The Adventures Of Hax0r Man Chapter 11 Hax0r Man buys a house by LateBlt It is a bright, sunny day outside when Hax0r Man decides to buy a new house. His cardboard box does not have good rainproofing in an alley, and under a bridge it tends to get noisy. Hax0r Man doesn't think too much about housing, but he has noticed that there appear to be houses in some places. He suspects people use them for living in. Maybe one of these houses will have more room for all his computer stuff, because his cardboard box is getting full. Let it never be said that Hax0r Man is not a man of action. Or at least, a _something_ of action. As soon as he decides he wants some new digs, he wastes no time in contacting a real estate agent by e-mail, who replies with an invitation to come and see an "open house". Hax0r Man isn't sure why she refers to it this way; sure, the house might be open now, but what if somebody closes the door before he gets there? Still, he decides to take her advice and shows up at the time she specified in the e-mail. "Hello, Hax0r, I'm glad you could make it," says the real estate agent, a kindly middle-aged woman. They shake hands, and she makes some small talk which Hax0r Man proceeds to completely ignore as she starts to show him around the house. "As you can see, it has a fairly spacious living room," she begins. Right off the top, this sounds like a disturbing bit of marketing-speak to Hax0r Man. This one room is the *living* room? Are all the other rooms for people who are dead? Hax0r Man begins to have a bad feeling about this house. She must mean that all the other rooms are haunted. They move on. "This is the kitchen. It has lots of cupboard space for your pots and pans, and it comes with a nice stove and oven unit." Hax0r Man is very pleased about the oven; this house is better than he expected. If the house comes with a solder reflow oven, it surely must have had some thought put into it. When they get to one of the "washrooms", Hax0r Man stops to ask the agent what a washroom is. She pauses, apparently unsure how to answer this question. Hax0r Man is annoyed; he's sick of people who don't know their stuff. This woman has just boasted about how great the washroom is, and now she doesn't know what it is? Tacky, very tacky. "It's a room for cleaning, you know?" she finally manages. "You go there if you want to wash or clean. That's why it's a _wash_room, see?" "Oh!" Hax0r Man exults, delighted. "A clean room?! That's amazing! I hadn't expected the house to come with a fully-equipped clean room." Hax0r Man looks inside the wonderful washroom, but his face falls as he finds it somewhat disappointing. First of all, it's a bit too small to house a chip fab. And the furnishings are atrocious! "What kind of clean room is this? It's got some kind of fabric-based rug on it," Hax0r Man observes, poking a mat on the floor of the washroom with his toe. "This would never be acceptable in any commercial clean room; the microscopic fibers from fabric like this mat circulate through the air, and they'll contaminate any chips that get produced here." The agent walks Hax0r Man through a few more rooms, including a bedroom, which Hax0r Man notes has a closet that seems like a good size to put a few server racks into. He keeps figuring that she's saving the most important and impressive rooms for last, but finally they're back where they started, and he infers from her tone of voice that she's wrapping up. "Excuse me, but where are the computer rooms?" he asks. "The computer rooms? Well..." Hax0r Man wonders, for the infinitieth time, why people are always so prone to long, surprised pauses whenever he asks them a question, as if they were awestruck by the fact that he can speak. "There isn't a room just devoted to a computer, but you could use the living room to contain your computer desk, or possibly one of the bedrooms for your own private office." "There isn't even one single computer room?!" Hax0r Man asks, appalled. "But there are several rooms in this house! What are people supposed to do with all this other space?" "Well, they live in it," the real estate agent explains with apparently thinning patience. "But how do they live when there's no place for the computers? Where is the Commodore 64 room?" "The what? There isn't any such room in this house." "That's outrageous! That's almost as barbarous as wearing clothes without microchips embedded in them. I need a house with a Commodore 64 room, an Apple II room, a TRS-80 room, an IBM PC room, an IBM PC XT room, an IBM PC AT room, an Amiga 1000 room, an Amiga 500 room, a ZX Spectrum room, a PDP-10 room, an Atari 400 room, an Atari 800 room, an Atari ST room, and an Atari 2600 room at the *VERY LEAST*! How could a human being live without them?" Hax0r Man's voice is shaking now, on the verge of tears at the thought that people in the world might actually be living in such inhuman conditions. "Here's my card. Why don't you give me a call if you have any further questions." The woman quickly shoves a business card into Hax0r Man's hand, then scurries off to start the tour over again with another person. Hax0r Man is left alone and afraid. "Do you know of any other houses that have the rooms I mentioned?" he calls after the real estate agent, but she ignores him entirely and continues talking to the other person. Oh well. It's not so bad in Hax0r Man's cardboard box after all. It sure beats all this human-to-human interaction. Hax0r Man goes back home and spends the rest of the day designing his dream house in 6502 assembly language. It's built to spec, and probably much cheaper than the trashy house he was looking at earlier today anyway. Home, sweet home.