From the Archives: machines

October 3rd, 2009

Out of the Closet

Hello everyone!

Traditionally, the computer running 1000Gears has lived in Adrian’s closet. Lately there have been some problems with this living arrangement, so we have moved the website to another computer, which does not live in Adrian’s closet, but does promise to be much more reliable. So far it looks like nothing was broken in the move. It is possible that we still have a few bugs scurrying around, though. If you notice one, please let us know. I will try to find it and hit it with a stick.

Thank you,
~Catboy

January 30th, 2009

New and Special Headers

Hello! A few days ago I made a special Tybalt logo for this website, and perhaps a few of you have seen him peering out at you from the upper-left corner of your screen. Tybalt is wonderfully pretty, of course, and I think the logo is a nice kind of extra touch. Unfortunately, clicking on this logo still took you back to the home page, just like clicking any other version did. That was not very helpful. We do get new readers sometimes, and not everyone knows who Tybalt is.

So, I thought to myself, “Self, why not make the special logos take people to different parts of the website? You could make more logos sometimes and show people around.” This sounded like a really spiffy idea, so I opened up the back panel to the website and started taking things apart, fiddling around, and putting them back together again. It turned out to be a little bit more complicated than than I expected. I think I broke the site once or twice, but it should be fixed now.

Please let us know how you like the change!

Always,
-Catboy =^.^=

October 1st, 2008

Links Have Changed!

We are all very sorry about this, but the latest version of the 1000Gears software has introduced a new numbering scheme. Unfortunately it makes the site links very ugly, so I took out my hammer and made the website make pretty links again (though they are still different from the old ones).

Unfortunately, the old links do not work anymore. Some of the most popular posts are linked below, but there are quite a lot of them and people link to them in strange ways sometimes. If you have been directed to this post because your link did not work, please excuse the inconvenience and find a working link below. Also, the person who sent you the broken link may not know it is broken. Please be kind and forward the information along, so that the Internet may get by without so many broken links.

Thank you!
~Catboy! =^.^=

Graveyard
Fake It
Sometimes, When You’re Sleeping
YaoiCon 2007: One Server’s Thoughts
If You Think Education Is Expensive…
Putting Money Where My Mouth Is
Lovers Die Together
The Tears of Anael
DreamFever
Intoxication
Wanting More
You Can’t Go Back to Eden
It Begins With A Kiss
Shut Up
Civilized Behavior: You’ve Heard of It, Yes?

If you are looking for a post not listed here, the search bar off to the left should be happy to help you.

August 7th, 2008

Fake It

Posted in Fiction by

Today I’m going to tell you a story about a boy and his car. The car is the template, after all, for our first great status symbol and our first great step to personal independence, and thus, from there the Great American Love Affair. We never forget the first cars that made us stop and stare. The years wind by and men who’ve long since forgotten the names of the girls they took to Senior Prom can still rattle off the years, makes, models, and option-packages of their first cars.

Somewhere near Milpitas and not so long ago (either 2003 or 2004), there was a boy, I think, in love with the Mustang SVT Cobra. I imagine he was a boy, at least, but she may have been a girl; nobody needs a Y-chromosome to appreciate the Cobra’s beautiful, all-American brand of power and handling. Still, it suits my sense of aesthetics to believe that this was a boy, and so this is a story about a boy and a car.

The dealer, sadly, put too high a price on love, and the sticker on the Cobra weighed in at over $33,000, almost exactly an entire year’s wages for the average American man. This is a very old story, actually, at least as old as money and really as old as trade. Too frequently our wallets are too small to contain our hopes and dreams. I imagine him breathing deep in disappointment, but really this boy was still far from a pauper, modestly successful in his own right, and he let the dealer guide him around the lot, showing him less exotic breeds of pony. He might have seen the Mach 1, loud and brash as its name, and every dealer would have a few proud GTs, Gran Turismo cars built to run great long stretches of open American road.

Even these are expensive cars, though, and in time the dealer would have shown our boy the basic-model Mustangs. At $18,000 they were still badges of modest success, sports cars for those who refused to settle into the comfortable domesticity of Camrys and Accords. These, he could afford.

Still, he loved the Cobra, not the Mustang. Two hundred horsepower divided the two, to say nothing of the refinements in handling and trim. The Mustang is an American classic for its tunability, but the Special Vehicles Team had raised it to the level of art, and with the extra 800ccs of engine he could not hope to compete. Besides, the Cobra name brings a special, exclusive sort of cachet, and I am sure he dreamt of its effects on his circle of lady friends.

What would he do? He could tune the Mustang, of course, and even if it could not race the Cobra, he might well be able to match the Gran Turismo. That was a lot of work, though, a commitment to bury himself to the elbows in grease for months on end and pore over the tachometer’s wobbling like a scientist over his graphs, and he probably did not know how. The muscle-car gearhead is a dying breed. Perhaps he could drive a lesser car, something practical and boring, something economical that might let him save for a Cobra in five years’ time, but that was a desperate move. Like so many American boys, ours wanted his gratification now, when he was still young and full of flash.

No, none of these would be good enough. If this boy could not have his Cobra, he would make it.

Or fake it.



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