The year: around 1994. I was 14 or 15 and using a borrowed account on a local collage network. A student there shared his modem pool login info with his friend who was also my friend and he shared it with me. My first taste of unix was a DEC minicomputer in some cs professors office. I learned a lot of the ins and outs of unix and the internet… 2400 baud for pirating software and porn mostly. Eventually random ftp sites and netnews got boring and redundant. I got introduced to irc and was amazed at the instant interaction with other computer people. My friend at the time hung out in a specific channel, #chitchat2, and I joined it as well because why not. It was a pretty tight knit group of regulars that hung out there and talked about whatever… Nothing in particular. At 15 I felt pretty accepted by people for the first time in my life.
Being the budding wanna be hacker and scriptkiddie I also hung out in all the warez channels, #exceed, #ego, #warez, etc, and picked up on irc scripts and whatnot. SrFrog and his seminal lice script was my favorite of the time. I learned about patching and compiling a customer version of the standard unix irc client, and ran lice. It was pretty fun to mess with people and being 15 and relatively immature I spent hours riding server splits and nick-colliding people for the hell of it. There were some dicks that hung out in #chitchat2 so I did what I could to make their life hell. Looking back I was probably as much of an asshole and they were insufferable IT twits.
I also met a girl there who was in college in another state. She remembers me as being a gigantic asshole and super immature. She hated me and would refuse to talk to me. Over the next 4 years I grew up, turned my script kiddie nature into an actual passion for computer security. As I grew she and i became sort-of friends.
Eventually, when I was around 19, my family moved across the country, and she graduated college and moved the other way across the country to be with her family. We started talking more and more on irc, private chats, late into the night. Out of the blue she called me on the phone which blew my mind. I had dated on and off but this is the first time I ever had a member of the opposite sex who I felt was actually interested in me. One call turned in to once a week, then to several times a week. I had to get a job so I could pay for 400 dollar a month long distance bills (this was the mid to late 90s and I never invested time in the phreaking skills I probably should have). One day she sent me a message “I bought a plane ticket and am coming to visit you in 2 weeks”.
My heart exploded on the spot. I spent the two weeks saving what cash I could, I found a hotel for her to stay at (my parents were cool but not cool enough to let her stay with us, she was some random anonymous person I met on the computer, as they put it… Stopping short of calling her an axe murderer).
The day arrived and I met her at the airport at the gate. You could do that then. It was then, at 19.5 that I knew I was in love for real, not just in lust or in dire need of companionship. Our next week together was a blur of every: passion, incredible sex, amazing conversations, and our souls connecting on a level so deep I didn’t know such a connection was possible. It went way too fast and seemed to last a life time all at the same time. We even spent some time on irc talking with all our combined friends in #chitchat2. By the end of our time together, we knew we had to be together. I brought her to the airport and walked her to the gate. We were both sobbing but she promised that her next step was getting her shit together and she was going to move to where I lived.
The next 6 weeks was arduous. It might as well have been 6 years. But in August of 1996, she packed her bags and flew across the country. She lived alone for a couple of years until I had issues with my family and I moved in with her. 4 years after moving to be near me we got married.
Tomorrow, April 28th will be our 24th year wedding anniversary. It hasn’t always been easy but I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone else.
As for the love of my life, tru64 lead to Solaris, led to slackware linux, Debian, ubuntu, Arch, etc. my lifelong love of unix and unix like operating systems started 30+ years ago with tru64 and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Just kidding… It’s my wife that is the love of my life. We met “on that damn computer” as my mother likes to put it. Every year on our anniversary we go to where we had our first irl date. I sometimes pop back into efnet on irc to see if anyone has returned to #chitchat2 but so far haven’t found anyone. I’m still friends with, and grateful to the guy who gave me access to the colleges modem pool.
Hello everyone, it's been a productive morning. I cut the backyard with the new EGO mower and ran the trimmer. After I had spent an hour with my 100+ year old double-sided ax I inherited chopping roots out of the ground. They definitely don't make them like they used to. Then I sharpened the ax when I was done. You never know when a tree will need chopped or a Viking raid completed. 😉
Have a wonderful Sunday! Hopefully something interesting or fun happens.
Richard Rohr's contemplation inspired me to write about my own difficulty facing reality as my dog approaches the end of her life. Find my blog post here: https://www.spiritualbnr.org/living-in-reality
Richard Rohr reminds us that the self is a small, petty product of the ego, but the Self is everything. "People with a distorted image of self, world, or God will be largely incapable of experiencing what is Really Real in the world." You can find his meditation here: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/our-limited-perspectives/
Don’t worry he has an escape plan - although I think he missed the bit about an ego the size of a planet for emergency levitation via hot air balloon.
“I try not to think about it [democracy] too much. But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israel Defense Forces, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”
It seems like personal, unreflected fear is the driving force for hate and intolerance. How do you fix that? How would you teach people to not fear certain things?... 🤔 Recently I discussed with someone who is pro forbidding people to wear a hijab, and the only real argument was that they fear people wearing those. That it's weird and unusual. They didn't seem like a hateful person, it was just the fear of something they rarely see which leads them to decide for restricting freedom of others...
Fear can be weakened or even fixed. At least through attempting to face fears, therapy and maybe even some basic reasoning all by yourself. But it needs work and you need to be ready to do the work if you really want to overcome fear of a specific thing (depends on the fear, what is the best course of action).
Disdain...well, that's another thing that needs work. But, if the person isn't willing to hear any other opinions, then it's pretty much impossible to go for a change, and you cannot force a person. Examples, statistics, research and stories can be used, but some of us are very stubborn or otherwise don't want to consider any other points of views.
Depends on a person how they deal with bad news. Their experiences/history, personality and other factors.
I as an example enjoy to talk about difficult topics with people even when I don't experience them myself and I'm always happy to help in reasoning and getting ideas on how to maybe fix something.
What you are trying to undo...
I'm not sure what you mean with this. But if I can make people to choose stuff via their own free will and to consider things through their own reasoning - in ways that don't harm them or others - that sounds like a thing I'd be happy to be guilty about!
Probably that too, but not always. Fear is one another factor.
Which is deeply rooted -and has always beern - into humans...
Intolerance?
One reason for racism/intolerance is the fear of the unknown. If you see an individual for the first time that has some characteristics you have never seen anywhere else, I wouldn't be surprised if you felt doubt or even fear. You could (also) be just curious instead.
Some of us prepare for the worst. That's cool as long as it doesn't make you behave in a bad way.
You still can fight urges, no matter what they are and where they come from. Or seek help to overcome them if you're not strong enough to do it yourself or if you don't know how to do it yourself.
I'd rather feel indifference towards anyone around me than intolerance.
How did you meet the love of your life?