We had an interesting occurrence recently, and an added life lesson. The rose hair tarantula was beginning to look a little “full”, and seemed sluggish. I thought it might be ready to molt. Sure enough, a few days later, it appeared as though there were two spiders in the cage, but one was the molted exoskeleton of the spider (as seen on the left of the top photo), and the new larger tarantula was poking around.

What a metaphor for our own life experience. Sometimes when things seem to have a tight grip on us, we just need to shed some constraints and stretch ourselves to accommodate. Suddenly we realize we’ve grown in the process. Ohm!

If I have seen further into Virtual Reality [than certain other persons] it is by peering over the shoulders of geeks.

I’m being fecetious, but seriously – look at the photo above! I thanked the cyber-gods for Google and Wikipedia, so I could tutor myself while participating. Everyone used their laptop as an immediate reference tool during the presentations. Damn, learning is gonna be so cool for our kids!

This is symposium was Andrew’s forte, but I feel like I’ve had a big glimpse into what’s coming up in VR and I’m diving in, or rather my avatar is diving in boots first. Not to mention how cool it was to be at Nasa-Ames and meet some very, very clever folks!

One of the best surprises was having the chance to meet Rudy Rucker. I took a couple of my old, yellowed paperbacks on the second day, stared at my feet like a gob-smacked groupie, and asked for an autograph. These books in particular are dear to me because they were the first of his work I had read. I’m not a science fiction reader, but I was taking a physics course at Indiana University when a very cool book seller (from The Book Cellar – Geez, I hope it’s still there) turned me on to Rudy’s books. He was the coolest thing, my secret find. Okay, obviously I still think that, though I realize he is local and quite well known out here. The Clash were right – Rudy can’t fail!