Death and the new century of virtual residence

October 23, 2009 at 6:50 pm · Filed under off-topic

What should be done to a user’s online profile/website when they pass to the next layer of life as we know it? What becomes all of their virtual ‘belongings’? Should their online presence exit stage left, or be left in memoriam?

These are hard questions to answer, with possible differing of opinions, or even no opinion.

One could argue that taking down all of them on the virtual level is the proper thing to do, the respectful thing to do; however, conversely simply leaving it up, or perhaps leaving it be, or building it up can result in an even greater therapy: notifying for years to come of the occurrence, providing a corner of the somewhat-indestructible virtual-world a place of refuge for this person– their pictures, quotes, moments in time. Is it best to not deal with these feelings in the beginning, to rid oneself of these reminders…or is it best to deal, remind? As for my father’s death, it becomes profound to not leave an online presence, his virtual residence as you will. This is a man who amassed many domains, websites, connected with hundreds of individuals over the years, traveled the world, and for him not to be on the internet almost seems wrong. Like the vikings, I am prone to believe an afterlife partially starts with the life you leave on earth. Being left with gorgeous riches and a dog is not my bag; alas, leaving a memory, an imprint of some sort is important; if not for those to remember you by.

Not everyone is ready to reveal their emotions, memories, stories with those who have passed; but with an online profile of sorts, this too can be made possible later on in life– when you are ready, ready to say your peace, or add that picture of you two in one hell of a location together. I mean what really should be done to an online profile of  a dead person? Should this be taken down in respect of the deceased, moved to an obituary– perhaps a middle ground of an obituary online profile? Or maybe it should be left up, in remembrance of this person’s footprint on life. Added to over the years, to keep in inclusion to your lives.

After all, you may want to click through and see them again, the way they left things.

So I ask you: What would you leave?

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Energy consumption

July 30, 2009 at 8:12 am · Filed under off-topic

I was listening to a hairdryer this morning and thought of how much energy it uses to heat up.
If you use a standard hairdryer for 5 minutes a day, each day of the month for a month total, you use the equivalent total of a single day of energy consumption for 4-5 people, or almost a weeks-worth of energy used by one person!

As a side note, people in the United States typically use twice as much energy as those in Europe and Japan, and 10 times as much as those in India; consuming more than 25% of the worlds energy at only 5% of the worlds population!

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russian spammers

June 3, 2009 at 7:13 am · Filed under off-topic

just unbelievable how unrelenting they really are– atleast it goes straight to spam these days

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veterans day quote

November 11, 2008 at 12:41 pm · Filed under off-topic

“Nobody wins the next war, nobody”, Henry Allingham (2008, Veterans Day interview)

Allingham Interview

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delta and linux

October 30, 2008 at 5:35 am · Filed under off-topic

I was flying delta to and from LA, Cali. and I noticed that the media server kept restarting. I noticed it when first walking into the plane, but when I sat down I saw this screen on the headrest touchscreen, being restarted multiple times. Everything seemed mostly in order, running on what I think to have read as a geode with some flavor of redhat; including a proprietary package (non-opensource of course) installed for what must be the dvd movie rental and dish network service to run off of. cheers to delta for saving a buck and going an interesting route.

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scissors

March 11, 2008 at 7:36 am · Filed under off-topic

I recently moved, and in the usual random shopping you might do at a walgreens/cvs, I purchased some scissors. When I got back to the apartment I realized that the package containing the two scissors could not be opened without a sharp cutting device, preferably scissors! Just the sort of inane irony that exists… here is a pic to cheer up this awfully boring post.

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