Y'know, I guess that initially I didn't give much thought to the fact that if ANYONE ends up reading these entries that don't know me directly, they may be a little puzzled as to what the Hell "Son of Cheese" is in reference to...Were my parents made of brie or roquefort? Am I a member of a strange cult that still believes that the moon is made of green cheese and that once we eat the applesauce, we'll all ride the comet to salvation?..EAT THE APPLESAUCE, FOR LUNA'S SAKE!

No. It's not even as fanciful or, for that matter, as remotely interesting as that. It's the name of the hard drive on my computer at work. "Son of Cheese" is the name of my Mac G4.

I liked the scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where we are suddenly privy to the knowledge that the hero was named Henry all along and that Indiana had been the name of the family pet. We don't quite know why Henry Jr. decided to adopt the name of his pet contrary to keeping his birth name, but we can see that it IS unique and kinda manly. If I adopted the name of any pet I've had in my lifetime, I'd end up being called "Tippy" or "Rita." Neither of which will give me the appearance of a rugged adventurer. Being called "Son of cheese" has just happened through attrition.

When I started at the Gazette, I was working on a Power Mac 66mhz. for the time, it was pretty cool, I had been working on a very old Mac II at the screen printing house and, by comparison, this thing was a frickin' race car. eventually, the power supply went bad and I was gifted with a brand new Power Mac...something..It had a 250mhz processor I think. It was awesome, at the time. It was a bad mutha...I named it "John Shaft." I even rigged it to play the theme from shaft on startup. This led to it acquiring a worm virus. It kinda died. I had to start over, zeroing out the drive and reformatting.

Before we get too far, I should mention Ten Yun. Ted had been at the Gazette for a while when I got there and he was (still is, I'd imagine) a very capable designer who strived for bigger and better things. He was always the first to be called upon for special marketing projects, or design projects that needed a more "national" look. ted was also friendly and had a quick wit. everyone liked Ted.

Ted and I somehow got into a discussion about cheese one day. The details aren't important, I often will discuss, debate or argue about anything, regardless of whether or not I have any knowledge of the subject and sometimes, just to end the conversation, I'll go off on an inane tangent that seems completely absurd BECAUSE IT IS. By design. I remember telling Ted that Cheese was like life, the larger, more experienced cheese was old man or old woman cheese and it had to help the younger, less experienced cheese to maturity. Makes no sense, I know, it wasn't supposed to. Ted looked at me cockeyed and said "whetever, Old Man Cheese."

The name kinda stuck. He called me Old Man Cheese. Before it died, I named my power Mac 66 "Old Man cheese." I didn't think anymore about it for a long while.

After John Shaft met his untimely demise, while I was reformatting, I realized I had to come up with a name for my computer. I figured, if it really were the replacement for Old man Cheese, it could very well be the Son of Cheese. I bestowed this moniker on my new Mac upon reinstallation of system software and was off and running. I also had been set up with an email account that week, everyone in the building now had one. Oh how high-tech we had suddenly become!

y'know, the funny thing about email is that "name within a name" feature. Sure, you have your email address, I was dknight@gazette.com...but my display name was set to default to the name of my computer...You guessed it. "Son of Cheese." Every time I sent an email to ANYONE, it showed up in their in box, ready to read, sporting the name "Son of Cheese." Through no fault of my own, actually through my own ignorance, I came to be known as "Son of Cheese." also 'dickweed,' but that's another story.

When I left the gazette and came to the ad agency I'm at now, I was working on a 9500 named "Jerry." I gave it a worm so I could reformat and start over as Son of Cheese. Eventually we upgraded to G4 macs and I christened my new work station "Son of Cheese." The name "Son of Cheese" appears on the rip while my print jobs are ripping, Son of Cheese appears on the backup log and on the network. And soon, Son of Cheese will be the name of a shiny new G5...Son of Cheese will live on, even though I barely give any thought to it's origin these days. It just IS. It's accepted as a part of daily life here. And it's the first name that popped into my head when I decided to start a blog.

So there's that.

postscript: Son of Cheese was given a shiny new monitor yesterday. It's HUGE! we all have two monitors now. It's freakishly modern. I feel sooooo cool.

Labels: 'puter stuff, lame stories, me roots