Nazrax

July 11, 2013

Board Game Room
I'm in a fairly small room - maybe 10x10. Every wall has shelves, and the shelves are completely packed with all sorts of different board games. Many of the board game boxes are gigantic. One of them catches my eye; the front of the box is probably 2x3; I can't see how deep it is. The primary color of the box is red. It's advertising its complex gameplay with over 2 square miles of in-game terrain, and it's also talking about the great competitions that are held for it, that one out of every 7 players is able to compete.


Problem Solving
I'm at work, in my cube - except the cube is huge, probably 15x15. The walls are dark grey, like they really are. It's completely bare except for a shelf running around near the top that has some random stuff on it.
I'm slowly walking around, trying to solve a problem. I know one of our other products - the M - has solved it in the past with an XML converter. I can't quite remember what they did or what they were actually converting. The best I can come up with is that they were translating elements into attributes or vice-versa.

Now I'm on a conference call, wearing a phone headset. One of the guys on the call is talking about how much he loves his commute - it's only an hour and a half each way, and he's being completely serious.

July 8, 2013

Dream Research
I'm researching dreaming. I'm finding stuff on Indian (i.e. in India) sites about dreaming, but they've got lots of religious over- and under-tones, and they're very poorly laid out. Even the article on Wikipedia has lots of the Indian religious stuff, though there's a note near the top that it needs to be cleaned up and get the "foolish superstition" removed. I look up from my laptop and out the window. I'm surprised that, even though it's night, the trees are well lit up - but they're siloetted, lit from the ground. I don't remember installing any landscape lighting.


Changing the Build
I'm changing our build/deploy process to allow linking libraries against other libraries in the build. I'm having trouble with linker errors, but I finally get the build working. I have to modify the deploy process to use the old mechanism before a certain build and to use the new mechanism after it. Beyond a certain revision, deploys are RPM based, so that makes it easier.

I remember seeing a web page that's a list of our builds, one per line: just revisions as links, nothing else. Near the top of the list were SVN revisions; later on the page were the newer Git revisions. I also remember seeing a terminal (white on black) with a linker error.


Consolation
I'm in a clearing in the forest, consoling a kid who's been beat up. In front of me, at the edge of the clearing, there's a steep incline. It's just dirt with a few roots sticking out of it. A tree has fallen down the incline and rests against it.


Long Driveway
I'm in a car driving down a driveway towards the road. I think I was the driver, but I don't actually remember being behind the wheel. I don't know what was to my right; to my left was some grass, a short gentle slope, then a big lawn
with a single small tree. As we drive past the lawn and the tree, we see a large ornate white house. A driveway goes off to the left, then splits. One fork goes to the house; the other fork goes to some kind of out-building.

I continue driving past the house and reach a T. If I turn right, I get to another small building. If I turn left, I'll get to the road.


The Healing Cat
I'm on an island floating in the sky. It's perfectly flat and is covered with grass. I can't make out the edges, so I don't know how big it is, but I know it's pretty big. There are no structures on the island.

Now I'm on another island. A woman wearing strange, heavy clothing is here; and I have a tiny, pure white kitten with me. The woman takes the kitten; now she's become young again, and the kitten is gone. I get mad at the woman for killing my cat, but she says it's OK, that the kitten will be back shortly. Sure enough, there it is. She explains the kitten can heal people, that it disappears for a bit after it heals, and that it enjoys it. The kitten is puring; the woman takes her glasses, sticks the earpiece into a hole in the kitten's head, and "stirs." The kitten purs even more.

Now I'm back on the first island. I have the kitten, and an older man is standing near by. There's also a cardboard box full of containers of toxic chemicals that I need to work with. Between my hazmat suit and the healing cat, I should be OK. I chose one of the chemical containers at random, fire it into the sky, and explode it.

June 17, 2013

Gas Station Trouble
I'm at a Citgo, getting gas. The pump says to insert a credit card to start the transaction. I stick in my Amex, and the pump promptly thanks me for paying $58.1x. A pump attendant is walking nearby, so I ask him for help, saying that something went wrong, that I ended up paying for someone else's gas and need a refund.

He takes me to the manager, a rather hard woman who has no sympathy for me at all. I argue with her that it's not my fault, that the pump said what it always said, except that this time instead of letting me pump gas, it paid for the last person who used the pump. After much assertiveness on my part, she finally agrees to look into it.

The pump receipt has the previous customer's full information, so the manager calls the customer. She takes my Amex and starts asking the lady if she's ever heard of a card starting with xxxxxx (the first six digits of my dream card) or of a card with a cssv of xxxx (whatever it was in the dream). The customer hasn't heard of such a card.

While she's on the phone, I realize that all I need to do is call Amex and dispute the charge; but I realize the dispute will work better if the manager is on my side, so I let her continue with her call.

When I woke up after that one, I was feeling rather stressed.


My Hand's Outline
I'm in my office. I've decided to draw an outline of my hand so that, if I ever think my hand has changed size, I can check it against the outline and tell for sure. I grab a sheet of paper that's already been printed on and spread out my hand on it. Oddly, my finger tips are off the edge. I turn the paper and try again, with the same result. So, I turn the paper back to vertical and put my hand on it with the fingers together, and this time they fit.

I start tracing on the right side of my hand. I'm using a rather fat pencil, so the line starts too far out from my hand. I need to be careful to keep the line to the actual outline of my hand. I make it up past my middle finger and start to come down the other side.

Except now, I'm not tracing my physical hand, I'm tracing a shadow of my hand. There's a lot of stuff already printed in this part of the paper, and I'm having trouble seeing my hand's shadow. With difficulty, I manage to trace it down further.

Eventually, I get to a point that I just can't make it out at all. There seems to be a wonderfully detailed city printed on the paper, and the city is casting its own shadow further down on the paper, hiding my hand's shadow.

I think about taking the city off, but there's some reason I can't.


Conversations at Work
I'm at work, in the parking deck. I get onto the elevator along with a couple of friends, hit the button for my floor, then hit what I think is the door close button. It actually turns out to be the alarm button, but for some reason, the alarm doesn't actually go off. I'm thankful it didn't go off, since that would have been fairly embarassing.

The elevator starts to move. This is an old-fashioned cargo elevator with no doors. If I reached out through the opening, I'd get my arm snapped off by a passing floor. I'm amazed they're still allowed to operate such things.

The elevator stops. We get out, go along a walkway into the building, then start climbing stairs. I would have taken the elevator in the building, but my friends are using the stairs, so I do too. I'm worried, though, because we're going to the 40th floor.

Amazingly, after just a couple of flights of steps, we're there. I ask them what happened. They explain that in building A, each floor is actually two floors (say, 15A and 15B), so to get to floor 40 you'd actually have to climb past 80 floors; but that building B isn't like that, and we're in building B, so it's OK.

Now I'm with only one of my friends, Peter. We're walking down a hallway. He's talking about most of us having to follow certain rules, but people who are important enough can get exemptions (as long as they clear them with the police across the street). We're going to one such person now - some kind of scientist. Her office doesn't have a door - it's just a big room off the hallway. Peter talks with her for a while; I just stand there, a few feet further away, watching. Eventually she notices me and Peter introduces me. I happen to have my mouth full so I mumble a hello.

Something comes up about one of my team members wanting me to run Snort on one of our lab segments, and she asks me my opinion of Snort vs Enterprise Scanner. I tell her Snort is much better, which surprises her. Out the window, I notice it's raining. I can't remember if the wind breaker I'm wearing has a built-in hood, so I reach up and check. It does.

Eventually, we leave her and walk further down the hallway. Peter asks me about public schools for my daughter. When I tell him we don't use them, he tries to prove his point by asking if I'm registered for the draft. My wife shows up and says that I'm not, that I might register one day. I reply that it's mandatory to be registered, so I've been registered ever since I was required to me. She gets really unhappy and wants to know when this happened and why she didn't know about it. That disagreement goes on for a couple of minutes, then we're looking at a flier for the draft. It's actually a story about a guy who got drafted into some war, quickly gained ranks, and left the military a few decades later as one of its most highly ranking people, and This Could Happen To You Too.

June 14, 2013

Airport Adventure
I'm at an airport gate connected to a mall. A row of security desks is at the entrance to the gate. I leave for a moment, then come back in. I try to go past the right-most security desk, but the lady there tells me that I have to pay to use that one; so I go past one of the other ones.

Just past the security desks is another desk where a lady was accepting baggage and taking money for it. Somehow, I know I have ownership of some of this, so I comment to her that I wished I got 10% of what she was collecting. She finds this legitimately hilarious and burst out laughing.

Turning around, I see a couple of people standing just outside the gate, and I know they're going to attack us. I quickly have a guy with me slow time around them so much that it's nearly stopped (Alloy of Law reference). Another guy with me has the power to speed up time. He goes and walks around the frozen pair; I'm worried he'll get too close and stuck in the slow time field, but he doesn't. Once he's scouted them out, he creates a fast time bubble around the three of them, pretending to help them out. His bubble only partially cancels out the slow time bubble. As he "helps" them, he waits for a good moment to take them out.

I'm seeing this happen as if from inside the bubble; the three of them seem to be moving at normal speed, and
all the people moving around them seem to be moving at double speed.


A Strange Assault
A small village in a dusty valley has had to evacuate. As they're trudging along the pass, the enemy commander decides to take them out; not for any stategic reason, but to hurt moral even further. They're no threat, so he sends a small force: a few dozen troops and a couple of tanks. They materialize in the pass right behind the refugees.

One of the guys sent in is much taller and stronger than everyone else; somehow, I end up talking with him. A woman I know has had part of her mind locked away, and he knows her secret. He says he's willing to help me, but I know he's just toying with me. He says he's modified some noncritical source code back at base with clues that will lead me to who she really is and remove the lock.

Now I'm back at HQ. It's a huge futuristic-looking room - lots of shiny surfaces and rounded desks. One wall is entirely a window. Along with another guy, we pull up the source code and look for anything out of place. I find it in a debug function. The function uses reflection to discover the name of any variable passed in, checks if it's in a list, and
prints it if it is. The tall guy modified the list of variable names to contain his "hint". It made the function worthless, but since it was only used for debugging, nobody noticed. As we're puzzling out the hint - more of a riddle - we look out the window and see a huge force advancing on us.


Dumpster Garden Trouble
I'm at home, working on my garden. We've got a dumpster, and I built squarefoot gardening beds all around it, using it for support. I'm told that the dumpster company has sent a truck to come collect it and I only have a few minutes before it arrives. I want to save the plants, so I grab a trowel and a bunch of plates and start scooping plants onto plates. I send Mom inside for more plates, since I'm going to run out. By the time I run out, she's not back, so I go inside myself, collecting a handful of paper plates and a few more ceramic plates.

Back outside, the dumpster guy has arrived, but he's willing to wait until I'm done moving the plants. In fact, he even helps me a bit. We finish, and he drives off with the dumpster.

Later, we're all walking around the neighborhood. We're at the top of our street where it joins to the main street. I see another dumpster truck making a left turn into our neighborhood, and I hear my last name. I approach the truck and ask if I heard correctly, and a woman in the passenger seat confirms that I did. When I identify myself, she asks me to lead her to my house. She gets out, and we jog along in front of the truck.

When we get to my house, the garden area is completely overgrown with trees, vegetables, tall grass, and a couple of tentacle-looking things. They're about 5 feet tall, rising out of the ground, moving around a little. They come to sharp points on the end, and I'm sure that they'll attack anyone who comes near.

The woman isn't concerned, but I am, especially since they're right where the dumpster needs to go.

June 13, 2013

Leaving the Museum
We're leaving the Civil War / Train museum (real place) with our group. It's raining (just like it was when we were really there). One of the couples remembers they parked by a lake, but they can't remember where it is. I tell them it's OK, I'll pull up a satellite image on my phone.

The map software puts the GPS marker at my house, then quickly moves it along the roads until it's at the museum.
I'm worried that, since there's no wifi, it won't be able to get an image; and sure enough, the whole thing is a green block. Then I remember I've been here before, so it should be cached, and the image clears up and shows great detail.

I'm zooming in and out using the volume rocker; my friend is amazed that I'm zooming without touching the screen and wants to try it.

I realize that we didn't see the locomotive in the museum, and it dawns on me that it must have been a temporary exhibit.


Fragment #1
I'm waiting at a traffic light. On the crossing road, two big rigs are waiting to make a left turn. There's something about people trying to cross the road in front of me and not get in the trucks' way.

Now, the trucks are to my left. Some people are dancing around with glow sticks. One of them sticks one in the grill of one of the trucks. I know that when she pushes the detonator, it'll make the driver go blind. She's some kind of environmental nut.


Fragment #2
We need to pick up a new car, maybe a rental. I realize that we'll need to drive to it together, in one car, so that we can each drive a car home.


Fragment #3
I'm sitting with some people around a table. We start discussing our favorite bits from "You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger."

June 11, 2013

Police Raid
I'm with Robert at the factory he runs (real guy, but it's not what he does). It was after hours, and we were just hanging out on some sofas, eating. A policeman walks into the building and asks me if I'm Robert. I say no and point to him. A whole squad comes in and starts tearing the place up. Somehow, Robert's personal plane, which he keeps on the second floor, gets damaged. Everything in the workshop is scattered.

Now I'm on the second floor. His wife arrives near me, excited that she's won some jewelry. I try to get her to go away before she's seen, but she doesn't pay attention to me and goes downstairs. The police take her and question her.

Later, Robert and I are outside the building. The police are gone. The plane is outside with us, totally wrecked. He says the official story is that a freak hurricane popped up and damaged his building.

Dream DVD
I dream that I have my dreams downloaded onto a DVD and I'm watching it, rewatching the police raid. I fast-forward past that dream. Now I'm in a house, in a kitchen, talking to someone.

I get interrupted watching the dvd when a couple of guys I know show up at my house with a broken riding lawn mower. I go outside to talk to them. On the yard behind mine, I see my neighbor's daughters doing something (the daugters are real people I know, but aren't my neighbors daughters) . I haven't seen them in years and I'm amazed at how tall they are, and that the younger is taller than the older. They wave, then go inside.

June 10, 2013

Train Smashup

I'm in my car, waiting at a railroad crossing. The lights are blinking, but the arms aren't going down. I don't understand why they aren't coming down. The train comes by (going left to right) really fast. It's only the engine plus one car, which also surprises me.

Strangely, the lights are still blinking. I look to the right and see another train heading towards the intersection, but it's moving at a snail's pace. I look left again and see another train coming on really fast, and I realize it's going to hit the slow train. They collide, and the trains start to accordian, with some of the cars in the middle coming off the track towards us.

They come close to the van, but they don't actually reach us. We all run out of the van and try to get away. The crossing happens to be at the bottom of a hill, so we run to the top to be less likely to be hit.

More trains are coming from both directions, and they add to the carnage.

Frosting Faux Pas
I'm in a house with a very open floorplan. Windows are everywhere. I'm talking to my pastor about something.
I'm carrying arounda small plate with frosting on it, eating some of it. His daughter's just finished baking him a cake, and the plate has the extra frosting. I realize with embarasment that she might have been keeping the plate of frosting for him, so I put it in the fridge.

Van Accident
I'm watching Frank drive down a driveway with a tight corner. As he rounds the corner, he runs into another van. He gives his van a cursory examination and thinks everything is OK, and he's going to drive on, but I take a look. I notice that something on his van has made a perfect block-shaped indention on the van he hit. I look at his van to see what made it, and I see that his van is horribly crumpled, with waves of metal going all the way along it. I realize the waves are split near the back, where the gas tank is, and that liquid is coming out. I tell everyone the gas tank is leaking, and we all back away.

I had a failed WILD earlier in the night. It seems to have put me in the mood for lucid dreaming ...

Exhibition hall
I'm walking in a concern hall / convention center / exhibition hall. It's a big area divided into lots of little areas, with a stage up front. Now I'm at the front of the hall, resting my left arm on the stage. I look at my arm and see that it look rubbery, and there's a hole (an inch or so wide) going down into my elbow. I can see each layer - skin, fat, muscle - and the hole goes all the way to the skin on the back of my arm. Where the bone should be is just a hole leading both directions through my arm. My first thought is that I've sustained a terrible injury and that my brain is hallucinating so that I won't go into shock. My second thought is that I'm dreaming. A nose-pinch test confirms it. I kneel and touch the carpet to solidify the dream.

Now I'm in a hallway, trying to make some sort of change to my body. I want to take my shirt off to see myself. I take off my outer shirt, then my undershirt; but when I look down, I'm wearing my shirts again. I take them both off at the same time, and I'm left with my undershirt. I think I try once or twice again.
Now I'm sitting on a sofa in the hallway; someone is sitting next to me. I close my eyes, and I can't get them open. I start to panic - my lucid dreams tend to end this way - but I calm down and focus on touching the sofa. I move my hands around, feeling the rough texture of the fabric (that awful scratchy stuff that used to be popular), and it grounds me enough to open my eyes.

Now I'm sitting on the sofa, watching Commander Sisko address his officers, saying something about a Runabout.


Car wreck
My wife and I are in my car, driving on a 2-lane road. The terrain is very flat, nothing like where we actually live. The road curves to the right, but my wife drives straight ahead, crossing the other lane and going off the road. There's a ditch on the other side of the road, maybe 5 feet deep, and we launch into it. The car is momentarily airborne then hits bumper-first.

Now, I'm laying face-down on the grass. The car is upside-down above me (by its position, it seems to have rolled instead of flipping like it should have). A tree is in front of me. I have a passing thought that things this bad only happen in dreams. I decide to try the nose-pinch test, and it indicates a dream. I don't believe it, so I try it again, then a third time, and I'm finally convinced it's a dream.

For some reason, I decide to really pay attention to my senses. I run my hand through the grass, feeling the blades. I pick up an immature pine cone, feeling its sharpness. There was a cold breeze on my arms. I'm amazed at the clarity of the sensations I'm receiving.

When I woke up, I could still imagine the feeling of the wind.

Departing coworkers
I'm at work, though the room I'm in actually looks like the kitchen at church. My fellow employee, Scott, is leaving. I'm talking to megan about it, that I'll be the only build engineer left, and that I can probably ask for whatever I want and they'll give it to me. She wants to know why I'm staying at all, and I reply that I'm not condfident enough to set out somewhere else and that I enjoy my wowrk even if some of the requiremetns of my company are frustrating.

Chris is also leaving and we're talking to him. It's a Friday and he says that he was originally scheduled to have his exit interview on Monday but that they moved it up to today because he no longer has his keycard and they had to take a couple interns off of their regular duties just to follow him around and open doors, that that's just a huge waste of money, and that they originally only planned for them to do that through the weekend.

Somehow related to that, i'm looking at a control panel for the building. I can see my floor almost like one of the Sim games. I see doctors and patients arriving via various entrances. I see the conversations of the doctors in little text bubbeles next to their icons.


The strategy/space game
I'm looking at the overword map of some kind of strategy game. I think I'm looking at the surface of a planet as seen from space, but it looks pretty blasted. I'm on the rebel side; we're still small, but we're gradually starting to take more area back from whoever we're fighting against. The map I'm seeing is showing the currently contested areas of the planet.

Now I'm in a space fighter learning how to fly it. It uses standard WASD controls, so I already feel fairly familiar with it.

Now I'm on a space station.

Repaving
I'm driving. The edge of the road is newly repaved. It looks like they're still applying the finishing touches. One machine with big balloon tires is driving along it; another machine that looks like a big reel mower is coming along behind it. Even after they pass, I can see the marks from the treads on the balloon tires.

Now I'm out of my car. I touch the newly paved section, and it feels sticky and warm.

The side-scroller
I'm playing a side scrolling game with stick figures. Oddly enough, it goes right to left. All the characters are represented as small black stick figures. It's incredibly hard past a certain point. Eventually, a boss type character shows up; she doesn't look any different from any of the other figures, but she's a lot harder to defeat. The first time through, I have trouble controlling my character and she quickly kills me. The next time through, I do better. This time, I get to a downhill section where she kills me. The next time through I get to a part where she gets into a large walker vehicle and starts chasing me. I'm supposed to shoot her out of the pilot's seat, but it's hard to aim. Somehow I get behind the walker and end up fighting Roy and the other characters from The Order of the Stick. They're much bigger and actually look something like who they're suposed to represent. I die fairly quickly. Somehow I realize that there was a way for me to hover in the air directly above the boss's cockpit to shoot at her more easily.

Now I'm looking at the level editor for the game. I'm not actually making a level myself; I'm just seeing a beta level the developer is working on. Near the top, I see a ladder going off the screen. Something isn't right - I see the top of the level in the editor, but there's a flashing bar where the top of the screen would actually appear, and it's lower than the top in the editor. I don't know why this is.


Driving from the back seat
I'm driving. It's very difficult to drive - I seem to be sitting in the very back of a bus, but somehow I'm still driving it. I have to duck down and squint to see out the front, and my view is still terrible. I'm constantly worried about hitting something or someone. Thankfully there aren't too many cars on the road. At one point I find myself coming up on an older woman on a bicycle; she's right in the middle of the lane. Somehow I'm having a really hard time seeing her. I accidentally turn the bus a bit to the right, and I end up with half the bus off the road. It works out ok, though - I just barely pass the women on the right. I'm glad i didn't hit her. Shortly after this, I come to a T intersection with traffic coming in from the left. There's a traffic light here, but I don't know if it's still green for me (I haven't been able to see it for a while). The other cars don't move, so I keep on going. I hope I didn't cut them off.

Now i'm passing some buildings on my left. I've had trees to my right the whole time. I start veering a little to the left, across the wrong lane (no one is coming) and towards the buildings. I can't seem to get straight. I wake up and have the weirdest sense of moving to the left even as I'm still laying in bed.

No shoes, no service
I'm taking my kids to a shop on a strip mall. As we walk up to the entrance I see a "No shoes, no service" sign and realize that my feet are bare. We all go back to the van so I can get some shoes on.

Demon dog at the police station
I'm in some kind of private eye, film noir dream. I enter a police station via a lose second story window and find myself on a small landing. I go downstairs, but return upstairs to close and latch the window. Back downstairs, a huge black dog with glowing red eyes starts to chase me and my dog. With my dog, I run to the front door and open it just wide enough to get out through. I try to get my own dog out without letting the demon dog out, but he's somehow stuck. I wake up.

Game in a warehouse
I'm in some kind of puzzle game. I'm with a group of people in a gigantic warehouse. We're all riding along a huge conveyor belt that takes us from puzzle to puzzle.
Eventually, we reach the end of the conveyor belt. Something up in the air drops three big boxes down in front of us. Somehow, they're shooting at us. I know that this is really easy to solve if you just know the trick.
Now I'm looking at the summary screen for the last puzzle. I'm frustrated because even though I believe we solved it perfectly, we still lost points, and I have no idea why.

Bus to New York
I'm out somewhere doing some activity. Soon it's over, so Ron and I board a bus to go home. We're on the bus a long time - I wonder if we're going to the right place. I know Ron hates buses, so I look back at him and see that he's sleeping. The bus has a few rows of front-facing seats that recline slightly. Behind them are 5 seats on each side facing towards the middle of the bus. Ron is on those seats, laying down on his back. He doesn't quite fit. It looks like the seats at the end of the line can actually spread apart a bit more, but he hasn't done that. Behind those seats are a couple more rows of normal seats, then the back of the bus. I'm sitting a few rows back from the front. The row directly in front of me just has a couple of pairs of shoes on the floor. An older couple is sitting on the row in front of the shoes. I'm not all that happy with my seat, so I move and end up on the front row. The doors are immediately to my right.

I see indications that we're entering New York, and I'm worried. We pass through a toll plaza with "Welcome to New York" across the roof above the tool booths. For a while, we drive through a bunch of tall buildings; eventually, the view on our right opens up to a shipyard. The shipyard is large and is full of huge ships. One ship in particular stands out: a huge ship, carrying a cruise liner with plenty of room to spare, is being lowered into the water by a crane. Finally, we arrive at the La Guardia airport and the bus lets us off. The airport is a huge blue building with "La Guardia" written in white on the side. I'm discouraged that I'm probably just going to have to get on a return bus and spend the day on that to get home. I know I could fly home, but there's no way I can afford the ticket, especially trying to buy a ticket the day of the flight. I know I'll be missed at work today, but there's no helping it. I'll just try to be back by tomorrow.

Inside the airport, I get a call asking where I am. I explain that somehow we boarded the wrong bus. I'm worried that my phone is probably ready to die since it wasn't charged over night. I look around; I'm in a HUGE open room. It's almost completely empty, though there's a gift shop over in one corner.

I'm in a smaller hallway now. I've run into my in-laws. My mother-in-law is flying off on a missions trip and he's here to see her off. I think how nice it would be to fly home with him, but I know I can't.

The shapeshifters
I'm moving through a cave system trying to get away from something. I find some primitive bedding, and the thing taunts me. I move out of there and find myself in what seems to be a run-down cathedral. There are lots of tall, thin windows, but they're very dirty. The walls seem to be made out of stone.

Now he's there with me, but he's turned into a young man. He's some kind of shape shifter. I ask how that works, if he can change shape whenever he wants, and he explains. When he eats certain things, he changes; different things change different things about him. Where he comes from, there are lots of vendors who sell different items to cause different changes. You have to be careful only to use stuff that's compatible with you, or you could cause yourself problems.

Now I'm with him at an outdoor market. Booths all around are selling little squares with a color and letter; the color and the letter designates what they change.

Now I'm in a room somewhere. I have a bowl of colorful cereal. In the bowl, in among the cereal, is a yellow square with an H printed on it. I know it's not for me, but I accidentally start to eat it. I get it out of my mouth before I chew it too much. I know it's for a girl nearby. To hide the fact that I started to eat it, I wad it up into a ball. Somehow, even though the cube was fairly small, the ball ends up the size of a tennis ball, and I wonder where the extra size came from. I don't notice at the time, but the color has also changed from yellow to blue. I give the ball to the girl, and she eats it. No one is sure yet whether she can shapeshift, so this will tell. After chewing it, she bends over in pain - that means the change has started, that she is a shape shifter, and everyone is excited.

Waiting for the subway
I'm waiting for the subway; a number of other people are also sitting around, waiting. We've been waiting for a long time. Somehow, I miss it. I ask someone how long it'll be and whether it runs on a regular schedule; it seems I'll be here for a while.


Walking around downtown
I'm walking with my wife around a rather nice downtown area with attractive buildings and lots of green space. It's fairly close to where we live. Katie's started selling in an organic market near where we are, so we should go buy something from her to encourage her.

On the way we stop at a pizza place for my wife. She orders while I walk around and look at what's available. The restaurant is a large circular room with a cash register in the middle and glass counters (with food behind them) all around the edge. When I walk back over to the register, I see a bunch of plates laid out with slips of paper with names on them, waiting to have their order filled. I laugh because my name, not my wife's, is on the order. The cashier asks me if everything is ok, and I explain why I was laughing.


The restroom
I've just walked into a public restroom. I lock the door and turn around, but when I see that it's actually a fairly large bathroom with a number of urinals and stalls I unlock it again. There's one toilet sitting outside a stall near the urinals; there's no way I'm using that. I go into a stall and lock the stall door, but then I realize that the stall only has a half wall, and that I can see outside the bathroom through the gap.


The restaurant
I'm in a rather nice restaurant. Our table is near the main doors; the doors are open, and everything is wide open and airy. I go to find the restroom and end up in a cafeteria. It looks like any normal school cafeteria, except that instead of seats or benches, it has toilets. Everyone is sitting on the toilet lid; but people can relieve themselves whenever they need to.
I go back to our table and tell everyone else about the cafeteria/bathroom I found. A couple of strangers start giving me a leg massage. I see Bob, and he looks really old, with lots of missing hair and lots of spots on his face.


The field
I'm in a fairly level, wide-open field. A couple of trees are dotted around, but mostly it's just grass. I'm trying to load stuff into our van. Seth is standing a long way away aiming a hose at us; my daughter is running around trying to avoid getting wet.


Dystopian escape
I'm trying to escape from something. I'm jumping between pieces of ground that are rising out of and falling into lava. Eventually, I jump to a piece that has a manhole cover on it, and I know I'll be safe, that this piece won't sink back into the lava.
Now I'm in an apartment. Another man is here; he lives with me, but I don't talk to him at all. I'm worried about my friends; they decided to escape through the labyrinth, but I haven't seen them since. The leader gave me a phone number to call only in an emergency, so I call it. The woman on the phone wants to know how I got this number; I can't remember the name of the man who gave it to me, but I describe him to her, and she knows who I'm talking about. She asks if I'm interested in high energy particle physics, and I don't know how to answer. I explain that the other leader took my friends into the labyrinth to escape from the guards, and I haven't seen them since, and ask if she can help free them. I also explain my fears that they may have caught the plague down there.
Right then, my roommate warns me that guards are coming, so I throw my tablet phone under the nightstand. Some guards come in to scan us to see if we're sick. I'm worried that the woman on the phone will speak and that they'll find the phone, but she doesn't speak and they don't find it. They leave, but they come right back and take my roommate with them.

I'm in jail, but I'm innocent. The building is one story and massive; cells are on each side of the wide hallway, and I can't see the end of them. They're the old fashioned cells that are made of all bars with no actual walls. I'm alone in the cell. A guard and one of my friends are standing outside the cell.

My friend wants to pass me some food. He comes close to the door to try to slide something in, but when he gets too close, a fine mesh screen appears out of nowhere to completely block the door.

My friend is very concerned about my safety. Somehow, he can't talk directly to me, but has to talk through the guard. He doesn't want to say anything plainly, since his message would be analyzed; so he gives a verse reference - something in 1 Corinthians 29 [he specified a verse, but I don't remember it]. The guard is suspicious of the "coded message" and refuses to pass it. The guard then "suggests" that my friend walk with him; my friend becomes even more afraid for my safety, that they'll do something to me while he's gone.

---

I'm staying in a house with a lot of people [though I never actually see most of them]. The house is huge and has many bedrooms and bathrooms. Somehow, I end up using a bathroom that's not "mine." Someone is calling to me through the door; they think I'm the person who's supposed to be using the bathroom, and they're reminding "me" to take "my" pills. I look down and see that there's a large bowl near the toilet filled with translucent pills. I don't call back, since it would give me away and show that I was in the wrong bathroom.

Now I'm back in the hallway. I took a shower in the bathroom, but since it wasn't my bathroom, I didn't have my towel. Now I'm wet and naked and running to my own bathroom to get dressed. Someone else sees me; now I have a towel wrapped around me.

Now I'm in another room. I'm meeting with people about one of my projects at work, explaining what it does, how I made it, and what state it's in. First, I explain to a man. Next, I explain to a woman - the man's boss. Later, in the hallway, I start to explain to a third man (he's Asian), but it's lunch time, so we take a break.

Now I'm at Whole Foods. I'm talking about how you can tell a lot about a grocery store by looking at its shopping carts. The carts here are very small and only have two shelves, so it's clear that the store is high end and doesn't expect you to buy very much at once.

---

We're at some kind of church function. My wife has advised me to wear my black shirt and pants along with a tie (don't remember which one). I'm still outside with my car. I want to say hi to Chris, but he's inside doing something. I'm glad I took my wife's suggestion to wear black.

---

We're on the patio outside someone's house. There's a nice pool here. My parents are there. I'm talking with Mom about their pool, and she's describing how they dug a channel from the upper pool to the lower pool to install a salt water filtration system because they didn't want to use chlorine. I'm surprised at the cost, but she said they did all the labor themselves so it wasn't too bad. As she's talking, I visualize a dirt channel going from a small pool to a larger pool.

I'm biking around a city with a friend. We're biking through a parking lot for a strip shopping center.

Now we're on a road, heading towards a huge intersection, going pretty fast. As we get close to it, I glance at the crosswalk indicator - it's just counting down to 0. The moment it hits 0, the light turns yellow. We're close enough that we can't stop - we have to go through. Right after we enter the intersection, the light turns red. I hope no one is around to see us, but I see that there's a police car in the turn lane to our left.

Now we're on the side of the road, stopped on a little grassy spot. We hear a siren behind us - it's a bike cop coming after us for running a red light. I want to try to explain that I was in the intersection and my friend was past the intersection before the light turned red, but the cop isn't in a good mood, and I want to wait for the right moment. He tells us that we'll need to take a driving course.

Now we're in a van with the cop - he's driving. He's looking for food that's right for the test. We pull up by a stand by the side of the road that's selling something, but it's not right. Then, someone else in the back of the van offers pizza.

---

I'm in a conference room with some people. One of the people is asking for an older version of some Microsoft software. It's freely available, but he can only find the Windows 7 version, not the XP version that he needs. Someone else at the table gets mad at him - they had to go through the trouble of contracting with Microsoft to get the old version, so this guy should have to as well.

---

I'm in a house with some people.

---

I'm with a small group of people walking into the atrium of a shopping mall - it's a huge space. Displays are set up here and there; we pass near one of them that's for a video game. D tells me I should save up for it and buy it.

I'm at the beach, standing up on a hill beyond the sand. Lots of people are down on the beach proper. Beyond the beach, I can see the blue ocean; on the beach is a scattering of palm trees.

B wants a bear dog, and we've decided to get one. It's big, with curly black hair, and thinner than I expected it to be.

I'm down on the beach with Ron. He's driving his son's massive old car - it's a big black sedan of some sort. It's ancient and falling apart. I think it only has 2 doors. Ron's got the car because his son is coming to live at home again.

I get the dog loaded in the back seat then get into the front passenger seat - Ron is driving. As we're driving, I'm trying to get my seat belt buckled, but it's not working. I look down at the buckle and can see loose springs and trash inside it. Ron is disgusted. I really want a working seat belt, so I climb into the back with the dog; unfortunately, the buckle back there has the same problem. I get each arm through a belt (5 point harness?) and hope we don't crash. Now, Frank is in the front seat where I'd been sitting.

We arrive at Ron's house - it's huge. While Ron takes the dog inside, I take the broken mower out of the trunk and take it out back, leaving it near a huge tree. There's some lawn debris piled up nearby.

I go inside the house and find Ron dealing with repair and mortgage people. If his son can get the car and mower into the repair place by Monday, then he can roll the repair costs into his new mortgage.

B says something about the dog having puppies. I'm surprised - I thought the dog had been spayed/neutered and ask about it, but she doesn't respond.