Troy Trip

Well this is posted a couple of days late so the details are quite vague. Oh man, was this an exiting experience… So here goes. I started off in Farwell, Michigan. Me and my buddy sontek had to drop off a server at a co-location center in Troy, Mi. (2.5 hour drive). So we get up nice and early, hop in the car, and drive to Troy. The city of Troy is really quite exquisit. All of the grass is cut, and all of the housing is upper-class. Anyways, back on topic.

Apon arrival, we realized that neither of us had brought the cell-phone number to the guy we were supposed to drop the server off too. So, we stop by the insanly large complex that WaveForms resides, to find that the man wasn’t present. A little irritated, but not upset, we decited to go for some food. KFC was devoured, discussion of LAN centers was priority since we are trying to get one established in the near future :). Sontek told me about his time hanging out at a LAN center called Mouse Miles which was about a half hour away or so. From there, we went back to the building, and rang the security buzzer. The security guard told us to come in and sit down and then proceeded to lecture us about his days before he was a “rent-a-cop”. How we aren’t going to be able to suceed without money and extensive college education. Being the person I am, I challenged him with my knowledge and my plans for sucess and persuaded him to the belief that I am going to be incredibly successfull in the near future. He then went on a rant about how he stopped like 400 people from entering a mall or something by talking bad-ass. I don’t know, I really wasn’t paying much attention. The man seemed as though he was starved for attention and positive commentation. We finally weasled our way out of there after sitting with him for over an hour and a half. Out to the car we went feeling very lighthearted at what we just experienced, but a little more frustrated as we hadn’t accomplished our goal. We started running out of ideas, but I refused to go back to Farwell without dropping off the server. So we called the co-lo from a payphone, only to get the automated answering system. We then called my house looking for someone to email the co-lo guy, only to get an answering machine. From there, we called John house in Grand Rapids to try and summon his room-mate to fix our situation. His phone was out of service.

So what next? We were stuck in Troy with a server and nowhere to go. We had to do the logical thing. We had to ask random people to use their internet. But where would we do something like that? We found our solution in two random girls walking down the street (no we didn’t pick them on account of gender). So we pull up slow-like, and John sticks his head out the window and speaks: “Hey, we are trying to get a hold of a guy, can we use your internet?”. The reply was one that was unexpected until we actually looked at the girls. I hear from the drivers seat of the stratus “Don’t talk to them”. So naturally, I look over humered at the response to see 2 eleven-year-olds or so standing by the car window, scared for their lives. That is when we realized that asking people was a bad idea, so I took off down the highway. John askes me “Where are we going”, and my response was the only thing that I could do. “Were going to find that LAN center”.

So we venture another half-hour to a city I have never been too, in search of a LAN center that I had never been to, and John has only been there once. I don’t know how I managed to do it, but I found my way to the city where the “supposed” LAN center was. From there I started the drive around with John barely recognizing anything, let alone knowing where the LAN center was.

To make a long story short, after about an hour of unknown detours and city roads, we somehow managed to put ourselves on the road where the LAN center was. So we walk in seeing a kid that sontek had met before, and got on the computers. Chat started, and I realized both how much of a computer geek I am in compairison to normal people, and how much I regret playing online games for 2 years when I could have been reading more reference and getting extremely knowlegable. Sontek got a hold of the Wave-Forms guy and we played some UT2004 (which is a great game). We realized that the LAN center there sucked. That really sparked some ideas concerning how we could get investors for our LAN center, but that is another entry. We left the LAN center tired and impatient. We had wasted 3 to 4 hours driving on the road to placed we had no idea about in search of internet access which is everywhere.

So we drove the 30 minutes or so back to our origonal destination to see Bill (The WaveForms Guy) sitting there waiting. The rest of the story is simply excitement and optimism. We entered the keycard access room to where the servers are housed. I was in awe at the networking media, equiptment, and setup of the placed. Air conditioned flooring (raised), enclosed rack mounts, etc. Then we get to talking business. All of a sudden we get to talking computers (even more so then every other sentance). Eventually, I come to realize that this man is a genious. He makes his own hardware, he is an engineer, he is connected everywhere, plays the stock market, and lots of other fun things that sparked the imagination inside my nieve head. So we start making deals about servers and things of that sort. He tells us that he can help with the LAN center, and that he is going to put us on the developer list for WaveForms. Again, to make a long story short, we talked for 5 or so hours, and me and sontek drove home completely exhausted, yet satisfied, and optimistic.