There are people in my life I have heard so much about that by the time I meet them, they feel familiar. I have trouble adjusting to a reality where this person is not already my friend. Sometimes there’s trouble adjusting to how people are in real life, how they move, their physical quirks.
That’s what it was like when I met Locutus.
Locutus, of course, being Gardella’s server.
Locutus, it turns out, is related to the Latin root “loquor.” And by “related” I mean “is a form of the word”–the past tense to be exact. Locutus, in case you don’t know, is the name Captain J.L. Picard gets on Star Trek: The Next Generation during his time as a member of the Borg Collective. I assume that Locutus of Borg was named because of his connection to the word “interlocutor,” which is what he was to be–an interlocutor between the Borg and Federation. I could say Gardella’s server was named because it too served as an interlocutor, between him and the world, or him and him (since he regularly connects to it when away from home), or because it “speaks,” but those would be lies. The server is named Locutus because it, much like it’s Borg counterpart, has a blinking green light.
Locutus, among other things, allows Gardella to watch television. The cable runs through the server, in order to be viewable on the one functional screen in the apartment–the monitor. Because the video is all run through and processed by the computer, he set it up TiVo style to capture, or record, shows. When he heard that the Royal Shakespeare Company was filming their staged version of Hamlet, he set out to capture it. The RSC version stars David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.
Basically it’s like someone decided nerds needed to see Hamlet.
David Tennant played the eponymous Doctor in Doctor Who for three seasons. Patrick Stewart played Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise. Nerd heroes.
Of course the production was artfully done and I have plenty to say on the matter, but that will be up over on my personal blog if you want to read a review. Here, I’m going to talk about what it was like to watch.
You see, Locutus runs something called GRML. GMRL touts itself as a “Linux Live system for sysadmins / texttool-users / geeks.”(1) This means a) it does strange things, b) its interface is almost old school, and c) it doesn’t always work. Every time something new is done using the server, it’s an adventure. This isn’t to say Gardella had never watched captured video on it before–I honestly don’t know–but this was the first time it processed something in HD.
And boy did Locutus not like it.
For some people, running open source systems becomes an all-consuming hobby. It’s not like he goes out on the weekends and does an activity, but rather he spends much of his spare time thinking about it. He stays away sleep trying to tweak things and make new things work. It’s not so much a hobby, but a lifestyle–much like how the Steelers become in Pittsburgh, how a lawn or garden can be. It’s that place after running on weekends transfers into running every day of the week. It’s that place where someone becomes a marathon runner, picking meals carefully, drinking certain amounts of water, managing certain amounts of sleep, and maximizing who they are. (Gardella says “I don’t feel as hardcore as a marathoner…I don’t think of it as hard work.” -Ed.)
Rather than do something sensible, like try a different application or transfer the file to my trusty laptop, he poked, prodded, twittered, coded, and examined parts of how his computer worked to try and make it function–to try and make it so we could watch the familiar tragedy of Hamlet play out before us with two of our favorite British men.
(“I want one,” I would whine piteously during quiet moments when David Tennant would be on screen. “I want one,” Gardella would counter when Patrick Stewart had center stage.)
And this seemed natural.
Of course we needed to do this in order to watch Hamlet. Of course it didn’t work on the first try. I think neither of us expected it to–or even if we did, we weren’t surprised when it didn’t work flawlessly and smoothly.
When someone becomes a hacker, a hacker of anything, they know and accept that things might not work the first time or at all. They accept that they’re going to need to tweak and pull and reshape and retune things constantly–whenever a new variable arrives or an old one changes. This understanding moves from acceptance to joy. Hackers can revel in things not working.
I like to think Harry Potter has moved enough into the social conscious that I can say this. Remember when Harry is getting his first wand and Ollivander expresses his joy and bemusement at how tricky a customer Mr. Potter is being? When I read this, I understood the feeling. Sometimes it’s great when things are hard, when things don’t work, when you need to strike and move to make it work. Locutus brings the feeling out for Gardella. This is what gives him that softly maniacal joy of doing something you’ve chosen to love to do.
He talked apologetically, as is his wont, while he worked. I did my best to assure him, as is my wont, it was fine. When it worked, he didn’t just have the satisfaction of getting to watch his Captain: he had the satisfaction of knowing that he made it happen.
(1) GRML.org