Re: Re: bbsing
  By: Nancy Backus to Damon A. Getsman on Tue Apr 21 2015 20:40:32

 NB> I suspect we'll never know... ;)  I THINK, though, that we are back on
 NB> track now, both of us...  A few days before I left on my trip, the bbs I
 NB> send DADS and ASIAN_LINK messages from went down inexplicably, and
 NB> wasn't back up until I got back from my trip.  I sent the reply packet
 NB> I'd prepared over the few days before leaving finally AFTER I got
 NB> back... ;)  Turned out he'd had a massive crash... thankfully he's back
 NB> up and running well again.  :)

  Heh.  Yeah, seems like it.  ;)  I don't know what might've happened, dun bun
can't be undone. ;)

 NB> We come to the hobby from different places...  :)  I came for genealogy,
 NB> where real names are the lifeblood of the area... :)  Games (mostly word
 NB> types or trivia) were an addition... as was getting somewhat involved in
 NB> messaging in the local areas, getting to know the other users and the
 NB> sysop better.  It helped that the sysop of that early board was a
 NB> friendly sort, and encouraged good interaction.  :)

  Yeah I was definitely a naive kid who'd gotten into coding beforehand and had
really romanticised dreams from reading the book 'Hackers' by Steven Levy and
wanted to change the world through freedom of information and coding.  The
persona was the really interesting aspect to it.  Struggling to have a life
with more meaning in a pre-portioned society, I guess, at least that's what it
felt like at the time.  'Course I spent plenty of time with the online gaming,
as I got telecommunications ability and I found that now I had software for the
computer that I'd salvaged and no longer had to write my own.  It's kind of a
shame, really.  I would've come a lot farther with my programming and sysadmin
skills probably if I would've kept that hobby going as strong through my teens
as it first started in my pre-teens.  I didn't really resume it in force until
almost my mid-twenties, and even then it was only my minor, while my major was
in partying.
  The first couple of boards that I was on, as far as local dialups, didn't
really have that sense of community so much.  I guess they were really
indicative of the culture in North Dakota, now that I reflect on it a little
bit.  It was when I first got some cracked accounts to access major online
BBSes (ie ISCA BBS) that I first started to feel a real sense of community. 
There weren't any people in my community who responded very well to my sense of
repression fighting for outlet...  Going against those grains instead of just
taking what was handed to you in play was kind of frowned against.  Nobody
could understand that a kid with problems might be a product of parents with
problems...  I don't know, I could write a million page essay on all of that
crap, but it's really neither here no there anymore.  It taught me to be a
better father, that's all that should really matter at this point.  Well that
and to fight to find things that can help me to keep those haunting nightly
revisitation hours under control where the demons of the past try to pour back
out at me.  ;)

 NB> There was some of that here, too.  And for some, I'm sure it was a
 NB> similar lifesaver as for you.  :)  I remember one teen boy I spent some
 NB> intensive time in chat on one bbs (he'd started by trying to "hit" on
 NB> me, until I told him I had a son already out of college, at which point
 NB> he responded by asking for advice on how to deal with his parents)...

  Heh.  I think I've probably made that mistake a few times myself.  I think
that the whole atmosphere of online interaction can be really great for kids in
that situation, where they're repressed and kept from normal socialization by
parents or whatever cause.  Unfortunately I've seen the opposite, too.  It
doesn't help much that the internet has been so popularized at this point that
it doesn't really require a sense of community in the discussion boards or
anything of the sort.  I don't think quite as many people experience the
original senses of community that were so helpful to people in my position when
they were younger, now-a-days.  Though no doubt the reblogging and soul
dumpings on facebook, diaspora, tumblr, and [maybe even] twitter spurts still
serve the same purpose.  It's just so much more likely to get lost in the
flood.  Plus the newer media makes it a lot easier for people to just spend
their time reblogging and 'liking' the different content that other people put
up, instead of spending time in really meaningful interactions.  Kind of
reminds me of people sewing band patches and other people's quotes onto their
clothing so that they can be an 'individual'.  *looks guiltily at bathrobe
emblazoned with many band patches and other designs*

 DAG>> I hope that I can roll out this shell that I'm working on to them
 DAG>> soon here so that I can give back a little bit to the community
 DAG>> that gave me so much. 
 NB> A nice repayment..  :)

  I'm just sad it's taking so much longer than I thought it would.  Such is the
curve for projects of this size though, I guess.  Well, that, and I'm hampered
a bit because of the fact that I've never coded with frameworks, never coded
with testing, never learned any decent software engineering techniques.  I've
only worked on my own code, and that's bitten me in the bum a bit.  Especially
since I've had somebody else contribute good portions of work to this project,
now, and I'm having trouble getting up to speed on the flow of their code in
order to fix it where it's broken with recent additions.  Regardless, I hope
some of them appreciate it once I iron out these last 3 bugs that are keeping
me from putting it up public.

 NB> We get that, too... nothing but rain in the forecast, but look out the
 NB> window and there's sun and maybe some clouds...  ;)

  Heh.  It's been a lot nicer around here lately.  Got a nice trip to the river
beach planned here for this weekend, if all works out.  I want my son and I to
be outside for awhile, but nothing quite so stressful as this last campout. 
More of just a day to be a beach bum, maybe cook some hotfrogs, throw some
recreational spheres around, all of that jazz.  ;)

 NB> Sounds perfect.  :)  Most of our large parks are outside the city limits,
 NB> but it's not that large a city anyway... and there's lots of woodland
 NB> and green space around... :)

  I definitely miss a less urban setting right now.  Hopefully this contract
work helps me fill the coffers soon enough here that I can save my kittie's
life and then get ready to relocate to an area where he'll have more kids
around, more space to play, and not quite so many yuppies packed in like
sardines.  :)  Not that I mind them in the slightest, hell I aspire to be one,
though the 'y' part might not apply to me any more.  The lack of kids, though,
and the fact that kids wandering to the park alone in this area are subject to
sheltered dipshits calling them in to the cops, leaves quite a bit to be
desired.  Didn't really forsee that in the cards when I moved here.

 NB> So, did you do your camping trip, yet...?   I sure hear you on the cabin
 NB> fever part, certainly is the season when it really is time to get back
 NB> out and doing again...  :)

  Sure did.  It was a lot more stressful than it could've been, due to some
issues with other people's children on the way, but all in all it was a good
experience, and I'd still call it a net positive.  I need to get some of the
pictures off of my phone and up onto a site somewhere where I can share them,
no doubt.  It was absolutely beautiful setting, although I'll admit I was
haunted that night trying to sleep due to proximity to Mt. St. Helens and the
subsurface geology of the area.  ;)

 NB> As far as I could tell, this was the first reply to this... ;)  I did go
 NB> back and check my saved messages, to be sure... and to make sure that I
 NB> hadn't answered it back already...  ;)  I think part of it is that we
 NB> are having similar threads in three different echoes at the moment.. ;)

  It's nice to have an archivist in the threads.  ;)  That's on my list of
things to do, also...  Time is such a horribly limiting quantity, though.  I
suspect that you are very much right in the bit about the similar threads. 
Perhaps at some point I'll go through and consolidate here.  That may well fall
back onto the 'load-shedding pile', as my roommate so aptly puts it, though. 
;)

  -D/K
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