christopher's lives (v5.3)

i used to make this post every year and it’s been awhile since i did but, this year, i have an updated version of it… mainly because i found that the message board the links went to is no longer around, but, the internet archive still has copies…

so, here is a copy/paste from the 2004 version of the post, now with archive links… btw, i would now add that, if you just want to get the story without reading every post, scan through the first thread, watching for the posts by user “blueseed” as they contain all the updates… on the second and third thread, the posts by “z167704″ are, of course, the most relevant… ctrl+F on most browsers will let you search the page… of course, all the posts are meaningful, so, i recommend at least scanning… anyway, here’s that copy/paste:

in the Dreamcast Technical Pages message board archives (now known as the AlwaysGame.com SEGA Forum), i found this thread about a regular of their board, Thomas Vazquez, aka “z167704″, with whom they had shared many hours playing PSO, Quake, and other Dreamcast online games, turning up missing right after the september 11th attacks… in fact, they had played Daytona USA with him the night before…

it all makes for a rather long read, but, this is some heart-wrenching, unbelievable stuff and there is not exactly a happy ending here…

i think the whole ordeal is relevant to everyone…

it all starts with this thread

and then, on september 25th

october 12th, aftermath and more of what the future may be like

and you could have a look at this

and this all has to do with a subject i yell about quite a bit…
the people who say that we should all “get off the internet and go out and meet some REAL people” or that you do not have “real” relationships on the internet…

tell THESE people about “real” and how these are not really “real people” they know and how they don’t really have “real relationships” between each other…

i also wanted to add something new that i find quite gripping…

in 2006, a couple released their own home video of the attacks from a breathtaking, but, of course, horrifying perspective… i don’t live in new york, so i don’t know where “41 River Terrace, the tallest building in Battery Park City North, about 500 yards northwest of ground zero” is (the location they give on their site where the video is hosted), but, it is a perfect view to see the entire nightmare unfold – this is unlike any video i have ever seen and odds are you have never seen it, either… most people have not, for some reason…

“What We Saw” By “Bob & Bri”

be sure to check out the FAQ on that page, as well…
(btw, i have a fairly high-quality conversion of this video i made for my psp and it should work on most small media devices – if you are interested in a copy, contact me using the info at the top of the right sidebar of this page…)

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).

F u t u r e M e . o r g » Public » Random

in my links on the sidebar, i have a special section just for random links… click on them to visit a random weblog, a random homepage, a random webcam, even a random page on wikipedia… i love random links and don’t come across them too often, but, now i have a new addition to the list…

do you know FutureMe?
it is a site that lets you send an email to the future… the link at the top of this post and soon to be on my randoms list allows you to see emails people have sent (they have been anonymized), with the date they wrote it and the date it will be sent…
i hit it a few times and there is some fascinating stuff… a parent’s email to their daughter for her 18th birthday, a guy entering medical school sending himself a message to be received after he graduates, someone on their first day quitting smoking, a wife on her 5-year wedding anniversary sending a message to her hubby for their 10-year anniversary, and of course, mundane things like reminders for a doctor’s appointment, and many many many that are not easily described…

they are small pieces of stories of dreams and wishes, hope after regret, breaking of cycles, escapes from the past, beginnings and endings and new beginnings… and you can’t help but imagine these people and their situations, and the more vague the message, the more interesting it is…

so, go check it out, and btw, this is the best kind of random link, the url itself has the command to randomize, so, you can go there and just keep hitting reload…

PointlessWasteOfTime.com » A Gamers’ Manifesto

or “20 things gamers want from the seventh generation of game consoles” and wow, this guy nails it, even if he spends a lot of time being comical…

(warning, language that some may find offensive…)

AudioBooksForFree.com

Duke City Fix » The City Bus Diaries

in many ways, i miss the bus… we used to take it all the time in cali… sometimes i would just get my walkman, catch a bus, take it to the end of the route and then take it back home… “two dollar therapy” we called it (a buck each way)…
anyway, i think this article nails it and there are some poignant comments, as well…

.
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[i should start blogging links more often... i always just add any interesting link to the "looking at" section over there on the right, qute a ways down, but, no one ever sees those... and a link can go over there for a wide variety of reasons... anyway, i just grabbed the "Press It" bookmarklet and this is my first use of it...]

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 :P

The true cost of free iPods – Engadget

Boing Boing: Lucas put malicious Xbox trojan on Star Wars DVD
Star Wars DVD Grosses $115M

Google Search: star wars holiday special
[not only do i remember the fam rushing home so my brother and i could watch this over 25 years ago, i have always rather vividly remembered a couple moments from it (like the stormtroopers searching the wookie kid's room), and the images at these sites were so familiar i found myself saying "oh yeah, i forgot about that part"... yet i have trouble remembering my own phone number...]

ICQ Chat Request

A visual history of spam (and virus) email
The Spam Weblog

Boing Boing: Fave music site: Oddio Overplay

Play the PlayStation Portable — in Japan – Engadget
[um, yeah, i'd probably like to play with that... btw, best pics of the PSP i've seen yet...]

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | Ruined by R ratings
[something of a history of not-safe-for-network-tv language in movies being dubbed for broadcast...]

NetRatings: Broadband users a majority in U.S.
[i somehow missed this news until now...]

The Making of a THX LaserDisc

Cities Collection [via RefDesk's SotD]
This NASA site offers outstanding astronaut photography of cities taken during space-flight.

craigslist – Gorgeous 2br Penthouse on Las Vegas Strip [sigh]

this is from the help files of Achaea – Dreams of Divine Lands, a text MUD we are contemplating throwing large portions of our life away to…

it is a role-playing-required game, though, and i have not done that sort of thing since i was a teenager, and am not sure i am in any hurry to again, it can get goofy… (you should see some of the rp weirdos on pso… they talk to their mags and everything…)

anyway, so, i have been just sitting in the newbie channel a bit the last few days, watching how things work, and today someone was talking about their internet connection lagging, so, someone says “excuse me, but, it seems you need to read HELP INSANITY”…

so, i had a look and it is kinda’ clever…
btw, i can’t help but hear peter jones reading this…

15.6.1 Insanity

(see HELP ROLEPLAYING)

Adventurers are a special group of people. Sarapis has given to adventurers both strengths and weaknesses that denizens do not have. One of the weaknesses to which an Adventurer may fall prey is insanity.

The first sign of insanity is when the poor victim starts to use words that are meaningless to others, such as talking about "my PC" or "being online" as if everybody else should know what is meant!

If the insanity is allowed to go unchecked, the victim may begin to believe that the imaginary world is the real world and that Achaea does not really exist.

Some fancy that qualities of their own existence, such as their health or life experience are nothing more than numbers!

Chilling, isn’t it?

Most distressing of all is when the insanity appears more akin to a case of possession by some vile, alien creature. Victims in this final stage may call life a game, and imagine that they are nothing more than playing pieces in that game, controlled by some greater being.

If you’ve been asked to read this scroll, consider this: have you been showing signs of insanity?
Are you willing to take the first step and admit that you are ill and in need of a cure?

To those of you who see others suffering: insanity is a disease of the mind. Those afflicted with it should not be ridiculed, as this tends to aggravate the condition. Speak to them privately. Show them concern and understanding. Remind them of their true reality and home here, in Achaea!

Nobody wants to see insanity o’erwhelm us all.

every year around 9/11 i have posted this in various places… now i have a blog to post it to, and i decided to post it early this year…

here is the latest version of it…
for those who have read it before, there is a chronology fix and i added a follow-up thread that i had somehow missed before that has important info…

in the Dreamcast Technical Pages message board archives (now known as the AlwaysGame.com SEGA Forum), i found this thread about a regular of their board, Thomas Vazquez, aka “z167704″, with whom they had shared many hours playing PSO, Quake, and other Dreamcast online games, turning up missing right after the september 11th attacks… in fact, they had played Daytona USA with him the night before…

it all makes for a rather long read, but, this is some heart-wrenching, unbelievable stuff and there is not exactly a happy ending here…

i think the whole ordeal is relevant to everyone…

it all starts with this thread

and then, on september 25th

october 12th, aftermath and more of what the future may be like

and you could have a look at this

and this all has to do with a subject i yell about quite a bit…
the people who say that we should all “get off the internet and go out and meet some REAL people” or that you do not have “real” relationships on the internet…

tell THESE people about “real” and how these are not really “real people” they know and how they don’t really have “real relationships” between each other…