Monday, November 18, 2019

Mos Eisley-The Cantina

So...A couple of Weekends ago, Mrs J and I traveled to what I had believed to be THE most wretched hive of scum and villiany in the universe.  Well, turns out...I was wrong.  The only remaining reliable news source has determined that DC is in fact third worst.

Having lived in DC, but not in the first and second place winners (losers?), I still have my doubts, but that's neither here nor there.

As I said, we traveled to the east coast WHOSAV* and checked in to the Airport Hilton arriving there in the early evening.  After dropping off bags at the room, contacted Little J who was headed our way along with an overabundance of other souls fleeing WHOSAV.

He would be delayed.

We decided we would have an adult recreational beverage while anticipating his arrival. That momentous decision was unanimously decided, so we proceeded to the  hotel's Cantina.  Fortunately our arrival therein was recorded.





I'm the one in the Gold outfit.

Turns out that not only was the hotel hosting the Juvat Clan reunion, it was also hosting an Online Gamers Marathon.




As we were boarding our flight from Austin, (which was an adventure in itself.  It took us an hour and a half to transit a little over a mile due to traffic light malfunction at the Y at Oak Hill.  Anybody who's transited Austin East-West knows that intersection.  Yes, we OJ'd through  the airport.)

You were saying something about "Boarding your flight", juvat?

Lo siento, mi sargento de la Fuerza Aérea increíblemente viejo, ¡me distraje!

As we were boarding our flight, I noticed a young guy, scraggly beard, T-shirt, flip flops, with a computer under his arm.  It looked pretty expensive, and he treated it with a bit of care placing it in the overhead compartment.  I had wondered what that was all about.  Most people travel with a laptop, not a CPU.

In any case, this guy was with us all the way to the hotel.  It was only when I saw the above sign did I begin to understand.

But, Mrs J and I walk up to the entrance to the "cantina", music is playing, people are talking.  Sounds like fun is being had.

We walk in, and much like the video above, the music stops and someone growls, "We don't serve that kind here".

OK, maybe not the latter.  but I'm pretty sure the music stopped.  

And I KNOW everyone was staring.

I also know Mrs J and my presence in the fairly crowded bar raised the average age in it by 20 years.

Fortunately, the hostess took pity on us and led us to a table near the bar.  Where we ordered our adult recreational beverage,  a single malt Scotch, in this case, The Glenlivet

While the Bartender is fixing our libation, Mrs J and I are looking at all the peeps, and glancing at one another and starting to chuckle.

It's every cliche about millenials ever spoken...in one room.

If this threesome had walked in to my wine tasting room, I'd have asked for at least two forms of ID.

Actually, the bar wasn't all that noisy, Mrs J were able to carry on a conversation, although we could overhear some of the others near by.

My favorite?

"How did you do on the Final Fantasy Round?"

 "I heard Karbo won the round."  (Coulda been Carbo, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt)

"Yeah, so did I, I heard he was maxing out the game using only 30% of his CPU capacity."

 "Awesome"
Drinks have arrived, that is a glass of water.  I was thirsty and elected to chug a glass of water rather than a glass of expensive Scotch.
Well, as the evening progressed, more of the tournament players started to show up.  The group at the bar picked up a few more and expanded in our direction.  Turns out, as I overheard an introduction, Karbo is the guy in the middle with the black T-shirt.

Their conversation quickly devolved into techno-geek babble which was untranslatable to mere mortals like ourselves.  Fortunately, right around this time, Little Juvat arrived and we went to dinner.

As Little Juvat's wife is wont to say.  "It was HIGHLY entertaining."



* WHOSAV 
-->  wretched hive of scum and villiany

35 comments:

  1. Quite the experience!
    I work with a few middle age men who are gamers.
    Some of them build their own gaming computers.
    I thought playing hockey was expensive........

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. $1200 for a video card? Sure, but you need two of them.

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    2. And another $600 for something to overclock the card, and another $800 for nitrogen cooling and another...

      All for a video card.

      Don't even ask what they do to a poor CPU chip.

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    3. I asked someone how gaming was monetized. They said that for the game producers to have a “Karbo said xxx game was the coolest ever” would boost sales quite a bit so they would pay him ( and those like him) to play in these tournaments. Which is great until you loose.

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    4. Yes, definitely bad if you are loose. Either you can be picked up by anyone or you have a bowel or kidney problem.

      Mayhaps you meant 'Which is great until you lose.'

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    5. Commenting from an iPad is always dangerous...but it’s all I got.

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    6. Shades of the Obergrammatikführer!

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    7. I thought of it as 'officer says, enlisted cleans up.'

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  2. The odds of hearing " Here, hold my drink" would have been much smaller there than a few of the establishments I visited in the past. Those gamers would have been more cognizant of the dangers of liquids spilled on CPUs, keyboards, etc considering the cost of those parts.

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  3. My son is a semi-serious gamer, and the cost of an okay monitor that has the least amount of lag just about gagged me. Seems the reaction times (eye, hand) can be severely impacted by the lag between the cpu and the monitor. You could be dead before you even see the guy that offed you... Who knew....

    I'll stick with my tools.... When I get done using them, at least I can hold what I made in my hands....

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  4. Hobnobbing with Millennials? Wow, you really were on Mos Eisley!

    Most entertaining post Juvat, even for one as incredibly old as I.

    ¡Pagarás a mi coronel ligero! 😉

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  5. And here I thought that you were the computer sage of the Texas Hill Country.

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  6. As someone dabbling in amateur league of e-sports (world of warships) clan battles at age of 47 I find it highly amusing to see stereotypes of gaming world...

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    Replies
    1. I find it amusing to see stereotypes confirmed, as well as, in your case, disproved.

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    2. You are 47? I thought you were in your twenties!

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  7. "OJ'd through the airport" - I'd bet money, and a fair bit of it, that none of the young 'uns in your tale (nice post, btw) would get that reference. Back in the 80's, however, it was still well known - I was literally running through the airport nearest WHOSAV to try to make a deadline that meant I had to make it across D.C. at 1600 in less than half an hour. As I was charging thru DCA at high speed, one of the baggage handlers yelled, "Go, OJ! go!" I appreciated that encouragement and beat the deadline by less than five minutes.... the drive from DCA to the contracting office was .... exciting!

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, I’ve got to be careful nowadays with that one.

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  8. The tech-geek place I take my pc to to get it physically repaired is... tech geeky. They had one chassis that, yes, actually had nitrogen cooling in it. Weird lights, strange shape, the whole nine yards. And me with my 'was on sale at Office Max' laptop.

    I was shocked and amazed that there was a mouse being sold for what I got my laptop at. $300 for a friggin mouse. And that wasn't top of the line.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I could buy several of my current model computer for the cost of 1 of theirs. And mine is still adequate to my needs for now

      Delete
  9. Speaking of Millennials, is that an alien millenial vaping at 00:10 in the video clip?

    I think my Mom's Tupperware is being used in the cantina to serve drinks.

    Good post.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, John. I think you’re right about the vaping

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  10. Bet none of them can change a tire!

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    Replies
    1. If you can find someone to offer that bed, take it. That’s as close to a sure thing as you’re likely to get.

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    2. I got to thinking about that tire changing thing.
      There are only a few cars with a spare any more.
      Mine has a spare, but it's one of those mini tires and it's 13 years old.
      So I wouldn't trust it much farther than I could drive in a phone booth... oh! What's a phone booth?

      I'll refrain from generalizing about millenials.
      Not all of them are out of touch.
      I'm rooting for those to inherit.

      Delete
    3. That had the nice thing about full size pickups, full size spares.

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  11. Since you were there, juvat, maybe you can answer one oir time's more burning questions.....

    Did Han really shoot first?

    Roger that on the video gamers. I *almost* got into it, and flight simulators, but didn't because I couldn't afford to at the time. The first "good" video card I bought cost $200, and I could barely afford that at the time.....

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  12. I kept waiting and waiting for the part where you shot Gamer Greedo through the Speedo. :-(

    All seriousness aside, cool post!

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  13. (Don McCollor)...back in the good old days of BASIC and the TI99/4A..I wrote a simple little computer game with NO graphics...you are a destroyer hunting a submarine...listening to emitted sonar "pings" and answering return "pongs"...the time difference indicated distance and a up or down scale "pong" doppler frequency shift indicated relative movement...harder than one would think and almost hypnotic (having eyes closed helped to concentrate)...

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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