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Drupalcon Denver - Who is the REAL Rok Zlender?

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Examiner.com is a very proud sponsor of Drupalcon Denver. Part of the sponsorship includes ads on the Drupalcon site. The team at Examiner.com decided to have some fun with them. Five members of the team were chosen to be "subjects" of each ad. After they were done, it seemed it would be fun to include a back story for each.


Disclaimer: THIS IS FICTION. Nothing here bears any kind of truth.
It is complete and utter nonsense.

Rok Zlender makes an audacious claim. He tells us he has been attending Drupalcons since 2006. To debunk this claim, we have to travel back to rural United States in 1898. We need to travel to Damascus Virginia.

Part I - Chipmunks and River Otters
Rok's ancestors aren't from Slovenia as he claims. In fact, his grandfather, Roger Slender, attended the first school in Damascus. It was built just south of the railroad trestle across Beaver Creek. Roger loved "The Little Red School House" with its three rooms. Mr. Jones Baker was his teacher and he learned spelling, geography, and grammar. For three years he revelled in his studies and learned quickly. Roger was a bright student with a bright future ahead of him.

Then disaster struck.

The Little Red School House burned down in 1901. School resumed in the Lutheran Church and Roger's fate changed - and in a strange way would intertwine with Garrison Keillor's - the man that has made Lutherans funny. But that is another story that won't begin until 1942 and has little to do with the man we now know as Rok. Roger came to despise the tiny town - even today it has fewer than 1000 people - that stole his beloved Red School House. He refused to speak and was desperate to get away. Much to his parents dismay, he ran away from home and joined a travelling band of Appalachian Trail hikers who earned a living by selling woven coverlets that were made from the wool of river otters and chipmunks.

This art form was adopted by the young Roger who became highly adept at complicated patterns with his small but nimble fingers. Unlike his fellow artisans, Roger - who worshipped LIFE - refused to slaughter the little animals that provided the materials for his lively-hood. He would shear them, like sheep, with tiny blade shears he designed himself.

Shearing a chipmunk is no mean task but even more difficult is holding onto an angry, wet, half naked river otter. These skills were handed down from father to son. Even today, Rok's secret passion and guarded talent has won him many blue ribbons for beautiful tapestries created from the fur of small animals like mice, marmots, and the rare sphynx cat.

In 1933, Roger became famous for his craft. He settled in Sherman, Connecticut where he became friends with Ned Anderson, a farmer. Ned was responsible for mapping and blazing the trail in Connecticut. Roger built a small house on the Naromiyocknowhusunkatankshunk Brook, near a ready supply of otters, a place Ned suggested.

Roger fell in love with Ginny Claptrap - and they had a child together in 1934. He was named Rob Slender and was the 395th resident of the town.

In 1941, Roger joined the Army and travelled to Europe because of World War II. He was lost in battle, but not before he had passed the skills of chipmunk and otter shearing to a 7 year old Robert. A tearful Robert joined the consolidated school that had opened in the center of town a few years earlier.

Part II - Robert and the Golden Crossroads
From an early age, Robert showed a great predilection for numbers. His chotter weavings (as he called them) began showing intricate designs based on the Golden Triangle with logarithmic spirals. (The Golden Triangle was a portent for where his own son would end up settling - another shocking coincidence in this shaggy dog tale.) His teachers in school couldn't make out this strange boy who not only was good with his hands, but could work out long equations in his mind without paper or pencil. He was truly a marvel. As he grew older and continued through the grades leading up to university, his ability with weaving and with numbers increased significantly. He found himself at a crossroads - should he study Art or should he study Math? At 16, he packed his bags and moved to Cambridge, MA where he had been accepted in the Math Department at MIT. Oh, but little did he know he was about to become central to the world of computing.

Jay Forrester discovered young Robert soon after he arrived at MIT. Jay had been perusing a local craft store where Robert had put up some tapestries for consignment. Robert had put them up for sale in hopes it would help support him in his time at the Institute. The designs in otter and chipmunk fur fascinated Forrester and convinced him he must be seeing the work of some kind of mathematical genius. In this, he was correct.

Forrester sought out Robert and offered him a job helping work on the Navy Computer, Whirlwind. Robert gratefully accepted and become responsible for finding the vast number of vacuum tubes needed to run the machine. Robert's mind quickly moved from pure Math to computer science. How could machines like the Whirlwind do more than just help the Navy train pilots? Could the computer eventually be used to share information? Could it be used to manage content, like libraries of books? His head spun as he thought about these things. In 1951, Whirlwind was complete and Robert was still a mere 17 years old with several years left at MIT. By 1954, Robert had proven himself as a powerhouse in the emerging computer world. He would prove to be critical in conceptualizing the concepts of packet switching. He would be present when Arpanet carried its first packets and would whisper the secrets of the emerging Internet to Al Gore who would later invent the Internet as we know it today.

While Robert put all his energies into his work - he never forgot his roots of complex weavings using the shorn hair from small creatures. He began a vole farm so he would have a ready supply of fur to spin into long strands of yarn to create his beautiful throws and hangings. He also began to build computers in his home which required more electricity than he could possibly expect in a residential area. Marrying his two loves, he constructed treadmills in his back yard which the voles were required to walk on but he found that too many voles would produce too much electricity while too few wouldn't produce enough power. He created a device that would measure the electrical potential difference and eventually these would be marketed in Radio Shack's around North America as Vole(t) Meters. This provided him with a ready source of electricity to work on his inventions.

In a shocking move by the Massachusetts government, Robert's voles were confiscated. His home was not zoned for farming, production of electricity, nor was he allowed to house wild animals. In a fit of rage, Robert swore to never trust the system in America ever again. He looked at where he might move with less regulation and on his activities and discovered that Slovenia was actually well known for both computing and small animal husbandry. He vowed he would make it to Slovenia to make a new life for himself. In 1980, Robert stowed away on a cargo vessel, with a sampling of his weavings and schematics for new computers, bound for Izola.

Part III - the Great Tapestry Re-Vole(t) of Slovenia

When Robert arrived in Izola, he threw himself at the mercy of the Immigration authorities and swore he wanted to renounce citizenship in the United States. He showed them his tapestries and schematics. He told them how he had been so mistreated by the Massachusetts government. He told a story of sacrifice of his grandfather and how he had learned his craft. In the end, the authorities relented and granted Robert citizenship. He Slovenicized his name to Bojan Zlender and made a life for himself in a small country cottage near a creek that had a large population of European Water Voles. These little creatures proved more difficult than any before to shear, but in time his deft hands became adept and removing the fur but retaining the creature's life. His brilliance continued has he created astonishing works of art which he sold in town at Gallery Alga.

One day, while wandering down Kristanov trg his eye caught a rare beauty looking at one his tapestries hanging the the Gallery window. He slid up beside her, and asked her name. She was Vladka - and they were meant to be married.

In 1984, a baby was born. A boy they named Rok. Rok truly seemed to take after his father's skill with vole keeping and computers and eventually registered at Fakulteta za računalništvo in informatiko in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He never knew that his roots were from The United States. Nobody told him.

In Ljublijana, Rok would take computer classes by day - but his other calling - weaving kept dragging at his soul. He began to take night classes in animal husbandry and weaving. He kept a small colony of friendly rodents in his apartment and made tiny coverlets that he kept secret. He wanted no one to know of this personal activity. Rok took on an alter-ego "Dušan Peterc" assumed the personae of one of the founder's of Arahne who had secretly gone missing. He merged his love of computers and weaving into a single space. But by day, he continued his classes and by night pursued his art.

This is where the story becomes interesting. A strangely young Dušan was seen in February and September 2006 at Studio Azzero in Italy and at the Office of the Development Commisioner for Handlooms in India *right when Drupalcon was occurring*. Rok CLAIMS he was working with Drupal at the time but I suggest that next time you see Rok, check his fingernails for tell-tale signs of vole fur. Then and only then, should you make up your own mind.

Epilogue
We all know that Rok began his rise in Drupal at NowPublic. We also know that between the time he began his work in Drupal and 2009 he found a letter from his father that shared with him his heritage from the Southern United States. Rok began a plan so cunning it would bring him to America where he could explore those roots. Through a series of masterful moves, he helped direct the purchase of Now Public by Examiner.com. That led to a succession of events that has now brought him to the United States on a work Visa in the City with Golden Triangle.

His plans are, allegedly, now to find a way to Damascus where he'll see the places that started this family journey. In Denver, ask him how the chipmunks are doing.


Rok Advertisement courtesy of Examiner.com
Blade Shears photo courtesy of Wikipedia
Whirlwind Tubes photo courtesy of Wikpedia
European Water Vole courtesy of Wikipedia
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