Here’s my Rush story.

Years ago, I managed the software team for a company that made smart-home products, including whole-house audio. One of these products used streaming services to send audio throughout the home, with individual keypads controlling the music in every room. You would use an app to select any streaming music you liked and send it to any location, or set up scenes and such, but the keypads also allowed local control.

The keypads had a favorite button you could use to save whatever was currently playing, so it could be selected later without requiring the app. Like a lot of software developers, I liked to hide easter eggs in my code. In this case, I hid a second favorite, chosen by double-tapping the favorite button. This favorite, however, was preset to Rush Radio – on tunein, since I had to use a service that didn’t require a subscription that the user might or might not have.

Finally, since I required code reviews for any software we developed, I had to get the code through the reviews. I hid the ascii strings for Rush Radio as hexadecimal strings and commented the actual operation as a built-in-self-test for manufacturing, describing that the manufacturing line would use this to test a specific operation. Any future developer would be reluctant to change anything that could affect the manufacturing process.

I don’t know if it was ever discovered, or even if the link continues to work today, but I know it was still active a few years after I left that company. My hope was always to meet one of the band at some consumer-electronics show, and get to actually demonstrate the easter egg. So as fantasies go, that’s got to be pretty high on the geek scale.

Anyway, I’m still a bit in shock that this machine is ACTUALLY BEING MADE – and even more excited about the involvement of Alex, Geddy and Ed. I was lucky enough to snag an LE from one of the 6 or so distributors that I had reservations with. Wife had said NO-MORE-PINBALL after I got burned for full price on the Heighway Alien machine, but she relented for this one. Great wife!