10 ms·

You just never know who might turn up from your past... 1999: I was a sysadmin at an ISP in Austin. One day we had a tour come through, people looking to see

by mrbill 8y ago

You just never know who might turn up from your past... 1999: I was a sysadmin at an ISP in Austin. One day we had a tour come through, people looking to see if they wanted to colo in our datacenter. In walks in the former CEO and most of the technical staff from the Oklahoma City-based ISP I'd started my career at and left in '96. We laughed, shook hands.. and they headhunted me away a couple months later with a 200% salary increase for their new Austin-based startup. 2015: interviewing for a remote sysadmin position at a firm in California. They knew of me through some mailing lists I've run for a couple of decades. A couple of interviews in, I mention that I'd need to get off early on Thursdays to attend Lodge as I was a Freemason. Turns out two other execs interviewing me were also Masons. It certainly didn't hurt my job prospects.. And then after I started the CEO asked "Weren't you mr_bill on efnet #unix IRC in the 90s?" I gulped and said "Yeah..." and he said "Cool! I was on there too..." And, at my current job, after I got hired, my team lead said "Yeah, (other coworker) said you were cool and said you'd fit in well here..." - turns out the other coworker was another EFNet IRC buddy that I'd never met in person.. So, never lie about a contact or reference and never burn bridges if you can avoid it - you never know when someone from your past may be in a position to influence your future.

swozey 8y ago
And on the flip side bear in mind that some of us were 10-15yo on IRC back in the day. Don't fault those of us too hard.
- rlayton2 8y ago
  Yes, one of the great things about the "don't use your proper name on the internet" was the ability to let go of the past if needed. Much much harder now.
  - roel_v 8y ago
    Getting ot now, but actually you'd be surprised (at least I was) how fast you drop off the internet as websites and services die. I've gotten more careful about using my full name maybe 4-5 years ago (the 10 before that I didn't care, and I never used my real name the 10 before that) and nowadays I'm all but invisible online, save a few work presentations with my name on it left and right. I know the mantra is 'the internet never forgets', and probably if you're high profile it doesn't, but for your average joe, even thousands of comments and tweets and posts die off after only a few years.
    - Bartweiss 8y ago
      Every once I a while I end up trying to recover my own posts and accounts from the Wild West days >10 years ago. It's shockingly hard - anything less established than Hotmail has a pretty good chance of simply being gone or unrecoverable. Which is a pain when I'm looking for it, but vaguely reassuring otherwise; unless the government or the site-owners themselves are after you, much of that stuff isn't coming back.
  - magduf 8y ago
    How is it that hard? I still don't use my proper name. The only exception is Facebook, but I don't do much on there besides maintain an account to prevent someone else from making a fake one to impersonate me, to be able to access the profiles of a few select family members and friends, and to sell stuff on the local yard-sale groups. For all my other internet activities, including this site, Reddit, etc., I use pseudonyms.
- bpp 8y ago
  Woah, EFNet...I was definitely 12 years old on EFNet back in the day.
- pc86 8y ago
  I'm still friends with a handful of IRC folks. Some were older, some were younger. I think I was 12-14 during my heyday, but I was around for a few years prior.
  - mrbill 8y ago
    A bunch of us eventually got tired of EFNet politics and started a tiny server network of our own that's run for almost .. 16 years now? Running /lusers shows 22 users on the network across 3 servers, with 5 total channels. Overkill, but it's "home" to us.
scottyelich 8y ago
http://www.oxide.org/unix/ http://www.oxide.org/unix/
- retr0h 8y ago
  Wow, haven't been on efnet in forever. Ever know a guy named chris at unix.org, was in #unix.
  - kw71 8y ago
    http://bonmot.ca/xni_people/ChrisPortman http://bonmot.ca/xni_people/ChrisPortman
Kenji 8y ago
Question: What is freemasonry about and why did you join it? I read up on them quite a bit but I just didn't find any good examples of actual goals and activities they are pursuing. Do Masons have a hacker mentality?
- cookiecaper 8y ago
  I'm not a Freemason, so I'm probably talking out of turn here, but I've always admired Freemasonry and the Masons I know are pretty cool, so I'll give this a shot. Corrections welcome. Freemasonry is a collection of locally-run fraternities. There is no overarching masonic organization or top-down command structure, it's all done by the local lodge, which may or may not be affiliated with other lodges. They are all "Masonry" because they use the same rough template of traditions and rituals, passed down from earlier inductees (this is a simplification of course; there are different traditions within masonry called "rites", etc., etc.). Because their meetings are closed to the public, and because membership in such organizations is relatively rare these days, wild speculation occurs. They don't have a mission other than to be good citizens, help their communities, and help each other. A few generations back, belonging to "the lodge" was an expectation for most permanent members of the community, and many community activities and services were effectively brokered by them. The rise of "lodge doctors" in the early 20th century is a good example.
  - mrbill 8y ago
    Actually, in the US it's run at the state level. Each state has a "Grand Lodge", that issues charters for the local Lodges (and in some cases, owns the buildings). Each state "recognizes" other state Grand Lodges (and their local Lodges) as "regular"; this lets me go visit other Lodges that my state GL has recognition with, and so forth. You might see lodges designated "AF&AM" or "F&AM" - that dates back to a minor schism long ago where you had the "Antient Free & Accepted Masons" vs the "Free & Accepted Masons" - all that boils down to these days is minor differences in ritual and ceremonies. That's one of the nice things about visiting lodges in other states - to see how they do things differently! You'll also see "Prince Hall" lodges - these are the Masonic equivalent of Historically Black Colleges & Universities. Nowdays, a white man can join an PH lodge, a Black man can join an AF&AM lodge, and so forth - and one thing I'm glad to see recently in Texas is that while we've had "recognition" between PH & the AF&AM lodges for over a decade now, we finally have "visitation" - where I can sit in an official meeting at a PH Lodge without having to officially request a visit through the Texas GL, and so on and so forth. This is the way it should have been for a long time, but honestly it took waiting for a lot of old racist guys to die off before we got to this point. Some states still don't have full recognition/visitation between the two and it's really upsetting (mostly in the Deep South). We're basically a fraternal society with some secrets (all of which you can find out with the right Google searches) - we're not a "Secret Society". A lot of the secrets are just passwords, modes of recognition, and so forth. Stuff that boils down to (in my opinion) "If you can't trust your Brother to keep these simple secrets, can you trust him with anything else?" Shortest simplest explanation: a bunch of guys who hang out once or twice a week and have a fancy dress meeting once a month, to get away from the wives, have dinner, BS and catch up with each other, and do some good for the community in whatever ways we can. We're there for each other, and anyone else that might need help that we can provide. There's really no "secret advantage" to being a Mason that's different than having friends who own businesses in "normal life" - at one time I joked that my Masonic tattoo might get me a discount on an oil change and I could get cupcakes at wholesale... There's no "Illuminati" or world-running society. How can you expect us to run the world when sometimes we can't even decide what to serve for dinner? It's really no different than belonging to any other social organization. My Brethren kept me sane and alive after my wife passed away in 2009 - I'd be sitting here at home alone, would get a phone call. "Hey we're here at Lodge cooking for the meeting on Wednesday, want to come hang?" "Nah, I'm okay, thanks." Five minutes later the phone would ring. "Bill, this is the Worshipful Master, if you're not here in 15 minutes I'm sending a truck full of guys to haul your ass up here.." They knew I needed to be around other people and to be distracted. (the WM is basically the elected president of the lodge for each year)
JohnCrane 8y ago
you're old as fuck bruh
jmvoodoo 8y ago
Hey mr_bill. Long time no talk. -indy :)
- mrbill 8y ago
  Hi there. It's been a while :D
- alanpca 8y ago
  uhh, hey guys. this is weird.
  - letsgetphysITal 8y ago
    Freemasons.
    - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
      is a sideways smiley face now some secret mason handshake?
    - alanpca 8y ago
      No, just a 90s era #unix'er.
bunfunton 8y ago
Hey mr_bill it's me Andrew
mmaunder 8y ago
EFNet. Those were the days. I was pHaze on #phreak and #2600.
pjc50 8y ago
Next time someone says technical hiring is not hiring quite so many women or minorities because it's purely meritocratic, I'm going to point them at this post.
- rando444 8y ago
  (1) Networking and building a reputation for yourself will always have value. (2) Most of the things that he's listed are merits. Being involved in his community, having a strong verifiable previous job history with good references, etc. (3) Having a good job history, making friends, and being involved in online and offline communities are not things limited to white males.
  - aje403 8y ago
    Yeah but can we disregard common sense and still call it a good ol boys club for the sake of the pitchforks? I think if we turn it slightly differently we can definitely slap a white male oppression on it
  - pjc50 8y ago
    In re (3), the post specifically mentions the Masons, which traditionally is extremely exclusive, men-only, excludes Catholics, etc. They've opened up slightly in response to pressure, and there are some female freemasons, but it's still pretty exclusive.
    - rando444 8y ago
      The masons was an anecdote specific to that commenter, my point was that there are many different types of groups that serve the same purpose.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
        At the very least, I think pjc50's observation highlights that there is a certain inertia in some industries that perpetuates a bias toward one or the other gender. Edit: changed a couple of words to make my point clearer.
jacquesm 8y ago
Only loosely related to your comment but the freemason bit reminded me of this Monty Python sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2PyeXRwhCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2PyeXRwhCE
- mrbill 8y ago
  I rather like this Hale and Pace bit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBnzp4OkDD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBnzp4OkDD4
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Hehe. Don't screw with the masons (or their daughters).
    - mrbill 8y ago
      My last girlfriend's father had been a Mason, and she was heavily involved in the Order of the Eastern Star for a while. It was nice to not have to explain what I did when I went to Lodge, and so forth.. and when she attended our (public) installation of officers ceremony, she knew a bunch of the high-muckety-mucks that were attending :D
michaelcampbell 8y ago
Another EFNet #unix veteran from the same time period. Ahoy!

by mrbill 8y ago

swozey 8y ago

And on the flip side bear in mind that some of us were 10-15yo on IRC back in the day. Don't fault those of us too hard.

rlayton2 8y ago
Yes, one of the great things about the "don't use your proper name on the internet" was the ability to let go of the past if needed. Much much harder now.
- roel_v 8y ago
  Getting ot now, but actually you'd be surprised (at least I was) how fast you drop off the internet as websites and services die. I've gotten more careful about using my full name maybe 4-5 years ago (the 10 before that I didn't care, and I never used my real name the 10 before that) and nowadays I'm all but invisible online, save a few work presentations with my name on it left and right. I know the mantra is 'the internet never forgets', and probably if you're high profile it doesn't, but for your average joe, even thousands of comments and tweets and posts die off after only a few years.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    Every once I a while I end up trying to recover my own posts and accounts from the Wild West days >10 years ago. It's shockingly hard - anything less established than Hotmail has a pretty good chance of simply being gone or unrecoverable. Which is a pain when I'm looking for it, but vaguely reassuring otherwise; unless the government or the site-owners themselves are after you, much of that stuff isn't coming back.
- magduf 8y ago
  How is it that hard? I still don't use my proper name. The only exception is Facebook, but I don't do much on there besides maintain an account to prevent someone else from making a fake one to impersonate me, to be able to access the profiles of a few select family members and friends, and to sell stuff on the local yard-sale groups. For all my other internet activities, including this site, Reddit, etc., I use pseudonyms.
bpp 8y ago
Woah, EFNet...I was definitely 12 years old on EFNet back in the day.
pc86 8y ago
I'm still friends with a handful of IRC folks. Some were older, some were younger. I think I was 12-14 during my heyday, but I was around for a few years prior.
- mrbill 8y ago
  A bunch of us eventually got tired of EFNet politics and started a tiny server network of our own that's run for almost .. 16 years now? Running /lusers shows 22 users on the network across 3 servers, with 5 total channels. Overkill, but it's "home" to us.

scottyelich 8y ago

http://www.oxide.org/unix/ http://www.oxide.org/unix/

retr0h 8y ago
Wow, haven't been on efnet in forever. Ever know a guy named chris at unix.org, was in #unix.
- kw71 8y ago
  http://bonmot.ca/xni_people/ChrisPortman http://bonmot.ca/xni_people/ChrisPortman

Kenji 8y ago

Question: What is freemasonry about and why did you join it? I read up on them quite a bit but I just didn't find any good examples of actual goals and activities they are pursuing. Do Masons have a hacker mentality?

cookiecaper 8y ago
I'm not a Freemason, so I'm probably talking out of turn here, but I've always admired Freemasonry and the Masons I know are pretty cool, so I'll give this a shot. Corrections welcome. Freemasonry is a collection of locally-run fraternities. There is no overarching masonic organization or top-down command structure, it's all done by the local lodge, which may or may not be affiliated with other lodges. They are all "Masonry" because they use the same rough template of traditions and rituals, passed down from earlier inductees (this is a simplification of course; there are different traditions within masonry called "rites", etc., etc.). Because their meetings are closed to the public, and because membership in such organizations is relatively rare these days, wild speculation occurs. They don't have a mission other than to be good citizens, help their communities, and help each other. A few generations back, belonging to "the lodge" was an expectation for most permanent members of the community, and many community activities and services were effectively brokered by them. The rise of "lodge doctors" in the early 20th century is a good example.
- mrbill 8y ago
  Actually, in the US it's run at the state level. Each state has a "Grand Lodge", that issues charters for the local Lodges (and in some cases, owns the buildings). Each state "recognizes" other state Grand Lodges (and their local Lodges) as "regular"; this lets me go visit other Lodges that my state GL has recognition with, and so forth. You might see lodges designated "AF&AM" or "F&AM" - that dates back to a minor schism long ago where you had the "Antient Free & Accepted Masons" vs the "Free & Accepted Masons" - all that boils down to these days is minor differences in ritual and ceremonies. That's one of the nice things about visiting lodges in other states - to see how they do things differently! You'll also see "Prince Hall" lodges - these are the Masonic equivalent of Historically Black Colleges & Universities. Nowdays, a white man can join an PH lodge, a Black man can join an AF&AM lodge, and so forth - and one thing I'm glad to see recently in Texas is that while we've had "recognition" between PH & the AF&AM lodges for over a decade now, we finally have "visitation" - where I can sit in an official meeting at a PH Lodge without having to officially request a visit through the Texas GL, and so on and so forth. This is the way it should have been for a long time, but honestly it took waiting for a lot of old racist guys to die off before we got to this point. Some states still don't have full recognition/visitation between the two and it's really upsetting (mostly in the Deep South). We're basically a fraternal society with some secrets (all of which you can find out with the right Google searches) - we're not a "Secret Society". A lot of the secrets are just passwords, modes of recognition, and so forth. Stuff that boils down to (in my opinion) "If you can't trust your Brother to keep these simple secrets, can you trust him with anything else?" Shortest simplest explanation: a bunch of guys who hang out once or twice a week and have a fancy dress meeting once a month, to get away from the wives, have dinner, BS and catch up with each other, and do some good for the community in whatever ways we can. We're there for each other, and anyone else that might need help that we can provide. There's really no "secret advantage" to being a Mason that's different than having friends who own businesses in "normal life" - at one time I joked that my Masonic tattoo might get me a discount on an oil change and I could get cupcakes at wholesale... There's no "Illuminati" or world-running society. How can you expect us to run the world when sometimes we can't even decide what to serve for dinner? It's really no different than belonging to any other social organization. My Brethren kept me sane and alive after my wife passed away in 2009 - I'd be sitting here at home alone, would get a phone call. "Hey we're here at Lodge cooking for the meeting on Wednesday, want to come hang?" "Nah, I'm okay, thanks." Five minutes later the phone would ring. "Bill, this is the Worshipful Master, if you're not here in 15 minutes I'm sending a truck full of guys to haul your ass up here.." They knew I needed to be around other people and to be distracted. (the WM is basically the elected president of the lodge for each year)

JohnCrane 8y ago

you're old as fuck bruh

jmvoodoo 8y ago

Hey mr_bill. Long time no talk. -indy :)

mrbill 8y ago
Hi there. It's been a while :D
alanpca 8y ago
uhh, hey guys. this is weird.
- letsgetphysITal 8y ago
  Freemasons.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    is a sideways smiley face now some secret mason handshake?
  - alanpca 8y ago
    No, just a 90s era #unix'er.

bunfunton 8y ago

Hey mr_bill it's me Andrew

mmaunder 8y ago

EFNet. Those were the days. I was pHaze on #phreak and #2600.

pjc50 8y ago

Next time someone says technical hiring is not hiring quite so many women or minorities because it's purely meritocratic, I'm going to point them at this post.

rando444 8y ago
(1) Networking and building a reputation for yourself will always have value. (2) Most of the things that he's listed are merits. Being involved in his community, having a strong verifiable previous job history with good references, etc. (3) Having a good job history, making friends, and being involved in online and offline communities are not things limited to white males.
- aje403 8y ago
  Yeah but can we disregard common sense and still call it a good ol boys club for the sake of the pitchforks? I think if we turn it slightly differently we can definitely slap a white male oppression on it
- pjc50 8y ago
  In re (3), the post specifically mentions the Masons, which traditionally is extremely exclusive, men-only, excludes Catholics, etc. They've opened up slightly in response to pressure, and there are some female freemasons, but it's still pretty exclusive.
  - rando444 8y ago
    The masons was an anecdote specific to that commenter, my point was that there are many different types of groups that serve the same purpose.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      At the very least, I think pjc50's observation highlights that there is a certain inertia in some industries that perpetuates a bias toward one or the other gender. Edit: changed a couple of words to make my point clearer.

jacquesm 8y ago

Only loosely related to your comment but the freemason bit reminded me of this Monty Python sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2PyeXRwhCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2PyeXRwhCE

mrbill 8y ago
I rather like this Hale and Pace bit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBnzp4OkDD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBnzp4OkDD4
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Hehe. Don't screw with the masons (or their daughters).
  - mrbill 8y ago
    My last girlfriend's father had been a Mason, and she was heavily involved in the Order of the Eastern Star for a while. It was nice to not have to explain what I did when I went to Lodge, and so forth.. and when she attended our (public) installation of officers ceremony, she knew a bunch of the high-muckety-mucks that were attending :D

michaelcampbell 8y ago

Another EFNet #unix veteran from the same time period. Ahoy!