was with a slender black-haired woman; we'd been tucked into the corner of a concrete wall and a garage floor. The building we'd been in, her condo, was flattened. I pulled her station wagon around so we could load it up with whatever we could find to salvage. I found a bunch of storage tubs, and we began to load her clothing and books into them. Everything was wet. She wanted to find my stuff, but all we could find was a blue canvas bag with grey straps. It was my overnight bag. It was empty, somehow the storm had tossed it around and broken the zipper, its contents were scattered. I wasn't concerned about it. I could easily replace a couple of shirts, socks and underwear. The comb; I would miss that a little bit as I haven't been able to find one like it for years. (Echos of a conversation N and I had during the weekend. I replaced an old comb that had become brittle and lost several teeth, it just wasn't the same.)

             The woman's name was Keiko (like a high-school friend of mine.) She was upset and overwhelmed after a few minutes of searching through the rubble. I managed to get her scrapbooks and fire safe in the wagon. I then managed to recover her DVDs and a laptop computer. The computer was in its case and seemed to be dry inside. I managed to get a good handle on things that could be dried out later or that were on shelves in bookcases that weren't too wet. There was too much stuff to fit it all in the station wagon, but I managed to set up a couple of shelves and load them up and then covered them with a tarp. I was hoping that there wouldn't be a lot of looting, but figured that even if there was, books would not be high on the list. Although the comic and magazine boxes were damp, the comics and magazines were bagged, and because the boxes had been tipped upside down or on their sides, there really wasn't any water damage. (There hadn't been all that much rain, mostly just wind and collapsing building.

            I climbed into the driver's seat. The vehicle was controlled by a single controller: an isosceles triangle about 8 inches across at the base and 12 inches long. Aim where you want to steer, and then press the back to accelerate and the front to brake. Letting the triangle sit in the center would slow using the best recharge rate. The vehicle could also move sideways by coming to a complete stop and tilting down one side or the other of the triangle, you could also drift when at speed using that control. I was completely immersed in the dream up until the time that I started driving. The darned thing was so different, and it was very much like a hovercraft. We were going to our friend's home about 100 miles north of the condo. Keiko wanted to go to her mother's, which was near by. My plan was to put her stuff at our friend's so it could be dried out, then to take her to her mother’s, then I would drive back down and camp at her place until I could get the rest of her stuff packed up and stored.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Monday, May 08, 2006

Anime Duck Herders, Dragging Kimono and Moustache

            Apparently the new DSP is having trouble handling the traffic. My dreams still seem to be populated exclusively by Anime cartoon characters and Chinese people, including myself with the annoyingly long Fu Manchu moustache. I must have started dreaming about a duck pond with two red-haired duck-herders (Anime Spiky-Haired Maidens) at least four times.

Then I was wading through the weeds with my silk Kimono dragging in the water and my moustache catching in every thorn bush we passed by, that part started over about a dozen times, or at least is seems like it did. No dream seemed to go anywhere or come to any sort of conclusion. None of the people I know were in my dreams, and none of my normal dream characters appeared during the night.

            Also, those anime faced girls look really weird in profile in 3D. They looked like robots rather than people. Somehow they reminded me of the Purple haired moon girls from the British TV show “UFO”.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Dream Service provider Change


      I dreamed that my Dream Service provider (DSP) went out of business. It sold its accounts to another DSP. The new DSPs staff wrote programs to transfer the old DSPs accounts to the new system, but I found that there were several annoying changes.
      My old DSP sent out a "sorry for the inconvenience" and then liquidated its servers and hard drives to pay its bills. Much of its antiquated equipment, I found out, went to a junk reseller. The reason I found out, is that I didn't like the new service provider's architecture or control much. I found myself walking along the row of equipment liquidators and second hand shops, pausing once to look at my reflection in the window of a second hand bakery goods shop. I'd been turned into a younger (Ok that was good) Chinese man with a Fu Manchu moustache. I looked at myself and shook my head. I wasn't sure how it was possible that this would be a similar dream avatar to my original fully bearded, blue-eyed, full head of curly brown hair. I continued on my search and came across the "Second Chance Electronica" shop.
      Inside the shop was a little bit musty. The proprietor was a portly man with thinning hair and a slight lisp to his voice. He was friendly enough. He knew exactly what I was looking for. He only had one of the servers left, still with the OS and application drives loaded on it. He also had the backup tower, an ancient looking tape drive unit. "It never had to be fast because they had all day to backup the nightly account activity."
      "What about Naptime activity?"
      "Always an issue in this field, but that was on a special unit, I've already sold it, though."
      We connected up the Dream Server and I watched the logo form on the screen. A stylized "C" and "A" with the holes arranged somehow in the shape of an eagle. Part of my brain was amazed that I couldn't remember the logo from the start of every recurring dream I've ever had until I saw it live here. Another part of my brain wondered if I'd ever seen it before.
      "What do you want this old stuff for?"
      I pointed to my face. "I'm a curly-haired, full-bearded, Norse looking man in middle age."
      "Oh!"
      "And I would think there should be some very pretty customers or a sales lady to chat up in here."
      "Sorry about that, not finding much like that around here with this DSP."
      I purchased the stuff, and the owner signaled me to follow him around back. In boxes next to the dumpster, awaiting recycling, were stacks of computer printouts of source code and handwritten notes. "If you're going to reverse engineer and mount your own DSP software, this could be a big help. It's yours, I was just going to recycle it."
      "Thanks, I don't know if I can get it all into my car." I thought about Little Red, my poor overloaded Honda Insight, then realized that I didn't really need the racks and UPSs, only the server and the data tower. Still, Little Red was definitely over her weight limit. I was frustrated a bit, in my old DSP I would have found myself in possession of and driving Cecil again (my old V-8 powered Plymouth Satellite) or Sean (Nan's Toyota Prius.)
      "If you get this working again let me know, I think I'd like to try it out. Some customers would be good, especially like you mentioned."

Naptime Dreams; Seven Hours Later


      Apparently I am still on the new DSP. Nothing but dreams involving Chinese or Japanese people, to its credit, I was still younger, and there were more women in the dreams. Sarah Prim was there, in a black wig and dark matrix style glasses, trying to fit in. Apparently I had managed to get the server up and running, but since there were large amounts of data missing I was only able to restore a small part of the database, something about needing a couple of Terebyte NAS Units to round things out. Sarah warned me not to eat anything. I pointed to the yummy looking matrix girls across the counter from me, she just sighed and empasized "ANYTHING!"
      "No kissing either!" She added.
      "Even you?"
      "That would be safe. I'm part of the old OS."
      I puckered up and leaned over to her, she yelped and slid off her stool. Giving me a "get back to work" look.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Steamship Amphibious and the River Pirates.

      
      I dreamed I was the captain of the Steamship Amphibious. We were steaming up a deep slow moving river in the Amazon, a tributary of that great river. I had just taken shots of several monkey tribes along the shores when I noticed small camouflaged boats moving among the tree roots at the water's edge.
      My local guide panicked when I pointed them out to him and begged us to put on steam and make our escape. The men in the boats chose that moment to fire their rifles across our bow. Ducking down behind the steel bulwark of the top observation deck we made our way back into the control bridge.
      "Full Steam! Get ready to come about!" I shouted into the microphone that was disguised as an old brass speaking tube. I felt the boat rumble to life as fuel rods slid smoothly into the reactor.
      The river narrowed and the current was becoming faster. Soon it was too narrow to come about, and the river pirates were catching up to us in their much smaller gasoline powered boats.
      "Put up the shutters!" I ordered into the mic. "Crew the port net launchers." I told the quartermaster to give the sailors our spare floats, not to load the launchers with netting. I could see a much larger vessel, this on with a machine gun on the front ahead of us at the narrowest, fastest place on the river ahead.
      "Landing gear down! Come about to port! Ready on the launchers!" I threw the wheel to port and the huge mass of nuclear powered steamship rolled slightly to starboard then started around to port.
      "We'll run aground!" shouted my local guide, reaching for the gun rack in the back of the bridge.
      "Tracks deployed, captain." My chief engineer reported over the intercom.
      "Thanks chief, record time."
      I moved to the port window to see the small river pirate boats closing on us. In each boat a couple of men stood with rifles or pistols. For a second I wished I told them to load the launchers with the nets, then the die already being cast I gave to order to fire, calling out the description of each boat and each launcher so everyone had a different target.
      Foot thick red and white floats were shot by steam out of the launchers. They all flew true save one and all but two riflemen were knocked out of their boats into the water. The two riflemen opened fire.
      My local guide asked where the ammunition was for my hunting rifle.
      "Put that back, we're not going to need it."
      "Gravel shoreline, 100 yards to the logging road."
      I turned to our helmswoman, gave the thumbs up, and used a pocket laser to indicate our path on the heads up display. I leaned over the microphone, "All port cameras, fill flash, fire now."
      A dozen bright xenon flashes went off in rapid succession, the cameras taking film of the attacking pirates, and blinding them in the process.
      "Prepare for impact, we're going ashore." The helm warned the ship via intercom. She spoke using a small mic that looked like it was glued to her cheek.
      I put the guide down into my captain's chair as we touched bottom and the track units took the weight of the steamship. We rolled up out of the water, I turned to the stern cameras and watched the river pirates veering off and waving and shouting. A couple of boatloads capsized as our backwash sent 5 foot waves out behind us.
      "Steamship Amphibious, reporting pirate activity," my helm operator called into her microphone, she gave the GPS information and we sent the photos of our attackers out live via satellite to the internet.
      While she was making our emergency call, I re-plotted our course so that we would follow an old logging path that had no old-growth jungle, something we could easily push through.
      Unfortunately our unique vehicle seemed to encourage the pirates rather than deter them, after the initial shock wore off. We managed to launch a video drone, and I was able to discover that the machine gunboat had docked and the pirates were transferring the weapon to a bright yellow Hummer. "What moves on this river that could require that much firepower?" I asked our guide.
      He shrugged. "Guns, drugs, parrots and macaws?" I could tell he was only acting like he didn't' know, and his continued searching for ammunition made me certain.
      I signaled the quartermaster, our biggest crewman, to come to the bridge. When he arrived we took the rifle away from our guide, and the quartermaster took him to a "safer part of the ship."
      I opened up a small compartment hidden by a name plate under the gun rack and pulled out a box of 50 rounds. The helm operator looked worried.
      "Armor piercing, shooting at their big gun, and radiators."
      I was under some sort of agreement with the country that I would not use guns against people, for any reason. I had agreed, but they let me keep the hunting rifle as we might need it against animal predators or to keep meat on the table. I knew I was taking a chance, but I didn't want that machine gun near us, I knew the ships armor wouldn't stand up to that.
      By the time the Hummer came up on the trail behind us, I was sitting on the top of the bridge with my scope focused about 400 yard back along the trail. In front of us I could see a mile long stretch straight through the forest, where before the path curved and twisted. I noticed a large white metal plate bolted across the front of the Hummer. I doubted that I could shoot through it to get to the radiator, I could tell by the way it bounced that the tires were solid, No luck there. I really didn't want to break our promise not to shoot at people, especially with streaming video going over the internet. I swore under my breath, and then luck turned our way.
      A pirate filled pickup truck and a Volvo pulled onto the logging trail, now made flat by our passage. They raced ahead of the Hummer. I took careful aim and fired a bullet into each radiator, and then as they slowed blew out two tires on the truck and one on the Volvo. They swerved and stopped, blocking the path of the Hummer. Pirates jumped into the back of the Hummer and snapped off several rounds at us before we were around a curve. The cable winch on the back of the ship exploded into fragments as three or four rounds tore into it. Another round tore through the aft loading door and ricocheted around in our aft garage. I watched the trees along our path exploding and falling behind us. That would slow them down also.
      It had been several minutes since we'd called in our mayday, I was beginning to wonder where the military was. We were almost to the end of the mile long straitaway when the yellow Hummer rounded the corner and accelerated rapidly towards us. The crew of the machine gun had it pointed to the sky, they were shooting at the camera drone!
      "Get all the drone pilots to their stations, lets give them lots to think about!"
      Soon, 7 more drones joined the camera drone, each of them headed for the Hummer. Soon the gunners were shooting at the drones, even pulling out pistols. We lost a drone, but the operator managed to flip it into the bed of the hummer at the last second, causing a couple of pirates to fall or jump out. The pirates suddenly seemed to realize they were wasting ammunition, and stopped firing at the drones. The big machine gun tracked back forward over the cab of the Hummer.
      I could see the ammunition feed box on the side of the gun. Every eighth round was colored differently, probably a tracer round, I took careful aim at the one closest to the weapon and fired. My bullet shattered the covering. Phosphorous leapt to flaming hot life. The ammo feed bucked and jumped. The pirates aiming the gun abandoned it. I fired again, this time right down the barrel of the machine gun. Our luck held, there was apparently a phosphorous round currently chambered. It burst and the round tore out of the barrel, jammed by its distorted shape it arced out flaming only a few hundred yards from the Hummer, lighting the debris from our passing in the process. There was now no pirate visible in the back of the Hummer. I took my time, hitting more ammo, hitting the shield on the front of the machine gun (the bullet went through, I fired a couple of more just so a gunner would think twice about relying on that little piece of steel to protect them) and generally trying to hit anything on the gun that looked like it might be breakable with a small steel-jacketed round.
      One of the drone operators called me and told me they had LAWs in the pickup truck that was now rejoining the chase. I told him to fly over the Hummer and then directly at the pickup. He did. The pirates in the back of the truck fired a LAW at the drone. It missed the drone, and struck the debris next to the Hummer. Several of the drones dove on the truck. Getting smart, the pirates only responded with small arms fire, but this too was aimed in the direction of the Hummer, and soon all the river pirates not in the Hummer's cab had abandoned it.
      Ahead of us was a small mining town, the road through town lead right to a dock on the river. Steamship Amphibious was just a little bit too wide to fit comfortably through the center of town without damaging every building along the main road. I pulled out a tablet and chose a new route, one that took us through a field outside of the town and then down to the river alongside the dock. The town's people were actually running away as we approached. Apparently they weren't part of this ambush.
      I was still concerned that we hadn't gotten any response from the country's military. One of my research leads put a call in to the embassy, trying to get some pressure put on the local government to come to our aid. I looked back, the Hummer wasn't gaining on us, I noticed that it had an Arizona license plate. I zoomed in with the camera on the back deck and shot a closeup of it. We slowed down to about 15 MPH from 60 and bounced off the main track across muddy empty fields. I was glad we weren't tearing up anyone's crops. We then entered the river and made full steam out to the center. I went back down into the bridge and suggested that we put a couple of miles between us and the river pirates, although they seemed to stop outside the village and sat around. We didn't drop any microphones in on them, as they were getting better at hitting the drones and we didn't want to lose any more. I really wanted to know what they were saying into their cell phones, though.

Friday, May 05, 2006

Dreamed of Large Sunroom, Conference call to Mali.

We had a large sunroom over the patio along the entire length of the back of the house. There were stairs up in the center by the chimney and south wall was almost all glass and short shelves with planters on them. The North wall was all book cases with doors with UV glass in them. The furniture was all lightweight Futon type of chairs with one computer desk. The east end of the room was a large projection screen with books on both sides. There was a huge green and white awning outside to keep the sun from shining directly into the living space. The plants in the windows also provided considerable shade. (Looked like honeysuckle and jasmine as well as wisteria and grapes.)

            In another dream, the entire roof was covered with solar panels, as was the roof of the (currently non-existent) cover over the driveway. I was trying to convince someone in Mali (?!) to put up towers and cover their part of the Sahara with alternating solar panels and windmills, fight the encroaching desert by covering it with power generating equipment, then pumping water and soil amendments in to help reclaim the now partly shaded ground. In other words, make global warming work for them instead of against them.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Missing Clothing Dream

            I was working sound at a show, unfortunately, it was a performance by a bunch of mimes. All I had to do was start the CD of the show music, set the level, and pause it when the action paused for laughs.

            That was it.

            Really.

            All of it.

            OK, not really. I wasn't wearing any pants.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF

 

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Scary Dreams

            I was at a large lake, in an ultra light with a camera hanging from it, shooting footage of the first annual Celebrity Ultra light Race Against Viral Infections and AIDS (CURAVIA?).  After several turns around the lake I noticed the Penn and Teller ultra light was having trouble and was loosing altitude. I flew over, landing well behind them just as they crashed into the lake. I taxied over as quickly as possible. I shut down the throttle and dove out of the ultra light, then swimming over to where Penn was pulling on the wreckage of the ultra light. He was shouting something about having "killed the most important people in the world." I helped pull the wreckage up out of the water. E and M were still strapped into their seats. E sputtered and was OK. Baby M was motionless.

            "I know Child CPR!" I shouted and we got her unstrapped and turned over. I pressed the water out of her lungs and a single puff got her coughing and breathing again. Penn carried E and M out of the water and I started swimming after the camera plane, which was still idling out into the lake. Ambulances and emergency vehicles were making their way along the shore so I figured things were well in hand.

 

            The next dream was drier, but scarier. I was working alone in a huge building at the edge of a new industrial park that was still, except for Stellanova Publishing, empty. My car was the only one in the parking lot. As I left the office I was mugged from between my building and the parking structure. As is often the case in my dreams, I was armed (this time with a pepper spray) but completely unable to use it to hit my assailant, in fact, I ended up with the nozzle sideways and bounced the spray off my palm into my own chest.

            I woke up hoping I could at least put the pepper sprayed hand in his face. What really ticked me off is that I wasn't even carrying my wallet; I'd left it at home, so I was getting mugged for nothing.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF