In this dream, I was with a friend, JP. JP loves to read E2, but he is not himself a noder. Apparently, we had acquired corporate offices for E2 and JP and I were going to see them.
JP and I were in the lobby of a big office complex. A lot of my dreams wind up in these kinds of places now—I have no idea why this is. I don’t work in one, and haven’t in many years. They seem to have replaced malls as my dream spot of choice.
So JP asked me "Since I’m not a noder, how often do I need to fill out the log paperwork?" This made sense in the dream, and I told him that management just wants him to fill out a log sheet once a week, for troubleshooting purposes. As I say, it all made sense in the dream.
My friend and I arrived at a stairwell. There was a box on the wall, about the size and shape of a fuse box. I opened it and there were small, thin Post-it stickers in there. I knew I was supposed to write my name on one, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to put my real name or my noder name. I saw that the most recent one was signed "Heisenberg" so I put my noder name, stuck it inside the box and headed up the stairs. JP was getting ahead of me.
The suite of offices was pretty darned nice! Not opulent, but cozy and clean, fairly spacious. There was an office with the words "Linux Development" on the door. A big bearded guy hugged me affectionately and told me that it was good to see me (he did not seem all that familiar, maybe this was some sort of modified version of WiccanPiper, I know he’s one of those open source guys!). I did not have much time to be bewildered about his identity, as I was moving on.
Further down the corridor turned to the right; a thin, handsome blond man was coming out of an office. He shook my hand and told me it is good that I’m here. I asked him if I have an office and he told me that I share a "Junior Editor Suite" with Walter and Andrew Aguecheek. I remember thinking that it might be cool to meet those guys in person. I also remember, at about that point, thinking (for no reason I can discern) how I’m hoping that kthejoker and TheDeadGuy are there, so I can get some time to talk with them if possible.
I noticed a thing on the wall, framed and glassed, it says "We miss..." and a bunch of names I don’t recognize. Among them are a few I do, Sensei and Hermetic... possibly a couple of others, but the rest are gibberish. I looked for the name of a couple of friends who have left and couldn’t find them. This made me unaccountably angry.
There was a snack bar at the elbow of the corridor. There was a middle-aged woman running it. I remember wondering if she is a noder or if she wondered what the hell we do here.
At the end of the hall, there was a long table, like one might see in a boardroom. A big group is crowded around. I recognized kthejoker, Jack and several other estimable noders. I think Apatrix was there as well.I squeezed in to see what they are doing. Someone with a German accent was talking about how we are close to meeting our financial goals. I thought it was Heisenberg speaking, but I was not sure. Joker said we were within a couple of hundred dollars a month of making ends meet.
In this (purely fabricated) life, I apparently had some scratch. I spoke up and said that I could probably chip in 50 bucks or so toward the shortfall. I hoped no one would think I was flaunting my new-found money around, but people seemed heartened by this. Jack said that this would bring it close. The blond guy asked Jack if they could do something technical to the "server room."
I could vaguely remember seeing a bunch of computer-y equipment bolted to a wall in banks. I’m not very knowledgeable about such things in real life, so the dream did not make much sense.
Jack said that it shouldn’t be a problem to do whatever to these servers, but they’d have to be ... I don’t know, calibrated or adjusted. Some darn thing! So, I thought I’d go and find my friend. As I got up, I caught the gaze of a cute young woman. She smiled at me and slapped palms. I think she was supposed to be Savpixie.
One of my favourite high school teachers, the English teacher who encouraged me to write, had an office on this floor. It was a big office, spacious and filled with a jungle of tropical flowers—it was absolutely beautiful. I went in and saw that he was spraying them with water to keep them fresh. I was absolutely blown away by the office. I could actually smell all the flowers.
I woke up soon after that.