Lost my account years ago and back now after lurking for ages...

Howdy all.

I've been around ATS for quite a long time now and once had an account that mysteriously vanished before I could even get to my minimum posts to open threads in other topics. Around here I am going to go by JS as I try to practice some kinds of good internet informational hygiene. (Obvious stuff like browser isolation, different account aliases with different emails, De-googled phone, minimal anonymous social media presence, VPN...)

In the real world I come from a family with a long history of service in the Navy, with some uncles and family also serving in other branches after their initial enlistments were up. Alas, despite my best intentions, a life at sea wasn't meant for me and I was discharged shortly after boot camp for medical issues. God had other plans. While my interests are strongly slanted toward computers and technology, a career in IT, software development and testing, or other related field wasn't to be either despite my best efforts in school. Again, God sent me in a different direction and I have been in facilities maintenance for 17 years now with the last 8 years in charge of the daily operation of large (but old) buildings and their systems.

I hang around ATS to soak up mostly the paranormal / ufology stuff which I have a strong but skeptical interest in. I've got enough of my own unexplainable experiences to not need convincing of the validity of the phenomena. Mostly I am critical of claimed evidence on camera due to the number of obvious fakes.

I also follow some of the political and social breakdown stuff posted here. Socially and politically I used to be just right of center on most things but the shift left in the world among family and friends has me now standing decidedly right of the center line though I feel like I have only grown a bit more conservative since my wife and I had children.

Lets see about getting some details out of the way...
Religion: Former big A Athiest turned Roman Catholic
Guns: Yes
Abortion: No
LGBTQ: Leave me alone and do what you want as an adult. Keep kids out of it until they are adults.
Drinks: Coffee, Beer (Pale Ale), and red wine or a Gin and Tonic.
Hobbies: Digital art (mostly 2D pixel art on my Amigas, but also some 3D in blender), retro computers and video games, Linux, some basic electrical tinkering when needed, programming (old languages like AMOS on the Amiga, but also did C# and Java long ago in school, Python for Blender, and some other one off scripting languages in tools as needed.) surfing and lap swimming, the occasional range shooting or shooting in the mountains... yeah that is a pretty good list.

Anyhow, I am glad to have finally been able to make an account again...I have tried several times over the years to open one and always got errors no matter what I did. I guess today is the day and I can get to start interacting with people on here again.

-JS

a reply to: jscallahan

You sold me with the Amigas.
Welcome back on board.

a reply to: jscallahan


Neat intro and nice work with the Amigas

a reply to: jscallahan

Welcome back JS!

We have much in common and I look forward to having discussions with you.

I’ve been in the facilities maintenance field for over 30 years in one capacity or another.

You’re Catholic and I’m Protestant, but these days the lines are blurred and I believe God’s true Church will be called out if all denominations that believe the Truth.

Again, welcome!

a reply to: Cymru

Thanks! I love my Amigas and I've been a Commodore user since I was tiny. Dad started with a VIC-20, then C64, and then the Amiga. Speaking of 64s, my best friend gifted me a slightly broken SX-64 I have been restoring for the last couple months. Space on the desk is getting limited with 2 A500s with different hardware, my PC, the SX-64, and a couple laptops for various tools.

-JS

a reply to: SprocketUK

Sometimes it is hard to know what to say to get things rolling for an introduction.

-JS

a reply to: NorthOfStuffx2

Never thought I would end up in facilities permanently but it just sorta happened by not being terrible at my work, doing what I was asked, and having a higher than normal aptitude for problem tracking/solving. (It also got harder and harder to keep up with studies in CS as I couldn't get classes around my work schedule and almost constant OT at the time was keeping me way too tied up and tired.) At least I enjoy it most of the time and it keeps me moving a lot more than sitting at the desk and testing software all day in an office.

I fully agree with your assessment. My wife and I both feel a schism is coming in our church and it is going to lead to some very interesting and difficult choices to have to make. I have no enemy in a brother in Christ.

Thank you for the welcome.

-JS

Thank you and your family for your service, even if yours was cut short. Hope it wasn't something debilitating or permanent.

a reply to: jscallahan

Welcome, you’ll fit right in here.

I spent my early teens glued to an Amiga 600. Spent about an hour every night for a year trying to kill the red baron on a game called Wings. I still have it buried in my mums garage with a few boxes of games and utilities. Having flashbacks to workbench as I read this thread.

a reply to: jscallahan
What struck me in what you are telling about yourself is that you said you are a former atheist turned Roman Catholic!

That's like observing a white raven...

This is something so rare it is hard to imagine, all the more with all the negative publicity the Catholic Church has been getting for decades because of child sexual abuse (and even much earlier because of socialism)....

a reply to: putnam6

Nah it wasn't. Turned out to be a misdiagnosis by a over zealous LTJG that I was seen by. I think he was unhappy with his assignment or something. Got home and was seen by a civilian doc and it was a whole other experience. I was going to fight it with the help of an uncle who was working in the Pentagon at the time, along with letters from all my family, but my chances to get it overturned were still slim and I would have had to wait weeks, possibly months, in DC for boards to convene and go present my case which I didn't have the time or money for. Oh well, my going to the recruiting office lead to my best friend joining and serving 22 years and just retired last December so it was worth something.

-JS

a reply to: Grenade

Dude! I LOVED WINGS! I played the hell out of that game. Once I had it down I racked up 212 kills playing through the whole story. I still use at least one of my Amiga's almost daily and now I get to introduce games and software to my kids. They are too young to get the physics of shooting needed but we play a lot of Scorched Tanks against 3 CPU players. They also enjoyed watching me play through Yo Joe! about a year ago.

My little brother still has his A600. Such a cute little machine but in context of what Commodore was doing at the time it made absolutely no practical sense to produce. (Stupidly, I sold my Dad's A1200 a couple years ago now that I have a couple Vampire powered systems... regretted that pretty quickly but since it was never my machine I wasn't really attached to it.) I have some new keycaps coming for it as his are pretty badly yellowed and I don't want to retro bright them without a replacement on hand. I did a recap job on the mainboard a couple years back for him so the tantalum capacitors won't blow or rupture anytime soon.

originally posted by: jscallahan
a reply to: putnam6

Nah it wasn't. Turned out to be a misdiagnosis by a over zealous LTJG that I was seen by. I think he was unhappy with his assignment or something. Got home and was seen by a civilian doc and it was a whole other experience. I was going to fight it with the help of an uncle who was working in the Pentagon at the time, along with letters from all my family, but my chances to get it overturned were still slim and I would have had to wait weeks, possibly months, in DC for boards to convene and go present my case which I didn't have the time or money for. Oh well, my going to the recruiting office lead to my best friend joining and serving 22 years and just retired last December so it was worth something.

-JS

Thats good to hear, enjoy the boards and the Tangeray and tonic

a reply to: YourExcellency

Yeah I am kind of a unicorn. Most of the people I was in RCIA with were coming from protestant faiths so not quite the jump I was making. We had two Buddhists too. My wife's grandma laughs and says she gets a ticket straight to the top for me.

I am certainly aware of the dark and evil things carried out by people that supposedly share my faith. Though I have had friends raised LDS and JW in High School who either knew of horrors in their families or suffered things like sexual abuse themselves. It is important to remember that predators seek power wherever they can find it. I don't try to make excuses for cover ups. Bad people do bad things. My faith is about me and the Lord.

As for my conversion... It is a hard one to explain, which makes it all the more meaningful to me. I'd read Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, all those guys and watched untold hours of video take downs of Christianity, Islam, etc... I was a very hard lined Atheist for a long time. I started to recognize these guys don't seem to be all that fulfilled with their lives, especially Hitchens. I had tested living their moral relativism in the world ending in great personal calamity with a painful, but thankfully childless divorce, and loss of basically my whole world. A 10 year setback. My wife at the time had unilaterally decided she was allowed to do whatever she wanted as a modern and suddenly hard left progressive woman. She no longer desired to have children, and we were just a pairing of economic stability that allowed her to become educated and self sustaining. Keep in mind I was still pretty in the center but we'd paid for her to go to "Big girl school" as we joked and I realize now that she was probably getting her head filled with nonsense even in 2008. I had also seen others around me who shared her view also cause the collapse of their relationships and families. That was 2012. So I started thinking this does not appear to be working all that well and I was reading more counter arguments and taking in other view points. By 2014 I was dating my now wife, a cradle Catholic. Then, one day, I had an experience with what I now see as a spontaneous prayer and a sensation I cannot explain. I also cannot deny the results. I don't expect anyone else to understand it or accept it, the experience is mine and entirely subjective. My life has been on a different and much better trajectory since. When I decided to start the inquiry process in 2015 I submitted paperwork to have my previous marriage annulled on the grounds that it was invalid. (My first wife did not want children, which is contrary to an ordered marriage, and she was wildly and admittedly unfaithful, strike two.) It was granted, but took almost 18 months to process. I was baptized in 2017... I had a year delay due to working overtime.

a reply to: jscallahan

You did a great job with your intro.

Glad you finally did the join up and Welcome Aboard!!!

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Thank you! Happy to be here officially now.

-JS