Entries this day: Dream USS_Winston_Churchill smarterchild work

Dream

5:16am CDT Thursday 4 October 2001

(dream)

At Katy Robinson's house, with other YRUUers there - Natalie B, and I were trying to figure out how to run Katy's internet connection. It was a flash based animation thing that seemed a lot like a Zork-type game, where the player had to do different tasks to make the right thing happen. Natalie and I called Kay in to ask her how to connect, and Susie S came out and showed us. One of the game options was to ride a virtual roller coaster that was based on one that really existed out by the beach in front of the house.

Someone wondered why we didn't just ride the actual roller coaster instead of riding a virtual one on computer, so we went outside, but couldn't figure out how to unlock the real roller coaster. Called Katy and Wende came out and said she had started the process from inside, and we now had sixty seconds to open a drawer on the side of the coaster, find a key and open a book, look up the code in that book and enter the code into an alpha-numeric pager sitting on the side there. The pager was going off, and we had sixty seconds to enter the correct code. Wende looked it up and said "six one one seven five" or whatever, and I entered lower case l's instead of 1's for the ones. I asked her if the code would be read by a human, who would possibly forgive the l for 1, and she said she thought so.

- - -

My previous dream:

I had my car parked twice in front of a scary facility thing, and I only had one set of keys. I had to figure out a way somehow to move both copies of my car with only one set of keys.. I figured out a technique that involved loading the braces from some structure into my car so that when I drove the other car would be attached or something wacky like that and I had to climb the fence to get out of the scary facility. I was surprised to find that one of my copies of my car was parked right in the middle of the entrance to the facility, blocking the front gate. I was surprised that it hadn't been towed. The other copy of my car was parked off toward the side.

Once I got the car started, I drove over to Kate's house, where the above dream begins.

USS Winston Churchill

04 October 2001

This is an e-mail from an Ensign stationed aboard the
USS Winston  Churchill...

Dear Dad,

Well, we are still out at sea, with little direction
as to what  our next priority is.  The remainder of
our port visits, which were to be  centered around max
liberty and goodwill to the United Kingdom, have all
but  been cancelled.  We have spent every day since
the attacks going back and  forth within imaginary
boxes drawn in the ocean, standing high-security 
watches, and trying to make the best of our time.  It
hasn't been that fun I  must confess, and to be even
more honest, a lot of people are frustrated at  the
fact that they either can't be home, or we don't have
more direction  right now.  We have seen the articles
and the photographs, and they are  sickening. Being
isolated as we are, I don't think we appreciate the
full  scope of what is happening back home, but we are
definitely feeling the Effects

About two hours ago the junior officers were called to
the bridge  to conduct Shiphandling drills. We were
about to do a man overboard drill when we  got a call
from the LUTJENS(D185), a German warship that was
moored ahead of us on the pier in Plymouth, England.
While in port, the WINSTON S CHURCHILL and the LUTJENS
got together for a sports day/cookout on our fantail,
and we made some pretty good friends. Now at sea they
called over on bridge-to-bridge,requesting to pass us
close up on our port side, to say  goodbye.  We
prepared to render them honors on the bridgewing, and
the  Captain told the crew to come topside to wish
them farewell.  As they were  making their approach,
our Conning Officer announced through her binoculars 
that they were flying an American flag.  As they came
even closer, we saw  that it was flying at half-mast.
The bridgewing was crowded with people as  the
Boatswain's Mate blew two whistles- Attention to Port-
the ship came up  alongside and we saw that the entire
crew of the German ship were manning  the rails, in
their dress blues.  They had made up a sign that was
displayed  on the side that read "We Stand By You".
Needless to say there was not a dry  eye on the bridge
as they stayed alongside us for a few minutes and we
cut  our salutes.  It was probably the most powerful
thing I have seen in my  entire life and more than a
few of us fought to retain our composure.  It  was a
beautiful day outside today. We are no longer at
liberty to divulge  over unsecure e-mail our location,
but we could not have asked for a finer day at sea.

The German Navy did an incredible thing for this crew,
and it  has truly been the highest point in the days
since the attacks.  It's  amazing to think that only a
half-century ago things were quite  different, and to
see the unity that is being demonstrated throughout
Europe  and the world makes us all feel proud to be
out here doing our job.  After  the ship pulled away
and we prepared to begin our man overboard drills the 
Officer of the Deck turned to me and said "I'm staying
Navy."

I'll write you  when I know more about when I'll be
home, but for now, this is probably the  best news
that I could send you.

Love you guys.

smarterchild

2:04 pm Thursday 4 October 2001

Dude: you wanna see the coolest thing on the whole internet?
Rob: I'd love that!

I didn't really think it would be the *cooolest* thing on the Internet; but maybe some awesome flash animation or some such.

Dude: add a buddy to your buddy list named "smarterchild"

Wow. Try it yourself. Add smarterchild as a buddy on your AOL Instant Messenger buddy list. This is *almost* worth getting AIM if you don't already have it.

Tell him HI.

work

4pm Thursday 4 October 2001

I enjoy being productive at work. I got the project basically to a point where we can show it to the client. And we have three (3) phone calls with them scheduled for Monday and Tuesday so different people can see the site and give comments etc.

I've been productive today even though I spent several minutes playing with smarterchild. Visit activebuddy.com; apparently they have bots for all the popular IM things. Oh, and if you have AIM running, you can click here to say HI to SmarterChild now.

(I'm sure I was going to say more, but I found this entry unfinished when I came in the next morning)