John Evans' Blog

As you may or may not have heard, Patrick McGoohan died at age 80. Thinking about this, I realized that I admired this man and his work. So I figured I should write about it…

Patrick McGoohan’s magnum opus was, of course, The Prisoner. (That’s a link to Six of One, the Prisoner appreciation society. Also, if you’re interested, you can watch the original Prisoner episodes online, legally!)

About Patrick McGoohan’s work

An unusual thought just occurred to me. I was thinking about computer viruses. They’re called such because their propagation has certain things in common with biological viruses. Well, for biological viruses, we have vaccines. The basic of a vaccine (from the Latin vacca, “cow”) is that you introduce a harmless (inactivated, incomplete, attenuated) version of the virus into the body. That version is detected by the immune system, which builds up defenses against it. Thus, the defenses are ready when the real virus comes along.

So. What if someone was, say, a member of a corporation that was lax in updating its antivirus software? That person might acquire a relatively harmless computer virus and release it into the system…if enough users were to report mysterious popup windows and disk activity, the IT department would eventually take notice.

Of course, I’m certainly not condoning installing viruses on your workplace computers. That would be bad. Especially since, after all, you would have to be completely sure your chosen virus was harmless…

So, my father has a coffee cup that reads “Scheme”. For years I didn’t even recognize it, given its stylized font. Then recently I noticed “Scheme” and I thought, hey, the programming language, I used that in school.

However, I asked my dad and he said it was actually a parody of IBM’s “Think” slogan of years past.

Only instead of “Think” it was…”Scheme”.

This is my family. 😉

About the guy proposing through the Sci-Fi Marathon (see previous post)…I told my parents about it. My mom said, “If that happened to me, I would say no, just to be a pain”.

If you’ve ever wondered where my trickster streak comes from, well…;)

A gasp, and she awoke.

“Where…where am I?” Darkness surrounded. But not impenetrable, flickers stabbed the corners of her eyes, fleeing when she turned her head.

“You had a good life.” The voice came from all around. Pictures appeared, flaring on a screen, clicking away almost before she could process. “Hard. Difficult at times, but then there was success. Magic? It can turn things around, to, away.”

“Yes,” she said, almost coughing. The voice was so dry. “But I was leaving…why am I here? Who are you?”

“A new world opened up to embrace you, engulf you. All dependent on words. Culminating in this.” One picture stayed.

“I was supposed to be on holiday!”

“You left! After this!” The green and black faces stared at her. “Number Six.”

“I was just taking a break, that’s all, just a quick break from the words, going on vacation…Who are you? What do you want?!?”

“Why did you resign?”

Crazy/Evil