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Tag: me

  • MY movies ratings

    i was just complaining on twitter a couple weeks ago (one, two) about the netflix rating system being very restrictive…  one star = hated it, two = didn’t like, three = liked, four – really liked, and five = loved…
    there are SO FEW films i want to give a five-star rating, but, according to their system, if you love it, give it five stars…  and, since you are doing this for the social aspect of finding like-minded people, it only really works if you abide by their system…

    so, it got me to thinking about what i WISH i could change them to and i came up with a couple ways of looking at it:

    since i have a large movie collection, one way i thought was in terms of what i might say about a film as a collector:
    5 = “I own every release ever put out on LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-Ray”
    4 = “I have the Criterion DVD, is there a Blu-Ray release date yet?”
    3 = “I’m waiting to come across it on sale”
    2 = “I have a badly compressed file i downloaded off BitTorrent sitting on my media server, but that’s good enough”
    1 = “It’s been on my NetFlix queue for months…  Near the bottom.”

    and, being a home theater enthusiast and loving to watch movies with people, i was also thinking of how i might rate movies as a host, so to speak, if someone were to suggest watching a certain movie:
    5 = “Great idea!  Here, have the best seat!”
    4 = “Sure, it’s been too long since I saw that one”
    3 = “Um, ok, that’s cool, but make sure you’ve looked at everything else first”
    2 = “Hmm, well it’s in the sell stack, but, I could dig it out if you really want to see it”
    1 = “WHAT???!!!  NO I DON’T OWN THAT!!  WHAT DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?!  GET THE HELL OUTTA MY HOUSE!!”

    Blogged with the Flock Browser

  • my “attitude toward homosexuals”

        i was invited to blog my “attitude toward homosexuals”, so here i go and much of this is responding to his questions and expanding on answers i had already given, so, other readers please forgive what seems improperly segued 😛

        yes, the bible clearly says that homosexuality is a sin…  the bible also lists adultery, fornication, and christ went as far as to say that if you look upon a woman  with lust, you have already committed adultery with her in your mind…  overeating is also listed as a sin, as is disrespect to parents…  the bible makes it clear that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of god” and that no sin is worse than any other but that sin is that which keeps us from a relationship with god…
        while the bible clearly says that sin is not to be taken lightly, it also says that we cannot outright avoid everyone who sins because, again, all have sinned and continue to…  nor do i see the bible commanding me to feel or think a certain way about sinners (except myself, to whom it gives much instruction and wisdom) and certainly not to condemn them…  the bible records that jesus had occasion to eat with prostitutes, tax collectors, and other people whom much of society shunned and, if he had openly condemned them, i don’t think he would have been welcome at their table for long…
        and i said i have had many gay friends and that my best friend in albuquerque was gay…  she and i spent a lot of time together…  and, if it had been a ploy to get her to convert, she would have known it…  and she was not my only gay friend in albuquerque and they were friends – people i valued and shared much with and they with me – not people i was subtly trying to make converts of…  i said that i am firm and outspoken in my faith – well, she knew that i believe what the bible says and that the bible says she commits sin and that i do, too…  i believe the bible and am compelled to live my life according to it…  she does not…  there were times she asked me questions about what the bible says, but, mostly it didn’t come up…  we were both film snobs and art snobs and music snobs and most of our time was spent persuing those things…  i was in leadership in the church back home and i would talk about things going on in my life and she would ask questions about why things were done a certain way and sometimes she might think it was a bit silly to feel compelled to do what the bible said, but, i thought some things she did were silly and we could both talk about it light-heartedly…
        i have never been a “manly man” (i have no interest in football or cars and, right this very moment, my toenails are painted) and rarely fit in well with my peers and spent my youth with those that also didn’t quite fit in with the “normal” people of the world…  so, i may be the wrong christian to address this issue…  i don’t see gay people as a separate category of human…  i have biases and prejudices that i endeavor to work out in my life, like anyone else, this just isn’t one of mine…

        now, i said that no sin affects my relationship with people and i made a caveat and i just want to clarify…  there are people who take part in activities the bible calls sin that i am tempted by…  as a former drug addict, it would probably be a mistake for me to hang out with drug users, as i may very well get weak…

        so, the last question you asked me was if i thought being gay was a sin…
        you already know i will say what i think doesn’t matter, it is what scripture says that matters…  so, do i think it is sin?  i KNOW it is sin, according to the bible, as is many things i have done/do/will do…  and, as i said, the bible doesn’t tell me i have to treat anyone any different because of their sin…  i had no opinion on the gay marriage issue…  when i heard the ruling, i neither smiled nor frowned…  i think christians waste a lot of time and make a bad name for themselves when they get involved in certain issues…
        so, perhaps you meant to ask if i am at all repulsed by gays and i use a religious dogma to justify it and i think i have answered that…

        my view on gays does ruffle some feathers in christian circles…  i am used to “them” while most others still see them as some distorted kind of person that they cannot relate to and are even disgusted by…  i think that is a prejudice or perhaps a distorted attempt at morality… and i take some ribbing or even complete disapproval of my relationships with “them”…  even this post will get me some comments, i’m sure…  i bring this up because you certainly are not getting a fair sample of the popular christian consensus on this issue when asking me…  but, no one has yet to show me scripture that clearly proves me to be in the wrong in my view and scripture is the final court of arbitration…

       i also want to point out that, in another sense, i do represent the current christian worldview…  i pastored the addiction recovery ministry back home for several months, hosted a devotion in my apartment every weekday morning at 6am for a year or so, taught bible studies, did work with the homeless – all under the leadership of and accountability to calvary chapel rio rancho, and the worldwide calvary chapel movement is one that most christians would agree is a solid bible-believing church, and has been since its start in the 1960s…  they believe what c.s. lewis called “mere christianity” – the essentials of which have been believed by most christians, most of the time, since the time of christ and, as he puts it “is what it is and was what it was long before i was born and whether i like it or not”…  there are secondary issues i disagree with them about and they with me, but, my point is they are not renegade or radical and they did not consider me to be… 

        so, anyway, there you have it…  there are many kinds of “christianity” and the wild ones make the news and there is an unfortunate prevalence of what i can only see as unbiblical christianty and that is where the problem is…  my friend did not want me to know she was gay because i was christian and she expected me to judge her…  it gave her a whole new view of christ and the bible and those who follow him and it to know me…
        and perhaps i have similarly put you at some ease that not all christians are the same…

  • How have you been?

    ok, i get this question a lot and i have never really used my blog for posting stuff about my personal life, but, i’m going to make an exception and give the short version…

    yes, i am living in alamogordo, i moved here in october to help take care of dad when they put him on hospice…  and he died on december 16…  and now i am living with mom, helping her…  i have every intention of moving back the abq and bringing her with me…  but, that isn’t going to happen any time soon…  she has a lot of medical catching up to do, so, there are a lot of doctor visits and such, plus, she just isn’t ready to move yet…

    a gal named terra, and her 2-year-old son are living with us…  she was the best nurse with dad when he was in the hospital for a few days a week or so before he died…  she did a lot of above and beyond stuff, even coming to the house to help with him…  she moved in with us shortly after dad died – she helps me with mom, she helps me with a lot of stuff, and she had a few disasters hit her, so living here is very helpful to her as well…

    i am very involved with calvary chapel alamogordo here, including hosting the proverbs devotion at the church, every weekday morning at 6am…

    i miss home very much and my friends and church and disc golf and real coffee shops and my apartment, etc. etc., but, i have to be here for mom right now…

    and, yes, as of march 24, 2008, my divorce from mary is final…

    i have tweaked a few things here on the site…  if you look over at the side bar, you will see i have added links to every place i have an online presence, such as netflix, pandora, del.icio.us, and twitter…
    twitter is a fantastic way to keep up with me – it is sort of a ‘micro-blog’ service where, a few times a day, i make a post from my cell phone, sometimes with a pic, briefly telling you what i am doing at that moment – or a scripture that spoke to me, or a quote i liked, or whatever…  no, it won’t give you major details of things in my life, but, if you keep an eye on it, it certainly gives you little snapshots and sort of a wireframe of what my life right now is like…  the feed is on my sidebar, you can subscribe to the feed via rss, or, you can sign up with twitter yourself and get the updates to your phone, live, and you can make posts and we can get glimpses INTO EACH OTHER’S LIVES…
    wouldn’t that be cool?  i think so 🙂

    anyway, that is the quick version…

    i have really come to dislike talking on the phone, but i do email sometimes, i text message, and of course, i keep up with a few people on twitter, and they with me…  so, your choices for actually having a conversation are kind of few…  you could still trying calling and see if i answer, but, even when in the mood, i am one busy dude…

    so, look at the sidebar on the right, you will see all my contact info and, below that, some links to find me if you have a playstation 3 or see how rarely i update my photos on flickr or see what movies i’ve been watching lately on my netflix profile and what i thought of them, my taste in music on last.fm and pandora, some links i think are interesting on del.icio.us and, a little lower, see live updates to my twitter…

    that should keep you busy awhile 😛 (more…)

  • 2Timothy 3:16-17

    i wrote this on february 27, 2005 and just came across it on my psion the other day and thought i’d post it here so i can point people to it since i have been referring to the things mentioned in it lately…

    here is the original word document for those who want it…

    “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” — NASB95

    Theopneustos is the Greek word translated “inspired by God” — literally “God-breathed“. And this sets the Bible apart from any other document. Indeed, an ‘extra-terrestrial message’ sent to us from outside time and space, written by the One who created time and space and all that is in it. Everything else this passage says is because of those first few words; that Scripture is God-breathed. The same breath that He blew into the nostrils of Adam to cause him to have life causes the word of God to be alive (Hebrews 4:12).
    However, there are many Scriptures that refer to God’s breath in terms of judgment. In Nave’s Topical Bible alone, I find several passages to this effect. Like 2 Samuel 22:16 (quoted in Psalm 18:15) where David seems to equate the breath of God as “the rebuke of the Lord”. In Job, Eliphaz speaks in 4:9 and 15:30 of people perishing by the breath of God, yet interestingly, in 32:8, Elihu speaks of the breath of God giving man understanding.
    So, with the facets of God’s breath I have referred to so far, it is no surprise that we are told that His word is profitable for teaching, reproof and correction. And Elihu was obviously onto something, as in 2 Timothy 3:15, we are told that these sacred writings are able to give “the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus“. As has been well said, we must first know “the bad news” of man’s guilt and the penalty of sin if “the good news” of the Gospel is to mean anything to us.

    Now, since the Bible is from The Creator of All Things, it is most certainly the only truly accurate manual for the human condition and the Christian walk. As the summary of divine revelation, it contains everything we need to know to for “training in righteousness” and to be “equipped for every good work” that God will call us to do. As Matthew Henry put it, “whatever duty we have to do, whatever service is required of us, we find enough in the Scriptures to furnish us for it“.

    All of this being the case, we as Christians, ought to fill our minds with the Word. Through prayerful reading, devotions, study, and memorization, we “renew our minds” (Romans 12:2) and conform it to His will that we may be “doers of the word and not hearers only” (James 1:22). Ephesians 6:17 speaks of the word of God as the sword of the spirit, the only offensive weapon in the Christian armory, and we need to practice our swordsmanship so that we may battle the enemy the way christ did with “it is written” until the devil flees (Matthew 4:1-11, et. al.).
    Since the Bible is how we learn the will of God and equip ourselves for spiritual battle, the Scriptures need to be our obsession, our hobby, spending the rest of our lives searching them, learning them, studying them. There is no pastime more worthy of our attention. As one of my favorite passages on the subject says “…commit yourselves completely to these words of mine. Tie them to your hands as a reminder, and wear them on your forehead. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 11:18-20). If we spent every moment of the rest of our lives in the Scriptures, we still would not know all there is to know, so, we should fill as much time as we can with our minds on the Scriptures, “making the most of your time, because the days are evil“, endeavoring to “understand what the will of the Lord is” (excerpted from Ephesians 5:16-17).

  • [UPDATED] disc golf season!

    first, a big thanks to those i’ve already gotten games with, it was a blast every time!
    now, time to start bugging the rest of you 🙂

    the weather is finally agreeable and, in my experience, this place is not without decent playing spots…
    here is a site that has allegedly all the new mexico courses: nmdgc.org (new mexico disc golf courses dot org)… and here is a little thing i put together on windows live local, showing the abq courses: well, all but roosevelt 😛… you might also have a look at pdga.com’s new mexico course page…
    vista hills on rockaway is the obvious quick-game choice, centrally located for most people i know, just a couple minutes from the church… a really simple 9-hole course that can easily be played in under an hour…

    i’m able, ready, and more than willing after work (4:30, 5-ish) on mondays, thursdays, and fridays… i’m always up for grabbing a quick round at rockaway (the earlier the better on mondays or else the third hole has to be skipped because of the soccer kids) and, if time permits, ladera would be great… i’d love to play the baca, but when is a huge question mark… (weekends are not exactly ideal…)
    just gimme’ a call me on my cell – 328.1406

    i have enough discs for two people… if you want to buy, it has been too long, i don’t know where to go except online or try ‘head shops (ya’ know, where you used to buy incense, pipes, and tie-dye)… over at Big 5 sporting goods on coors near paseo, i bumped into a very small, basic selection of drivers and putters (no mid-ranges) for $10 a piece, but, maybe some local players will read this and post a comment letting us know where to go for the good stuff… i’m looking your direction, matthew bohnsack 🙂

    and, for that matter, anyone interested in getting a game can hit the comments and make it known… never played? no problem, i play like i’ve never played, so, it’s all good… just a nice way to waste a bit of time after work and maybe get hardcore on the weekends or something…
    it’s free and it’s fun, so, let’s get out there…

    .

    UPDATE – April 9
    forget what i said about weekends not being ideal… we have had a couple great saturdays out at Ladera and it looks like i/we will be doing it every saturday, hopefully getting there about 10am, 11am, somewhere in there and counting on spending 3 hours or so to play the 18 holes… yesterday, i was on the course EIGHT hours, so, i think the window of opportunity is pretty much all day if anyone else wants to join me/us…

  • Bird’s Eye Tourist

    if you have been too busy playing with google earth to explore windows live local’s “bird’s eye” views, here’s a very cool way to get acquainted with it…

    Bird’s Eye Tourist

    From the site:

    First Google brought us Google Local and Google Earth. Then Microsoft followed suit with Windows Live Local, featuring stunning new imagery. Bird’s Eye images provide a high-resolution, low-angle aerial view of a small area.

    This website is the definitive guide and repository for the coolest Windows Live Local locations.

    with a blog format and links divided into locations (where i found the sandia peak tramway) and categories (DO NOT miss “our favorites“), this is a very cool site…

    at the moment the front page includes “the bat cave from the old TV show Batman“, “the Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in Buena Park, CA”, “numerous hovercraft at the Little Creek Amphibious Base in Virginia, “The Simpsons mural at Fox Studios”, and “the fake McDonalds”…

    oh, and they also have a list of all the cities covered by windows live local…  very cool – even microsoft doesn’t offer that anywhere, as far as i know…

    this is one to keep an eye on…  (btw, they DO have an rss feed!)

  • feb pics posted and more new stuff

    ok, firstly, the pics from february are up…
    i did sort of a rush job, so, some should have been touched up, and i chose the wrong skin color scheme, so, it isn’t pretty, but, meh, at least they’re finally online…
    anyway, no autostitch pics from feb (march has a few to look forward to, though), but, there are a few webcam shots… also, this set finally has some pics of “Truman“, my new computer, so, everyone can see what i’ve been describing…
    enjoy…

    ok, next, since i get a lot of comments/questions about it, i would like to publicly let everyone know that my webcam sucks (hey, it was $15, you get watcha pay for)… it freezes up quite a bit, so, yes, when you view my webcam image, it might not be live… the program that uploads the images does just fine, so, it will have a current timestamp, but, it doesn’t realize the cam has frozen, so, it just keeps uploading the last image the cam provided before it froze…
    the way it usually works is that after a few hours, the cam just freezes… so, while i’m at work, or when i am out for the day, at some point or another, the cam stops giving new images, and i don’t fix it until i get home…
    BUT FOR THAT MATTER, keep in mind that, when i have it off, i have it set to just leave up the last image it took… i like that better than something that says “cam currently offline”… but, you can tell by the timestamp when i’ve done that…
    anyway, maybe i’ll buy a new cam soon… buuuuuuut, the cam software i use is a bit of a resource hog, so, sometimes i shut it down intentionally when i have several progs open at once… if anyone wants to recommend a lightweight cam app that has ftp, feel free to hit that comment link below and lemme’ know…

    and speaking of new progs, i am now playing around with SCWebCam and am lovin’ it…
    it does something a little different… it takes a snapshot of my monitors and uploads them… soooo, when you look at my sidebar over there, you will see a new image below the webcam thumb and that is a live shot of my computer monitors… click on it and i have a full page set up for it like my webcam page, with the chatterbox and everything… plus, the two pages are also now cross-linked to each other…
    since i am running two monitors and am letting the image be at 80% of actual size, it is pretty large… it may be a problem for those on dial-up… but, i have it auto-refreshing once a minute, so, that will hopefully be enough time for it to download completely…
    (oh, and, in case someone might point it out, yes, SCWebCam also provides webcam features, BUT, it doesn’t have a feature or two i love on ConquerCam, like the dynamic caption that i can change in seconds from a button in the system tray (it’s the blue text at the top of the webcam image)…)

    anyway, that’s it for now… oh, except that i was graciously donated a scanner by manuel, so, perhaps i will start uploading scans of photos from the old days…
    we’ll see…

  • January pics are up and A LOT of site-related stuff

    ok then, it’s what, the eighteenth of february?

    ah well…

    couple new things again this month…
    like last month, i have a folder of panoramic pics made with AutoStitch…
    this month, there is a new folder called “WebCam” and it has a very few notable moments caught on my cam… this will continue from here on out, assuming there are things worth posting and i actually hit that little ‘archive’ button on my cam when those moments happen…
    i have also done something that was much-needed and actually made thumbnails for the vids this time around…

    i think that is all there is to tell, right this way to the January 2006 pics…

    oh, btw, i am playing with the settings in JAlbum to figure out how complicated it would be to start posting my pics semi-live… see, it can generate an album and then, you can add more pics to it and it re-generates all the pages and such… then, i could just continually post pics throughout the month, rather than doing one huge batch every month… just not sure if that’s what i want to do or not…
    we’ll see…

    anyway, site news…

    first, briefly, i’ve changed the way the photos directories display and you can now read the full descriptions of all the folders… that’s awesome, take my word for it… sooner or later all the people who have complained in the past will see it and will no longer complain…

    secondly, since no one else is around to do it, i spend a lot of time cleaning up people’s computers, installing new software and such, and, on my usb swiss army knife i carry my “Christopher Pack” (if google and lifehacker can have one, so can i), so, this all inspired me to add a list of links to info about apps i cant live without… you’ll find said list on the sidebar, under Links, the list is called “Apps I Can’t Live Without”… now everyone can be as 1337 as me 😛
    ok, next, no, i never officially announced it in a post, but, yup, i gotta’ cheapy webcam here in my living room earlier this week… it’s on 24 hours a day, except when it’s not, refreshing every 10 seconds, unless i have it set for every 30 seconds 😛 😛 😛
    needless to say, there’s not much in the way of alwayses and nevers with it, but, it’s already been fun…
    it sits atop my monitor (erm, the primary monitor, the one on the coffee table) and shows me and everything behind me… of course, it’s often too dark to see much… some day i may just point it out the window for the cool view… in the webcam folder of this month’s pics, you can see an example of the view i have in mind… for now, i’ve been having too much fun waving to people and putting little “hello!” messages on it… it has a quick access dynamic caption feature, plus i have it set up to show my foreground window as well as what’s playing on winamp… man, from decade-long recluse to webcammer…
    anyway, over on the sidebar, under “My Stuff”, you’ll see a thumbnail image from it and you can click on it to get to the full webcam image view page thingy… also, i have inserted the chatterbox into it so people can leave comments and, boy have they… never had so many chatterbox comments in the three years or so i’ve had one…

    (btw, as of feb14, i have been back on the internet five years, here’s a little post from a couple years ago about it…)

    oh, almost forgot… huge thing here… i upgraded to WordPress 2.0 here a little while back and it has an import wizard… so, i thought and thought and thought and finally decided to do it, i imported ALL my posts from my old website… that caused me to jump to 170 posts, dating back to april ’03… you can see a month-by-month list on the sidebar under “Archives”, which is right under my webcam thumbnail image… i still need to add category tags to all of them and that is a big job… (my “uncategorized” category grew immensely when i did the import…)
    i wasn’t going to import the old posts and just leave the old site as sort of an old abandoned building to be explored by the venturous… i may still undo the import (if i can figure out how) and stick with that plan… BIIIIIIG difference between the christophercornelius.com website/life and the insidiousplots.com website/life and i have never thought it was a good idea to mix the two…

    ok, anyway, one last thing, as you will catch hints of in the pics, i now have a new computer… the old one died a horrible death… i have a bunch of new pics of it in the upcoming february batch, it is integrated into the home theater system, with dvd, optical digital audio, and everything… i’m lovin’ it, it is so much better than my last one… you can check out more info about it than you could ever care about, i have uploaded the main page of my belarc advisor profile of it, it is the big bold link under “My Stuff”, the very first link, it says “Truman”… you see, i named the computer “Truman”… that’s my dad’s middle name and my dad is the one who got me started in computers when i was 10… he also gave me most of the parts to build this computer and much technical support… THANKS, DAD!

    anyway, whew, what a long post, but, i think i’m done…

  • wow, the end of Ch@b

    karl sent me the news…

    99% of the readers of this post have no idea what i’m talking about, but, to those of you that do, this is truly the end of an era, even if that era ended for us long ago…
    no more Ch@bTalk, URL Chat, and, if i read it right, no more MyRooms… all those things we spent so many late frustrating hours for months trying to figure out… i remember clearly Curtis announcing he had finally figured out how to get it to work, even making a long-distance phone call to japan (jeez, that was almost five years ago)… then, months later, after everyone had given up on it, Vegitto figured out the way to open Ch@bTalk to the masses… the controversy over the selling of ISAO ID’s, people stumbling through the programs to create them for everyone… and, speaking of frustrating, trying to teach people how to use it… they were certainly our most used guides… then came DreamPassport Premier Ch@bTalk and all the amazing features and having to feel around in the dark all over again to work out all the buttons (the definitive exhaustive guide created by the guy at this keyboard)… JavaCh@b and then DPPC and no one believing Danny that he got it to work until he finally posted a screenshot of it running on his machine… hours spent on the URL Chat at ISAO, trying to get someone who could translate for our guides… months of trying to carry on conversations with people who spoke little to no english, but, needing their knowledge so continuing to try… and several times that it was declared that it was now impossible to create new ID’s, yet, someone always found a way… and, of course, several Ch@b directories, just so you could actually find people to chat with…
    Drobb was the first person to Ch@b us… minutes after posting our number in the original DCBG Ch@b listing…
    when i installed ICQ on my psion, i even switched out all the sound files with Ch@b sounds… and, here a few months ago, i dusted off my old generation 0 dreamcast and logged into Ch@b to check my messages and just see who might be on…
    man, i can hear that god-awful music that played on DP3 when the client would open and close when you went in and out of the email client… sometimes blaringly loud because you turned the volume way up to hear the quiet VoiceCh@b someone sent you…
    and who can forget “HALLO! HALLO!”, no matter how bad we want to…

    those glory days were great while they lasted… and now, one more piece of those days is about to expire…
    glad i was there for it… we really did make a bit of history, even if no one knows but us…

  • Engadget 1985

    amusing attempt to re-live the old days…
    [via Waxy]

    for the record, at that time, i was in the early stages of my techie journey with a TI-99/4A (with the 128k (?) memory expansion, disk drive, voice synthesizer, 300 baud modem, printer – ah, what i wouldn’t do for a pic of my old desk), i remember reading computer magazines back then and hand-typing basic programs they had in there (they did NOT come with disks, though, you could order cassette tapes with that month’s programs on them, as i recall)… some progs were so big, they would publish them in parts, so, you had a month to type in all that stuff and then wait for the next issue… i guess i was eleven years old when dad bought me a book called something like “Beginning BASIC For Kids”, which taught me about strings, variables, boolean – i still remember some of the little visual aides and such from that book… after that book, my fate was sealed… for years to come, my notebook full of programs and notes was my best friend… i remember many junior high lunches spent with a mile-long print out of some program i had written, scrutinizing every line, command, subroutine, trying to debug the thing, comparing my original notes, looking for typos, looking for incorrect goto line numbers, any clue as to why it isn’t working…

    a misspent youth, to be sure…

    i spent most of my non-programming time playing scott adams text adventure games, but, i did my bbs time, as well… on one local bss – i wish i could remember the name – i had been caught cheating at tradewars… selling secrets back and forth – had three accounts, one for each opposing faction and one to collect my hush money payments 🙂 neither team ever figured out who their rat was, but, the sysop did… somehow it all worked out that he gave me co-sysop access and i eventually worked for him at the computer shop he ran… dick scheffler was his name…

    on a bbs called “the twilight zone”, there was this little game where you could win more access time (you see, folks, you connected to a bbs using a phone line, so, they limited access to users, usually starting at a few minutes a day for new accounts, and there were things you could do to earn access minutes), this was a “guess the number” game… so, i had, say, 30 mins access time per day… so, i would log on and go straight to that game and try to win more time… but, in 30 mins, i could only guess so many numbers and may guess the same one more than once (it was a three digit number), writing down each number i tried ate up even more of my precious time… sooooooo, i wrote a little prog that could try out numbers WAY faster than i, a mere human, could punch them in, read the results, try again, etc., and would never repeat the number it had tried since i started it…
    as i recall, i got busted using that, too…

    and, you know, bbs’es live on, both dial-up and via telnet… when i got my psion 3c here just 3 or 4 years ago, i didn’t have any internet software for it, but, i did have a modem and a comms program, so, i got some bbs phone numbers, dialled them up, searched their files sections, and, after trying several bbs’es, eventually found an ftp client that i downloaded, then used it to get the rest of what i needed from the ‘net…

    annnyway, fun article… the “oh, let’s make fun of 80s tech” joke gets a bit tired, but, this one is not too offensive…

    btw, my brother got a “petster” for christmas one year, more like ’87…

    oh, and, before i go, it would be a crime to bring up bbs’es and not mention textfiles.com and the bbs documentary… which bbs documentary? well, THE bbs documentary, of course 😛