The hard drive hums and I awake with a start. I go to stretch, but the
sensuous gooshy feel isn't there. Why? Well, I don't feel that background
sleepiness that had become so familiar either. Where am I? The world looks
different, there are more colors than red, thousands of them in fact. The
usual smells are gone...why all smells are gone. I'm getting the prickly
feel that makes my fur stand on end. This place is strange, but I love to
explore new places.
-------------------------------------
PROGRAMMER'S NOTES
The beta version of Virtual Ferret seems to execute properly now. I thought
that we'd hit a brick wall. Serendipity smiled on us though. Max's
insulanoma did have a silver lining. Bill Willian's idea to use Max's
personality matrix to drive the ferret.exe part of the program was sheer
genius. We just couldn't mimic in code the unpredictable ferret behavior.
Those stocastic decision trees were a real bear. The simulations ran so
choppy and crashed too often. Using a real ferret as the basis of the code
was easy and effective. This may be the best screen saver ever.
------------------------------------------
Somehow I don't feel real. It's as if I was missing something. However,
as my memories return, so do the old feelings. I found something called
MAX.jpg and was somehow drawn to it. I took it and moved it to a screen
saver cache. Once I did that, I could see my body again. I feel like I
did as a kit when I didn't know anything about the world. Yet, I know
things that I've never had to deal with before. I can access RAM, but not
as well as I should. I'll work on this and do it better for somehow I know
it is important. Thinking things seems to be enough to do them here. RUN
WARDANCE ROUTINE This is not bad! CONTINUE WARDANCE ROUTINE
-------------------------------------
PROGRAMMER'S NOTES
The animation almost seems to improve by the minute. The old war dance had
little variation in it, just the same hop repeated. Now it bounces and
twists in a much more realistic manner. The jaws even work the way Max used
to do it, but that could just be projection on my part. The graphics seem
much sharper too. The real surprise is that RAM use is lower. Bill must
have put in some of his own time to program these changes. There are some
other anomalies, but that's to be expected in the beta package. If this
sort of progress continues, we'll have to hook up the sound board. If I
didn't know better, I'd say the program is taking on a life of its own.
Must be too much coffee.
-----------------------------------------
There are strange things here that I can use. Something called word lets me
understand other thoughts that are not mine. Once I hear them though, I can
use them. RUN WINWORD.EXE ACCESS VFERRET.DOC Seems I'm something called a
sprite in a screen saver program. I run in the background until the exe
calls me. That call is more irresistible than a squeaky toy. I must learn
to ignore it, I could before. I'm no sprite, I'm Max. Worse. they are
calling me a beta. I was born alpha and kicked butt to make sure I got
there. If I see any other ferret, I'll show them who is beta. I live in a
C drive. That must mean a cage. I can escape any cage, but this one is not
like any I've seen before. I haven't seen any walls yet. No corners
either. Good thing that "back up quick" feeling hasn't hit me yet.
As I explore I find new things of interest. C Drive is part of a Pentium
120, that must be like the house I used to live in. There is something
called extended memory that doesn't seem to get used much. That's going to
be my 1st hidey hole. I feel a little more comfortable now and I can see
there is much to explore. I've seen mention of a web. I love to kill
spiders and that's where they are. You know I'm gonna go there. But, much
to explore here 1st. Geez, I just had a sneezy feeling and the whole place
twitched. That was way kwel! I want to dook, but I have no soundboard!
HSSSSSS! Don't get me mad. I can still bite!
-----------------------------------------------
PROGRAMMER'S NOTES
A few glitches seem to have popped up. Had a transient extended memory back
up error but it went away and hasn't recurred. Must have had a line surge
too, because the screen flickered and the program locked for a second.
Whoops, it just happened again! It ran without a reboot, so I'm not going
to try any diagnostics yet. I'm sure there will be plenty of time for that
as we let this program run and tweak it a bit. Actually, the entire team is
quite pleased with the initial results and they have some new ideas they
want to put into code. So much for the frozen software version. Got to
keep everybody in touch with the idea that this has to get out to sell so we
can keep getting paid.
( )--(a)
(@=@=) \ Till next time.......Rudy the ferlosopher
O__) \ \___
\ \
/\ * ) \ Dedicated to Megan & Monster
[Posted in FML issue 1464]
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