+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | A Change in Venue | | | | by D!99y Dud3 | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Gr33tz, and welcome to another gripping D!99y Phile (TM)! In our last episode, we explored the basics of socket and serial port programming in PHP. After I uploaded that erstwhile endeavor, I noticed a typo in the script, as well as another reason that phucker ain't gonna work, period, regardless of whether the typos and other bugs get fixed. Well, I thought about being a conscientious Digster and publishing the errata, but then I thought nah, one of the sharper tacks in the teacher's chair will point it out, and it'll be a good lesson for all about why you shouldn't trust any old code you happen to find lying about teh interwebs, least of all some that I wrote. Anyhoo, there was another error in the last phile, this one concerning the port number of one of the fine BBSes where ol' D!99y does his spewing. The port for Particles! BBS is 6400. Oh, and Avon over at Agency BBS reminded me that I ought to be putting dizzes and sauce and what-not in these here philes. So I'll be doing that moving forward. I haven't settled on a group name yet, seeing as how there isn't a group per se, just me, but is starting to sound like a good one even though "repense" is a verb in French, not a noun, and you know how the French are about having their language bastardized. But then again, pissing those smarmy bastards off is as good a reason as any to go ahead and do it. Now that we got all the philosophizing and shit out of the way, some of y'all earnest BBSers out there might be idly wondering, as you peruse the pearls of wisdom inscribed on the bathroom wall down at the neighborhood cybercafe, just who in the phuque this Diggy Dude is. I could in all honesty say I was born the son of a poor Louisiana sharecropper, if it wasn't for the fact that muh daddy bailed out of the sharecropping business as soon as he was old enough to leave home. So, for better or worse, I was really just another skinny-tie-wearing punk ass 80s kid. We were too poor to own a home computer, and my dad didn't like computers anyway, or perhaps he just wanted me to forget about computers and be a working class hero like him, but whatever the case may be, I didn't lay hands on a computer until senior year, when my backwoods high school bought about ten or so IBM 5150s and one of the gym coaches taught the first computer science class there. I have to confess that I was hooked from then on, and signed up for a hitch as a Mk. 152 computer technician in the U.S. Navy upon graduating. For those of you who don't know, the Mk. 152 is the military version of the Univac 1218, an 18-bit transistor computer with core memory and shit. Needless to say, I learned everything I ever wanted to know about the inner workings of a computer whilst phucking aroung with that old thing. After the Navy, all of those old 8-bit computers I lusted after in high school became worthless to their owners, and people started just giving them to me. I messed around with them for a bit, but I didn't get into the BBS scene in a major way because the first local ISPs were offering full access Internet for $15 a month by 1994. Since DOS and Windows 3.11 didn't support networking out of the box yet, the ISP would give customers a floppy disk with a dialer script, Trumpet Winsock, Eudora, uuencode/uudecode, Netscape, and maybe a few other odds and ends I don't remember. In those days, a lot of unemployed computer nerds fancied themselves Internet security experts, so the people I hung out with on teh interwebz tended to be the same "l33t" types who frequented underground BBSes in former times. In those days, everybody had a nick, handle, alias, screen name, or whatever you want to call it. Putting your real name online was virtually unheard of until that spying sack of dogshit Phuckerberg came along and demanded that everyone do so. Some of my old monikers that I remember were r00d Dawg, Black Inertia, Bart Stutton, and Sinister Motives. I posted as an anonymous "dot" on Pud Kaplan's Fucked Company forum and its various spinoffs. I even ran a Fucked Company spinoff briefly. I've mainly been going by Diggy Dude for the last few years. All of the tracking, surveillance, censorship, propaganda, and other resolute phaggotry of the World Wide Web has all but put me off of it these days. I'm an 80s kid, so it seems to me BBSes are more correct for my idiom anyway, if I can ever figure out how to work the sons o' bitches. At any rate, one or two sysops and Jason Scott are the only BBSers who know my real name, and it'll suit me just fine if it stays that way for the time being. Besides jumping ship from the Web in favor of text mode boards as a way to get my online kicks, I'm making a completely unplanned transition away from the Web in my professional life also. I was a Web programmer for close to 20 years until I got laid off from my last job about seven months ago. I used to think they were joking when they said: if you're an IT worker who hasn't made it into management by age 50, your career is over. Not anymore. My unemployment insur- ance ran out a few weeks ago. Now I'm doing temp jobs through one of the staff- ing agencies I originally contacted to help me find another programming job. The latest gig is with an outfit that helps people who can't afford their heating bills get state benefits. Ironically, my own electric service is due to be cut off tomorrow. I'm going to use my credit card to pay it as soon as I'm done typing this. I can't say I miss programming for a living. It was always more fun as a hobby. In fact, the corporate world leaves no stone unturned in its single-minded quest to suck the joy right out of every goddamned thing it can get its hands on. I pray that I live long enough to watch every last corporation in America go bankrupt and close its doors. Especially ones like Faecesbook that produce absolutely nothing of value. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This has been another riveting communique from D!99y Dud3 at the Department of Demented Development. You can find all premium D!99y Philes (TM) on these fine, scholarly BBSes. Feel free to copy and distribute this phile to all other boards with this notice intact! Agency BBS Sysop: Avon telnet://agency.bbs.nz Borderline BBS Sysop: Balzabaar telnet://borderlinebbs.dyndns.org:6400 Particles! BBS Sysop: Paradroyd telnet://particlesbbs.dyndns.org:6400 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------