In my exploration around Ojibway / Brunet Park, I found an adult common snapping turtle, a few cardinals, a downy woodpecker, a woodchuck, a few garter snakes, a tufted titmouse, trilliums, morels, and perhaps a few other things.

My first computer was a 486 system that my brother gave me some time in the early to mid 1990’s (most likely 1993 or 1994). It was running DOS, Win3.1, and OS/2.  My introduction to computer literacy was mainly driven by my desire to figure out how to run games on the system. I don’t remember all of the games, but two in particular were Spear of Destiny (a spin-off of of the shooter Wolfenstein) and NHL 93 (and EA Sports hockey game).  With this motivation to  learn about the computer, I quickly picked up new things.

On the grand scale of computing history, this was before e-mail caught up with postal mail in volume,  right around when Red Hat Linux was introduced, right around when  Mosaic released their web browser, and a few years before Apple had a product called “Mac OS”.

It wasn’t too long before I was introduced to the more social aspects of the computing subculture. A friend introduced me to the concept of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and I quickly became hooked to that too.  The best way to describe the BBS scene is perhaps as a localized Internet. A BBS was a little system that someone would run from their home and you could dial into it. A whole subculture developed. A BBS would usually have functionality to chat, post messages, upload/download files, play games, etc.

Again, I must stress that I was a later-comer on the BBS scene. When I entered it, the BBS scene was probably somewhere slightly past its prime and starting its decline  (or, according to some, already well into it’s decline). My first modem was technically a 2400 baud modem, but that device was so quirky that I never really did  much with it. So very soon I jumped up to a 14.4 modem, which seemed fast at the time but is really unbelievably slow.

I called a bunch of BBS systems, possibly around 100 or more.  Many friendships formed through this medium, although they were probably not completely deep. I was pretty much a regular on the scene until 1999, when the scene had already pretty much died out. Where there were once hundreds of BBS’ in the Windsor area, at that point  there were only 5 or 10. Though I never really ran a full-time BBS, I was quite involved in the scene. I ran a couple of part time BBS’ and was co-sysop (assistant  admin) of at least 3 boards. I was co-sysop of Champagne’s Island, Genesis, and Eternal Dreams. I called many a number of system and was thoroughly immersed in the underground BBS scene.

For those interested, here are some of the BBS’ I called besides the ones that have already been mentioned: The Dynamite BBS, Windsor Footnote, Windsor Download, Czar’s Land, The Beacon, Second Sinister, Windsor ITC, Body Count BBS, The Abyss, Limbo BBS, Purple Haze, The Outhouse, The Kombatant, and The Swamp.

Just as things in the BBS scene began to fade away, I ran a low-resolution (ANSI/ASCII) art group which had five releases (one of which was released in my absence after I disappeared from the scene). There are so many other memories, aspects to this, much of which is probably not very well preserved or accessible. For all the efforts to relive the past, such as the BBS Documentary,  there are still large black holes in the records. Much of this past, even from the early to mid 1990’s, has simply disappeared off the map,  so to speak.  It might be a good thing in some ways, and a bad thing in others ways.  Some of it here will return back here and there, but for the most part it is gone for good. It seems enough hard drives have died or been erased and memories forgotten in order for much of this socio-cultural history to disappear. And anything that is unearthed will be a small sliver of the whole narrative of what went on.

While “cyberspace” certainly has evolved since then, many things for the better, there’s clearly something different now, and, I think, something lost.   But as a whole, I don’t think I’d go backwards if I could. Technological change changes us, and nostalgia aside, we are not the same sort of people that enjoyed in the BBS scene back in the 80’s and 90’s.

Here are some significant things that have happened in January 1st throughout history:

• 45BC: The Julian calendar takes effect
• 1600: Scotland starts beginning its New Year at January 1st instead of March 25th
• 1808: The importation of slaves into the USA is banned
• 1895: FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is born
• 1899: Spanish rule in Cuba ends
• 1908: The first New Years ball drops in New York
• 1912: The Republic of China is estalished
• 1919: Novelist J.D. Salinger is born
• 1942: The Declaration by the United Nations is signed by twenty-six nations.
• 1953: Musician Hank Williams dies
• 1970: Unix epoch time begins at 00:00:00 UTC/GMT
• 1985: The Internet’s domain name system is created
• 1994: NAFTA goes into effect
• 1995: The WTO goes into effect

Psalm 37:3-6 – “Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord,and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.” (ESV)

1. Where does the Meat Eater’s Creedo come from?  I posted it here in 2007 and Eric Raymond contacted me inquiring about the source. I thought I had a source, but apparently not. If anyone knows about the origins of this charming, classic quote which found its way into many Unix Fortune Cookie Files, please do spill the beans (err… the beef, I mean)!

2.  Why is there not yet a half descent way to manage a podcast collection (on ones mp3 player) that runs natively on Linux? (I’m talking something that automatically deletes listened to episodes, is relatively painless, etc.) Am I missing something? (and, yes, I’ve already tried gPodder, its going in the right direction, but IMHO not there yet).

3. Why can one buy a descent Mac desktop AND a descent 18″ PC laptop combined for LESS than the price of a descent 17″ MacBook?

3. Are all devotees of Gordon H. Clark (Christian apologist) chess players? (I’m almost convinced that one of his disciples proclaimed the white bishop on A8 a heretic.)  Is this Clarkian fascination with chess something I should be concerned about, being a sort of neoVanTillan? What is a characteristically Van Tilian game?

4. If we took John Robbins (The Trinity Foundation) and Marc Carpenter’s (Outside the Camp website) heretics lists, and concatenated them, would there be any orthodoxy left? What would have happened had they sat in the same room? Is anyone else relived that Marc or John never have been the leader of a state church?

5. Are there any Arminians who practice Exclusive Psalmody?

6. In the debate movie Collision, what are we to make of Christopher Hitchen’s comment about not wanting to convert the last Christian to atheism (to Dawkins dismay)?

7. What was C.S. Lewis possibly thinking when he wrote Reflections on the Psalms?

8. It seems clear to me that there are fundamentalistic/militant atheist public figures. Are there any that would correspond moreso to a “theologically liberal” Christian?  If so, who are they? Who is redefining the boundaries, playing word games, and denying/reinterpreting the fundamentals? Is there any softening, liberalizing influences within the New Atheism, or is it a fast track to fundamentalism?

9. Why is it so hard to find a good Greek salad? How can so many places, especially sit down restaurants, get it so badly wrong?  It can’t be that hard, can it?

10. How old is Jeeves supposed to be in Wodehouse’s novels? Is there a way to deduce it? The book covers tend to portray him as a bit oldish, but the TV series Wooster and Jeeves portrays Jeeves as older than Bertie, but still fairly young looking.

11. (In reference to Wodehouse’s portrayal of Honoria Glossop) Am I the only one who would can only shake my head at Bertie Wooster on this account? How could he possibly fall for a disciple of Nietzsche? (Interesting psychological quetions raised here)

12. What would have happened differently in NHL hockey if Mike Bossey landed on the Quebec Nordiques team (as almost happened while they were in the WHA) instead of the New York Islanders?  Would New York still win 4 cups in a row? How would it change the fate of the Nordiques?  Would they win a cup with Goulet/Stasany brothers/Bossey? Would they move to Colorado after that? Would Bossey still score 50-60 goals a year? Would he still retire before reaching 10 years?

That’s it for now. If you have any answers, I’m all ears.

“3 years ago Matt Fenn became one of the 30,000 people per year to be disfellowshipped from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He shares with us his journey and sheds light on the teachings of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society along the way.”

This past Lord’s day my friend Matt gave his testimony at my church.  You can access an mp3 recording of it.