Altered Prose at Pif’s Corner

Night Dream is a bit of experimental writing I’m doing. I’m trying out a few ideas and basically throwing them up in story format. There is no pre-defined outline, so don’t expect anything special. In fact, expect to get confused. Feel free to take each entry on it’s own, or to run them all together. I will be using a numbering system (1.0, 1.1, …, 5.6, 5.7 etc) to keep these in “order” but again, expect no well-formed plotting.

Comments are always welcomed. As with everything on this site, content is covered under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Despite all the treatments, Devon always dreamed. And now, in the weightless hull of the ship, Devon knew that he would soon be dreaming again.

“Set?” crackled the voice over Devon’s mic implant; inaudibly bounding along his skull.

“Set. Roll now,” he spoke unfocused in the air.

“Rolling…hey Devon?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t dream.”

“Right…” Then an audible sigh.

Devon always thought about the darkness. Capital D in his mind. It wasn’t a metaphysical state, Devon knew, despite what every technician told him. It wasn’t some plane of physics the Scientific Authority recently discovered. It was an entity, a place, a consciousness all at once. So Devon gave it a Capital D.

He first felt the darkness on the slumber jump to Rembrance. Back when everything was ordered. Back when authority had control. Back when everything had a place, and stayed in that place. He was tunneling through space with his mom; a vacation for her to escape monotony of life and for him to escape the rigors of childhood.

Devon didn’t know what it was at first. He still doesn’t know for sure, but he feels it. It crept up on him, so slow he didn’t realize anything was there until it already started.

And then the nothing was everything. He thought he knew he was asleep; he thought he was in a bad dream. Suddenly he realized he was a different person, thinking different, like he knew more than he should. Details were all in his grasp, but if he tried to focus on any one thing he felt a pressure of agony build inside his head. From a spot in his brain he knew no person should ever know is there.

It freaked him out. Freaked him out so bad he couldn’t move. Couldn’t open his eyes. Move his arms. Hear. But he could shut off all his senses, slowly.

One by one he focused on them, and they stopped. He heard the blood rushing through his body. Knew the exact amount of liquid and the amount of pressure with each frantic gush, heard the mushy remains of the flight food squeeze into his intestines, and he thought “no” and then silence dropped over him.

Sell everything! Get out while you can! Don’t be stupid and take any more loses! Oh, the world is over…we’re doomed, doomed, doomed, doo–

Er, wait…so the sky hasn’t fallen? What? But everyone else is selling…

So there really is American, European and global economies that are still breathing? So people are still buying and selling things to each other?

Hmmm….now which company’s stock do I like at these discount prices…

Thick skins equal thick wallets.

So today I notice that UA was downgraded by Wachovia and the stock at the moment is down more than $7. Oh my gosh…sell! Sell!!!

Nah. It’s fine. Their year guidance is actually up, and I see the logic in taking the marketing charge hit now for the super bowl. They have a strong brand which is not being eroded…in fact, it appears to be growing. At the prices today I’m more nervous about not being able to liquidate enough money to buy more…

I must be stupid. Ignorantly, blissfully stupid. Not rock dumb but “huh, wha–” clueless. It’s the only reason I have to explain my total lack of concern right now.

I like desktop sidebar. See my tasks and meetings, rss blog roll. And my stocks. Today I watched two stocks lose over $5 per share each, and no flinch from me. I just looked, noticed that names of the companies (Shanda and Under Armour if you care), and shrugged.

Dumb.

But here’s the thing: I asked myself (as I always do when I notice these, ah, bumps) “do I, Mike, being of questionable mind and no body, still believe in these companies? Would I buy them now?” and my answer is still yes. Absolutely.

But that drop…I mean, so much money is gone!

Nah, I never had that money…it’s all paper. Shanda has a strong lineup of games in the works and a solid balance sheet…plus their market is China. The China where most of the populous is still not on the internet yet. The China with the growing economy. Under Armour is seeing better than expected results and strong demand for it’s products. Yet these stocks tank?

What do I care what most of everyone else thinks? I plan to be in these companies for at least five years…in fact, I never plan to sell. Unless of course I stop believing in the management, or the products, or their industries.

Instead, I’m trying to figure out if I can’t swing another purchase of shares.

Stupid. Just like I planned.

From the IEBlog, the Dec 12 build of the upcoming Internet Explorer version 8 has passed the Acid2 test. This means that IE continues to increase it’s compliance with web standards, and should be joining the ranks of Opera, Safari, and Firefox (beta 3).

As a web developer, I’m happier today. One of the biggest time sinks I experience right now when building pages is making sure that the top browsers and versions display the pages well – or well enough for the visitor to not notice. IE6 is a bear. It takes good looking pages and throws them into a blender. I’ve just now gotten tot he point where I can fairly often predict what layout code will cause problems in IE6 and what workarounds I need to use – through IE6-specific CSS. Now I can at least look forward to the day where people will migrate off of IE6.

In fact, I would be of the mind to stop designing for IE6 once the new version comes out and only build pages for web standards compliant browsers – regardless of browser web visit stats. Right now for my work site we have about 30% of the visitors still on IE6 (compared to 32% on Firefox and 30% on IE7). Assuming IE8 comes out sometime in late 2008 or so, I can’t imagine many people still on IE6…

…here’s to hoping anyways.