In April 1867, one goverment functionary wrote to another official requesting authority to bill to the government a shipping charge of $2.07 from a freighting company for transporting two barrels of clothing intended for charitable distribution to government wards.
   The barrels had been received by a teacher at a school for children of the wards. A total of four letters were hand-written and mailed by the functionaries' clerks over this proposed charge. The last letter said, in effect, skip the whole question _ the teacher already paid the freight.
   Two dollars was quite a sum of money in 1867, when bacon was 13 to 15 cents a pound and a bushel of corn could be had for 80 to 95 cents. A doctor running a hospital for some of those government wards was paid the grand sum of about $97 a month _ and a teacher received considerably less! Yet, think of the waste of government money and manpower in this instance _ surely more than $2. I guess the teacher preferred to pay up and distribute the much-needed clothing than to wait for government action.
   With such small affairs do I occupy my mind at times during what otherwise often is a boring task I have undertaken voluntarily. I'm helping index all the names in all the documents of the "Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees and Abandoned Lands" _ commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau. This is an administration created by the federal government after the U.S. Civil War to care for and educate tens of thousands of freed and typically destitute slaves. The database resulting from this indexing _ and the images of the records _ will be available online free for African-Americans seeking their family histories and for other researchers through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
   I got into this effort through an interest in genealogy. I specifically joined the Freedmen's Bureau work in the thought that I might thereby see some of the stories of former slaves now freed. Not so, and such small damas as the freight charge are rare _ and usually one doesn't learn the outcome in any event, seeing only a portion of the recounting.
   The handwriting and thus the names often are difficult to decipher. That's especially true in the signatures of the various officials. The handwriting of the clerks generally is better and clearer, though not necessarily so since it often involved the curliques of the "copper plate" style and sometimes the thick strokes similar to old German. Additionally, often the ink had faded so that photo-images of the records are dim. One factor making it easier is that the many of same names show up repeatedly.
   But almost a greater obstacle is the stultifying nature of most of the documents themselves. Time after time they dealt solely with the exchange of bureaucratic reports _ requisitions for stationary, vouchers for payrolls and similar accounts, disputes over allowed expenses and other payments _ all penned in the formal style of "I have the honor to respectfully request" or to state or to transmit, and signed "very respectfully, your obedient servant, ..."
   Yet read them one must to determine whether they bear some reference to a name within the body of the document, as well as in the person addressed and the signature. It's said that an army runs on paper. The Freedmen's Bureau, being under the War Department and largely staffed administratively by military officers, was no exception.
   And, speaking of bureaucracy, Lt. Wm. F. Fernald, one of the sub district officials, wrote to his superior asking whether a U.S. flag might be issued or purchased, inasmuch as "numerous citizens of the Union persuasion have frequently expressed the desire ... to have one." The query was passed on to the next highest official, and then to another, and finally to the chief quartermaster for the military district. The answer came down 12 days later that "a flag may be transferred to the [Freedmen's] Bureau upon receipt of the proper order, but it cannot be sold to Citizens."  Whether Lt. Fernald ever was issued a flag wasn't said.
   Scattered among such mundane matters were more poignant references _ requests for 50 coffins, including varied sizes so as to bury children, or for lumber and metal bottoms to build coffins; pleas for clothing, especially for women and children, and for shoes and jackets and blankets _ and for lime and straw for the hospitals. The lime was for sanitation uses and whitewash, the straw for bedding. Despite orders that requests for clothing and other necessities were to be met immedately, there often was a lag of up to two months before the requests were filled.
   Churches and other charity groups often contributed clothing. Clothes for the men often were made of Osnaburg cloth, which is a close-woven cloth somewhat like canvas but softer, lighter _ and cheaper. Women wore lindsey _ a coarsely woven cloth of wool and cotton or linen; wool for a better cloth typically was in scant supply.
   One example: "I have the honor in compliance with request from your office to state since my last Med & Hosp. supplies came, I am well provided with hospital bedding & clothing with the exception of clothing for women and female children. I have no gown or underclothing for them. They come here most of them with scarcely enough on them to cover their nakedness and frequently so covered with vermin that it is necessary to burn all of their habilments at once."
   Periodically came reports of "deceased and discharged men and deserters."
   There also were requests for thousands of "rations" _ often in the form of  barrels of salted pork. And yes, it was such situations as these where the needy were aided at government expense that gave rise to today's references to congressional "pork barrel" projects and feeding at the public trough.
   Rarily, however, were any of the various reports themselves among the documents; rather, most documents were merely the cover letters.
   Quite a few of the exchanges dealt with horses _ the need for them, the feeding of them, the transport of them, the use of them, where they were being situated, whether there was or wasn't authority for them _ and, at times, the rent of them. In one exchange, a officer was told he would not be reimbursed for the expense of having used a rented horse because paying $3 a day was excessive when typically one could rent a horse for a day for a dollar-fifty.
   One of the more wryly amusing set of documents began in January 1867 in Virginia. Two men were due $15 each for having served a civilian court set up by the Freedmen's Bureau for a time on grounds that the regular civilian courts weren't treating the "freedmen" justly. For months, letters went back and forth among six Freedmen's Bureau officials. Each document typically explained that the money was due, or said the party writing stood ready to pay the two men as soon as proper documents were submited, or that the proper documents HAD been submitted, but apparently to the wrong person at a given time. The matter finally was wholly resolved and the men paid _ in August.
   Another set might have been in part a transcript from a defendant's rant before Judge Judy. Apparently someone had suggested that a teacher in one of the freedmen schools had profited by renting out a portion of the school's land and pocketing that revenue. The irate accused denied the whole, explaining that rather he had allowed some of the school repairmen to use a plot as a garden and, far from profiting, had supplied seed and implements.
   The school was to have received a portion of the produce for its benefit, he explained.  However, the gardener/repairmen's success at growing vegetables was so indifferent that the school never actualy received any of the produce, the teacher insisted. Meanwhile, he said, he himself had paid upwards of $100 out of his own meager pockets over a period of time to fund such repairs and maintenance as replacing windows and doors, repairing the roof and floor, etc. He would happily accept belated compensation _ though, he said huffily, he had no expecation of ever seeing even a dollar of that money
returned.
   I once had a full-time job at which I earned $33 a week before taxes, of which I consistently saved $5, but even so, the prices and payments of the 1860s are surprising. A barrel of lime sold for $3.50, but whitewash brushes were $1.50 each. A hundred pounds of straw could be had for 50 to 75 cents. Paper ws costly _ a ream (about 500 sheets) sold at $4.50 
and a ream of foolscap (think, roughly, legal-size sheets or larger) for $6.50.  (However, within a few months, many of those prices had risen by 20 to 30 percent, though a few items cost less.) A gross of steel pens (that's 144) cost $1.60, a dozen pints of ink _ $6.50. A cord of wood, cut and delivered, was $5, or a bit more ($5.20) if bought one at a time but maaaybe a bit less if bought in bulk.
     A building to be used as a school house might be rented for $10 a month. One document was a receipt for $10 received from sale of a bureau horse.  Allowing as much as $100 for a building's renovation was rare. 
   This already is too long, but I still want to say that there are quite a variety of indexing projects under way under LDS supervision, and that any interested party may participate _not just Mormons, and without any church pressures. All the results ultimately will be available worldwide free online in the form of huge searchable databanks _ some are already there. One recent count indicated there are more than 115,000 volunteers like me. Over time, I've indexed about 52,000 names and associated data within several projects, more than half within the Freedmen's bureau porject. To put that in perspective: On one recent day, volunteers had indexed more than 168,000 names in roughly half of a day.

Additional links:

About the Freedmen's Bureau:
   http://freedmensbureau.com/
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedmen's_Bureau
   http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/HIUS403/freedmen/overview.html
   http://afroamhistory.about.com/cs/reconstruction/a/freedmensbureau.htm
   http://www.archives.gov/research/microfilm/m1913.pdf
   http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/freedmen1.html

About the LDS projects:
   http://www.familysearchindexing.org/en/index.jsp
   http://genealogy.about.com/b/2007/04/12/try-your-hand-at-familysearch-indexing.htm
   http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/01/familysearch-in.html
                                                                                                                       
   
 















 "I am, General,
     Very Respectfully,
        Your Obedt Ser't.
            W. Storer How Bt. Maj. Va ...
                (late) Supt Six Distri...."
 












"...J J DeLamater, S....
           Chf Med Off  B ...
                State Va"

That "find sex in your 'hood" site has some sister operations. In for a penny, etc, right?

After a time, I finally noticed a recurring charge on my cedit card, and it definitely wasn't nominal! So I phoned the site administration to complain and  cancel _ and got a surprise!!

"If you don't cancel now, we'll give you free lifetime membership," the representative said. It turned out that under the "terms and
conditions" _ all that tiny boring legalese  no one ever fully reads, because after all, they're all more or less alike, right? And anyway, you have to say yes to all of them if you want to go ahead _ under the "terms and conditions," I had had 24 hours within which to cancel; then, automatically, a hefty monthly fee kicked in and renewed automatically month by month until canceled by specified actions. And, of course, by agreeing to the terms and conditions, I had authorized that charge.

And here's the kicker to THIS aspect: If I had tried to cancel within that first 24 hours, I'd have been offered the same deal I was being offered three months later: Free lifetime membership without any fee whatsoever. There still would be fees for certain auxiliary services IF one chose to available one's self of those, a one-time charge per instance, but no more auto-recurring monthlies.

So it turned out to be free after all _ BUT, only if one complained, and only after one already had paid X number of recurring monthlies.

 

  

The latest developments are much like those that occurred when this sexcapade began. Just as I was at the beginning, I'm now again a non-paying "member." And after two months of ever shrinking activity that only twice gave any sign of emanating from real individuals, there is yet again a sudden flurry of erstwhile contacts _ all arriving immediately after my paid membership finally expired.

To recap, after getting yet another batch of e-porn-oriented spam,  I had signed up at this site as a silliness one late quirky night _ and immediately drew 50 contacts within two days or so, depite my age. The site sent notices to my email address so I'd be sure not to overlook all these eager women's efforts. Like, wow! Then I discovered that while membership IS free, one must PAY if one wishes to contact or respond to someone who looks interesting _ and I can assure you that the displays show plenty that's likely to heat up one's interest!

So I paid up out of continuing curiosity, and over the next month I made repeated efforts to contact these apparent individuals, each response carefully crafted in keeping with that individual's approach. To the extent that I drew any response at all to my efforts, they all seemed like _ pardon the expression _  "one size fits all" replies. Most of the 50 vanished; there still were 16 ostensible second contacts.

Something had changed, however: I no longer got notices in my email inbox that someone was trying to contact me.  I found that odd: As a "free" member, I got alerts. As a "paid" member, I didn't get alerts. Hmmmm. Further, only two seemed to come from real people. One wanted to know why I had joined in the first place but wasn't sufficiently impressed by my reply to contact me further. The other _ a comely 28-year-old in Ghana _ wanted to marry me and have my children, as soon as I paid her bills and her $1,800 air fare.

As the deadline approached for the membership's automatic renewal _ read that, charging my credit card for yet another month without further authorization or contact, _ I canceled. I set a specific effective date, and I received an advance acknowledgment from the site operators (which I retained for the sake of proof, if needed). My credit card bill, received two weeks later,  nonetheless contained a charge for an additional month. It had been posted two days after my resignation. My demand for a credit drew no response.

However, there was a mild new flurry of contacts during the next two days after cancellation was to have taken effect. I got perhaps a dozen or maybe 15 wholly new invitations. So, what the heck, really curious now as to whether anything was real in this operation, I responded to them. And then contacted them  a second time _ this time asking that they do me the favor of a reply mentioning some aspect of my email or my profile. And then sent yet a third but very brief request. None ever responded _ wait, I take that back: There was one subsequent repeat contact, but it didn't meet my request for content directly related to me and again was of the form-letter variety.

In the interim, I had scouted the site and picked out a handful or two of reasonable prospects and had initiated my own contacts. I wanted to see if I could stir up a real person. It would appear that either I'm incredibly poor at this process _ or perhaps that there is virtually no real person behind these photos and profiles. For whatever reason, none responded to my invitations.

I had posted a note in my profile saying I had canceled as of a specific early September date and no longer would be able to reply to anyone. Almost all of these new apparent contacts came a couple of days after that date and took the same general approach _ along the lines of "Am I too late?" or "I should have written sooner, are you still available?" I manfully told them all that I was. None of those replies drew further new attention. Perhaps two weeks after that small  flurry, one more new contact drifted in _ and it actually seemed real, with a certain piquancy that actually led me to hope there WAS a person behind it. I even wrote two or three times, but if she's real, she didn't choose to continue the contact.

Siiiigh.

Now, just a day or so ago, the monthly anniversary rolled up yet again _ and this time my resignation became real. And over the following 36 hours there has been yet another flurry of new "contacts." there are at least 13 sitting in my inbox as I write. Just as at the beginning, I'm now again getting alerts that messages are waiting. I still can read these emails, but of course no longer can I contact anyone _ unless I pay up again!! 

Soooo, waddayuh think: Should I go on, or is it time to quit? *g* Now, this is some dinky off-brand site; it's not one of the majors, so there's an alternative. I could shift my experiment to one of the "biggies" and check how THAT works out.. And, who knows, after all, I might STILL get lucky!!

 Putting it bluntly, I really dislike the Woyano format change that places ads within the contribution space, and especially those that even precede the starting line of contributions.

Generally speaking, I don't mind the Google ads elsewhere on these pages. They are small, they load quickly, one can ignore them readily enough, and there's nothing too wrong with finding ways to capitalize on a project _ especially since one doesn't have to contribute and can quit any time.

Now, however, it seems to me that what has been a nuisance has become an intrusion that to me raises questions  as to the appropriateness of continuing to contribute posts.  That even this complaint will be surrounded by such ads seems adding injury to insult.

The e-mail I received Thursday evening from cultural anthropologist Dr. Susan Carole Coutin announced publication of her third book, "Nations of Emigrants." She had just received a first copy and offered a URL at which I could read about it. The reviews are fantastic. They barely stop short of calling it "a good read" _ hardly typical for publication of academic research! *s*

It didn't come easy.

So I'm crowing on her behalf.

And I hope you'll take a look.

Dr. Susan Carole Coutin is my daughter.

 

 

 

 

 

My "sexcapade," like Arizona's monsoon season, stirred up some dust and provided a lot of flash but left behind the same drought it found upon its arrival.

I've been trying to come up with a clever approach that would delay the denouement for at least two paragraphs, but let's face it: There's just not a lot to say about a game with no score.

My sojourn in the potentially steamy world of casual sex is over _ welll, practically over. I've canceled my account for want of action.

And however it may sound like sour grapes, I rather suspect there was a good deal of scam in this set-up.

First, let me clarify something. Some of the comments on the initial installment suggested a degreee of misunderstanding. I didn't have 50 encounters, I had 50 contacts _ I guess it's fair to call them invitations of a sort.. My difficulty wasn't that of trying to juggle 50 women. It simply was trying to come up with 50 clever and individualized replies to what often seemed like canned comments, responses that in their turn would engender further contact that, uhhmm, might lead to something more personal.

Remember, now, "membership" in this operation is free. It actually IS free. One can post images and profiles and descriptions and prescriptions to one's heart's desire. One may search the operation's truly extensive databank without charge _ including all the hundreds of photos. But if anyone takes the bait, or if a search turns up someone interestingly, one then must take out a PAID membership in order to make contact. So, I ponied up _ as I said before *s" _ out of sheer compassion. It seemed a shame that all those women would forever wonder why they weren't good enough to warrant at least some kind of reply, even if it were only a gently worded "no, but thanks for asking."

So I struggled to come up with comments appropriate to each instance and hit the "send mail" button 50 times. Exhausting, I tell you, exhausting. And what happened?

That initial 50 promptly driwndled to 16, and though one or two seemed to come from a real person, most of those also still seeemed canned. I mean, I send an email with at least two conversational hooks and a question in it and get replies like: "I find you interesting, I'd like to talk to you. Do you have anything on your mind right now that you want to share?"

Or, "Dramatic, energetic, and fun, that is basically what I am all about. But don't get shaken by the term 'dramatic' coz I do drama the right way. A little of it makes things more exciting! Don't you think so?"

Or, "Life has been good with me. What have you been up to? I hope you are doing well. Any hot happenings there?"

I suspect that the site _ apparently unlike others _ has created a number of generalized "contacts" intended to perk up a new member's ego and entice that "free" member to pay up in order to pursue the dream. *s* For instance, at first, I got email notices for each and every "contact" and each and every "buddy" request. After I paid, there were no more alerts.

But I persevered through round 2, again offering to each of the 16 a personalized and conversational reply that included some generalized indication of location relative to theirs. Greater Phoenix actually sprawls over 500 square miles; "location" is important for more than just real estate!

And then I waited. And I waited. And then I waited some more. Since the "membership" fee automatically bills itself again monthly, I had placed a note on my calendar to warn of that renewal's approach. As that time drew nye, I shipped off a third email to each of the 16, this time brief and witty _ wellll, at least I thought each was witty LOL _ and cautioning that I was about to quit the site but would stick around if she wished.

Still nothing.

And so, I shut it down early this week _ slightly poorer than I started but certainly no wiser and with no insight as to whether such sites ever actually result in close encounters of any kind.

However, there's still that woman in Ghana who desperately wants to marry me. As soon as I pay her bills and provide the $1,800 air fare, she says, she'll hop that plane and land in my bed. She sent pictures to assure me how cosy she would be.

Actually, though, there was one other somewhat intriguing development.

Last weekend, when I shut down my dial-up Internet connection, my phone line began going "beep-beep-beep-beep ...." It seems there was a messge on voice mail, from earlier that day, so I dialed in to listen.

"Hi. How are you doing," said a female voice that obviously was trying to sound seductively enticing _ and, unfortunately, failing. "I'm Jill ....

"Sorry to have missed you," she added. "Talk to you later."

I don't know anyone named Jill ....

     ===

Initial blog: http://www.woyano.com/view/6183/Matchmaker-Matchmaker-Make-Me-A-Match

PCMag.com recently ran an article about ways to make an old computer useful _ besides adding RAM, replacing the hard drive and so on. One thing it mentioned was "distributed comuting." I realized I hadn't heard or seen anything about that for a long time, so I decided to mention it here.

Belated added thought: You can do all this on your current computer, too, of course, without hindering your work; you don't have to wait till you have an old computer to use LOL.

The last time I asked someone about distributed computing, my acquaintance said "what's that." If that's your reaction, the phrase as I'm using it refers to running a program on multiple computers, thus magnifying the computational power.

The program will be one for which a large problem has been broken into small segments. Each computer uses otherwise idle time to work on the problem and then feeds the results to a central computer where the segmental results are assembled into a whole. The effect is that of creating a supercomputer at virtually no cost to the main user _ hundreds, thousands or even millions of indivdual computers all working on aspects of a large problem, and donating their time.

One simply downloads a basic program, registers with the project's organization, installs the program on one's computer _ and lets it run. There's little more that the home participant will have to do after that point. There may be program updates, it may falter some times, it just might sometimes get in the way of programs you want to run when you use the computer yourself _ though this is infrequent _ so you might have to adjust how much of the computer's resources you are willing to devote to the distributed computing project.

But, mostly, you just install it and let it run, and that's that _ and you begin taking part in humongous projects for the betterment of humankind, at virtually no cost or hasle to yourself. You even may have the program display a graphic as it works, in effect becoming a screensaver or wallpaper.

The SETI folk (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) instituted the first large-scale project, so far as I know. That's where I started years ago. As of 2006, SETI@home had racked up the equivalent of 2.7 million years of computer time. Once it became obvious that this project functioned well, others began developing similar projects, one of which looks for effective drugs to fight cancer, the AIDS virus and perhaps other diseases. This project involves computjng how proteins assemble themselves _ that is, how they fold themselves. That's tough to figure out. Besides, when they don't fold correctly, diseases can result. The distributed computing aspect is known as "folding at home" (folding@home). This is the one in which I'm currently involved.

Early on, and perhaps still, folk formed groups or teams and competed with other teams to see which could rack up the most hours, or work units, or perhaps finds. Forums and blogs were created to deal with the foofurah *s*.

After a time, BOINC was developed _ the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing _ which makes it easier for folk to start projects. As the BOINC home page puts it for the rest of us, "Use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. It's safe, secure, and easy."

You also may use an idle PlayStation3 for a project.

http://researchforward.wordpress.com/2007/03/16/distributed-computing-meets-ps3/

Currently there are more than 20 distributed computing projects under way within BOINC. Among them are others that deal with searching for protein structures to fight diseases (Rosetta@home, .Proteins@home Still others deal with a search for prime numbers (GIMPS and PrimeNet and Entropia) _ no longer within BOINC, a search for nanosystems that can't be simulated and analysed through normal means (Nano-Hive@Home), and a search for gravitational waves (Einstein@Home).

Unfortunately, the never-ending search for gold _ that is, the profit motive _ has hit distributing computing as well. As CNET News put it a few years ago, "Companies are springing up with business models that involve farming out computing tasks to hundreds or thousands of computers on the Internet or [in] private networks." Those of you who what to make a dime may check that out.
[ http://news.com.com/2100-1001-245266.html ]

For those of you more altruistic minded, there are links scattered throughout this blog, Wikipedia has bunches, and here are a few more:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0%2C1697%2C11769%2C00.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing

http://distributedcomputing.info/

http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/themes/theme_05/

http://folding.stanford.edu/

Woyano has invaded my dreams. For true, I swear _ when I
awoke today, I realized I had been dreaming about an aspect
of Woyano. Since I didn't have to get up, I lay there and
extended the dream in my half-awake state, not consciously
directing any development but rather simply letting it all
grow out of the circumstances of the dream. This is the
result: a blog on a blog and a dream.

I recently read a columnist's report on what big names in
the gamer world and that of virtual reality think will be
the next-generational developments. One aspect of that is to
make 3-D avatars far more realistic _ so, for instance,
Loves Bloc Party could go shopping with her mates and try on
jeans to determine how she looks in them, and then could
use the real-life version of the store to buy those that fit
and looked good.

These avatars of us would be able to more from VR setup to
VR setup rather than, as now, being limited to existing only
within one. Our Second Life avatars could go into World of
War and vice versa, as well as to any other such VR
environment. We could roam the Internet in the personna of
our realistic avatar

It occurred to me as I read that if, as jbravo and
others posit, we are living in a simulated universe set up
by some higher intelligence with a giant computer, then here
we were creating a SimWorld within a SimWorld.

In my dream, someone _ sorry clemmati, 7-th Dimension, arooka,
Big Al and all the rest of you, but my dream never said who, ok? _
as I was saying, someone had created avatar vegetation in
this SimWorld II, including trees and flowers, and the plants had
become exceedingly dirty _ air pollution, don't you know. [Probably
because I subconsciously knew I needed to wake up because
my gardens need water desparately _ they have been wihtout for
two whle days. One robust strawberry plant actully died. *weeps*]

So jbravo told me to clean up the trees and the rest of the plants.
Seemed a reasonable enough concept in my dream, and there,
it didn't even occur to me to wonder "why me." I just set out to do it.

To clean the trees, basically I just went into the program
and rewrote the tree avatars' code somewhat so that the
surface pollution would be absorbed into the avatar where it
would be converted to energy which then was returned to the
grid. That's how I thought of it in the dream _ *s* _ tree avatars, etc.

As a result, little by little, the outermost surfaces of all
the vegetation in SimWorld II slowly began to clean
themselves. As they did so, they began to take on a seeming
glow as the cleaned surfaces began to reflect more light
than did the vegetation's still-dirty innermost surfaces. In
turn, little by little, slowly, SimWorld II took on a newly
lighter look _ literally, if the term may be applied to a
SimWorld, because more light was being reflected everywhere
by the plants.

The plants themselves _ the outermost tree branches, the
flowers, the upper levels of grass, and so on _ all began to
stand out slightly from their dirtier surroundings. One
couldn't help but "stop and smell the roses" _ or rather, at
least see them; their appearance demanded notice, and
SimWorld II became a lighter and brighter place on yet
another level.

I thought cdin would like that. I thought it all rather wonderful, myself.

This cleanup, however, had turned into a Herculean task. Not
only was it all pervasive _ all those millions upon millions
trees and plants and stuff, see _ but for some reason in the dream,
I was rewriting the code only branch by branch, the code for each one
in a Mandelbrot-like version of the Neverending Story, rather than
rewriting the code for the avatar or, better still, for the whole program
insofar as it applied to vegetation creation.

It was a dream, after all, no requirement that it had to be reasonable
or logical.

And after a time, I became so pissed off over having to do
all this work byte by byte that I did something shameful, or
at least mean-spirited. The original vegetation avatar code
was, in effect, proprietary, but I rewrote it totally using
open source and Linux. That was legal to do, I reasoned, because
in effect I was creating a new intellectual property since the
avatars' function had been changed _ they now absorbed the
dirt and converted it into energy which was returned to the
grid and thus was shared by everyone.

And I posted the source code so everyone else could use
what in effect had been a proprietary source available only
by license.

Then, I made a new pot of coffee and came here to tell you
what I had done _ and thus, in total Oprah and Springer
fashion, cleanse the guilt for my  ill-minded deed. *nods*

I'm not wholly guilt-free, however. I added a scoop of
forbidden caffeinated grounds to the decaf coffee when I made the
new pot., so I'd wake up enough ot end the dream.

===

Links:

PC Mag.com colmunist Tim Bajarin: