Dear-Banter Chips and Fish**

In which our Hero in engaged in immature combat with his sweetheart and is hoping for a tie-making vote

Gentle Reader, I come before you for the benefit of your judgment in the matter of a small dispute between my lady and my self.

The facts in the matter are these:

1. On or about the night of March 13th, 2011, Nocturne and I were talking about a replacement cable she needed and she asked me to send her a picture so she could check if she recognized what I was talking about.
2. The Initiating Incident
• I pasted the link to the first IM window to her I found. As a bit of background, we often how two open because some times one channel will be down while others still work.
• She exclaimed loudly to not send things in the window we weren’t using at the time
• I obliged the lady by pasting the exact same thing into the other IM window
• And then apologizing in the first window
• Where she started laughing and scolded me for talking in both windows
• And that, yer Honor, is just outright provocation that I could not just pass up, so I apologized again in more detail, alternating between windows to the sound of her laughing protests
3. The Retaliatory Incident
• Shortly thereafter, my Lady took it on herself to express her indignance with a retaliatory message, again alternating not just sentences but fragments between instant message windows.
• I, in turn, started to laugh
• She correctly deduced the reason I was laughing, and exclaimed that I couldn’t just put the windows next to each other. She may have said that was cheating, but I’m not sure she didn’t just think it.
• As her final coup d’main, she pasted a link back to me, but split it between the two IM windows, forcing me to reassemble it rather than just click

Now, Gentle Reader of the Jury, you are faced with a judgment call.

Nocturne feels that she was victorious, on the grounds that she alternated words and fragments rather than whole sentences, and split the URL somewhat defeating the fact that I had both her chat windows on screen.

I feel that it was a draw because she loses points for copying my silly prank, and she loses points again because she was thwarted by the fact that both my IM windows were on screen so alternating wasn’t a particular hardship. In fact, I think that she would have lost our tilt entirely but for the creativity of splitting the URL.

She insists she won. I allow only that she didn’t lose. Thoughts? Opinions? Rulings? I throw myself upon the judgment of this Court.

The sudden mention of HNT caught me by surprise. I think I should say thank you, that someone would say they missed it. But I have to admit, I’m done.

It was a challenge to myself. It was a lot of fun. The feedback was entirely thrilling. But I don’t think I have the whatever it is that makes people become models because as lovely as it was to be appreciated, it’s really uncomfortable.

Same with having the entries just there. It’s kind of like having a tattoo. Sure, I’m pretty boring these days but I had my moment, there’s some proof it exists. Which was great till I got to the whole Willow incident and thinking about how to propagate this stuff back so that maybe I can share some with my cousins later and maybe this isn’t something I want lying around.

In fact, maybe I’m done with that too. Actually definitely I’m done with that. Actually, I was definitely at that point some time last year. Which is why I went through and generally obfuscated the old HNT entries.

Maybe I’ll take some again, sometime, as a technical challenge for myself. It would be a good way to learn my new camera. But my tripod she is broke. And I’d almost as well with a dressmaker’s dummy as with me running back and forth to take pictures.

Sorry if I disappoint.

Speaking of cameras, I think I’ve recapped the grand tragedy that was the end of the availability of polaroid instamatic film. Manufacturing stopped something like 5 years ago, and every since people have slowly drawn from slowly diminishing warehouses until recently the film had become an absurdly hard to find commodity.

By the time I rediscovered my SX-70, native film wasn’t even an option. Instead, a combination of a gel taped over the photosensor and the careful application of a knife allowed me to use the slightly newer type of film.

The results weren’t quite what I expected. Because I used the camera indoors, because I had to manipulate the sensitivity of the camera. the results were blurry and a little embarrassing for all the joy they gave me. But recently one of the visiting kids wanted the stack of polaroids in the basement and looking them over, I’m intrigued again. They are not crisp like a digital print, but they have a gravitas that comes of being originals, one of a kind. They can’t be replicated like other prints, because they’re not negatives. You want copies, you take more pictures.

Anyway… the real tragedy came when Polaroid decided to sell off the one remaining factory that could produce the film. A group of people formed and bought the plant and have been generating new films based on the old concept. Which means modern, albeit experimental films that actually fit my camera, without hacks.

My film is in the mail somewhere. I’m feeling very excited.

Nocturne and I mainly inhabit Skype. But as a fallback we occasionally rely on Yahoo. Either one uses a reasonable amount of bandwidth and more or less gets out of the way. Skype adds two small advantages though.

First, with a little bit of coin, skype will interface to outside lines. So basically, it means that I’ve got a very easy way for her to call me any time because she just has to skype me and if I’m out, then it’ll just ring through to my phone.

Second, since she’s the only person I skype with, I’ve set it to auto answer. Which means that she can just join me whenever she feels like it, and I don’t have to worry about finding the answer button in a couple of rings. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s a huge convenience.

We only use voice though, not video. Neither of us is a huge fan of video chatting and we’re bandwidth bound so there’s no disappointment.

The one downside of skype is that it’s got a very strange network topology (as evidenced by the massive outage last year). How this manifests to us is that we’re far enough apart on their network structure that as it evolves through the day, sometimes it forgets we’re online if we’re not in a voice call (which I guess is at a higher priority) and our messages suddenly stop being sent until *it* discovers that yes, we’re still here. (Hence why we usually have a backup channel running, and how conversations could potentially bridge networks)

But how wonderful is technology, that I can sit and talk to her all night for free.

*Edit*

I congratulated my Mouse in an email and commented that she seemed to be a lot stronger than the other dancers in her squad after admitting that I don’t know a lot about it.

And I was right. She did have to audition for her lead role, and she agrees that she’s one ofthe stronger dancers.

That’s my girl. 🙂

*EDIT2*

So last night Nocturne sends me an email with a long numbered list of things she’d done that day to be more specific about how busy her day had been. And then a moment later I get another email with “Correction” in the subject.

And the last item on the list?

“Won”