Weird Halloween Friday: Finch House Computer Investigation Part 2

Hello everyone, it's Tom, and I am here to report back on my findings from Joey's house. I have answers, and little more.

To be honest we didn't really find anything on Joey's computer. It didn't lag or anything, but it also was a lot more mundane than I was hoping for. There was expectedly some stuff on there I can't really talk about because of confidentiality stuff, but it's a lot more exciting to say than to look at.

After the search however, I was contacted by one of Joey's cousins, and they did have a concrete explanation for the program that Joey remembered, and they wanted to share what they remembered with the website.

The thing that totally surprised me however, was that this relative of Joey is actually already this Site's Associate, StarJaxer (They just never told me this until now). Likewise I'll allow Jax to explain from here.

Jax, here, and I've got quite the story for all of you. When I was a little kid my grandmother made a children's dictionary program internally code-named Calexta 97, (97 because that's when she started the project, I can't say its actual trademarked name for reasons I'll explain later). She worked on this project until 2008. This program was a children's dictionary, outfitted with a voice recognition program my gran programmed herself. She worked on it for over a decade, meticulously perfecting the program and its voice controls.

I will preface any more detailed information with an explanation on how I have the information I do.

The thing is, I got lucky and had a chance to ask my grandmother about all this before her passing. When I was probably around 15 I spent way too much time online, just reading wikis and forms and such. and after spending probably a few straight hours on the website Tv Tropes' "you know that show '' message board, I tried thinking about what I could personally half remember. I then remembered Calexta and I had the same questions Joey had this month. Anyway I did have a good opportunity to talk to her about the program after I started asking myself questions, as I think I started my "investigation" in early November and while Grandma had moved away, she always made sure to come back to Florida for Christmas.

I have a good log on everything she told me because I made sure to write everything she told me down in a little notebook and then transferred all my information to a text document. And I'm going to condense this information into this article so Joey and anyone interested in his story can maybe get a little closure on his weird half memories of this game.

The dictionary was outfitted as a child friendly chat bot tentatively named Cal, Short for Computer Pal. Cal was made to be a digital gender neutral child narrator. Cal was accompanied by a set of 7 stuffed animal characters. These characters were supposed to be the AIs personal toys that they would share with you while you were learning together. The program was designed to work for both one on one sessions with a child and for group sessions with a presenter, the presenter being a parent, grandparent, teacher, library, camp counselor, etc.

She didn't say too much about the group feature, but I know the single player dictionary mode would let you voice search, text search or manually look up different definitions.

Me and my cousins tested it out regularly under my gran's supervision, as we were the perfect 4-9 ages to be the play-testers she needed.

The last thing she told me in that first long Q&A session was the fate of the Calexta project . In 2008 a company (big enough she didn't want to tell me who because of potential legal headaches) bought the code for a fairly large sum of money. It was a little more than what she needed to pay off some stuff, house loans and the like. Sadly the program will likely never be published, but she said its code already got re-used somewhere useful enough she didn't regret what she did. I asked her if she kept the source code or any copies of the program, and she told me she had to give over all her copies to the company for security reasons. I know it's anticlimactic, but it's all there is. Me, Joey and the rest of our cousins beta tested a computer program that was eaten by a corporation.

However there was a silver lining, as she was allowed to keep a number of placeholder art assets the company wasn't interested in, and this includes the art that interface had when me and Joey were testing it, which she put onto a flash drive that she stuck in my Christmas stocking, and I still have that flash drive with me. A majority of the art on the flash-drive was premium clip-art she had the rights to use but I don't, but I will share whatever original assets I do have. I know it's not a lot, but it's all there is. I beta tested a canned computer game, and the only proof it ever was is the testimony of my fellow play-testers and some old art my grandmother did. That being said, it's good art.

And for what Joey remembers of Calexta, Well gran actually told me about that as well. Before the big sell out, a number of companies were interested in Calexta,and would request certain changes to be made to the program for their potential publication of the program. Apparently one company asked if the dictionary could handle more serious topics, and for a solid commission she created a series of dictionary entries in Calexta that featured some topics that were more in the PSA ballpark. That company then had a management change and lost interest, and then the next company in line asked her to remove the more serious material. If I had to guess, I'd say Joey probably found a half taken out dictionary page on grief, and considering gran left Florida when he was 7 and he was still writing to Santa until he was 9, he probably just assumed Calexta was alive at that age and remembered it as such.

And while I have this spotlight, I will like to make a number of personal announcements. The first is, to honor both my grandmother and myself, offsite I've been calling myself Calexta for a while now. I would like to start going by Calexta or Cal on here as well, but I will still answer to Jax. The other thing is a big personal thing. To preface, Joey has been extremely kind to me even before he realized who I was. To be honest he didn't know that we are cousins until after his article was published. If you can possibly imagine, I am very cautious about who I share my identity with, but once I knew he was chill, I made sure he knew who I was. And likewise he let me know there was an open room at the Finch house, closer to the majority of the other WSTH moderation. As you can imagine I took his offer to be his housemate in a heartbeat, and I'm excited to be geographically a lot closer to the rest of the mods. Now I'm going to throw it back to Tom.

Thanks Cal. Well that's how that cookie crumbled. Sadly, Joey's personal lost media is in some big company’s archives at best. But he did get to see what it looked like again and I've put a selection of those assets in a gallery at the bottom of this article. Cal has asked me to host the rest of the images on this site, and I will put a page together that should be ready after Halloween.

That being said, I am very excited to meet Cal in person, and I look forward to spending time with them offline. So nobody broke anything, I gained an "IRL" friend, Cal can move out of their parents house, and Joey got closure. I'd say this is a net win for everyone here at Weird Stuff That Happens! Happy Halloween everybody and have a great one!