Tech Dream
This is one of the most vivid dreams that I’ve had in a long time. I know that I can’t do it justice here, but I’m going to try.
I found myself working for a large tech company. Something similar to Agilent where the primary products are computer chips, testing equipment, motherboards, and stuff like that. I was doing some web development for the corporate site, but it was boring stuff. It was just plain HTML and images. No PHP. No Perl. No Ajax. No JavaScript. Nothing like that. No challenge at all.
I had my annual review with my boss, Vicki, and I implored her to let me use more advanced technology on the web site to make it more dynamic, usable, and interesting. She denied my requests, so I was stuck doing plain old HTML. She noticed that I was obviously unhappy with the situation, but I told her that I would continue to do good work for her. Vicki, who oddly enough was a midget, understood, and promised that she would see what she would do to help me out.
A few weeks later (and I’ve never had WEEKS pass in a dream before) another manager by the name of Sarah waddled up to me to talk to me. The reason I say waddled was that she was also a midget, but she had difficulty walking, so she would drop on her butt, split her legs like a gymnast, and waddle along on her ass as she moved along. It was quite strange.
Sarah told me that she thought she had the perfect job for me in her department. She said that she had a father/son pair on her team that were trying to cobble together a web application for another team, but they were having a hard time doing it. She asked me if I would be interested in helping her out on a full-time basis.
Of course, I hopped on this right away. She told me that she had expected my answer, and had already worked things out with Vicki. She lead me to where her team sat, to introduce me to the team. The office space was in the back of the building, and was filled with wire cages, metal shelves, and all sort of junk lying around. It was total chaos, but I was intrigued because the “junk” was all sorts of techno gadgets that I had never seen before.
As she was leading me back to the team, she stopped by this huge stack of books, and told me that I would need to learn some new stuff to work in her department. I told her that it wasn’t a problem. I always enjoy learning new stuff. She told me to grab a copy of each book from the various stacks. There were seven stacks in all, and they all had the Novell symbol on the cover. I’ve never gotten along well with Novell software, so this made me a little nervous. As I picked up each book, I looked at the cover. They were things like Novell Linux 0.9, Novell PHP 2.1, Novell Perl 3.2, Novell HTML 2.02, Novell Photoshop 3.14, Novell JavaScript 1.2, and Novell Apache 1.3.2.
I was flabbergasted at how outdated all of this technology was! I hoped that the numbers were Novell numbers, and not actual version numbers of the software. I started skimming the books (e.g.: Like Johnny-5 in Short Circuit) and I quickly discovered that these were the real version numbers of the software. I was being taken backwards in technology by more than a decade!!! I was dismayed, but I decided to give it the “old college try.”
Sarah lead me to my desk, which was a small metal affair just large enough for my dumb terminal, keyboard, mouse, and my seven heavy books. As soon as I put my books down, I heard a cheer behind me, “He’s here! Yay! He’s going to help us, Dad!”
I turned around to face two men. One was in his mid-fifties, going gray, and had a decent-sized gut that was barely restrained by a thin, brown, leather belt. A photocopy of him, although 30 years younger (and without the gut) stood next to him. They were smiling brightly at me. The younger one turned to the older one and said, “See. I told you that Sarah would come through and get us the best web developer this company has to offer.”
I was a bit surprised at that statement, but I put a smile on my face before stepping forward to introduce myself. Before I could reach the men to shake their hands and learn their names, a phone rang. It was coming from my desk, but I couldn’t recall there being a phone on my desk. I turned back to my desk to discover a small silver and dark blue phone on my desk. It looked very familiar. That’s when I realized that it was the on-call phone from my current (real life current, that is) job! It was ringing, and that meant that I needed to answer it ASAP because I was on call!
That’s when I snapped out of the dream to realize that the phone really was ringing. I managed to fumble for the phone and answer it before it went to voicemail. I had work to do, but somehow, after finishing the work, I managed to remember enough of the dream to write it up.
