Last year I found an easter egg that my father left for me in his address database. (He died in 2013, but was afflicted with Alzheimer's for the last 10 years of his life.)
From my father's address book (a DbaseII file that was last updated on December 15th 1992). This was a note associated with my contact info.
Found on February 16, 2020.
Hi there, son.
I doubt if anyone else will ever see these memos, but if anybody ever does, it will have to be you because you would be the only one with enough computer savy to dig them out. Hope you are doing well--and if I'm not still in this dimension when you see this--have a drink to your old dad's memory. Having you around gave me most of the pleasure in our family's growing up period!
Live long and prosper...............
Thank you for sharing this, it's a beautiful expression of how uplifting emotion can be even in the face of how fleeting our lives are; especially during these times!
I would leave one of these for my wife, but she'd never find it. she will, however, inevitably discover my journal, and hopefully that will be nice for her.
My grandfather never wrote much in his life, he was a man of physical work. When he turned 80, he suddenly wrote up his whole life story, end-to-end.
I've always wondered how complete versus sanitised his hand-written book might be, but there is some pretty gruesome stuff in it including eating a dog to avoid starvation, which resulted in extra torture because the only meat available was the beloved dog owned by the very commander of the prisoner of war camp where he was held during/after WWII.
Perhaps one day, I shall scan, OCR/type in, and publish it.
Similar thing told by my grandfather, who was imprisoned in Russia for some time: They had to eat the grass to avoid starving. Every morning someone would be frozen to death and prisoners had to stick close together to not freeze. Or someone would have drowned in a puddle of water over night. Horrible gruesome situations.
He said things became much better in terms of food, when later on he was imprisoned in some US prison (not sure that was in the US or in another place but managed by US).
> Perhaps one day, I shall scan, OCR/type in, and publish it.
My grandpa (who I never met) was in Fiji during WW2 - not combat but support staff on some base. Turns out he kept a journal that my uncle now has. He made a photocopy and gave it to my dad. I was super excited to read about his experiences, so I asked for my own copy. I typed the whole thing up and even looked up references to what he was talking about. (There were a lot of entries about him going to see this movie or that with his buddies, but I hadn't heard of 90% of them, so I added IMDB links.)
Almost the entire thing was mundane day-to-day goings-on and temperature and weather comments. He built cabinets for the base, went for beer with his friends, got letters from home, etc. I was expecting/hoping to at least hear his thoughts on things or what he wanted to do when he returned to the States.
You might reach out to your local library or nearest university library. Many of them have some sort of local document repository. This is the sort of thing that should at the very least be photographed page by page. They would have done microfiche back in the day.
Even without OCR, it's valuable.
Trust me on this: do a simple phone capture (photos) as immediately as possible. We always delay things, and then they get lost irrevocably - in fire, flood, during the move, accidentally destroyed. Do plan doing the "capture proper", but do this simple one ASAP - it could take 15-30-60 minutes, but at least you'd have some sort of a backup.
Unfortunately, I am speaking from experience: just recently, I discovered that many years of my own notes were quite water damaged by a leaky pipe I wasn't even aware was there... and the slowly dripping water found its way to it through and over a random maze of random things worthy of the Rube Goldberg himself.
It is well worth archiving. I recently helped typeset and publish (via Amazon) a diary written by one of my ancestors - https://amzn.to/3tmUI3l ($0.99 as that's the lowest price Amazon accepts, but you can read the preview to get the gist)
It is written by a homesteader in 1930s North Dakota, and she just relates bits of her life, her family, and her favorite recipes. Simple, yet it's still a remarkable way to evoke the life of the era, and worth preserving and sharing as you are comfortable.
On a related note, you may want to be sure you take care with the actual physical media you have as well. Time and improper storage can render things unreadable - archival boxes (https://www.archivalmethods.com/ and elsewhere) are made to be neutral/alkaline rather than acidic, and are the sort of things museums use to preserve artifacts.
My grandpa wrote a rough draft of a memoir of his childhood. He grew up in a German-speaking town in the US around WWI, and he wanted to capture that experience since the harassment that happened to German-Americans during WWI caused those communities to Anglicize. He had more than a few sarcastic references about "patriots."
Yes please! It would very interested to read it all. Also sorry for what your grandpa had to go through. Stories like these never fail to remind me how -mostly- lucky and privileged we are to live in such peaceful times.
Same story with my grandfather and two world wars, communism, dictatorship, repressions. Unfortunately however a couldn't find yet a correctly working OCR that recognize his handwriting. Anyway, I scanned all the pages because the notebooks are rapidly degrading.
Tangentially, I started my family a bit late in life, as such my daughter will be barely into her 30s by the time I reach my 70s. I started a journal for this reason - so maybe whatever family she has can know me. Might be a tad narcissistic, but I regret not having know my own grandparents very well, so maybe they will appreciate one day.
Thats not narcissistic but a very good idea. My wife is an orphan, and especially now we have our own kid, we wonder a lot about how her parents would think about this or that.
I never even got to meet one of my grandparents. All I have is stories, and honestly not a lot of those.
I don't think you should feel narcissistic at all. Family is one of the prime places where we share our wisdom and values. Where we pass on the results of our mistakes in the hopes that the next generation avoids them. Don't feel bad for trying to do that, it's one of the fundamental elements of human progress.
I have the same age difference with my father. I have always been a melancholic and curious person so I ask a lot of questions. I think most people will have those questions that naturally come to them at some point. When you realize your parents are people with their own memories, hopes and flaws, a step that's probably called adulthood.
A very common trigger for this, as I've asked about this topic to other people with elderly fathers, is becoming a parent. But for me it was leaving home.
Also make room for such conversations. We had a month long vacation, just the two of us, which I remember fondly, even though there was no big event or deep discussion.
I was born late in both my parent's lives, and even though I'm only in my 40's, they are both now gone. The letters my folks wrote home while we were stationed overseas are one of my personal treasures. You might be writing for grandchildren, but don't downplay how important these artifacts are, even for children who already have spent years getting to know you!
Reading the prosaic thoughts of my parents when talking to other adults was like peeking behind the curtain, and it helped me understand them better as people, not just Mom and Dad. I am grateful for it.
I had a great-grandfather who was in the SS, in one of the divisions that wasn't really known for their good deeds to say the least. There is a journal which he wrote, I have yet to gather the courage to read it. All I know is some vague stories that go around in the family but from what I gather it isn't probably too pretty what he did.
It's typical that most people will tell you their grandpa was in the resistance, rarely they will tell you that they collaborated.
There could be some serious historical value or insights in that journal, even if there are terrible deeds listed within. If you can't bring yourself to read it, perhaps consider sharing it with a WWII museum or historian.
They might be willing to leave your great-grandfather's name out of it, if that's a concern for you.
Lots of people did shitty things in that war (and all wars), and honestly if Germany had won the war it likely would have been all condoned, like the US dropping two atomic bombs on Japan is. The Japanese committed vast atrocities in China, but they were never made to sit in a war crimes communal because the US thought the chemical warfare research was worthwhile knowing. Either way, what you grandfather did or didn't do doesn't make you a bad person, and reading it might give you reflection to make better choices in your life?
The Monuments Men Foundation[0] is a non-profit that, while they typically deal with artistic works, can absolutely assist with getting this to the right people to preserve it for historical value.
When you say "It's typical that most people will tell you their grandpa was in the resistance, rarely they will tell you that they collaborated." - do you mean that people lie about being in the resistance or do you mean that they only talk about the war if they were part of the resistance?
I know what you mean, OP. On the other hand, your great-grandfather was just a man, and he lived under very difficult circumstances. I'd like to think that I would have risked my life and resisted in his shoes; but I have no idea. Best case scenario is that his diary humanizes him to you and to others.
(Speaking as a Jewish American with no SSS relatives but many who perished in the Holocaust, FWIW)
There was a lot of mental manipulation to scapegoat the Jews for everything, to make them be seen as animals and not humans. I think reading this paper can help to better identify how the media tries to manipulate us.
I've found people's handwriting deteriorate as time has gone by... cursive is rarer to come by (leaving the 'legibility' argument aside), typing has certainly contributed to this, but some people still write on boards to explore ideas and boy are those diagrams and writings unreadable.
If the author posted some samples of the grandfather's notes (withholding personal information), that would have added a very personal touch to the article indeed, and also ensured his ancestor's work gets recorded by archive.com.
I've been consistently embarrassed by my writing and drawing (cursive, block, white boarding, etc) since I was a kid, and I can't seem to get any better. My wife's penmanship in any situation is... great (stunning by comparison). I can read stuff she wrote 20 years ago - I have trouble rereading my own notes from 2 minutes ago.
This type of 'discovery' won't be possible with the next generation as the digital version of that would be locked on some media (possibly encrypted) somewhere forever.
My grandfather (from Czechia, cca years 1970-1990) kept daily notes of what he bought and did each day (he somewhat obsessively quantified himself before it was cool). I think these could be interesting to a historian, but they're written in pencil and kinda hard to read/decipher. I don't think technology is advanced enough for automated extraction yet.
Jerry Pournelle used to talk about his personal log. He kept a day book and would write notes every day about conversations, meals, things he did, etc... I heard him talk about it on This Week in Tech a few times and for years I've wanted to do something like that. I've done it occasionally but have never been able to establish the habit.
I read a random letter from my grandfather recently. The most interesting part of it was how much mundane life updates were in it. Things that don't seem normative to communicate in written word anymore, because they're so transient they belong in a transient form, like a phone call. Letters felt much more like an ongoing spoken conversation.
My grandmother put together a collection of copies of old letters from families who had been in our hometown for several decades and gave it copies to all of her children.
As an HN user, when I die my notes might just disappear with me.
My family probably won't be able to log into my custom made blog. It will go on for a few years then the domain will expire.
My phone which gets unlocked with fingerprint or a 6 digit pin will remain locked forever. My computer, also with a secure password and encrypted hard drive will remain locked.
All my accounts with secure passwords will remain unreachable.
My dropbox which contains all my unpublished notes and books will probably expire and get deleted.
I'll have to print some instructions and lock them in a safe for my family.
I have been able to research multi-generations of my ancestry, and it's been amazing to say the least.
Emigration stories to America are really interesting. My Great-Great-Grandfather was tied to the ship's mast 2x for being a "bad" boy at 10 years old.
Another ancestor was one of the first martyrs of my church when a mob marched against them in Nauvoo. He deterred the mob at gunpoint 2x and was a marked man after that. He was later caught, beat and whipped to death.
I believe family history/geneology is very important, and we should be researching to see what was sacrificed on our behalf, and also documenting our own lives for our descendant's benefit.
In addition, there are multiple Family Search centers throughout the world that specialize in digitizing records, and assisting people with their geneology.
I have a lot of grandparents as users on https://www.dreamlist.com (a family wishlist site) and one of them requested an ability to preserve notes and family stories for loved ones. I am about to launch that feature in the next few days - it will work as a shared brain for families with text and audio recordings. I started working on it during the pandemic - everyone should be remembered. Feel free to reach out if you are interested in the same problem and want to talk (founder (at) dreamlist.com).
I interviewed Ray Kurzweil not long after "The Singularity Is Near" came out. I asked him about a concept that he brought up in the book but didn't get much attention in light of the other more startling predictions he made. Excerpt follows:
Q: In the Singularity is Near, you also discussed an intriguing invention, which you called the "Document Image and Storage Invention", or DAISI for short. But you concluded that it really wouldn't work out. Could you talk a little bit about that?
RK: ... The big challenge, which I think is actually important almost philosophical challenge -- it might sound like a dull issue, like how do you format a database, so you can retrieve information, that sounds pretty technical. The real key issue is that software formats are constantly changing. People say, "well, gee, if we could backup our brains and I talk about how that will be feasible some decades from now. Then the digital version of you could be immortal, but software doesn't live forever, in fact it doesn't live very long at all if you don't care about it if you don't continually update it to new formats.
Try going back 20 years to some old formats, some old programming language. Try resuscitating some information on some PDP1 magnetic tapes. I mean even if you could get the hardware to work, the software formats are completely alien and [using] a different operating system and nobody is there to support these formats anymore. And that continues. There is this continual change in how that information is formatted. ...
Q: You said there's no technological solution. What about creating standards that would be maintained by the community, or would be widespread enough that future …
We do use standard formats, and the standard formats are continually changed, and the formats are not always backwards compatible. It's a nice goal, but it actually doesn't work. I have in fact electronic information that in fact goes back through many different computer systems. Some of it now I cannot access. In theory I could, or with enough effort, find people to decipher it, but it's not readily accessible. The more backwards you go, the more of a challenge it becomes.
And despite the goal of maintaining standards, or maintaining forward compatibility, or backwards compatibility, it doesn’t really work out that way. Maybe we will improve that. Hard documents are actually the easiest to access. Fairly crude technologies like microfilm or microfiche which basically has documents are very easy to access.
So ironically, the most primitive formats are the ones that are easiest.
As a genealogist, I have thought a lot about solutions to preserve data long term that don't have physical limitations of microfiche or paper media, or the problem of computers crashing, subscriptions lapsing, or for-profit online services shutting down (see "Ancestry deleted 10 years of my family's history", https://slate.com/technology/2015/04/myfamily-shuttered-ance...)
Maybe 10 years ago, a few people in the Silicon Valley futurist community came up with the idea of a ball or disc etched with gradually smaller text an excerpt from the Old Testament, translated into multiple languages. It was kind of a Rosetta Stone ideal ... The plan was these balls/discs could be seeded across the world so even if there was some great calamity or the loss of written languages, future civilizations could resurrect them.
There are many limitations of applying this idea to genealogy or any written record, including cost and the inability to update the text.
It made me think that a more realistic solution to the genealogy preservation problem aligns with Kurzweil's "most primitive" take: Preserve core records on paper, share them widely with relatives and cousins, and use an easy-to-understand versioning system. This could also be applied to other family records, such as the grandfather's notes.
We know high quality paper can last hundreds of years. It can be easily copied and spread, potentially allowing the information to last thousands of years, as evidenced by Roman, Greek, and early Chinese dynastic records and literature that can still be read today.
My mother committed suicide when I was a child. She kept a collection of journals, letters, writings, and various computer documents detailing her inner thoughts, bipolar disorder, specific medication schedule, ECT, and various medical records.
I should go through it someday. I know it’s probably a psychiatric students dream. A complete documentation of someone’s entire life, with associated medicine schedule (and eventually, ECT schedule). I imagine there’s some value to it.
Nice story. I was hoping for some more "groundbreaking revelations." However, the opposite was the conclusion:
> he was a man like any other.
He had hopes and dreams. Triumphs and failures. Faith and doubt.
I write a lot of notes. I imagine there are some great takeaways in there. And sadly, I'm not very optimistic about those having any impact, especially if I get hit by a bus tomorrow. Mortality... Blah.
[+] [-] anonymousiam|4 years ago|reply
From my father's address book (a DbaseII file that was last updated on December 15th 1992). This was a note associated with my contact info. Found on February 16, 2020.
Hi there, son. I doubt if anyone else will ever see these memos, but if anybody ever does, it will have to be you because you would be the only one with enough computer savy to dig them out. Hope you are doing well--and if I'm not still in this dimension when you see this--have a drink to your old dad's memory. Having you around gave me most of the pleasure in our family's growing up period! Live long and prosper...............
[+] [-] chunky1994|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h0p3|4 years ago|reply
What did you do when you saw it?
What would you say back?
Are you leaving any easter eggs for your own offspring?
[+] [-] codeproject|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rainpain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leesec|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobiekr|4 years ago|reply
I would leave one of these for my wife, but she'd never find it. she will, however, inevitably discover my journal, and hopefully that will be nice for her.
[+] [-] testfoobar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jll29|4 years ago|reply
I've always wondered how complete versus sanitised his hand-written book might be, but there is some pretty gruesome stuff in it including eating a dog to avoid starvation, which resulted in extra torture because the only meat available was the beloved dog owned by the very commander of the prisoner of war camp where he was held during/after WWII.
Perhaps one day, I shall scan, OCR/type in, and publish it.
[+] [-] zelphirkalt|4 years ago|reply
He said things became much better in terms of food, when later on he was imprisoned in some US prison (not sure that was in the US or in another place but managed by US).
He wrote it all down as well.
[+] [-] mynameisash|4 years ago|reply
My grandpa (who I never met) was in Fiji during WW2 - not combat but support staff on some base. Turns out he kept a journal that my uncle now has. He made a photocopy and gave it to my dad. I was super excited to read about his experiences, so I asked for my own copy. I typed the whole thing up and even looked up references to what he was talking about. (There were a lot of entries about him going to see this movie or that with his buddies, but I hadn't heard of 90% of them, so I added IMDB links.)
Almost the entire thing was mundane day-to-day goings-on and temperature and weather comments. He built cabinets for the base, went for beer with his friends, got letters from home, etc. I was expecting/hoping to at least hear his thoughts on things or what he wanted to do when he returned to the States.
[+] [-] pnutjam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BugWatch|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, I am speaking from experience: just recently, I discovered that many years of my own notes were quite water damaged by a leaky pipe I wasn't even aware was there... and the slowly dripping water found its way to it through and over a random maze of random things worthy of the Rube Goldberg himself.
[+] [-] agallant|4 years ago|reply
It is written by a homesteader in 1930s North Dakota, and she just relates bits of her life, her family, and her favorite recipes. Simple, yet it's still a remarkable way to evoke the life of the era, and worth preserving and sharing as you are comfortable.
On a related note, you may want to be sure you take care with the actual physical media you have as well. Time and improper storage can render things unreadable - archival boxes (https://www.archivalmethods.com/ and elsewhere) are made to be neutral/alkaline rather than acidic, and are the sort of things museums use to preserve artifacts.
[+] [-] tablespoon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adonese|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzfld|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillyquiet|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperman1|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awj|4 years ago|reply
I don't think you should feel narcissistic at all. Family is one of the prime places where we share our wisdom and values. Where we pass on the results of our mistakes in the hopes that the next generation avoids them. Don't feel bad for trying to do that, it's one of the fundamental elements of human progress.
[+] [-] hycaria|4 years ago|reply
A very common trigger for this, as I've asked about this topic to other people with elderly fathers, is becoming a parent. But for me it was leaving home.
Also make room for such conversations. We had a month long vacation, just the two of us, which I remember fondly, even though there was no big event or deep discussion.
[+] [-] Baeocystin|4 years ago|reply
Reading the prosaic thoughts of my parents when talking to other adults was like peeking behind the curtain, and it helped me understand them better as people, not just Mom and Dad. I am grateful for it.
[+] [-] FriedrichN|4 years ago|reply
It's typical that most people will tell you their grandpa was in the resistance, rarely they will tell you that they collaborated.
[+] [-] cableshaft|4 years ago|reply
They might be willing to leave your great-grandfather's name out of it, if that's a concern for you.
[+] [-] soperj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stronkLikeBear|4 years ago|reply
Very happy to make an introduction if needed
[0] https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/
[+] [-] whachawatch|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] setgree|4 years ago|reply
(Speaking as a Jewish American with no SSS relatives but many who perished in the Holocaust, FWIW)
[+] [-] webreac|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antattack|4 years ago|reply
In my opinion, no. However, it gets complicated when one's status is derived from misdeeds of the predecessors.
[+] [-] scanny|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BurningFrog|4 years ago|reply
You could then ask them about it in non detailed ways.
[+] [-] reallymental|4 years ago|reply
I've found people's handwriting deteriorate as time has gone by... cursive is rarer to come by (leaving the 'legibility' argument aside), typing has certainly contributed to this, but some people still write on boards to explore ideas and boy are those diagrams and writings unreadable.
If the author posted some samples of the grandfather's notes (withholding personal information), that would have added a very personal touch to the article indeed, and also ensured his ancestor's work gets recorded by archive.com.
edit: grammar.
[+] [-] mgkimsal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tartoran|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] js8|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klmadfejno|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brightball|4 years ago|reply
Treasures of history right there.
[+] [-] ibudiallo|4 years ago|reply
My family probably won't be able to log into my custom made blog. It will go on for a few years then the domain will expire.
My phone which gets unlocked with fingerprint or a 6 digit pin will remain locked forever. My computer, also with a secure password and encrypted hard drive will remain locked.
All my accounts with secure passwords will remain unreachable.
My dropbox which contains all my unpublished notes and books will probably expire and get deleted.
I'll have to print some instructions and lock them in a safe for my family.
[+] [-] 0b1k3n0bes|4 years ago|reply
Emigration stories to America are really interesting. My Great-Great-Grandfather was tied to the ship's mast 2x for being a "bad" boy at 10 years old.
Another ancestor was one of the first martyrs of my church when a mob marched against them in Nauvoo. He deterred the mob at gunpoint 2x and was a marked man after that. He was later caught, beat and whipped to death.
I believe family history/geneology is very important, and we should be researching to see what was sacrificed on our behalf, and also documenting our own lives for our descendant's benefit.
Some resources: ancestry.com familysearch.org
[+] [-] 0b1k3n0bes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dzink|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|4 years ago|reply
Q: In the Singularity is Near, you also discussed an intriguing invention, which you called the "Document Image and Storage Invention", or DAISI for short. But you concluded that it really wouldn't work out. Could you talk a little bit about that?
RK: ... The big challenge, which I think is actually important almost philosophical challenge -- it might sound like a dull issue, like how do you format a database, so you can retrieve information, that sounds pretty technical. The real key issue is that software formats are constantly changing. People say, "well, gee, if we could backup our brains and I talk about how that will be feasible some decades from now. Then the digital version of you could be immortal, but software doesn't live forever, in fact it doesn't live very long at all if you don't care about it if you don't continually update it to new formats.
Try going back 20 years to some old formats, some old programming language. Try resuscitating some information on some PDP1 magnetic tapes. I mean even if you could get the hardware to work, the software formats are completely alien and [using] a different operating system and nobody is there to support these formats anymore. And that continues. There is this continual change in how that information is formatted. ...
Q: You said there's no technological solution. What about creating standards that would be maintained by the community, or would be widespread enough that future …
We do use standard formats, and the standard formats are continually changed, and the formats are not always backwards compatible. It's a nice goal, but it actually doesn't work. I have in fact electronic information that in fact goes back through many different computer systems. Some of it now I cannot access. In theory I could, or with enough effort, find people to decipher it, but it's not readily accessible. The more backwards you go, the more of a challenge it becomes.
And despite the goal of maintaining standards, or maintaining forward compatibility, or backwards compatibility, it doesn’t really work out that way. Maybe we will improve that. Hard documents are actually the easiest to access. Fairly crude technologies like microfilm or microfiche which basically has documents are very easy to access.
So ironically, the most primitive formats are the ones that are easiest.
As a genealogist, I have thought a lot about solutions to preserve data long term that don't have physical limitations of microfiche or paper media, or the problem of computers crashing, subscriptions lapsing, or for-profit online services shutting down (see "Ancestry deleted 10 years of my family's history", https://slate.com/technology/2015/04/myfamily-shuttered-ance...)
Maybe 10 years ago, a few people in the Silicon Valley futurist community came up with the idea of a ball or disc etched with gradually smaller text an excerpt from the Old Testament, translated into multiple languages. It was kind of a Rosetta Stone ideal ... The plan was these balls/discs could be seeded across the world so even if there was some great calamity or the loss of written languages, future civilizations could resurrect them.
There are many limitations of applying this idea to genealogy or any written record, including cost and the inability to update the text.
It made me think that a more realistic solution to the genealogy preservation problem aligns with Kurzweil's "most primitive" take: Preserve core records on paper, share them widely with relatives and cousins, and use an easy-to-understand versioning system. This could also be applied to other family records, such as the grandfather's notes.
We know high quality paper can last hundreds of years. It can be easily copied and spread, potentially allowing the information to last thousands of years, as evidenced by Roman, Greek, and early Chinese dynastic records and literature that can still be read today.
[+] [-] aspaceman|4 years ago|reply
I should go through it someday. I know it’s probably a psychiatric students dream. A complete documentation of someone’s entire life, with associated medicine schedule (and eventually, ECT schedule). I imagine there’s some value to it.
Really don’t know where to start with it though.
[+] [-] the_arun|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bt1a|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brettermeier|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neonate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anotha1|4 years ago|reply
> he was a man like any other. He had hopes and dreams. Triumphs and failures. Faith and doubt.
I write a lot of notes. I imagine there are some great takeaways in there. And sadly, I'm not very optimistic about those having any impact, especially if I get hit by a bus tomorrow. Mortality... Blah.