Microserfs

Melrose Place night. One hour of work-free bliss and catcalls as the six of us monopolize the living room TV. It's better than the Academy Awards - and every week, too. Added bonus: 90210 as an hors d'oeuvre.

Susan noted tonight that the computers in Billy's office aren't connected to, or plugged into, anything. But this just made the show even better.

Todd chugged Snapples. He calls them, "Workahol."

We all made fun of the commercial for Mentos mints, saying "Mentos" all night with a goofy European accent. "Mentos." It's so dumb.

* * *

This is embarrassing to admit, but I still don't really know what Dad does for Michael. I am amazed that I can be this clueless, but all either of them will say is that he's working on our final corporate space in downtown Palo Alto. But can we afford this? I thought we were hurting for money. I am going to try and sleuth out what he's doing. Whatever it is, it's totally sucked up all of his model train-making energy. He doesn't go near the garage anymore.

* * *

I told Karla what Ethan said at lunch, about teaching money to multiply itself. She said Ethan's talking "bollocks." I asked her what that word meant, and she said she wasn't sure - it was a term from the punk rock era. "Something to do with anarchy and safety pins." We're going to e-mail someone in England and find out what it means.

THURSDAY

Today we were talking about the name of our corporation. It's so boring - E&M Software. Obviously, that's Ethan and Michael, and it is their company, but Michael said if we had a better idea we could change it. Since we haven't shipped anything yet anyway.

Over the day, we wrote our suggestions on our code-blemished dry-erase wall. This is a really common thing down here: dry-erase boards covered in name suggestions. Here are some of our own:

"Cybo"

"GeekO"

"1410 C°" (Michael suggested this - it's the melting point of silicon.)

"@" (My suggestion. Susan said the name sounded too skateboardy, and Ethan said that somebody's probably already used it, anyway.)

"Clean Room" (Abe's e-mail suggestion and my favorite - Lego was always hell to clean up.)

"Dead Pixel"

"Xen" (Pronounced "Zen." Half the companies down here have an X in their name.)

"InfiniToy"

"Bottomless Box"

"Dangerously Overcrowded Electrical Outlet"

"Box of Oily Rags"

"Dream Enabling Technologies" (Ethan suggested this to a chorus of gagging noises.)

"WaferMap" (Suggested by Susan, but then immediately nixed by her as "Too 1981," but Michael liked the idea of InterCapping - mixing capital letters in with lowercase letters.)

Something "European" (Karla: "Americans can only digest one new extremely weird European word every two years. It's a fact. My proof: Nadia Comaneci, Haagen-Dazs, and Fahrvergnügen. We can become this year's scary European word.") Everybody agreed in principle, but nobody knows any other languages besides computer languages, except Anatole, but he's like the wacky upstairs neighbor from a sitcom, and not a part of our core team, so the idea died.

"Cher" or "Sting" (Ethan suggested something one-syllable. So we asked which syllable in particular, and he blanked. "Ummm . . ." doesn't count.)

":•)" (Mom wrote this one, saying, "They're called emoticons - I read about them in USA Today. They're like sideways happy faces." We all ganged up on her: "We hate those things!" Everyone except for Bug who, as it turns out, loves them. And then Susan 'fessed up that she liked some of them. And then Todd. And then Karla. I guess emoticons are like Baywatch - everyone says they don't watch it, but they really do.

Mom, the librarian, said: "Just think of how confused librarians would be! I mean, what would they file it under? Diacritical marks are extraordinarily confusing." I was pleased to note this anarchical streak in her. "We could call the emoticon, ;•), 'WINK' "

Ethan asked what keyboard character the "nose" was, and Michael quickly replied, "It's a dingbat-OPTION-8 on a Mac keyboard using Word 5.1. PCs use the asterisk."

"Interiority" (The winner, and my suggestion. Prize: a Nerf Galling gun.) So now we're making Oop! an Interiority product.

* * *

Housing update: Bug and Susan now live 30 miles north in San Francisco. They drive the 280 against the rush-hour traffic, it's not too bad.

Susan lives in the sumptuous 2-bedroom apartment next door to Bug's seedy bachelor "bedsitter." We gloated at their decision to live next to each other, but Susan told us to stop smirking like dungeonmasters. "Don't think I don't know what I'm in for. I warned Bug that if I smell even one of his crappy little Dinty Moore meals through the walls, I'm going to gel him evicted." Susan just doesn't want to admit she doesn't want to be alone. She acts all tough and wolfwoman, but it's all bark. Michael lives in the other spare room down the hall from me and Karla. More to the point, he announced he's moving to a personalized 1-800 number. That's where he really lives -