Tech Specs

Life in 2030, as dictated by President Microsoft and Prime Minister Intel

• 3:00AM -- The internal clock on your home-wired computer goes awry. It tells you that it's 3600hrs. You get up to reset your Pentium 19 home control computer for the 5th time of the night. You slide back into bed, waiting to catch a few more winks.
• 3:20AM -- The computer thinks it is 0830 hrs, and starts brewing the coffee.
• 6:00AM -- After the 7th hardware reset, you finally give up and get out of bed. Everything within your house is wired to the central control computer. The blinds automatically open for you, but since there is no light outside, the computer senses the lack of light and turns on the 400W Sunlight Emulator lightbulb to FULL BLAST
• 7:00AM -- Because the temperature sensor, developed by Intel, on your shower was malfunctioning, you enjoyed an ice-cold shower in the dead of winter. When you got out, the computer sensed that the room got too cold, and switched on the automatic furnace to heat the room to 33 degrees. You immediately get a cold.
• 7:30AM -- The toaster spewed burnt toast for you to enjoy. After your web-enabled RealNetworks toaster got the wrong toasting information from it website and toasted the bread for 20 minutes instead of 20 seconds, your piece of bread turned from a nice edible white, to charcoal black. You eat the toast anyway because there isn't anything else in the fridge. The digital shopping list got deleted on your last fridge hard-boot two nights ago.
• 8:00AM -- You head to your Linux powered car. Your car has all the features you can implement, although no car customizer would come out with enhancements for it, calling the task as "unfeasible". You press the button to open your Windows XP powered garage door opener. XP senses the Linux command, and blows up your car. You get out with minimal damage. You go back inside to change into fresh clothing and head out to take the bus.
• 8:15AM -- Bus breaks down because of an illegal page fault. The digital speedometer turns into a circular blue screen. It looks purty.
• 8:32AM -- You almost got run over by a car. Apparently, the Windows 95 powered streetlight gave both cars and pedestrians the permission to cross the busy intersection. Lucky for you, advancements in SUV technology will decrease the chances that you'll be killed in a pedestrian/vehicle collision... you'll just be severely maimed.
• 9:02AM -- You arrive at your co-op job. Your robotic supervisor gives you a hard time for being 2 minutes late. You reach for the back of the robot to deactivate him for the remainder of the day. The rest of the development team hasn't showed up yet. The late night drinking binge must have went late last night.
• 10:40AM -- Your co-workers are still nowhere in sight. Your Athalone 15Ghz processor infused workstation still won't let you surf for porn at work. Instead, you quickly browse through the "All your base are belong to us" pictures at the www.amiallyourbaseornot.com website. The "all your base" fad hasn't stopped since the early 00's, as it has spawned a 1500 locations fast food chain, a fashion label, and a thrift store. Word is still out on the baseball franchise though. The Vancouver Grizzlies are up for sale again, for the 6th time in 29 years. No city would want to have anything to do with them. "Big Country" Reeves is getting old, very old.
• 1:40PM -- Your coworkers begin to stumble in. They inquire on your why you left the party so early last night. The entire team assembles and begins to code. You turn on your 15 Ghz machine and put those 999Megs of Quad-DRAM. Instead of initiating Borland-Corel-RedHat-Caldera-Suse C++ compiler, you mistakenly start up Quake XIV. Your co-workers find out, and they all start up a network game.
• 1:41PM -- Your XP-powered machine freezes up. A XP freeze-wizard pops up and walks you through your options: 1. Restart the computer 2. Cold-boot the computer 3. Use percussive maintence. After trying option 1 and failing miserably, you choose both options 2 and 3. Your Mitanium Apple Powerbook is undentable, so you hit your workstation with it. Computer feels pain and restarts. You resume your network game. You reach frame rates of 400 fps, and those new railgun effects are purty.
• 4:15PM -- Your co-workers feel the stress of 3 hours of Quake and calls it a day. You all do about 3 minutes of programming for daily logs, and leave the door. On your way out, you re-initialize the supervisor robot. The robot starts up and begins to greet you in Russian. You leave in thick confusion.
• 4:20PM -- Remembering your incident with the crosswalk and the bus, you take the Skytram home. The Skytram is powered by McDonalds, now a digital networks supplier and ranks as the one of the top 3 Financially Stable Companies by Forbes-Time-Newsweek-Playboy. Apparently, some 14-year-old hacker McDonalds employee found a way to use the oil used in deep frying beef and fries for superconductive purposes. Instead of silicon, the fad now is congealed beef fat. That 14-year-old has now become the Chief Software Architect of McDonalds. Burger King is not behind. They found that the roundness of the Whopper patties can be a cheap replacement for rubber, and now they have taken over Firestone and are making race quality tires for the masses. Best of all, when you burn rubber, it smells like a nice homemade burger.
• 6:00PM -- After the Skytram took a wrong turn and ended up in Miami, you had to catch another Tram to head back home. You enter the home, and place your finger over the finger-print activated door-knob. It doesn't open. You smash the finger-print activator with a RIM titanium pen and the door pops open. You head right to the faucet and pour yourself a nice cup Pepsi-Cola flavoured Mountain Dew. Because of the NewPort Ebola virus outbreak, all water has been replaced with Mountain Dew, which kills all bacteria in contact. You open the fridge to find that your neighbour's groceries were energized into your fridge by mistake. You take the sirloin steak and pop it into the Mattel Insta-MealMaker oven. Within minutes, you have a nice vegetarian meal from the recycled remains of your sirloin steak. Odd, that brocoli tasted like meat.
• 7:14PM -- The XFL is on again, but you choose one of the other television series instead. You pick "The West Wing: Canadian Edition". After watching Jean Chretien Junior trying to say an English phrase, you switch to Survivor XXI. Rumour is that someone is about to get killed. 16 people locked into the Cisco compound in Antigua isn't exactly Club Med.
• 10:00PM -- Your parents call. They want to know how you are doing. In the middle of the teleconference, you are greeted with the face of Mike Harris reminding you that your call will be disconnected if you don't insert more blood into the donation slot. You cut a small vein and inject the blood into the collection system and continue with your conversation with your mother.
• 11:00PM -- You head to your bedroom. You set the clock to 6:30AM in the morning. The clock currently says BB:AA hrs. You order XP to turn off your lights and close the blinds. Instead, it turned on your stereo and called for Ginos. You get up to receive the pizza. You eat a slice, put the rest back into the freezer along with your other boxes of pizza from the nights before, and head back to your bedroom. You order XP to water the plants and dial 911. The lights turn off and the blinds close. You ponder momentarily what would happen if the police hadn't changed the emergency number from 911 to 416-905-647-604-266-AT&T-911, sponsered by Verizon Wireless.

Welcome to the 21st Century. Don't forget to dial your area code before dialing the emergency number.

Raymond CT Lai mathNEWS Technology Editor