The Timothy's True Story

My wife is very near sighted although when I was first introduced to her I did not know. I met her through a friend at work. He had got four tickets for a Jazz concert and as he knew I would be interested, he asked if I wanted to go but it would mean making a four up, with him, his wife and his wife's sister. I was very suspicious as it was obvious he was trying to set me up but in the end I agreed. We met up on the night of the concert in a bar and Steve my friend introduced me to his wife, Penny and her sister Andrea. I was absolutely stunned because both girls were really lovely looking. Penny had long hair and she wore glasses but that did not detract one bit from her obvious good looks. Andrea, was stunning with blonde shoulder length hair, beautiful features and a fabulous figure, she did not have glasses. 

Logan’s Obsession - part 2

by Dieter

(part 1 is here)

Just days prior to the start of the school year, I reported to the gymnasium to be given an annual physical required of all students for competitive sports. Since I was entering my first year in high school, the process was a new experience for me. Participation was intimidating due to the size and maturity of the older boys. They seemed more like adults compared to the boys in middle school. I had no difficulties with any tests or checkups until reaching the final station. I panicked as I realized, of the two lines displayed on the eye chart, I could see neither.

Unable to read the requisite letters, I stammered very quietly, “I can’t”.

Logan’s Obsession

by Dieter

At age eleven, upon witnessing a classmate wearing glasses for the first time, my best friend turned to me and said, "We’re better than he is now." I shook my head in agreement but knew that wasn’t true. The notion that someone is inferior simply because they have less than perfect vision is ludicrous. Mike, our classmate, had not been the first to get glasses nor would he be the last. But he had been thrust into that awkward situation where the teacher directed everyone’s attention towards him because of his new glasses. That must have been extremely embarrassing for him. I had never been particularly concerned about anything related to optical matters until that incident occurred. It triggered something in my psyche and since that day I’ve never been the same. My name is Logan and this is the story of my obsession.

Eddy's Exchange with Electra

Electra 16 May 2004, 15:27

Eddy are you one of those permanent colonials who wears a panama hat

Eddy 16 May 2004, 20:30
1) Leckie. No. Strictly boaters. Panamas tend to clip the monocle.
19 Apr 2004, 00:35

The Governor’s Dinner

Speaking of Puffin's Chinese restaurant sighting, Eddy went to a big dinner last night, a Governor of a Chinese province who was visiting. In a big Chinese restaurant. Eddy himself was quite occupied with the wife of the owner of the restaurant, 40 something lady from Hong Kong with VERY fetching rimless minus 4s which had a nice way of flashing in the lights. However this was but as preliminary play when in walked the official party and just behind the big man himself was a truly stunning gwg, about 30, legs which went all the way up to her armpits and a totally acceptable pair of gold rimmed ovals. Now as you know, I'm not one to judge these things but I'd be prepared to swear that they were in the -7 range. Wonderful!
We were a bit intrigued as to how we would play this one because that level of pulchritude in the company of a "leading comrade" usually indicates minor wife. That's mistress for the more literally inclined. So we were favorably surprised when she took a seat at a table far below the main one, a definite signal for the Eddy move-in. Turns out that she is the deputy mayor of an impoverished county who has succeeded in bringing in amazing amounts of foreign investment by methods which Eddy could only guess at as he sat there transfixed by the way in which her shapely legs disappeared below her very mini skirt.
We have decided that a technical exchange should take place tonight. Watch this space.
27 Jul 2003, 04:37

Troubles with the original website

I must admit I kind of expected that. The original website with the stories has a problem. I tried to solve it and screw it even more. Do not worry, the files with the stories are safe. I even think they still are at the hosting sever because when I opened the ftp client, it showed me all the files untouched. However, the system refuses to show the contents, it did not accept the files I was sending, and it refused my repairs of the index.htm file and deleted it instead. 

The root of the problem is in the number of files. Although the number of stories and pictures is about 1100, the whole website needs some more files to hold together and show properly, all in all the files of the website make about 2400 files and 56 folders mutually interlinked in a sophisticated way. (To maintain this number of files one needs to use a software for creating and editing the web. Nothing too special, it actually looks quite similar to MSWord - and it is of the same fucking origin.) And the sweb.cz wich is the hosting system now refused to accept more files from me.

I will have to solve it. But not now. It is 4:10 a.m. everybody is sleeping and I am so angry, that I am not able to start reading the Help and handling what is necessary. 

Look I know everybody is waiting for some new stories! So I uploaded them here. All the three new stories. This is a safe place and easy to maintain. Of course it is not as comfortable for the readers as the old one. Specs4ever dislikes this place so much he sent me an email about it a while ago. Someone wrote in January he could not find his favourite story here (well, there are not all the stories from the original website here, I uploaded only some of them. Do not worry, more will come.) But there were more positive reactions to this blog than negative. The labels are great! The management ...

Anyway, I feel like having a shot of Fernet Stock now and get between the blankets. I will try to solve the problem with the site till the end of the week. I promise. 

Bobby

Eyescene down and the community

by Bobby

I have been thinking about the last failure of the EyeScene. I do not know how many people of the community noticed that. Only two reacted via FB. 

It was not for the first time when EyeScene was down. Actually when I found EyeScene many years ago, it had been down for weeks. What I found was just static, dead bulletin board forum. In spite of the lifelessness of the forum I was reading it with quite a passion. There was another forum about glasses, which was alive and served as a substitution. It was called Vision World Forum (you can find something completely different under this name now) and it consisted of one single strip of contributions made by many people.

Some months later the EyeScene started running again and most people moved back to the old place to talk about glasses and exchange links of, those years rather scarce, pictures of girls-with-glasses. 

Occasional failures may happen to any website. EyeScene runs thanks to Moonshiner, who cares for the technical things. It used to be run by Chris, but after more than 10 years of functioning as an admin, owner and operator of the website he got tired and decided to hand over the stuff to somebody else. He just did not feel like running it any more. Even under the supervision of such professional as Chris surely is EyeScene suffered several failures. It may happen anytime.

So, I think it has shown us clearly how important for our community is to have two forums: "EyeScene" and "Vision&Spex". If either of them goes down the community does not get lost nor desintegrated and can gather at the other site. You see, FaceBook is good, but not al of us have the profiles at this modern social network.

So, what I wanted to say is just: Keep visiting both discussions and do not hesitate to contribute, as these are the Internet shelters or our small community.

And, as an illustration I am pasting a very old picture from the early days. I have had this picture in somewhere my HDD for probably 15 years. Just a month ago or so Specs4ever sent me an e-mail with the picture as an attachment. Yes, let us remember the old days for a while. 

My first experience with GOC

by Bobby

First I wanted to tell the story by heart, but then I decided to copy and paste the contributions I had sent to the Eye Scene and Vision World Forum and add some comments. I think it will show the events in the original way and my readers will not have to search through the archives of the sites. I corrected some typos and grammar mistakes, and added some words to make the text easier to read. My postings are in black and "Arial font", my later commentary is in blue and Bold Arial Font

The first step I took was a phone call to Prague. I wanted to test possible reactions of opticians. Later, I sent the following text to the Eye Scene BBS:

Bobby                posted 26 April 1999 04:36 

I made an experiment. 

The problem how to buy glasses over contacts lenses has been discussed here (i.e. Eyescene and Vision World Forum) for many times. There are specialists among us who can count the diopters in combination, a chart was published, some of us have practical experience with GOC. The topic is so common, that we use an abbreviation "GOC" as if it was "NATO" or "UK". 

But still, one problem seems unsolvable: How can I go to an optician and tell him:

"I want to wear GOC, sell me glasses with minus 15 D." 

What would the reaction be?

The only way how to find out the reaction is to ask. I picked up the phone and called to an optic shop selling both glasses and contact lenses. I choose the first I could see in Golden Pages. I decided to fabricate the following situation: 

A place where nobody knows me

by Bobby

Here, I would like to write about the "place where nobody knows me" clause.

At first I experienced it. When I lived in Prague I took my long walks in a blurry world when I had my strong glasses days, I did not want to meet anybody who knew me as I could not imagine how  I would explain the reason why I was wearing such thick glasses. I was kind of ashamed for my strange "hobby".

Later I read the phrase at the Eye Scene and in the fictions, which are biographical to a certain extent, written by others.

The "place where nobody knows me" is almost a magic formula.

OO Terms to Know By All4Eyes

Table of contents:

1. Optical terms we use
2. Terms we made up to describe ourselves and our observations
3. "Philiac terms” which apply to some of us

Uploading stories again

Hi all, I started uploading stories to this blog again. The reason is simple. My old website with the stories and morphs is getting full and it is also becoming really difficult to maintain, archive and backup. There are just too many files. I will try to keep it up and running till this blog is ready to take over the function the old site has had.
However, uploading so many stories her is a long time and tiresome job. So, bear with me, be patient and feel free mailing me your opinion on the change.

Bobby

My history as an Optic-Obsessive

By All4Eyes May 2006

Every word of this is 137% true, right down to the names. To protect the innocent, I used only first names, except for my eye doctor, who I’m sure won’t mind a free plug.

I have often wondered exactly how and when my unusual fascination with all things visual began. I suppose it could have started when I was 6 years old and my mother became blind due to Multiple Sclerosis. She could only see shadows, light and dark and this lasted for about a year and a half before she got her sight back. I think this is also when I learned to love reading, because she would ask me to help by reading things to her. “But, Mama, I can’t really read yet” I would say and she’d say “But you can read some words and the ones you don’t know you can spell and I’ll tell you what they are”. I think it made me feel important to be helping her that way. At that point in time, I was not yet concerned with myopia or eyeglasses, just with blindness, although my father wore glasses (plus lenses) and my mother had worn minus glasses before she went blind and wore them again when her sight came back. Maybe I identified with my mother a bit as well. Anyway, during the time my mother was blind and for a while afterwards I used to blind fold myself and try to walk around and do things that way. I was curious about what it was like for her and also I enjoyed “being blind” like her. I also developed a bit of a phobia about going blind myself for real. I think this may have been behind a lot of my initial reading about eyes and vision, trying to reassure myself it wouldn’t happen. I find it interesting how close fear and fascination often are.

What is GOC?

This abbreviation GOC stands for "Glasses Over Contacts". It means that glasses are actually worn over contact lenses. To see clearly the power of both contact lenses and glasses must be carefully balanced. It is not easy to calculate the correct respective power of each optical aid. A formula can be very useful, however human’s eyes are very individual and the simple arithmetic need not be the best means of determining the correct powers. There is an MS Excel file goc_table.xls (download in rar format) that can help specify the powers, but some people say it works only in relatively small numbers. (What is small for a glasses fetishist?)
Why GOC?