Chapter 18

The next week I finally met Jack Felter. He was about dad’s age, and he spent about fifteen minutes looking at all the cables and jacks. “Wow, this is ancient, George! And I mean really ancient, what kind of throughput are you getting on the DSL?”

I said I did not know, so he had me use my computer and run a check. “Holy hell, 550 kilobits per second? OK, I’m gonna run new lines.”

“How much is that going to cost?”

“Oh, let’s call it $100 for the two lines, and the third you wanted in the office there.” I asked if he was sure, and he laughed. “George, trust me this is going to be easy.” And sure enough, it was. He put a box of cable at the junction box outside, then tied a knot in it with the old cable. And literally all he did then was go back inside and pull the old cable out of the wall. Pulling in the new cable as he did so.

In just over an hour the two cables were replaced, and he simply patched in the one I wanted in the office to the one in the living room. He even replaced the wall plugs and added a network cable to each room. And as all the phone plugs had four prongs, he replaced those and said those had not been used in decades. And after giving him the money he said it was good to meet me again and he took off.

And Julie was half-right. He did charge me, but I knew it was well below what I would have been charged if I was not Pete’s brother. And now the Internet speed was close to 900 kilobits per second, almost twice as fast.

Things settled down for the next few weeks. And my dad was a bit pissed that I had moved out of the dorm and was spending money I should not have been, but did admit it was my life and my money.

Mom was a bit stronger though, which surprised me. “George, you want to make your own life and I respect that. But remember, you are there to get your degree and not party all the time.”

“Mom, I’m not partying all the time. I go out with Shawna a couple of times a week, and maybe once a month play with Keith’s band. And sometimes hang out at his house. I just wanted some more privacy is all. Like if my girlfriend and I want some time alone, or if I want to hear what my playing sounds like and not through headphones.”

She asked if I was coming up for Easter Break, and I said I was undecided. “Well, let me know if you do, we can make arrangements if you want to come up.”

The next Wednesday was nice, as after the game Shawna and I went straight to my place. And even though a futon was not a great bed, it was sure a hell of a lot nicer than in my truck. And it sure felt amazing, falling asleep after going at it for over an hour and holding each other. And as some time in the night I was caressing her breasts and felt her hand reach back for my cock. And soon we were at it again. And in the morning we were both feeling really good when we headed off to class.

I was finishing my last one for the day when I got a memo to see my counselor. And what he told me shocked me.

“Mister Culver, I am informing you that you have been dropped from your Civics and American Literature classes.” This shocked me a bit, and I asked him why. “Well, according to records you have not been to either in almost a month, and there are three others that if you miss a single lesson you will be failed. It is not enough to just take the tests and turn in the lessons, you have to attend also.”

I sighed in my head, oh shit! This was almost half of my classes this semester. I asked what this would mean, and he sighed. “Well, it will not affect your average as these are drops and not fails. It will go on your scholastic record that you were dropped, but that is not a huge deal most times. It is not unusual for a student to have problems like this in their first year.”

We talked it over, and I dropped the classes I was in danger of being dropped also. This only left two classes now, History and Trigonometry. I went to see Professor Shells, and asked her why she had dropped me. And when after she asked I told her I was going to the protests each, she shook her head.

“George, that was just for that one week. I wanted you all to take action, to see that your voices could be heard. It was not for you to go every week. I am glad that you kept going, but you need to attend class also. I can pull the drop, but you will have to make up all the assignments you missed, and do a lot of work to catch up.”

I sighed, and told her I had already accepted the drop. “Besides, that would be a lot of work to catch up on in a short amount of time. No, I’ll just take the class again next semester.” And then she told me that it would be more complicated than that.

“The problem is, you likely have the 102 class next semester, and the 101 is required to take that one. I only teach the 101 every other quarter. This is really going to throw your schedule into chaos for the rest of the year. But you can see about taking it at another school, maybe they have a course they will accept in place.”

I sighed as I left, why had she not told us it was only for that one day! Shit, I was only in my first semester, and was already in danger of failing it. I went home and immediately hit the bong, trying to figure out what to do next.

That weekend I told Shawna I had dropped half my classes, and she was not real happy with me. “George, what in the hell were you thinking! I knew you had missed some for those stupid protests, but you missed enough to have to drop, that was stupid! So what are you going to do now?”

I sighed, and told her I would finish the three classes I was still enrolled in, and maybe go to Glendale Community College next year. “Most of these first two years are just general education classes, and they will be accepted here or anywhere else I go. I will just do that for the rest of the year, and maybe come back next year.”

She sighed, and told me I was not thinking straight. Pissed off that I had screwed up this semester so spectacularly, and that I did not seem to be serious about my education. It had been a real row by the time she stormed off, saying that I needed to get my priorities straight as I was pissing away my future and she could not waste time with a dropout.

That weekend I headed over to New Dawn with one of the speakers in my hand. Thankfully Mike was not busy, and I showed it to him. “Holy hell, George. That thing’s ancient? Where did you pull it from?”

“Oh, I moved to a place that Linda’s boss owns. It was mostly furnished, and one of the things there was this really old console TV with a stereo built in. It has inputs and outputs, but as you see the speakers are just about trash. I already asked and he said I can have it, so I wanna put in some better speakers and keep using it. How about it?”

He chuckled, and had me wait at the counter as he went into the stock room. And a few minutes later he returned with two brand new speakers that were a perfect match. And after some more questions he put down three needles for the turntable, and asked if there was anything else I needed. And when I told him it was wired for quadraphonic sound, he smiled.

He asked me more details about the hookups, and took me back onto the floor. We went to the front window where all the used stuff was set up, and pointed out two of the speakers. “We just got these in on trade last week. They are JBL PA speakers. They came in with that DJ setup over there, but I can ask Becky to pull them out. They have 500 watt amps built in, so that should be more than enough power for what you want to do.”

I had him go get a CD as I looked over the rest of the unit. I was familiar with DJ equipment, as it was not much different than what we used on stage. The mixer board was a bit different, and I was looking it over as Mike returned with his case. And it sounded really good once he threw in a Smash Mouth CD. I played with the controls a bit, and he laughed and shook his head.

“No, this is not a mixer board like you are used to, George. Here, let me show you.” He then threw in another CD into the second deck and was soon showing me how he could go back and forth between the two with a slide at the bottom that went side to side instead of up and down. As opposed to turning each individual input up and down like on a regular mixer board.

“This is configured for a DJ, not a band. This is an eight channel mixer, one to four are for the four left units, five through eight the four right units. I got it set up so all are live, and there are actually sixteen inputs in the back. This rack has two twin head CD decks, for four CD players. The other one is an MP3 player.”

I looked closer, and indeed it was the control unit that was like the ones for the CD decks, two of them side by side. But there was no CD player in the bottom to hook up to it. “OK, so how does it get the music?”

“Simple, you hook up a computer to it. You can either pull the music from the hard drive, or with some software we got control it all through the computer.” I asked if he could demonstrate that, and he shook his head. “Sorry, Becky won’t allow us to hook up a computer and do that, she’s worried about piracy. A lot of people in the industry are pissed at MP3, and she is afraid they might boycott the store if they saw her actually playing them in here.”

Aunt Becky came over as I was looking over it all, and Mike asked her how much for the speakers. She looked at the back of the sales tag where there were some letters, and she said she would be back after she looked at the invoice. Meanwhile, I was still playing with it and I liked what I was seeing. It even had some extras, including a small boom microphone at the top of the board on a flexible neck, and on the other side a light that was also on a neck.

And when she came back, before she could tell me a price I said I wanted the entire setup. Mike looked at me, and asked if I knew this was not a band mixer and I nodded. “I have been borrowing one from Becky to do some basic mixing at home. With this I can give it back, and do even more. I was thinking maybe do some gigs here, this way I would have all the equipment I needed.”

“What, you have your own band now, George?” I heard from behind me, and turned to see Keith and Crystal standing there. I gave them each a hug, and laughed.

“Naw, just a one man show if Becky has nobody else. And as Mike said, it is not a real band mixer, but it can do the trick.” They started looking it over, and Keith said it would do the job, if barely. He talked with Crystal for a bit, and they both went and borrowed guitars from the used rack and had them hooked up to the board. I grabbed a used Casio keyboard and we were soon doing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, and it was not bad. Mike was showing me how he was adjusting the slides on the board, and right away I noticed that there was indeed less fine tuning available than for a band mixer. But it was doing the job.

Becky took over playing as they started “Jump, Jive and Wail”, and Mike showed me exactly what he was doing. “You see, you have no actual dials for each instrument plugged in other than treble and bass. So if you can, have them work through a mixer of their own before plugging them in. But that’s not needed, just if they want more control over how they sound than they can get through the controls on their instruments.”

Finally they put everything away, and I asked Becky how much for everything. Well, it was more than I was planning on spending, but it was a good deal. And Becky even threw in some more cables, and told me to just return her mixer when I had the chance.

Keith and Crystal followed me home, and the three of us soon had everything set up and how I wanted it. She laughed at the TV set, and even thought it was silly the work I was going to put into it.

“Baby, George here is actually doing something slick. Oh, these old floor consoles were starting to get old even when I was your age. But they were really expensive. I bet this was close to a thousand dollars brand new, around three thousand in today’s money. And this is a top of the line unit, so using it as a TV stand and stereo is actually a really good idea.”

We soon had my old computer set up in the living room, as well as my keyboard rack. I was playing around on it, and the new speakers sounded really good. Better than my small speaker amplifier did. I had that set up next to me but it was turned off.

We were taking some hits as we were relaxing and Keith said he was amazed that Pavel owned this. “Yes, he said he rents the house out to movie companies, this was where the stable boys used to live, and I guess maybe the maid or other staff until he got it.”

He chuckled, and asked if I had met any of them yet. “Nope, but seen them a few times. Right now it’s two girls, there was even a film crew here last week and they did some sort of filming. But he told me to leave them alone, unless they asked me to join them.”

He laughed, and said that was probably a good idea. I offered to make them dinner, but Crystal said she needed to get home as they were having dinner with her grandparents. So I gave them all hugs, and was a bit surprised when she reached down and squeezed my ass.

So after I nuked a pizza, I got my tools out and opened the back of the TV. I used an ancient Kirby vacuum cleaner I found in the closet that was probably older than my mom and weighed about twenty-five pounds to clean up the inside, then pulled out the other speaker. And after about two hours I had it all back together.

And Keith was right, it sounded really good. I even found on one of the stations they were playing “Jumanji”, and it sounded really great with the new speakers in the cabinet, and the other two in the back of the room. Not quite surround sound, but close.

I called Shawna the next day, and she was obviously still pissed at me. “George, I gotta think about this, about us. I got a lot riding on this, and getting my degree is my ticket out of living in the ghetto. You may not need this, but I do. And I can’t see a future with some rich kid that is largely taking his education as a joke.” That got me pissed and I told her it was not a joke to me, I had simply gotten distracted there and I would be back. And soon we were having another fight.

On Sunday I drove over to Orbit. It was Julie’s day off, but Eve gave me a smile when she saw me. And after talking for a bit, she asked me what I needed. And when I told her I wanted a rack mount case and why, she laughed.

“Oh, George. You are like a cross between Pete and Becky. He loves computers, she loves music. You are doing both, that’s great. Hold on, we got one here that might be just what you need.” She had Abe go in the back with her, and soon he was lugging out a large blue case.

“OK, this is one of the last of the BBS systems we pulled out last month. It’s an Athlon 2100, and has 4 gigs of RAM. This was the box running the last of the porn servers, they ended that contract so we pulled it.” I looked it over, and it did indeed seem to be what I needed. I asked if they still did BBS, and she laughed.

“I think we have a dozen left now, they are all run out of a single computer. Your brother was right, the Internet really killed the BBS. The ones we run now are mostly for individuals, but a few businesses that do not trust the Internet are keeping them also. Or ones that can’t justify the cost of setting up online.”

I was surprised at the price she told me for the thing, but she shook her head. “Oh, this is already outdated, and it is less than a year old. The case is really old, I can tell by looking it predates when Pete started making them. And if you look, that is the third or fourth layer of paint on it. That is probably seven or eight years old, and there are no drives of any kind in it.”

I looked it over, and it was indeed what I needed. I had her add a DVD drive, and an 80 gigabyte hard drive. And Abe laughed when I asked if I could use the workbench in the back. Soon I had the drives installed, and was loading it when he came back to check on me. He then handed me a large binder that was full of disks, and I soon had everything I wanted loaded in.

“Abe, are you sure this is alright? My getting this for so little?”

“George, it’s fine, trust me. Eve’s right, that is likely one of Pete’s first cases when he started Orbit Communications. I was just gonna strip it out and sell them for parts. Look over there.” I looked, and saw a rack to the side with only two other cases still mounted in it. “That is where I took it out of, that was the last working porn server on the rack. And even though the Athlon 64 is out, unless you use Linux most are still using XP and the 32 bit processors. Naw, even brand new this board and CPU are only around $200. Used, we would be lucky if we could get $125. Don’t forget, even though Julie is now our CEO, we still work by your brother’s philosophy. Sell cheap and fast, do not worry about getting every single dollar out of a unit.”

And indeed, that made sense. And now the price I got it for made sense. The case was basically free, they had long ago got their money’s worth out of it. I only paid for the main system. Abe even pulled some parts off of the shelves in the back and I added a CD-ROM and disk drive. And they were obviously used, so did not even ask as I knew those were items they had pulled from other systems.

I saw it had video built in, but I knew those were largely crap and went to the front to see what else they had. I was looking at the cards and asked Eve if she could help me for a minute. “Eve, is that what I think it is?”

“Oh, sure is. That’s an ATI All-in-Wonder card. In short, it’s a Radeon 9800 video card, but they also added a TV tuner card with it. And it’s full in and output. You add on the cable and can watch TV on your computer, or reverse the connections and watch the computer on the TV.”

“Oh, that’s wicked. So I can use the DVD player on the computer, and show the video on a TV?”

“Yep, or even record it. We get some that are into video editing, but can’t afford things like Matrox or Canopus. This is not quite pro quality, but close if you are still at regular TV resolutions.” Soon she handed me the box and I had that installed also.

He tried to offer me a MODEM, but I laughed. “I got DSL now, so no need for that.” But he did grab a nice SoundBlaster Audigy from a box on the shelf, and that went into the front. He then asked me for $20, so I handed it to him. “We are starting to get a lot of these laying around, the last pallets we got from Northrop all had these in them. I can give you the card for free, but the box there is what you are paying for.”