Summertime Ramblings (May, part III, and June)

May 20th to June 14th, 1998

The Whirlwind Tour

Sometime around May 20th, things really started getting busy for me.

I had a job interview at the Vancouver International Airport... I really wanted this job, as it was one that would let me use my proficiency in Japanese, among other things.

I paused many of my tams, the Ocean Tam last of all... and after the interview, I had to go shopping at Costco with my Mom and Grandma, so I didn't have much time to do ANY tamming.
(tamming: verb, to play with one's Tamagotchi or other virtual pet.)

Even so, sometime around May 20th Kaylee ended up dying most tragically. I don't believe I even got to see her pass on... I just saw a little UFO wobbling across the screen. She couldn't have been much older than 9...

On May 21st, Kaylee's Child (KC) was hatched. I took as best care of him as I could, but did not do too well due to... well... I was tired.

Then, on May 25th, Gareth followed Kaylee to the Great Beyond, at age 14. Again, I missed this: I left the room for a couple minutes and returned to find a tamangel. It seems, though, that even being a TamAngel depletes resources: Gareth has since become near invisible on the screen, unless a button is pressed. Whoo boy, do I ever need new batteries...

Anyhow, on May 25th, Mojo5 was hatched... not exactly as a replacement for Gareth and Kaylee, but... I got lonely.

After a while, you get used to having a little portable pet in your pocket, and it gets kinda lonesome when you don't have anyone beeping for your attention every couple of minutes.

(It may interest the budding psychologists out there that I'm also addicted to ICQ... although with ICQ it's REAL people, not cyber-critters, who want to chat or play. *wink*)

Next, on May 26th, I arranged a Group Viewing of Godzilla, starring Jean Reno and Matthew Broderick and a big CGI Lizard that looked uncannily like a GigaPet Rancor.

While waiting for the other people to arrive, Mookie died. At least, that's what I assume happened. One minute he was fine, a short while later a fat man in black Speedos was crying.

I didn't even check the final stats, so intent was I on asking an acquaintance whether this actually happened in the Star Wars movies. (He had told me that there was a Rancor Keeper who cried when the Rancor died, but I had heard nothing of his wearing Speedos.)

Around 11:30-ish, though, I was startled to see a little spacecraft crashing. The little Rancor crawled out, and I had to start caring for it.
I named it Meggie, after Megatron, leader of the Predacon contingent on the Beast World... Mookie had, after all, been named after the T-Rex hand-puppet that Megatron habitually wore in robot form, so I thought it was only fitting.

Then, KC magically turned into... a Kusachi! I was startled, since I'd thought I had taken better care of KC. In any case, I enjoyed watching Godzilla... a terrible movie with terrible dialogue, iffy science, and much much more SAVED by the presence of Godzilla hirself (I believe that he must be a tam, considering the way that she reproduced...) and the inimitable, exquisite Jean Reno. I must get a pic of him sometime...

Oh, and Mojo 5 got ill twice. Once, despite my frantic tapping on the egg, it got attacked by the bear. Another time, I just discovered it being ill.

May 27th, KC got sick twice... then around 10 pm, I discovered KC as a little UFO.. again. *sigh* She was only 7 years old... Mojo 5, meanwhile, was discovered sick with his attention icon lit. This was odd, since everything was full, and he didn't need discipline (I tried scolding him, but he just looked puzzled). How weird...

From May 28th to 30th, I worked on some fairly important stuff (Stuff I'm actually getting paid for!) and also spent sometime helping my sister look up biographies on Howard Hughes (she suddenly became interested in this famous eccentric and Capricorn), and trying to shop.

I say "trying to" because I utterly failed to buy the things I most passionately want right now:



On June 1st, I suddenly had to go for an interview at The Vancouver Public Library, one of the biggest, most beautiful libraries in this province.

I had, without much hope, sent in an application for the Internet Youth Worker position. However, I was suddenly asked to come for an 8:00 am interview (The library opens at 10:00am. My brain starts up around 8:45am.) I had to wait a bit, but when the interviewers came I was rather terrified... there were three gentlemen there, instead of the one or two that I was used to seeing at interviews.

I managed to survive the interview, but decided from my rather lame responses to their questions that I'd be getting a nice "Thanks but no Thanks" letter, just like the Airport job and a couple others.

I was rather disgruntled (in a good way *wink*) when I was called early June 3rd, congratulated on getting the job, and asked to come down around 2:00 pm to get some paperwork out of the way. At the meeting, I was told that from June 4th to 6th I'd be staying at Gage Residence at my university for a weekend training session with youth from all around the province. I was somewhat flabbergasted (what does that word mean, anyway?) but also secretly overjoyed that I could stay out late, free from the watchful eyes of my parents.

However, since I was probably going to be busy, I decided only to take with me Little Meggie and Nameless the VR Penguin, whom I had recently started.

This turned out to be more cruelty than kindness... Since I spent most of my time at workshops, I could only care for my pets near midnight. Meggie dropped from 35, to 22, to 8 tons! The next day, he went from 8 to 7 to 12, to Nothing... When I came back to the residence Late Saturday Night, after seeing The Big Hit (starring former underwear model-rapper Mark Wahlberg), I discovered the crying fat man. Again.

Since the VR Penguin was alive and well (and in his igloo, since I never bothered turning on the lights for him and letting him out during the day), healthy, and an adult stage I'd never seen before (all black, with white eyes), and since my Beloved Wristwatch (a gift from my parents) had died, I decided to use the penguin as my primary time piece.

However, on June 6th, I was trying to bring all the parameters, including discipline, up to 100% when... The Penguin Passed On. I was forced to look upon a tragic little AngelPenguin, flapping up and down in eternal flight. The instruction manual had said that too much scolding could kill it, but... I hadn't believed it. How foolish I had been...

When I got home that night, I was all alone... my parents, sister and grandmother had gone to see the First Sumo Basho [Tournament] ever to be held in Vancouver... one of less than 10 to ever be held outside of Japan. I utilized this time to download the Polygon de Hakken Tams (Discovered as Polygon/3D Tams!) , a 3D tamagotchi e-mail program (and cursor-chasing v-pet). I spent most of the weekend trying, and failing, to get it to work.

Speaking of work, from June 8th to 12th I was up at 6 am, on the bus by 7:15, at my workplace around 8:15 am, and working as best as I could until 4:30 or 5:00 pm. My greatest problem was the fact that the people I was working with (fellow university students, half of them younger than me) had a great deal more experience with webpages, HTML, JavaScript, Image Editors... Pretty much everything!

I, on the other hand, had to learn using the "If I click this, what will happen?" method of learning.
:|
A further shock to my system came on the 24th, when I went into the Japanese partition of our hard-drive and discovered... a little Polygon Ghost Tam. It still followed the cursor, but obviously wouldn't eat or send mail. I was saddened.

Worse still, I tried to delete the ghost-tam, and re-install the set-up program... Only to be told that I'd already installed the PolyTam, and couldn't get a new one. I had lost the little tam (A Hashizotchi with a maniacal laugh, incidentally) forever...

As a side note, I should say that the Polygon tam, while quite cute, was rather limited. He could send mail to anyone with Japanese Win 95 or a translator program (unlike PostPet, e-mail users without PolyTams of their own could still be visited by MY PolyTam) and it could eat triangular rice cakes until it was full. (You could only get these functions by double-clicking on the tam and going to the care screen.)

Also, while the PolyTam ambles around on your desktop, if you put the cursor over it and press buttons 1 to 5 on your keyboard, each character does something new... apparently...

Here ends the Whirlwind Tour of what happened during those long days when I couldn't update. Another set of long days promises to be a-comin... My job lasts until the end of August, and I fully expect to be busy out of my mind, what with work, preparing for my University Courses, etc.

I'll still do my best to update on weekends, at the very least... I received several e-mails from people concerned or curious about how my v-pets were doing. Most of these supportive letters were a great comfort to me... it's nice to know that my journals are appreciated by people other than my tams.
:D

I'd just like to thank everyone who sent me a pleasant e-mail, or was patient with me as I sorted things out. Hopefully, I'll be able to write more, update more (I got some awards, and some new Links to add!) and generally improve upon the site... not just the Tam sections, but the neglected World Conquering and Gargoyles section as well.

Thanks to Geocities' expansion of the maximum allowable website space, I can finally get started on that Transformers: Beast Wars page I've been dreaming about... It'll mostly be useful sites, plus my own (rather shoddy :P) fan-fictions.

Oh, and whoever sent me that anonymous one-word e-mail via my feedback form: Learn to spell. If you wish to imply that I am satisfying my thirst, then yes, "slaking" is the correct word. If you wish to imply that, by having a desire to find summer employment and maintain my sanity I am somehow shirking my duty, the word is "slacking [off]".

June 14th, 1998

Well, as you can see, I finally got a chance to update my Virtual Pet Diary.

As well, I also got my very own on-computer e-mail program :D!!

Since my sister has taken over both Eudora Pro/Lite and our family e-mail account, I have been forced to use web-based e-mail such as Hotmail, YahooMail, and the Uniquely Canadian Eh-Mail, as well as Internet Explorer's Internet Mail and Netscape Mail.

However, yesterday, a friend from The Tamagotchi-L mailing list informed me that PostPet (English/Singapore version) had finally made its debut!

While I have, in the past, been less than excited about PostPet, my appetite for this new e-mail program was whetted by the Polygon Tam and also the knowledge that I'd been less than thrilled about v-pets, too... and nearly a year later, look at me now!

:D

This morning, I got up around 5:30 am -ish to download the program. At first, I couldn't log on to the internet and I panicked, thinking that my parents had finally gotten sick of how much time I spent on-line, and changed the password on me.

Then I noticed that the CAPS LOCK was on. DOH!

I went to The Official PostPet HomePage, read every single page there, and then agonized over which pet to download, and what e-mail addy to use; my work-addy, or the family account (I had forgotten that only my sister currently knows the password) or a new POP3 account created just for the PostPet?

In any case, I downloaded the file, saved it both on the HardDrive and a ZipDisk, and decided to use my work e-mail addy, which will only last until August. I figured that the PostPet, being a free beta version, would be just like the PolyTam, and live for a couple of weeks.

However, upon setup, I realized that the PostPet was good for 180 days, "after which it will become severely limited in its capacity" (?!).

I then agonized over which animal to choose (this option came up during setup. I had wrongly assumed that there were different programs to be downloaded for each Pet: Teddy Bear, Cat, Tortoise and Rabbit.) Since my friend had a tortoise, which had been my first choice, and since my second choice (the clever, cute, and temperamental cat) was supposedly short-lived, I decided to go for the Rabbit (who turned out to be only a little longer-lived than the cat. DOH!)

I named the rabbit Killer after a character in Patricia C. Wrede's Calling on Dragons novel, and immediately sent him off to my friend's post-pet home to deliver a message, and play with her tortoise.

Thus did my own personal hell begin... Because I couldn't retrieve the mail and get my Bunny back. I was repeatedly told by the error message that the username or password was wrong. I went so far as to create a free GeoMail POP3 account for the little PostPet... to no avail.
:(

I even used HotMail to see if the account was working okay, and it was...

Later in the day, I (without much hope) clicked on the Retrieve Mail icon again. This time, the Program started downloading several messages (the download bar had adorable footprints in it!) and my friend's tortoise waddled in, deposited mail, and left.

After several attempt to replicate this, I realized that this simply wasn't working. More importantly, I had changed the e-mail address... which meant that Killer, having memorized the old one, would wander aimlessly through CyberSpace, seeking a home which no longer existed.
:(

I deleted all of the PostPet Files, re-installed it with nearly the same parameters, and revived (?) Killer. This time, I test-sent a message to myself first. Killer seemed to be doing okay, so I tried sending him to my friend. He soon returned, with a lovely little Personal Diary entry:

"June, 14th.
I went to [my friend]'s house.
Torty was not there.
I was patted a little."

I was enchanted. Since he was "starving", I tried giving him various snacks. Each time, he shook his head, until I got to the "candy"/lollipop, which he crunchily ate like a carrot.

Unfortunately, while trying to see if I could drag the food around the PostPet Home, I accidentally "clicked" on Killer... the equivalent of a slap. Since he got angry, and I had read that anger needs to be disciplined, I kept clicking on him until his health stat showed that he was no longer "healthy" but was "very naughty".

As I type this, he still hasn't returned from delivering another mail, so I suspect that he may have run away from home... perhaps for good.
:(((

Later, my sister decided to get her own PostPet; this one, in order to prevent conflicts with Killer's Program, she saved on the ZipDrive. Her PostPet is a cat named Jasper Darlington Higgins IV. It's also quite cute, and even more clever than Killer is/was. Although Jasper's "diary entries" are much like Killer's, it has added comments such as "*nod*" and "Hihihihihihihi!" (Don't ask me... it's her cat.)

If Killer ever come back *sniff sniff* I'll probably publish his diary on-line. And I'd probably love to chat/exchange e-mails with other PostPet users... or non-PostPet Users who just want to talk v-pets.
:)

My PostPet Address was killeramoeba@geocities.com...

(As I update this, on September 8th 1999, my PostPet address has been turquoiseangel@softhome.net for a long while.
Apologies to anyone who has been sending their pet to the Geocities address...)

I will use this for all of my PostPets, if Killer dies or does not return. Please note whether you are a PostPet user or not... that will determine how I send my mail to you (via PostPet, or my regular on-line accounts). Finally, please let me know if you'd like to be on a little table/chart of English PostPet Users. It'll probably be a good way to make new friends... and it'll (hopefully) be a lot of fun!

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