Where it all began
Once upon a time, I was a boy. Then I grew up into an older boy, and then I went to college far, far away from home at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (at the time, the #3 engineering school in the nation), in Worcester, MA, a 17+ hour drive from my home (at the time). Being a freshman, I didn't have a car on campus, as that wasn't allowed for freshmen at WPI (at least not back then, not sure whether that's still the case). There were a few times I made a 45-minute each-way walk to Arby's in town, one of my favorite fast-food places (still is - especially now that they've brought back the Potato Cake sides), one time making the journey with a foot of snow on the ground. It was an interesting year.
Back in those days, there wasn't really "internet" per se - we had dial-up into BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems), somewhat akin to modern social media. Those BBSes had online games (sometimes with ASCII art, but usually just text-based; I believe the most common were role-playing games of various sorts), various information boards, and "online" community chats - forums - kind of like a long-winded Facebook post, where the "post" was a topic (a board topic) and the "comments" were the actual chats. I guess a better modern-day equivalent would be "Reddit" or "Discord" - where each "topic" might be a separate forum on a BBS. You were usually replying to the board one user at a time, since most BBSes only supported one or two connections. Remember, this was dial‑up, not broadband; a few “large” boards had more than two phone lines, but that was rare, as most were hosted in someone’s home using their primary or a spare landline. This was several years before "AOL" or similar dial-up megacompanies began hosting large online dial-up gateways.
The start of ... [LAPSE... brain dead]
One BBS in particular became very frequented by me. I don't recall the name of it, but it had a couple of games I would play, and I got involved in several of the discussion boards. I'd often end my comments or stories on the discussion board with the tag:
[LAPSE... brain dead]
I also became good friends with the "Sysop" - "system operator" - the guy who ran the BBS. In fact, he sometimes would come visit me on campus - always bringing a Dunkin Donuts large coffee with double cream and sugar - and once he came and picked me up and I spent the weekend at his house (well, his mom's house; he stayed in the basement there, where his BBS server was set up), where his mom made a fantastic dinner, the first time I'd ever had "twice baked potatoes" - and I still have that recipe! - and we watched movies (I recall "Wes Craven's Shocker" being one of them). At some point during the year, he created my very own board - the "LAPSE... brain dead" board. I don't recall any specifics, but there were some very interesting discussions on that board. Also, one time, one of my on-campus friends was playing Tetris on my computer, and got mad after losing, hitting the "Y" key very hard to "play again?" - this broke the Y key. I set up my BASIC function key shortcuts to have F9 = y and F10 = Y so that I could still use the computer for typing emails and papers until we could later get the keyboard repaired (this was back when things like computer keyboards were expensive, and repairing them was cheaper than replacing them). I also came in top 10 in a dorm-wide Tetris competition later that year.
After the year at WPI, I didn't return, instead going to a local community college for a while before joining the US Navy (after my six-year tour in the Navy in the Nuke department, serving on the initial crew of the carrier John C. Stennis, CVN-74, during which time they filmed the carrier scenes from "Executive Decision" - meaning technically I guess I'm an extra in that movie, although I was deep down in the engine room during filming). I did continue to have exchanges with my far away friend through email and similar things, and we're still friends on various social media platforms. As an aside - while I was at WPI, I would have email exchanges with my aunt, who worked in the English department at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham), which was not nearly as instantaneous as it is today. I would log into the BBS, send an email, and she'd get it in a day or two (the emails were sent from BBS to BBS until they made their way to the UAB servers), reply, and I'd log in and get the reply a few days later (with the reverse email "forwarding"). We are quite spoiled in today's "instant communication" environment! Not to mention when I'd be in the middle of a long BBS post or an online game or downloading a new OS and my college dorm mate would pick up the phone to make a call, which of course, interrupted whatever I was doing and disconnected me from the BBS.
The story continues
After the Navy, I returned "near" home to Huntsville, where I was working full time at SAIC and also continuing my education at UAH (University of Alabama in Huntsville - and, yes, UAB is "at" Birmingham, while "UAH" is "in" Huntsville). I also continued to stay "online" as I've always been pretty "tech oriented." I had created a MySpace account, and later got into Blogging, eventually settling on "Blogger" - where you're reading this now - and created the "[LAPSE... brain dead]" blog, circa November, 2007. Wow, that was eighteen years ago! For a while I was a pretty heavy blogger. Sometimes, I think, multiple blog posts in a day. Also, the shortcut "LBD" became a frequently used thing, too, such as our team name for my son and me in Rocket League. Anyway, I started to trail off somewhere around 2011, with 2014-2020 being pretty lean years (2017 and 2020 were skipped altogether, while 2018 and 2019 had one post each). I tried getting back into it in 2021, with 18 total posts, but it faltered again from 2022-2025. Now, however, I'm trying again, in late 2025, to be diligent to keep this place active. We'll see; I hope to...
[LAPSE... brain dead]
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