Six Years Meme

[jducoeur]

I don't do most memes, because they don't say anything interesting. But the self-reflective ones can be fun. And now that a few other people have jogged my memory about What Happened When, this is a little more feasible:

Six years ago, I was at (counting back jobs) Trenza, I believe, which was in the process of Collapse Due To Lack of Business Plan. IIRC, we had been cut down to 80% time (and salary), in a desperate bid to shepherd what little money hadn't yet been spent on Aeron chairs. Shortly after this, they would switch to an All Stock Options pay scheme, which was the point where I bid the company adieu. msmemory and I were mainly focused on planning a Paris vacation, having decided that the need to get away trumped the imminent loss of job. Besides that, I don't think I really had much life at the time; this was the point at which I was realizing that the life of Management was not for me.

Six years before that, the SCA was just beginning to recover from The Membership Crisis, which had consumed most of the previous year. I was deeply immersed in setting up the SCA Grand Council, and would be sending out the first newsletter shortly. I was still working at Intermetrics -- I believe that I was mainly focused on the multimedia educational MUD project ("Wyndhaven", no relation to windhaven.com), writing cutting-edge Java applets for the DoD's school system. In my spare time, I was just starting to give up on the VRML project ever doing anything useful and interesting. It was the first year of Hammatt Ocean Lodge, for which I was Senior Warden, and preparing to have my life hoovered up by being Master the following year.

Six years before that, msmemory and I were still relatively newlywed, and starting to think about buying our first house. Our apartment wasn't terrible, but a bit cramped. I hadn't yet gotten my AoA yet, but had mostly gone past feeling angry about that to taking a certain perverse pride in being the most famous non-Armigerous member of the SCA. That was mostly because of the still new-and-shiny Rialto, which I was spending too much time on; around this time, I started acting as the unofficial-but-universal online contact for the Society. I had recently started the Rolls Ethereal. I was Dancemaster Carolingia for the first time, and was beginning to plan The Letter of Dance. At work, I was writing assemblers for Intermetrics, which were in turn being used to program pretty much all GM cars at the time. My relationship with baron_steffan began around this time: he asked me to become his Esquire, and I asked him to sponsor me into Freemasonry.

Six years before that, I was just finishing High School, and realizing how utterly and completely I had fucked up my life. Sometime around this point, I realized that I was allowed to be *friends* with girls; failure to understand this probably explained my nonexistent social life. I was still not over a terrible crush that haunted me throughout high school. In my spare time, I was working for my father, as the main programmer for the Apparel Store vertical-market system we were attempting (completely in vain) to sell.

Six years before that, I was in the middle of my first year of junior high in Princeton. My parents were splitting, which was mostly going about as well as could be expected. I was actually having a lot of fun, and had a modest group of fellow-traveler geek friends, not realizing that The Year of Hell was just around the corner.

Six years before that, the Watergate scandal had not yet started, so I was still a complete TV addict. (I didn't really start reading for pleasure until my mother started taking over the TV for eight hours a day.)

Six years before that, I wasn't quite born yet.