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Significantly rewritten over and over since 1996. Warning: includes geeky computer terminology
[Knoxville, TN] Evil Peacock is finally released from a rigorous nine month beta test and is unleashed on the world. The development team, mom and dad, are relieved that their second release is finally done and moderately bug-free.
Completely unaware that Disco exists, Evil begins developing his gestalt. A few occasional crashes slow debugging, but overall he seems to be functioning well.
Evil gets into personal computers, starting with an Atari 800XL. His friends with Commodore 64s laugh. Evil makes lots of little animated movies, sound effects, and draws with his drawing tablet. He also dabbles with programming using BASIC trying to write games and pointless software like "The Atari Self-Destruct Program".
Evil Peacock falls in love for the first time, which takes about a year to settle in and debug. No, really! Unfortunately Evil has a lot to learn and never quite gets the whole love thing right. For the record Evil has only the highest respect for the woman involved (wherever she may be). Meanwhile Evil's gestalt finishes the last major add-ons as part of the ongoing Puberty 1.0 upgrade plan.
Evil somehow gets an overpriced Macintosh Classic and begins composing music with it and two tape decks. His friends with Commodore Amigas laugh. With these tools Evil cranks out tons of low fidelity semi-melodic industrial noise. Occasionally he pulls off some electronic dance music as well. He puts this work on cassettes and distributes them among a few friends.
Evil completes public assimilation at Bearden High School and prepares to get as far away from high school as possible. After graduation all links to his previous API are erased and a new improved OS kernel is instated for the upcoming college development project.
Above: The last portrait of Otto-Mobile, Evils' cat until the summer of '92. When Evil relocated to Washington state he had to leave this poor fellow behind. Not more than a year later Otto-Mobile would disappear without a trace.
[Olympia, Washington] Evil begins work on his new update at The Evergreen State College. Within days his new OS begins networking with other units and positive changes begin to take place. The whole process taxes his hardware but after the first year Evil emerges completely changed for the better.
Evil somehow gets an overpriced Mac LC475 at student discount prices with help from dad. His friends with real Macs laugh. Evil continues composing, this time with the Mac's primitive on-board digital audio and a 4-track. Noise gives way to organic sounds inspired by world music.
Evil begins work with the Housing Custodial/Maintenance Department at Evergreen on weekends for extra cash. He is supervised by a curious individual known as Jumpsuit Boy. Jumpsuit Boy trains Evil to do such interesting things as unclogging blocked toilets with a mechanical snake, repairing/replacing faucets, and just about everything janitorial.
Evil does 23 credits of work by auditing classes, but at Evergreen the maximum per quarter is 16. This wears on him and he wishes he could just move on to the real working world and simply just live his life. Nevertheless he preservers by taking less classes and not giving up. As a distraction Evil purchases more audio gear and gets more into MIDI and digital audio multi-tracking.
Thanks to years of saving every damn penny he could Evil gets a phat new "high-end" Mac 8500. His friends with Macs follow him home and attempt to ambush him and steal it. Over the next year Evil purchases lots of upgrades for it in the hopes of finally being able to work with video as well as audio.
Evil now works with Jumpsuit Boy instead of under him as the "Linen Lead". Basically that means that Evil and a motley band of raggedy undergraduates manage the gathering and cleaning of 700+ bed sets for foreign English studying students and summer conference guests. The job is painful with long hours and almost no days off in the summer, but like parents always say, it builds character.
The final year of working on the 2.0 Evil OS update under the rigid foundation of the College API brings good times, love, hard work, and a break from previous years of torture. Evil completes development on schedule (4 years).
He receives his Golden Master CD-ROM on June 14 after which he works all summer trying to stash as much cash as possible for the long hard job hunt ahead.
Evil completes work with the Housing Linen Development Team, leaving the Linen 2.5 kernel complete and totally written in native microprocessor assembly. In winter he briefly returns on commission to fix bugs and train a replacement. At Housing everyone goes back at least once after they leave... Then, for the last time, he finally bids farewell to coworkers Jumpsuit Boy, Rasta Hacker, Polyester Woman, and his main development supervisor, P.U.T.Z.
In an effort to establish a higher consciousness, Evil agrees to move into a large eclectic house with The Prophet Elias, Rasta Hacker, and a crazy old coot called Vern Peanut. Despite Vern's constant retching, Rasta Hacker's caffeine and beer injections and The Prophet Elias's vodka bathes, Evil survives. The boys appropriately christen the house "Chez Kludge" and spend many a long night eating, drinking, watching movies or playing on a Playstation. During this time Evil does occasional freelance work and focuses on making music.
While gorging himself with handfuls of chocolate chip cookies, Evil stays up late writing the first version of this definitive chronological history for his web page even though he knows it's not likely anyone is going to care to read it. [It's been rewritten countless times since. -ed.]
[Seattle, Washington] After some mental strife from lack of work Evil Peacock relocates to the nearest substantial city where he begins freelancing through several temp agencies. His inherited automobile, the "Wonder Wagon" survives the short repetitive moving trips but is left reeling by the onslaught of Seattle traffic conditions.
Evil Peacock accepts a job at Weber Marketing Group as a graphic designer but over time becomes the network admin and web master. Even groovier is the fact that he won't waste any more time in traffic as work is now two miles away.
At WMG Evil works with the likes of The Ravenous Chan, Mama Queen Bee, LA Girl (aka HeyWiley1), Storm trooper of Design, Washeem, The Mothership Connection and the overwhelmingly powerful Towering G.
The Wonder Wagon (aka "Bessie", "that damn car", "old woody") is clearly on it's last legs. Fortunately Evil has planned ahead financially and trades her in for a brand spanking new '99 Honda Civic HX. This doesn't help the lack of enthusiasm for dealing with Seattle traffic, but driving is a lot more fun and trouble free.
For the record Evil did not name this car "Bessie". His late grandfather referred to the car in this way. Bessie earned the respect of each family member that was worthy of driving her and on one occasion got Evil to and from the airport in heavy snow and ice.
Unfortunately Evil's new Honda doesn't have wood trim. So attracting the attention of the opposite sex is going to be much more difficult.
In all of this time Evil has continued to compose and record music and continues to release CDs. For Halloween '99 Evil releases his 5th CD, which is part of the great massive purging of the old and unfinished music that keeps one awake at night wondering if it's worthy or not. Peripheral to this, Eric once again starts buying audio gear with a brand new sampler.
Evil releases his 6th CD and decides to take a break from music. So he backs off and revels in his newly purchased DVD technology by collecting and watching *tons* of movies.
Along with all of this Y2K hits like a bomb but fortunately Evil is Y2K compliant. Damn right.
After almost 6 years Evil purchases a new top of the line Mac to add to his pile 'o tech. The leap in speed and efficiency is overwhelming at first, but oh the things one can do.
In all of this time the changes to his gestalt have been all over the map and difficult to document. Much has changed and continues to do so. And like any software there are always bugs to fix. Evil is definitely getting older, but no sign of baldness yet!
Evil hits his two year anniversary at Weber Marketing Group. That means he's been there long enough to become "old school" - one of a select group of people who have gritted their teeth and survived dealing with tough clients and beer every Friday.
Evil begins to collect gas masks through various military surplus suppliers on the internet. Gas masks are the ultimate symbol of anonymity and authority, or they're just neat. Plus Evil wants them for sculpture and film props. Evil begins creating a new section to his web site: "Evil Peacock's Gas Mask Extravaganza".
Evil Peacock gets a fire suit for Christmas from dad. This novelty is great for parties and has excellent potential as a general fashion accessory for live performances.
Evil Peacock acquires his mothers elderly Burmese cat. This old cat with kidney problems also happens to be extremely cute despite an extremely loud voice (for a cat).
Eric's cat Sabra is put to sleep when her kidneys start to fail. Sabra was 17 in cat years.
Unrelated but also slightly significant, Evil hits his four year mark at his job.
A routine physical reveals that Eric's blood pressure is at excessively high levels. His cholesterol isn't so good either. Mixed together these two factors can cut the average human lifespan short. Eric is classified as "high risk" and spends the next six weeks adjusting his diet and excercise to reduce hypertension.
Only weeks after the death of Sabra Eric's special guest cat, Ariel develops fatty liver lipidosis and has a nine inch tube surgically inserted into his stomach so that he can be fed manually since the disorder keeps him from feeding himself. Do not try this at home. Weeks later in December Ariel recovers. It should be noted that Ariel is a he. Think Shakespeare, The Tempest.
With 2003 around the corner, for the author 2002 has earned the title Year of the Cat.
(Eric turns 29 – next year at this time he is no longer to be trusted)
Still running with higher than average blood pressure, Eric goes on medication for an extended time. Eric's uncle dies after of heart failure/stroke after having a first stroke in 1997. Chaos works.
The added exercise and dietary care that has come with handling higher than normal blood pressure has facilitated the smoother operation of most systems. Cholesterol levels improve and weight is lost as a nice side effect. Many programmers talk about excess bloat in relation to various programming languages and also the people that sit a lot while using those languages. In this case the bloat wasn't bad to begin with, but it's prevention became necessary anyway. Public service announcement: stop bloat before it stops you. Or at least keep an eye on it.
...the struggle continues...