Questions for the cast!

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Nyamaza
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Questions for the cast!

Post by Nyamaza »

I don't remember if we ever had an Ask Volair/Jake/etc topic before, but I thoguht it might be fun to have one.

Dear Saundra from the Future
How is your Volair different from the one we've gotten to know? Has Volair mellowed a bit as he started to grey, or is he still as demented a vulp as ever? And what are the biggest differences you see between yourself and our-time Sundra?
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Allan_ecker
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Re: Questions for the cast!

Post by Allan_ecker »

Yes, it was done at one point, but I'd love to do more!

Nyamaza wrote:Dear Saundra from the Future
How is your Volair different from the one we've gotten to know? Has Volair mellowed a bit as he started to grey, or is he still as demented a vulp as ever? And what are the biggest differences you see between yourself and our-time Sundra?
Saundra wrote: Hm. I wouldn't say that he's really changed all that much, although being married has reigned in his more promiscuous tendancies.

I guess the biggest difference would have to be that I've learned to let things be. I think things really started to change for me after I got the TimePhone working; it's funny how Ph.D. programs snap up a girl who can break the laws of time and space with a soldering iron and a couple of neodynium relays. As for the portal itself, that took a little longer, and even longer for me to tell people about it. (Actually, I haven't told anyone about it yet; so far only my closest friends and family know.) I mean, sure, the math works out; you can't change the past or endanger the universe with it, but I'm still not sure the world is ready to cope with that knowledge!
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Post by Nyamaza »

Dear Volair
When did you first know you loved Saundra? And did you feel any anxiety about the feelings, given how you had loved Jake, and that relationship didn't work out? (Though at least you remained good friend =^_^=)
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Post by Fallwind »

dear Rick:
how many degrees do you have? (and what are they?)
I cant say that things will be better if we change; what I can say is that we must change for them to get better

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Post by Allan_ecker »

Nyamaza wrote:Dear Volair
When did you first know you loved Saundra? And did you feel any anxiety about the feelings, given how you had loved Jake, and that relationship didn't work out? (Though at least you remained good friend =^_^=)
Volair wrote: Heh, that's kind of funny, you know? I guess I always knew, in a way. I didn't really -get it- though, untill I found out she felt the same way. I'd sort of put her in the "friend box" because of how she generally reacted to my shenanagans.

Anxiety? Maybe a little. The week after Jake and I broke up was pretty unpleasant, but then I have some pretty good indications that this thing is going to last. -laughs-
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Post by Allan_ecker »

Fallwind wrote:dear Rick:
how many degrees do you have? (and what are they?)
Rick wrote: Ahem:

BS, MS, and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.
Ph.D. in electrical engineering.
Ph.D. in bioengineering.

You might even say I'm once, twice, three times a doctor. -laughs-

I got the Mechie work done first; I was about sixteen when I got my Bachelors. The MS took two years, which is pretty standard, but I was doing lots of side projects at the time, if you know what I mean. -giggle- The Ph.Ds blur into each other; I was taking quals for the next while writing a thesis, you know, generally overworking myself and getting dangerously close to burning out. I think that's why I ended up getting into so much trouble in that part of my life.

But on the bright side, I sure can do a lot of multidisciplinary things these days!
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Post by Maximuscoolman »

Leonard,
What is it like to be a TV in a man's world? Do you find being a TV restrictive or liberating? Do you ever feel that you don't get enough attention? Do they unplug you at night to avoid a fire hazard? Are you ever afraid that they will forget to turn you back on? Do you have any gossip about people that we fans do not yet know?
-Maximus

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Post by The_Fox »

As an addenum:

Dear Leonard:

What was your first concious memory? What was it like the moment that you gained self-awarness? ... What was Saundra watching?

And if you tell us what kind of porn she likes, we'll set you up with a UPS and sattelite link. Heck, I'll BUILD you your own satelite.

With hopes of a cable lit future,
Jarylan
"What the?! Where did you get THAT?!"
"Creative aquisition."

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Post by Nyamaza »

Dear Volair
Now that you've graduated, are you working full time at your old part time job? Do you have any good stroies you can tell us about, that have been declassified and such?
As a second topic, you never mentioned just what cybernetic implants you have. Are you able to tell us what they are? And have you considered having Rick make you more? He IS rather an expert at such things, as you know.
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Post by Allan_ecker »

maximuscoolman wrote:Leonard,
What is it like to be a TV in a man's world? Do you find being a TV restrictive or liberating? Do you ever feel that you don't get enough attention? Do they unplug you at night to avoid a fire hazard? Are you ever afraid that they will forget to turn you back on? Do you have any gossip about people that we fans do not yet know?
Leonard wrote:There's an old joke about cats: You get to lie around and do nothing all day, and have attention lavished on you for no reason, but you also have to eat nothing but cheap tuna and crap in a box.

Now, both of those are strictly biological concerns, but I think my lack of mobility more or less equates. So being a TV is both restrictive -and- liberating. I have virtually no responsibilities, save to be an observer of the culture, and maybe throw in a social commentary or two.

I do not present any more fire hazard than a typical sophonot, so I do not have to be unplugged. When my screen is off, I'm still "on", so I haven't experienced any breaks in consciousness, except once or twice when I needed to be repaired. I have no -end- of faith in Saundra's technical capabilities, so I wasn't any more worried in these instances than a human might be undergoing routine surgery.

Gossip? I have some, but I'd probably get hard-wired to Fox News for a week as punishment for spreading it.
The_Fox wrote:What was your first concious memory? What was it like the moment that you gained self-awarness? ... What was Saundra watching?
Leonard wrote:Saundra was watching a documentary on "non-human" pandas being rehabilitated into the wild when I cracked my first badly formed joke about oedipal interspecies confusion, earning me a proper scream and several hours stuck on "the kitten channel" in hopes it'd somehow excorcise me. She'd tried and (she thought) failed to make me into a talking TV, and having me come alive like that was a little offputting. I'd spent about two months "growing up" on a steady diet of cable TV.

And they wonder why I have such an off sense of humor.
The Fox, using very small print wrote:And if you tell us what kind of porn she likes, we'll set you up with a UPS and sattelite link. Heck, I'll BUILD you your own satelite.
Leonard wrote:ExCUSE me? Let me ask you this, would YOU use a sapeint television who consideres you more or less its mother to WATCH PORNOGRAPHY? I certainly hope not.

And they say I'm wierd.
Volair wrote:I'll field that one. She likes Jeff Stryker, who in our universe is a male skunk with a HUGE tail--
Volair wrote:OW!
Volair wrote:C'mon, Sandy, the people deserve to--
Volair wrote:Ow!
Last edited by Allan_ecker on Thu Feb 03, 2005 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Allan_ecker »

Nyamaza wrote:Dear Volair
Now that you've graduated, are you working full time at your old part time job? Do you have any good stroies you can tell us about, that have been declassified and such?
As a second topic, you never mentioned just what cybernetic implants you have. Are you able to tell us what they are? And have you considered having Rick make you more? He IS rather an expert at such things, as you know.
Volair wrote: Pretty much went back to full-time with the SAG. I've been thinking of taking that desk job they keep trying to get me into (since agents start training at around 16 years old, we tend to get professionally "long in the tooth" pretty young. Sure, I could probably backflip through hails of shrukien well into my fifties with the cortical servos I've got, but why would I -want- to?

I've got a few good stories, but Allan's saving them for future comics. When he'll use them is anybody's guess, but mine is that it won't be even another two years before Umlaut House starts up again in some form.

Implants:

I've got wires running all through my musculature that allow me to perform actions faster by bypassing the slow nural electrics. There's a nodule at the base of my neck that coordinates all the impulses to match up the "faster than nerve" wires with the slow stuff. You know how reflexes only go to the spinal column and back? Well, I can do conscious actions with the same (or greater) speed.

I have what players of the twentieth-century game "Shadowrun" might call a battle coprocessor as well. Essentially I only make top-level tactical decisions like "hide", "run", "fight", and it makes decisions my grey matter isn't fast enough for.

I've also got a few storage banks which act as "dumb" storage, but since my -head- controls what goes in I can use it to:
store the song stuck in my head in 32-bit sound
take photos and video at human optical resolution (GREAT for lecture notes and/or pornography)
and just generally remember stuff better than any organic being ought to. I can get it into a computer using USBW. (Universal Serial Bus Wireless)

All this fits in a package the size of a standard hand-held rubber eraser (thank you Moore), which has been implanted at the base of my skull near the back, just under my visual cortex for better video performance.

I have about forty feet of wire running around connecting my brain to all this, thankfully added with a noninvasive nanosurgery developed especially for this purpose.
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Post by The_Fox »

*sends Volair an icepack*
"What the?! Where did you get THAT?!"
"Creative aquisition."

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Post by Nyamaza »

Dear Volair:
Well, the question was kinda asked of Saundra (though I have enough tact to not ask about someone as private about such things as Saundra), so I guess we might as well as you. What kind of porn do you enjoy? Do you and your lovely wife have seperate favored collections? And though I ask for NO details *glances scared at Sundra* Since we've established that Sundra is NOT a prude, I gotta ask... has she ever managed to pull anything in the bedroom (or other room in the house* that managed to squick YOU?

Dear Rick:
How DO you do that? (http://umlauthouse.keenspace.com/d/20011113.html)
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Post by Fallwind »

Rick:
how do you controll the spare bodies you arnt hooked up to? or do you? Is there like some wireless network where you sence what each of them is doing at any given time?
I cant say that things will be better if we change; what I can say is that we must change for them to get better

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Post by Allan_ecker »

Nyamaza wrote:Dear Volair:
Well, the question was kinda asked of Saundra (though I have enough tact to not ask about someone as private about such things as Saundra), so I guess we might as well as you. What kind of porn do you enjoy? Do you and your lovely wife have seperate favored collections? And though I ask for NO details *glances scared at Sundra* Since we've established that Sundra is NOT a prude, I gotta ask... has she ever managed to pull anything in the bedroom (or other room in the house* that managed to squick YOU?
(Future) Volair wrote: Squick? No. Surprize? You bet. Saundra is an inventive and enthusiastic lover. Going into any more detail would probably earn me a pummeling, however.

Porn? Well, anything good, really. High quality film, good lighting, all that. ZZ Studios is still crankin' out the hits in 2040, although they're under new management. Saundra and I have similar tastes, although she prefers there to be men involved, for obvious reasons.
Nyamaza wrote: Dear Rick:
How DO you do that? (http://umlauthouse.keenspace.com/d/20011113.html)
Rick wrote: Suffice to say "double jointed" does not begin to describe what I can do with this cybernetic prosthesis.
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Post by Allan_ecker »

Fallwind wrote:Rick:
how do you controll the spare bodies you arnt hooked up to? or do you? Is there like some wireless network where you sence what each of them is doing at any given time?
Rick wrote:The Spares operate in a bandwidth around 40GHz (Airwaves are less crowded at that frequency) using a QPSK signaling method. I didn't bother with any packet switching, routing, or even collision protection since I only use the network to send signals from the one I'm currently using to the others.

In this master-slave topology, I can find out where any Spare is (provided it's within antenna range) fairly easily. The Spares are also 802.11x enabled and as such can be reached wirelessly provided a router is in range.

(For you ought-fivers, the "x" does not mean every letter between g and x has been used; I'm using "x" like one does when referring to Windows 95, 98, and Me as Win9x.)
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Post by Nyamaza »

Dear Rick:

Where did you and Jake go on your honeymoon? I hope it was as lovely and wonderful as the two of you deserve.

And did you decide to stay in the Washington area? Or did the group move elsewhere at some point (company moved, career change, etc). This one's for Future Rick, of course.
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Post by Fallwind »

Dear Volair:
whats the ohm and star on the back of your ear for?
I cant say that things will be better if we change; what I can say is that we must change for them to get better

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Post by Maximuscoolman »

Heheh, got to love the voyager quote.
-Maximus

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Post by Allan_ecker »

Nyamaza wrote:Dear Rick:

Where did you and Jake go on your honeymoon? I hope it was as lovely and wonderful as the two of you deserve.
Rick wrote:Hawaii. It's a pretty cliche'd choice, I know, but it's also a lovely place.
Nyamaza wrote:And did you decide to stay in the Washington area? Or did the group move elsewhere at some point (company moved, career change, etc). This one's for Future Rick, of course.
Rick wrote:The gang pretty much settled right down in Seattle. After Saundra won the Nobel (it has long been expected that such would happen to the inventor of time travel), she applied for a teaching position at the UW and was accepted by a nearly frothing-at-the-mouth physics program. Volair, Jake and I can basically chose from where we work as none of us have jobs that require a physical presence in the modern drive-by-wire era.
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