November 11th, 2005
“All Good Things…”
This was one of the best TNG episodes, I believe. It was also kind of sad, but I guess that’s to be expected since it was the series finale as well. I’m half tempted to read the plot summary, but I think I may have just found a good, solemn way to spend my Friday night (since I completed this week’s chores last night). So, I’ll resist the urge and try to forget about it for now.
But the real meaning of the title of this entry is a salute to two important [right] material possessions which, in the last several weeks, have left the realm of everyday utility. They have been with me for five good years, with frequent use in inhospitable conditions (standard fare for my reckless nature). So with today’s Autumn Tactics, we bid adieu my stalwart companions the Diamond Rio 500 and my blue Seahawks hat. So first, the MP3 player.
I was climbed onto the MP3 fad before it really became big. In pre-Napster era I got into it during my first year at Virginia during the fall of 1997. In those days, FTP sites were the portal of choice and the RIAA was more or less oblivious to the thousand-pound gorilla they’d have on their hands in just a feet short years. Using such pioneering sites as the long-since defunct MP3Asylum, I leveraged the academic version of WS_FTP 95 that came with the ITC student software pack to grab hundreds of tunes onto the _vast_ 8.4GB hard disk in my blazing Gateway2000 Pentium II, Sabrina. But this precedes the Rio by a good three years. After my summer at Microsoft I’d gotten sick enough of running around with my 1994 Walkman brick and bad analog tape (recorded by connecting the line out of my sound card to my tape deck), so I used the birthday money I got from my mom and purchased one of the first SmartMedia MP3 players off of Amazon. Through thick and thin, on three continents the Rio was with me for jogging, planing, and bullet-training. Along the way I upgraded the firmware so I could use 128MB cards, but it grew increasingly limiting as broadband exploded and I started pulling down two hour DJ sets at 192kbps. Additionally, the Rio wasn’t ment to put up to my kind of abuse, certainly not for five years, so after being dropped about fifty times, the LCD began to give out, at which point I started employing a hard whack to the back of the unit to perform a delicate adjustment on the current flow through the crystals. I suppose ultimately this is what lead it to it not even turning on. So after propping myself up with the 64MB in my Sanyo voice recorder, I finally put capital to the ailment and used a birthday present from this year (five years later) to get an iPod Photo, with a 20GB capacity, two and a half times the size of my entire desktop hard disk from college. Wary of what I can do to electronics I bought a little orange jacket and screen cover for the iPod, one that’s normal means of attachment to me is being looped through my thick leather belt (which I’ve been wearing now almost daily since 1996). Still, I think I may need to get a separate protector for the click-wheel, because the factory film is going to get greasy and come off fast. But first, let’s have a moment of silence for the unflagging service of the Rio, which will now be retired to the electronics box in the back of my closet until I get really bored one day and open it as a science experiment.
In even _greater_ standing (no offence of course to the Rio), is my beat and weathered Seattle Seahawks hat. This was also obtained in the golden year of 2000, but a few months ahead of my birthday at my first professional football game, a preseason matchup between the (then AFC west and considerably less adroit) Seahawks and the Indianapolis Colts. When this hat was purchased for a mere seventeen dollars it already had all the earmarks of being a Rusty trademark. It had an almost perfect pre-curved bill, an outdated and campy logo, and a faded blue finish. But most importantly it met the two key criterion for objects representative of my style: 1) it was obscure (Have you ever seen someone else in a Seahawks hat?), and 2) it was as no frills as unflavored yogurt. Also a key selling point was the fact it had a copper buckle and adjustable strap, as opposed to the little plastic holes that I always need to set on “four”, which in turn make it look like I have a fat head.
The hat became my “lucky hat”, because to be it was obtained at the peak of my acceleration away from suburban Maryland obscurity. It also fit the Virginia “shaggy prep” look perfectly, always leading the chase of any first date in blue stripes and a Camel Hard Pack (standard operating gear for parties)**. So in my ongoing attempt to carefully control the disintegration of my apparel to reach Jack Kerouac-like status, I wore the hat everywhere and anywhere. To the ACM World Programming Finals, where the hat and I chatted up professional condomologists on the streets of Vancouver. To the mountains of Utah, skiing down Alta for the first time (and first concussion). To Mexico, on a cruise with a depleted supply of Coronas, sweaty busboys, and drunk girls who talked through their navels, where the hat nearly met peril falling off the ship and into the Gulf of Mexico, or under the bombardment of seagulls at port in Tampa. The hat swam through salted waters Atlantic and Pacific, on the calm shores of North Carolina to the rocky coasts of Carlsbad. In the sweet, dipping sunset of the Far East, on a man-made beach hauled up from Australia to rural Japan after the original was washed away by a storm. The hat was with me like a somber compatriot, suffering through scores of rainstorms, broken loves screaming in cars, into death’s eye from multiple bicycle-car collisions. It was even run over once, the proud and grimacing bill given a nervous twitch, a crick in the arch, and black tire marks across the crown. Though frayed and rusting, the hat still criticizes me not, but looks only to quietly serve, to see me through life’s adventures. Not for being lost a dozen times in absent-minded derision, not for being shoved into the depths of my cavernous backpack for the resulting paranoia. No, the hat has served far too well through all these years to be treated with such irresponsible abuse. For as foolish it is to revere an icon, this humble patch of cotton and polyester deserves far, far more. It is my trademark, it is the spirit of my perseverance and hope for the future. And so it has been retired, to a safe keeping place; a place without a forgetful owner or the risk of crippling earthquakes. Now it sits quietly, patiently, just like it always has, but in the warm darkness of my top closet shelf, in my father’s house nine thousand miles away. Slumbering in timeless space, dreaming of the day I will return home and reclaim it, for it will be worn on my next ride to glory. Sleep well, dear friend. I am not worthy of your patience.
… after watching TNG later that night …
Watching that series finale of TNG really put an accent on the night. It was just, spectacular. So much good writing, so many interweaving stories, so many lessons to take to heart. In particular, the look on Admiral Riker’s face as he explains why he let himself get in the way of Worf and Deanna’s relationship. Still clinging to the past,
I didn’t want to admit that it was over. I always thought that we’d get together again… and then she was gone. You think you have all the time in the world, until… yeah…
So many ways to reflect on the ways we live our lives. How are we living them? What is it for, really? It’s the people. It’s the people in our lives and it’s now. Because now will never come again.
(At the weekly senior officers’ poker match, Picard makes a rare appearance and prepares to deal the next hand)
Picard: I should have done this a long time ago.
Deanna: You were always welcome.
Picard: (pauses) So… five card stud, nothing wild, and… the sky’s the limit.
