The Conners Chronicle Issue #1 May 24, 1998 Dear Family & Friends, Welcome to my newsletter. I’ve discovered this spring that I don’t have time to correspond promptly to my multitudinous friends and family members, so I’ve decided to create this newsletter to provide all the latest dirt on what I’ve been up to. This way, everyone gets a decent letter, and I don’t have to spend three hours each day e-mailing people. Everyone wins, no? A few basics on the "Conners Chronicle"... First of all, if you’re not on the list of people that receives this, and would like to be, assume it is an inadvertent oversight on my part. Send me your e-mail address and I’ll add you to the list. If you are on the list, and for some bizarre reason don’t want to be, just let me know and I’ll remove you. Also, anyone who wishes may feel free to print this thing out (as long as they don’t alter it in some incriminating way), and distribute it to anyone who wishes a copy (i.e. people who don’t have e-mail). Alright... time for the interesting stuff... La Boheme I hadn’t been back on campus long before I ran into Professor Emeritus (his new title as of fall 1997) Karlos Moser, an old aquaintance. Karlos was having trouble recruiting enough men for the chorus of the upcoming UW production of La Boheme, and asked whether I’d be interested in participating. I eventually signed on. I hadn’t done anything in theater for about 4 years, so it was kind of nice to do a show again. There were a number of people involved in the show that I knew from previous shows, even after all these years, and it was nice to see them. The production was a success, receiving enthusiastic reviews in the Madison newspapers. A fine time was had by all. La Boheme is supposedly the last production Karlos will do for UW Opera (he has since "retired"), but I refuse to completely believe it. A Fool And His Money Seeing that Best Buy was having a sale on memory chips, I decided to finally upgrade my computer, which had been running on 8 MB all these years. For those who aren’t computer people, I’ll just say that 8 MB is not very much . While I was at Best Buy, I also saw a good deal on a modem that was about 3 times as fast as the one in my computer, so I bought it as well. I went home to install my stuff, and found that I wasn’t quite as proficient with computers as I would like to be. So I went back to Best Buy, and paid a goodly sum for them to install it. Several dollars later, I was back home, and discovered that I couldn’t connect to the UW server. So I called UW’s help desk. To make a long story a little shorter, they had me do something that completely hosed my PC. They then told me to call Microsoft for help. Or if I preferred, I could have the UW help desk look at it, for $60 an hour. This upset me a tad, since my PC was working pretty well until I called the UW help desk! After a discussion with one of the help desk supervisors, they agreed to look at it for free the next day. So I took my wounded computer (and wounded ego) to the UW help desk. They had to reinstall Windows 95 to finally fix the problem. It was also revealed at about this time that all that had to be done in the first place was enter the proper IP numbers. This would have taken less than a minute to do. Oh well, at least it works now. The main reason I got the memory upgrade was because I’ve been having problems with my CD-Writer, and figured it was a memory issue. It wasn’t. I’ve called HP and they are sending me a new one, since mine is still under warranty. Surprisingly, they didn’t make me jump through all sorts of hoops or anything, just asked me to try a few troubleshooting things, then when that didn’t work, they said they’d send me a new one, and I just send mine to them, postage-paid, when I receive the new one. I think I’m becoming an HP fan. Car Trouble (or, A Fool And His Money, Part 2) After a recent oil change, I noticed my car was missing strokes. My car doesn’t have a lot of power to begin with, so this was not a problem I could ignore. I took it in to Smart Motors, where they discovered that oil had gotten into the spark plug area, causing my problem. Four hundred dollars later, my car was healthy again. I just drove it from Madison to Charlotte, North Carolina without incident. Hopefully another eight years will pass before its next ailment. Back to Work I’ve gone back to Charlotte to work for IBM this summer. They’ve given me a small raise, which is nice, and I’ve found a place to stay for $300 a month, which is considerably less than I spent last time. I’ve got a room in the house of a former IBM employee. It’s about the size of the dorm room I once lived in, or perhaps a little bigger. I only brought what I could cram into my car, so there’s plenty of room. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any rocking chairs in the house, so I may need to find a new channel for my excess energy. I don’t know for sure what I’ll be doing for IBM yet. I’m planning to send this letter on Tuesday, which is my first day (I don’t have internet access outside of work). Joke #1 I will now attempt to create humor. I hope this joke doesn’t already exist. Q. What did the friendly shark say to the swimmer? A. Hi, chum. Signature Conversation I briefly used as an e-mail signature a list of my ten favorite albums. I soon got rid of it, because it was too large and unelegant as signatures go. But before I did, I happened to post to the rec.sport.football.college newsgroup, with the signature attached. The post generated literally thousands of responses. I don’t read that newsgroup much any more. They never talk about college football. The thread I started appears to have a life of its own however, and will probably last until The End Of Everything. For those who may be curious, here’s how the signature appeared: ****************************************************** Public Service Announcement Courtesy Ryan Conners Inc. ****************************************************** 10 Albums that should be in YOUR collection: 1. The Beatles, Revolver 2. The Clash, London Calling 3. Wire, Pink Flag 4. Squeeze, East Side Story 5. Prince, The Hits 6. R&R, Three Weeks of R&R 7. John Lennon, Plastic Ono Band 8. David Bowie, The Singles 1969-1993 9. Buzzcocks, A Different Kind of Tension 10. Elvis Costello, Trust Note: I will not be held accountable for anyone's poor taste in music. I think it was the note at the end that did it... I also received comments from several people I e-mailed during the time I was using the signature. A definite conversation piece, it would seem. R&R News My band, R&R, recently received its first paid order in several years. All the way to the top, baby! I inadvertently got into a conversation about Stiff Little Fingers after posting to the rec.music.beatles newsgroup, and eventually my own band got brought up in a discussion between me and an alleged former U2 roadie. A check is allegedly on the way... R&R Lyric #1 With our newfound success in mind, I think I’ll provide an example of our lyrical ingenuity: From the song I Hate You Too (1997): Our relationship is love and hate, just without the love. Thank you. Five Dollars, Going Twice After discovering a few Atari newsgroups, I decided to auction off about 15 cartridges I owned. I also posted to a baseball newsgroup offering to sell my Jose Canseco-autographed baseball. It turned out to be a great idea, and I made about $300 from the items. For those who may be curious as to whether their Atari stuff is worth hundreds of dollars, here are the final bids from my auction: CART HI BID The Chal. of Nexar $5 Private Eye $12 Atari Video Cube $60 Time Pilot $17 Montezuma's Rev. $16 Snoopy & Red Baron $17 Oink! $5 H.E.R.O. $14 Pooyan $14 Tax Avoiders $21 Frogger II Thrdp. $23 Pitfall II $10 Laser Gates $9 Cross Force $8 Cosmic Commuter $14 Artillery Duel $5 So, if your copy of Atari Video Cube is gathering dust in a closet, I’d be happy to take it off your hands. If you want to see a complete list of which Atari cartridges are most valuable, visit http://www.valendor.demon.co.uk/acn-uk/ It was interesting to see who bought these things. I wound up sending cartridges to winning bidders all over the country, and even overseas (Paris, France). None of the checks bounced. Incidentally, I still have about 200 cartridges in my collection, so I don’t really miss the ones I sold (although Private Eye and H.E.R.O. were pretty cool games). To think, people couldn’t give these things away a few years ago! The Jose Canseco baseball, accompanied with a set of Madison Muskies baseball cards, went for $50. The Rest is Silence I managed to catch the last episode of Seinfeld. I’ve heard that a lot of people were disappointed. I’ll go on record as saying that I thought it was pretty good. I wasn’t crazy about the way they tried to trot every past character out on stage, but I felt the plot was quite nihilistic and therefore appropriate to the show. I think in general people tend to expect too much out of last episodes... they’re waiting to see something Great, and are disappointed when nothing Great happens. Hey, that’s just the way Seinfeld is. It did seem to be a tad light on humor though... I should probably point out, however, that I’ve only ever seen about 20 episodes of Seinfeld. So maybe I don’t have the proper frame of reference from which to praise or criticize. On The Way To St. Ives Any time you drive to a destination a thousand miles away from where you began, you’re bound to pass some interesting places along the way. On my recent drive to Charlotte, I passed several lovely landmarks, most memorable for their neato names: -French Broad River -London -Paris -Lick Creek (although someone had carefully, even painstakingly altered the sign so it said "Lick Crack") -Stinking Creek Road -Oak Ridge, TN (is that where the Oak Ridge Boys are from?) -Billy Graham Training Center (?!) I wound up staying in a Days Inn in Shelbyville, KY, which is between Louisville and Lexington (I should have tried to find out whether it’s anywhere near Springfield). I had decided to stop for the night because it was becoming quite stormy out. In fact, I got to see the largest lightning I can remember seeing. It would start on one side of the sky and go all the way to the other side, a good enough distance that I could tell which direction it was going. I couldn’t tell where it was hitting the ground, though. It was like horizontal lightning. Driving into Louisville was really neat. I went over a really big bridge (over the Ohio River), with lightning going off all around me, and the night skyline of Louisville lit up in front of me. It was like something straight out of a postcard, only without the slow shutter speed effects (maybe if I’d been drinking a little!). The next day was sunny and raining at the same time. And the sun made all sorts of steam come up off the road, which was pretty neat. I didn’t check for a rainbow, but there was probably one somewhere. Later, I drove on a long stretch of highway that was under construction, and had been grooved. You could say it was a really groovy highway. I felt like a record needle. All in all, Kentucky was a treat. But the Days Inn didn’t have a porno channel like the place Rich and I stayed in, in Myrtle Beach. That was a mild disappointment. But I was too tired to watch much TV anyway. Indiana was a surprise. They had the exact same construction going on as they had last year, on the same road, only not quite as much. There was a sign that said "Left Lane closed 5 miles ahead," so I pulled into the backed-up right lane, so all the Illinois drivers could zoom by on the left while the rest of us waited. Which was also the same as last year. Next time I go to Charlotte, I’m gonna bring a bucket full of nails, and toss them into the left lane when I get to Indiana. One final note Write to me, for cryin’ out loud! As ever, Ryan