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Noelio

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  1. Noelio

    Suicide... Tell a friend!

    By Noelio,

    Tuesday last week an old friend hung himself.
     
    Some that knew him more intimately said they saw this coming a while. Others, like myself, who knew him from working with him years ago as well as the local motorsports circuit in the summer months would not believe he was capable or in that dark of a place. The last time I spoke with him was months ago. Everything seemed fine. He was his goofy and pleasant self, not a hint of the level of depression or self hate he was experiencing. Not a sign to be seen and no ill vibe to be felt.
     
    Fast forward to now and people are coming out of the woodwork, "owning" his demise. Saying how they knew it was coming a while or how close they were to him and how sure they were that he would one day succeed in his quest to end his life. Some of his ex girlfriends are busy typing how much they loved him (Really? Didn't you all dump him?) in the forums and how they knew his dark side more than anyone, even one CONGRATULATING him on "finally getting his wish". Pffftttt!
     
    What is really pissing me off is how none of these common friends said anything to me or anyone else that could have got down to the bare bones of the problem or helped them wrestle through one more non fatal day. Yes we all have busy lives and our own crushing blows to deal with from time to time. Our personal worst experience is the worst we know and can feel. To some, losing a girlfriend or a car to the repo man is as bad to them as losing a family member or seeing their city torn by war and having to search for the body parts of their family members in a crater. Personal hell is a personal thing and one's personal worst and as bad as it can possibly be for them. Some suffer in silence and some out loud. I would like to think that when we know someone is at their worst and feel they are a risk we would do everything in our power to stop them from killing themselves and hurting many other people.
     
    I know things are bad for many (and have been for a while for some) and that we all have at least thought, at some point in our lives, how nice it would be to sleep it off rather than face the day or even put ourselves out of our misery.
    This case is no different. I'm not trying to own my friends death, but it kills me to know I could have done something IF I KNEW. Maybe I couldn't have done anything, but at least I could have tried and shook this feeling I have of "what if I did this... Or this..." It's a human thing to think such things even when we know there was nothing we could have done because we didn't know!
     
    In these times where people are losing it all, we really have to keep our ears, eyes and intuition tuned to those in trouble and be ready to spring into action. I know for a fact that I could have at least had a long chat with my dead friend. We had enough rapport to discuss anything. It's just in the macho motorhead world heart to hearts are rare. I'm angry, sad and sorry at the same time but not in a position to lose a tear right now nor another layer of enamel from my molars. I just wish that if anyone knows someone on the verge of collapse, have the heart to drop what you are doing and let someone that *can help* know, if you can't help any other way. Not the loony bin or the law enforcement people, that will only compound the problem and add to the motivation, I mean common friends that have some ability to help or a different level of rapport with the torn soul. Someone who will let the person know how much they will hurt those they love by pulling the trigger, tying the knot, popping the jonnys, cutting down the tracks or jumping from the bridge.
     
    Not to lecture the dead, however I thought about what I'd do if I ever got to that point. Well I'd think about some of these things:
     
    -Join the army and volunteer for the front line or to deliver a package.
    -Peace Corp!
    -Missionary/Aid work.
    -Volunteer at a shelter for the homeless or for homeless animals.
    -Talk to a church leader, even if you have no faith. Heck even start by saying you have no faith and that your life is now disposable.
    -Take the craziest risk known to man. Strip naked, hire a helicopter and ski down Everest. Broadcast to the world how your hatred for yourself made you do it.
    -Smash a window to a police station and go to jail a while, stew on it with no outside interruption or pressure.
    -Visit those that you feel hurt you and let them know how you feel. Nicely, however, and disconnect the lines between you and them permanently. Do this within moral and legal bounds of course.
    -Write yourself a suicide note and try to tell yourself why you did it. Take those points and use them as a checklist of your things to fix.
     
    Looking back on some of the greatest stories in my circle of friends and family. There are some people that shine brightly as success stories that have done some of the things above. When you ask them how they motivated themselves, in many cases, they say that they had nothing else to live for or do, threw a dart on a map and went to where it landed. Anywhere but here with anyone but us. ANYTHING OTHER THAN DIE, killing a piece of everyone that cares. Believe me, even if you have not one friend, there's someone that you could have helped or been a positive part of their life, now leaving a void or a space to be possibly filled with a negative. "The Butterfly Effect" really captures this notion of personal influence on a social network. There's been a lot of unexpected hardship around here lately and a lot of people testing out the life insurance system. I've known 3 in the past year.
     
    I found myself, tonight, preventing such a case. Not by taking the gun away or by hiding the knives but by talking to a friend over coffee and discovering a major source of stress I never knew of before that is driving them over the edge. The reason I got them out for a while is because someone close to them had the balls to call me and let me know that they are extremely worried about him and fear the worst any time now. This friend is very much down and out to the point he's about to lose everything. He doesn't and never did ask for anything or talk about how bad things are even though we have a friendship that goes back to high school. Only for the call I wouldn't have known anything was wrong. Hats off to those folks!
     
    The conversation eventually lead where I wanted it to go, 2 coffees, a spin about town and a 45 minute flight simulator later. His problems were well within my means to instantly rectify, as small as most would say they were but the worst possible to him, from his personal experience. COMPLETELY FIXABLE in 60 seconds! I told him to not tell a soul, no one, DO NOT pay me back and do not fall down like that again. It's a delayed christmas gift from God and God only and it's a once off and to pay it forward. Who knows how my life will be next year? I know I can tell him anything and count on him to the best of his ability and my problems should they ever develop should be well within his means to fix as he's usually doing pretty good, I thought he was earlier today! He did indicate his possible intentions to people he thought would brush it off. Instead they had the foresight to prevent a very possible, immanent suicide. I only wish I had known about my other, more distant friend, the monday before last.
     
    PLEASE... If you are at the end of your rope, do anything other than what you are about to do. You are killing a little piece of what's left GOOD in the world and killing those you love in ways you cannot imagine. What bothers me now is that I see so many people losing it all well outside my circle, but I fail to see those inside my circle. A lot of us are going to be tested soon enough and we have to be on the watch as more things go down the shitter.
  2. Noelio
    These are the pics I took of the grow op (weed) I stumbled upon yesterday in my adventure just outside of town in a spot I used to go camping in my late teens and where I like to go to get away from this tangled city.
     
    Point form:
     
    -Stumbled on some flower pots and thought, well perfect. Mom would love these! They are BRAND NEW so I started to gather and stack them to take home.
     
    -Saw the names on the pots, "Romulun" (misspelled star trek race), "Pandora" and "J.C." (Jesus Christ). Hrrrm these aren't your average growers!
     
    -Saw a half dozen bags, some torn slightly and white speckled dirt coming out. Peeked inside, grabbed a plant and took a whif. What a pleasant savory like smell. Growing up, in my teen years, I got to know the smell. Hey, I *might have* inhaled a multiple of 100 times. Who knows?!
     
    -I'm no rat and *strongly* support the legalization and subsequent taxation of this stuff. But it pisses me off that these skulkers, of all people, evade "the man" every year and abuse the system while I am taxed to death, so I phoned it in.
     
    -Cops arrived, YUP weed. They think this is probably the same op they were searching for last year. They are combing the area tomorrow.
     
    Sorry about the quality, half the photos are screen grabs from video I took.
     
    Oh and the reason I was there, see the last 2 pictures.
     
    Update: I returned today and the goods are actually still there, no buds, but still there. I wonder if they even followed it up after.
  3. Noelio
    I went to a sale at the local video store, who once in real life used to sell computers and game systems too.
     
    On display was a 130ST, though the machine was the form factor of the 130XE and had giant circular function keys a la the system buttons on the XEGS.
    The keyboard (thanks to my recent pandora pre-order) resembled the keys of the pandora portable and were rather flat to the chassis.
    I went upstairs to the warehouse as the guy said "I think we have lots more old stuff there. Let's go check."
     
    Knocking over all sorts of boxes to get to the Atari area there were multitudes of 1050 drives in the sealed boxes, shrink wrapped and all.
     
    I negotiated with the manager as they were sure to be fired out into the garbage one day soon and we negotiated for $50 per perfect box, $25 per imperfect.
    ***For once***, I actually left the damn place with my truck full to the roof and to the tailgate with 1050's and a few of these 130STs.
     
    I know both the 130ST & 1050s exist in some form but they were mostly unopened and I finally managed a reef store haul!!!
     
    Though I was left hanging with "We've got a lot more Atari stuff but I just can't remember where but it's not 1050's or 130s... Maybe at the warehouse... Will call you if we ever stumble upon it."
     
    Yay me but the reef store got me in the end! I assume there will be more and I'll write about them when they raise their ugly head again.
  4. Noelio
    The first time I ever laid hands on a computer was in the early 1980s when my childhood friend got their first of many apples.
    It was a Apple II with a couple drives and a GREEN MONOCHROME apple monitor III. How many hours did we spend playing wizardry, lemonade stand, sabotage, dung beetles etc!?
    [email protected]!
     
    I liked the sheer size of the machine which lead me to falling in love with the original Atari 800.
     
    Anyways fast forward 28 years and I'm visiting my mother and the next door neighbor's Mother is having a yard sale. Naturally I went over knowing how many Apples they've had over the years and naturally I asked about "my first".
    To my amazement they still had it, packed in a crate that they had specially designed for it when they went to England on sabbatical back in 1985. It was still packed in the crate from when they moved back home!!!
     
    Last night I went over to get the machine. I offered $100 for the whole kit as I figured now that the family is moving they could use a few meals in their 3000 trek across the country and because I wanted this machine for a price.
     
    First thing I did was bust open the crate looking for the original disks which were not there. Fine enough! After a search online I discovered that the particular model had cassette in / out jacks built in that could be used in a rescue like mode.
    Hrrrm... After a little more searching I discovered "ADTPRO" which allows you to send a cassette image down to the machine from a PC via the soundcard to get you started.
     
    In my glee, I managed to set up a bootable system disk that contains the transfer program to transfer the disk images via tape ports.
    VERY cool to play those games again on the exact machine I remembered. Next step is to make a linux terminal out of it/contiki etc.
     
    Thought I would share!
  5. Noelio

    Reef store dream again!

    By Noelio,

    This time it was a going out of business sale at a local thrift/pawn store.
     
    It involved finding a 1040 STe like computer, a 21" "dual mode" color/b & w Atari monitor & a very peculiar Atari ST Communications module that was in a megafile / mega st style case.
    The com module housed a modem, network and a couple serial ports. Interesting device that was loaded with all sorts of communications ports on the back. The computer didn't need any
    software to run it either, so I assume the drivers were built in.
     
    Same theme as last time, for some reason I had to come back the next day at open to get the module and monitor.
    I walked out with the "pseudo ST".
     
    I don't know why but as I was going back to the store I WOKE UP AGAIN! This time, to the sound of Glenn Beck on Talk 165, XM radio pontificating how he would like to see the the people
    of America again, as it was on Sept 12, 2001.
  6. Noelio
    I figure that for my first entry I will reveal just one of the mental problems that I have...
     
    THE "ATARI DELUSIVE DREAM" - Ever hear of a 650XL? A 250/2500 disk drive? Well I have!
     
    This latest dream involved driving up to a house with a garage sale sign on the lawn though it was more of a moving sale as items throughout the house were also open to offers. A neatly organized series of shelves containing all sorts of Atari, Commodore & Apple hardware caught my eye. It resembled a nicely lit record/reel shelf like some of our parents had set up on the opposite to the floor model stereo and the all in one fake fireplace/stereo/liquor cabinet that you would find in a 70's sears / roebuck catalog.
     
    As I looked at the (of course) top shelf it was like angels started singing and a harp gently in the background. It was lit up with a fog that only the ether could produce. There, in all its unattainable glory was the 250 or it might have been the 2500XL that got me. This machine was simply stunning in appearance but functionally was as stupid as the mind that created it in its dream world. It was much like the 1050 although it was modular and had a large cartridge with the disc mechanism built in, much like a caddy system. For some reason you could take the cartridge with the disk and mech in it and relocate it to the back. During normal operation it would mount in the front with actual hand access to the side. An uncomfortable operation for sure.
     
    I offered to buy the drive for $50, sure that this man was stupid enough to not know that he has the only one on earth. Of course, he was skeptical about my reasons for wanting to buy this particular one so fast and consulted with his wife. While he was in the back room talking to the boss, I looked around and to my surprise there were all kinds of vials and medical looking gear. When he came back carrying yet another Atari XL looking device I asked him what he does.
     
    He was a home based scientist for Nasa JPL as well as other agencies. He used Atari XL gear & a few transputers to map extraterrestrial substances in a sort of spectrometer. Oh GREAT! He's going to be too smart to sell.
     
    The device he had with him was the Atari 2500 hard drive / cpu system, like a mid 90's 386 at case but with the indulging look of an XL motif. My ears and eyes were peaked on yet another unheard of curiosity that I had to own.
     
    I offered to buy all the xl stuff he had and cracked a joke that I'm probably the only nutbar willing to buy that crap these days but that I wanted it all, even stuff I already had, plus there was YET ANOTHER curiosity in the corner in a box with just the keyboard dangling out just enough to taunt me, like a stripper doing the leg thing behind the patented stripper blanket / slow song combo. It looked similar to the Commodore sx 64 executive computer but of course there was something unique about THIS ONE.
     
    The guy's wife came out and ruined my hopes by saying they had to verify and catalog everything they are selling as they don't want to sell sensitive equipment or equipment that is illegal to sell as it was mostly one off stuff. She told me to come back tomorrow and pick it all up provided it all passed final check. I was pissed, but I paid up front half just to make sure they don't sell to anyone else.
     
    As I drove to the place the next day and pulled in the driveway, my phone rang (in the real world). I woke up and clinched my fists at the wrong number that has constantly been calling me the past couple weeks at insane hours.
     
    Today I would like to (in a perfect world) hunt and kill the wrong number caller. They are the scheming little leprechaun keeping me from my pot of Atari XL gold after all.
     
    Anyways, I've heard other accounts of non existent stuff or extremely rare stuff in people's dreams. One of the best stories I've ever heard that captures this wishful/imaginative mind of collectors is the "Reef Store" dream.
     
    From Atariage glossary:
     
    "Reef Store Dream Generic term for a videogame collector's dream in which he/she finds a fantasy store filled with prototypes, rare games, and other unusual items. Experienced by hard-core collectors. No kidding. Derived from one of the first descriptions of such a dream in which the dreamer visited a store simply called 'Reef Store'."
     
    I think the next step is to take apart the reef store dream in a Freudian sort of way.
    Obviously hard core collectors have an obsession but it is a strange desire to own all of it, experience all of it rather than to flip & flog their collections. It's something attached deeply to their psyche like a cigarette addiction and what have you. I think Atari (hardware especially) tickles the reward center of the brain and that function of the brain likes to be stimulated, even in sleep it seems.
     
    Simply amazing! I've had at least a hundred of these sort of dreams related especially to Atari gear. Mostly XL series "dreamware".
    The ST lineup has a lot of stimulation to be found in the form of numerous models, specs and functions too, however, I'm an XL fanboy and it gets my attention a little more. Maybe it is the Freudian inner boy as well as the longing for happier / brighter and more innocent times that Atari accompanied in my childhood. Who knows! The "resistive force" metaphor of the wife wanting to check everything out, I think, comes from the smart goodwills / junkstores of today employing Ebay in their research before adding a price tag. Some things are just not making it to the retail shelves anymore. I believe there are some staffers at some of these places taking some goods for their own sale too. There's one particular place in my home town that has an unusually high retention rate in staff. It sure can't be the minimum wage pay!!! That's my paranoid thought for today! Though I did witness stuff coming in the donation bin one day and never making it to the shelves within that week as I would go back daily to try and score it! Whatever!
     
    Do we have any psychologists on AA? If so, you could help us collectors out!
     
    Have a peaceful weekend and try to play just one 8 bit wonder on some real hardware!
    Noel
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