The Sprite is now eleven.
On the way back from picking her up from her grandfather's house, she asked me the following question. If you could be the boss of any business, what business would that be? The answer was Bowen Labs. The idea is that I make custom secret laboratories for my clients. I have never gotten over Batman.
Most of what I've done in my career, the most fun I've had, was designing information systems for executives to augment their decision making. But that's primarily because it is what we have designed computer systems to do. There are public methodologies for doing so. It's an art, but there are professional practitioners. But I've been a DJ as well, and it is just as fun. I've also been a blogger, cartoonist, photographer and composer - all augmented with digital technology. It's architecture for the mind. That is my passion.
In my less than stellar life, I've only amassed a minimum of components for my own secret laboratory. But the dream has always been called 'The Wall'. I've always envisioned a solid wall of electronics - floor to ceiling. Blinking lights, whirring tapes, glowing dials, spinning hard drives, rows of cables, antennae, potentiometers of the sliding variety, pulsing VU meters, of Krell dimensions and complexity. Shortwave, CB, morse code, packet radio, BBS, fido-nodes, telegraphs, telex, ethernet, token ring, ATM and three dozen other protocols. PGP, stego, hashes, blowfish, triple DES and self-destructing files. Every video and audio and text and database format. A full complete library, cross-referenced, indexed and mobile-capable. Today all I have is one Terabyte in two operating systems. I should have more, much more. The Wall is incomplete.
I think I've come to that part of my life where my kids are asking the kinds of questions I've been writing down answers for over the years. And I've been thinking about recording more of them, on video, to be served up at precise dates in their future. Naturally, I was of the sort who wrote out a full curricula for my children to be when I was back in my single 20s. I don't know where the list is, but you can hear me gloating when I speak of the Little Bowens. I need to embed my own special messages to them in The Wall. I need to capture them speaking with me there too, as I have been doing since before they could speak.
But I wonder if I could make this a living. Is there anyone besides me <strike>crazy</strike> passionate enough to want their own secret lab? Would they trust me to build it? The whole enterprise came into binary focus when I found this drop zone at the B&W website. I was throwing away an old Thinkpad 600X that is now a worthless piece of junk and wondering if there were other Thinkpads I might buy for the family, used. Somehow I ended up looking at audiophile equipment and last night's conversation and the old dream surfaced high enough to merit blogging. The Society of Sound. Yeah. I would be in that. I can play a little Isley Brothers on the Ibanez. I used to idolize Bob Carver. I know why TDK Ds say '120'. There might be some guys, somewhere with whom I could hook this up. Some guys.
Friday morning like most mornings that I head to the office, I walk past two shining black automobiles in the parking garage. They are parked in their usual reserved spots. One is a BMW 650, the other a Porches Carerra S. I cannot decide which of the two I'd rather have, but I think, ultimately it would have to be the Porsche. As I was thinking that, another Porsche driver parked nearby. He looked to be around my age, shaved bald looking something like a Middle Eastern Mark Mobius. We exchanged pleasantries waiting for the elevator. I suddenly decided that my next boss would be a Porsche driver. I've got to work for the guy who already has his. I've got to finish the job I started and then do the executive thing. I get tired of the renegade software work. The world doesn't need to be reinvented, merely recorded properly. There's got to be something heritable in that vector - I can't imagine that so many people have to think so hard and work so diligently on problems that have never been solved the way I do.
When The Wall is built, there will be heavy iron components in the garage and remote human interfaces in the living room and library. In the garage next to the Porsche, and the oscilloscope bench. Sprite will still be living at home and I will have learned how to play fast enough to do 'Climbing the Ladder Parts 1 & 2'. It will be a notable Thanksgiving.
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