Wapsi Held Hostage - Day 14 (was Castela Notice 2015-07-05)

[Aed]

My precious!

Every time I see a reference to Gollum, I can't help but remember Adam Savage singing "I Will Survive" as Gollum.

Adam Savage singing "I Will Survive" as Gollum.

[Hansontoons]

My precious!

Every time I see a reference to Gollum, I can't help but remember Adam Savage singing "I Will Survive" as Gollum.

Must... stop... laughing!!!!

[Septuagenarian]

My landline ISP (Internet Service Preventer) has dropped me for several days at a time on at least four occasions during the last few months. Their router messed up, trouble at the little junction boxes around town and a replacement main cable where they missed about half the customers when they activated it. I've used my cell phone with a 10G data per month limit to hook up my computers and my wife's for a few hours each day. It 's actually faster than the landline and doesn't use as much data as I'd thought, even when I downloaded some files. (3D graphics meshes and textures.)

[Hansontoons]

*Sets a tray of various pastries...petit fours, kolachkys, yakkwha, meringue blossoms, bite sized...cake. "Yes, let them eat cake," spoken aloud to perhaps someone. Then vanishes back into the shadows to silently observe as before.*

A delicate glow, reminiscent of a growing display of northern lights begins to emanate from the table. DWC/Hansontoons, hubcap in hand, is drawn by the light. As he approaches, he begins gently whistling "Gary, Indiana" from The Music Man. The deliciousness displayed thereof brings a tear to an eye...

(As an aside, my hometown of Estherville, Iowa, is mentioned in the Music Man movie. Woohoo! Or not...)

[Hansontoons]

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[TazManiac]

Vote Early, Vote Often...

[GlytchMeister]

Glytch awoke in his tent, his mind unusually alert. Normally, it took him a couple hours to "boot up," as he called it. Waking up fully alert usually meant a few specific things for Glytch: he had just broken through a bad fever, he had actually slept the full 16 hours he needed to awake refreshed, or something was happening that set his fight or flight reflex off. He slowly reached up and measured his pulse with two fingers. It was slightly elevated. He silently rolled within his tent and grabbed his steel pipe before carefully unzipping his door. Louis was standing, back turned, a few yards away. Most everyone else's circadian rhythms had begun to synchronize to this pocket dimension's light/dark cycle. Glytch was synchronizing too, but he had always been quite the night owl. Still, Louis appeared completely sleepless. Everything about the... man... Made Glytch's skin crawl. Last night's display of his incredible grasp of rhetoric did nothing to quell the uneasy feeling. As silently as possible, Glytch emerged completely from his tent and padded toward Louis on socked feet, gripping his trusty pipe tight.
Glytch was two yards away when Louis spoke softly, as if to himself, completely devoid of motion.
"A young man creeping through the night; does he seek an assignation or is he up to no good I wonder? Good evening, young master Glytch. Is that firm grasp on your stiff little pipe to reassure and embolden you? Just how pleased are you to see me, dear boy?"
Glytch came to a dead stop and deepened his stance for a moment before relaxing and walking up to stand next to Louis. Glytch decided to ignore Louis's innuendo. "Something wake you up too?"
Louis glanced at Glytch, then the whitened mask turned back to the room full of sleeping wapsiholics. "Awaken me from what, pray tell?"
Glytch opened his mouth as if to reply, thought better of it, and clamped his mouth shut. He took a few moments to re-word his question. "Ok, something woke me up. I got a bad feeling, y'know?"
"A bad feeling can be a good thing. Good feelings are only viewed as bad by the dull, unimaginative and unadventurous. Hurt feelings are bad."
Glytch narrowed his eyes at the flamboyant man next to him. "I'm gonna go ahead and take that as an encouragement to pay attention to my bad feeling."

He looked around the room, dividing the space into meter cubes, and spending time inspecting everything about each small block of space. Even cubes seemingly filled with empty air were closely inspected for signs of heat haze or vapors. He saw nothing alarming or even all that curious, outside of what he had already seen. Glytch frowned. Nothing of interest besides what I've already seen? He shook his head. "No, I can't let that happen. Gotta pay attention to everything. What did I gloss ov—"
Glytch stopped short and stared at the portal. Instead of looking out at an artistically rendered Wapsiverse, he saw the room he was standing in... And himself. But it wasn't a perfect reflection. No, there were several major differences. First of all was the other Glytch was wielding a slightly bent and bloodied version of his pipe. He was favoring a leg, and his right hand was missing the ring and pinky fingers, which were bandaged with items from his packs. Across his back was a rifle, and at his waist was his knife and a revolver. Greg and Louis weren't present. And the room wasn't so much a room as it was a ruin, blasted apart and scorched by some powerful explosion. The sky was black and starless, and the surroundings were obscured by a haze of ash, soot, and smoke. But the most startling difference were the other Glytch's eyes. They were like tarry pits of despair and self-loathing.
"It's our alternate reality. Had you not convinced us otherwise, had we stayed on our present course, this is what would have happened." Glytch murmured.
"An astute observation. I'm hardly one to argue the benefits of self-restraint, quite the opposite usually, but their party may have been a little too lively, I fear. It seems I have made a timely excuse-me, over there." Louis replied solemnly. "And now, they must survive in a world without Wapsi Square."
A strange light sparked in the other Glytch's eyes, and he lunged toward the portal, swinging his pipe and reaching for his gun.
I can't let him in! Glytch barely had time to lunge and block the strike from the bloody pipe. The collision occurred exactly at the boundary between realities.
"Let me in!" The other Glytch roared with a bestial scream. The sound sent a shiver down Glytch's spine.
"Take responsibility for your own actions! There are no do-overs in real life!" Glytch drew upon his will and pushed hard, knocking the hellish Glytch backwards a few steps. As soon as the ghastly version regained his footing, he raised his gun and fired without a second thought. Lunging beneath Glytch's arm with the perfect thrust of a fencer, Louis blocked the bullet with the tip of his cane. The bullet dropped to the floor, still spinning. Louis laughed as both Glytches stared at the bullet, mouths agape. The other Glytch glared at them both with plainly murderous eyes, but his shoulders slumped in defeat, and he slowly walked away while Louis waggled a finger at him.

"You wanted us to see where we were headed so we could avoid it, correct?" Glytch quickly went to the control panel and re-established the portal to the Wapsiverse.
Louis arched an eyebrow. As the portal's noise died to its idle hum, he said "Oh, my dear thing, no. This is the land of do as you please. I merely showed you what lies on your path, that you may choose of your own free will to follow it to this hell, or turn aside to some other. I am who I am..."
Glytch inclined his head. "Thank you."
"Gratitude, hmm?" Louis stepped close, his voice low. "Well they are all asleep, and we are all awake. How should you like to spend our time together now? Perhaps a look at my picture book?" A fan of playing cards appears in Louis' hand, Tarot trumps peeking out as if shyly, from behind the upright Ace of Wands. "Or perhaps you have another suggestion?"
Glytch eyed the cards and Louis warily. "I don't think it would be... prudent to play a game of chance with the likes of you. And... I don't swing that way. Though I am somewhat flattered by your interest."

[GlytchMeister]

Thanks, Louis. Couldn't have written that without your help.

[louisxiv]

Though I am somewhat flattered by your interest."

Mmm. Well, sighed Louis, while there’s life there’s hope. Such a promising boy.

[louisxiv]

Thanks, Louis. Couldn't have written that without your help.

You’re welcome, of course.

See we lost the paragraph indents again — the board seems to strip hard spaces out when pasting text to and fro, though it will allow direct entry. Irritating.

[GlytchMeister]

Thanks, Louis. Couldn't have written that without your help.

You’re welcome, of course.

See we lost the paragraph indents again — the board seems to strip hard spaces out when pasting text to and fro, though it will allow direct entry. Irritating.

Either that or iPhone 4's running iOS 7 really abhor hard spaces. And since I have so much trouble getting this bloody thing to select or edit the right text in Safari, I had to move it to Notes (darn lag). I lost italics in that move, and I lost the indents in the move back to safari.

Meh. It's posted. I'm just glad my phone didn't crash. This much text makes it freak out.

[DilyV]

Thanks, Louis. Couldn't have written that without your help.

You’re welcome, of course.

See we lost the paragraph indents again — the board seems to strip hard spaces out when pasting text to and fro, though it will allow direct entry. Irritating.

Either that or iPhone 4's running iOS 7 really abhor hard spaces. And since I have so much trouble getting this bloody thing to select or edit the right text in Safari, I had to move it to Notes (darn lag). I lost italics in that move, and I lost the indents in the move back to safari.

Meh. It's posted. I'm just glad my phone didn't crash. This much text makes it freak out.

What will really blow your mind is that the Apollo spacecraft (Command Module and Lunar Excursion Module combined) went clear to the moon, landed on it and returned with a computer that only averaged like 64 kilobytes of data between them. In 1969-70 a comparable computer to do the same things as your cell phone can do would fill a building.

[louisxiv]

Thanks, Louis. Couldn't have written that without your help.

You’re welcome, of course.

See we lost the paragraph indents again — the board seems to strip hard spaces out when pasting text to and fro, though it will allow direct entry. Irritating.

Either that or iPhone 4's running iOS 7 really abhor hard spaces. And since I have so much trouble getting this bloody thing to select or edit the right text in Safari, I had to move it to Notes (darn lag). I lost italics in that move, and I lost the indents in the move back to safari.

Meh. It's posted. I'm just glad my phone didn't crash. This much text makes it freak out.

Notes? Brrr. Editing complex text in a text edit box on a phone screen is a bit of a b----r, for sure (4s here). Zoom the text before selecting it?

You are hereby awarded the Louisxiv’s Order of l’Etoile d’Or (Gold Star) for authorial persistence in the face of adversity and demanding co-conspirators.

[GlytchMeister]

Yeah. NASA somehow managed to put people on the moon...
...repeatedly...
With an oversized bottom-model grade school calculator.

And we still don't have fully functional self-driving cars. *pout*

[louisxiv]

What will really blow your mind is that the Apollo spacecraft (Command Module and Lunar Excursion Module combined) went clear to the moon, landed on it and returned with a computer that only averaged like 64 kilobytes of data between them. In 1969-70 a comparable computer to do the same things as your cell phone can do would fill a building.

Programmable calculators at best, both of them: if it doesn’t read/write punch cards or paper tape it isn’t really a computer…

[GlytchMeister]

@Louis:

Oooh, no. Notes is much better at editing text than trying to do it in safari, zoomed or not. Safari laaaaaags.
...
I've written every word of Purpose in a password-protected version of Notes on my old, arthritic little iPhone. Whaddaya think of that, eh?

[illiad]

well, all that overhead of graphics etc does tend to add up.... :/

The native editor in android is about as bad - that is why you should search for a better third party app!!

[louisxiv]

@Louis:

Oooh, no. Notes is much better at editing text than trying to do it in safari, zoomed or not. Safari laaaaaags.
...
I've written every word of Purpose in a password-protected version of Notes on my old, arthritic little iPhone. Whaddaya think of that, eh?

Ahem. I used to write stories and meeting minutes on my Palm III using Graffeti...

(We are in some danger of sliding into Four Yorkshiremen Sketch country here, methinks :)

[GlytchMeister]

@Louis:

Oooh, no. Notes is much better at editing text than trying to do it in safari, zoomed or not. Safari laaaaaags.
...
I've written every word of Purpose in a password-protected version of Notes on my old, arthritic little iPhone. Whaddaya think of that, eh?

Ahem. I used to write stories and meeting minutes on my Palm III using Graffeti...

(We are in some danger of sliding into Four Yorkshiremen Sketch country here, methinks

Back in mah day we had to invent chisels to carve our stories into rocks!

[Dave]

You had rocks? Luxury. All we had was mud... and we had to mix it ourselves.