The current free ebook is located at this link:
http://haggishell.com/ridgeproject.pdf

For details about the ebook, click here.

121227.6. This photo is of a little mall, the one closest to me, in the rain. It was taken on 121226.

I like the rain as long as I'm not standing right in it. Rainy days aren't necessarily gloomy. If a day has a mood, a rainy day is sometimes calm and reflective.

121227.7. I slept from 2:30am to 9:30am Thursday. Worked on projects and talked in IRC from 9:30am to 3:15pm.

I was out of commission due to the breathing or “shock” issue from 10:45am to 11:00am. Took a break from 11:30am to 12:02pm to tidy things up at my apartment and shave.

I traveled to Santa Clara and back from 3:15pm to 7:15pm. This was to eat at the buffet. Took care of some errands on the way there and back.

A manager at the buffet gave me the food for free as a thank-you for photos I'd taken. I offered to teach him the use of the GIMP and we may proceed with that.

The “shock” issue kicked in again around the time I arrived back home. My left hand started to spasm as well. When I mentioned this in IRC, Kappelin asked about it. I gather I haven't explained before that this happens sometimes.

121226.1. Slept from 2:15am to 11:45am Wednesday.

I last ate on Saturday 121222. I'd usually have eaten again by today. But it didn't seem to be necessary.

Not sure how to interpret what I'm experiencing. In recent weeks, I've been as sharp as usual mentally but physically tired. I had difficulty sitting up for a short period this evening. Didn't last long.

121226.2. I worked on a minor network tool for Kappelin for a third day. I think the code is close to stable now though still essentially a kludge.

Blue Dream and I also started the process of moving his websites to a VPS. I recommended Amazon Web Services to him as they have a free tier that's suitable for low-traffic sites.

It's interesting to realize that I'm helping Kenneth's business. Yet again :P

121226.3. I made two social media changes on Wednesday.

I was advised to redo my LinkedIn page. So I did. The old page is still there but I've created a new one. Feel free to visit the new page at the link below. If you're at LinkedIn yourself, send me a connect invite:

linkedin.oldcoder.org

And I promised a manager at one of my favorite restaurants that I'd post some photos of the place to Yelp. So I registered at Yelp and did so. Here's my Yelp gallery link for future reference:

Yelp Gallery

121226.4. Here's a Christmas card that I received from Prasanga.

121225.1. Today was Christmas Day. Phenek told me that I should purchase a Christmas decoration for fun. So I went out in the mid-afternoon and bought a few of them. The photo below shows the result.

Presenting the Coderland Christmas Friends :D

121225.2. Phenek has expressed an interest in Coderland photos so I've started to take some. There isn't much that's significant close by but I've enjoyed my attempts to do this again after decades.

The current gadget is limited to relatively low-quality photos. If circumstances permit I'd like to get a real camera again in 2013 and see what I can do with it.

It's been rainy in Coderland. But I don't mind the rain and these plants seemed happy about it.

121225.3. It's not clear when I slept or didn't on Christmas Eve.

121225.4. I spent part of Christmas Day writing a new network utility program. This was a favor for Kappelin. The utility was a PHP script that pulled blocks of statistical data from one or more of Kappelin's servers, used regular expressions to parse the blocks, and combined all of the data obtained to produce a multi-level array.

121225.5. Random stopped by IRC on Christmas Day to visit. He feels awkward about the Kiraly Cases and isn't sure what to say when he comes. Therefore the visits have been relatively infrequent.

Note to Mr. Meow: It's not the Random you're thinking of. It's a random Random that I've known for decades. This one was a Windows user until a few years ago. I moved him to Linux and he never looked back. He's working on software now that he hopes will produce an income stream.

121225.6. I went out on Christmas Day to buy some decorations as mentioned before. While I was at the store, a young woman approached me to ask me for assistance.

This happens fairly often. I sometimes come across to strangers as trustworthy. It's related to the fact that I'm both old and an engineer.

The young woman showed me a Christmas ornament that she was thinking about purchasing. It had a USB cable attached to it. She wanted to know what the cable was for.

The cable was surprising. Do Christmas ornaments come with mass storage capabilities now? Or is some sort of operating system required to use them? I guessed that, in this case, the cable was intended to allow a light bulb in the ornament to be powered by a laptop computer.

It's fun, though, to imagine the capabilities of an Ornament OS. Presumably the Ornament OS would be similar to a smartphone OS. Ornaments running the OS would be able to play Christmas songs, record holiday videos from the vantage point of a Christmas tree, print family newsletters, etc.

121225.7. Chaos showed up on Christmas Day as well.

I confessed to Chaos that I'm feeling poorly. He asked somebody else about the matter. It wasn't clear how he felt about it but I gathered that he was genuinely curious.

The strangest thing about the Chaos and Order situation is that something so unusual has faded into relative normalcy. The Kiraly Cases take precedence.

People have pointed out that two of the secondary Chaos alters can't be the same person because they've been seen playing a real-time game together. I agree that it might be difficult for a single person to manage this. But if the alters in question aren't the same person, something nearly as odd is happening.

On a related note, Atreides agrees that interactions between Chaos and Order, the two main Chaos alters, are scripted. But he seems to feel they're two different people.

121224.1. Slept 4:00am to 11:00am Monday. I've been overloaded this month. Underwater with the surface too far above to be seen.

Some of the people I've talked to know what that's like. I'm trying to proceed now as I've often told the kids to proceed:

Step by step. Patience is a virtue.

121224.2. Twisted Time stopped by IRC tonight. He was only able to stay for a few minutes but I appreciated the visit.

121224.3. Recent Minetest changes:

1. The OldCoder Server Nexus now supports both 2D and 3D avatars. You can select avatars in the game and change them without a restart. This is thanks to Zeg9 and his new skins mod. Note: skins has replaced player2d.

2. The Mauvebic and Vanessa worlds have been updated. Various fixes have been made.

3. The glow and usesdirt mods have been added to most of my worlds.

4. The classic Green Guy 2D avatar should look sharper now.

121224.4. Here are some new Minetest screenshots.

The first one shows two 2D avatars standing with a 3D avatar. The 3D character is the one in the middle. You can't tell from this angle that he's 3D. However, I had difficulty getting the players to stand still for a screenshot. They wanted to get back to playing the game :-)

So this is the best I could do:

121224.5. The next three pictures are screenshots from the Mauvebic world. This is an impressive world. The third picture shows Christmas decorations in an unexpected place: on a walkway located high in the sky:

121224.6. The last screenshot for today shows an amazing array of torches in my default world. These may have been set up by NakedFury.

121224.7. My identity was taken away from me decades ago. I think I've found it. I'm back and I'm real at last.

I've met others who have searched. And some that have found. Here is another search and an answer. This is a Christmas 2012 essay by Tactician.

Note to Benjamin and Iohannes: Tactician is the young man I've mentioned to both of you.

Try not to make promises. You don't know if you will be able to keep them. A promise is equivalent to an oath or vow. Let your word be your bond. But sometimes you should simply say “yes” or “no”.

We don't know what will happen. Not even five minutes from now. Unlike God, we are not all knowing or know what the future holds. So we can't make a promise or a vow and know that we can keep it.

Just tell people “yes” or “no”. Or that you will try. If you vow to go somewhere on a certain day, but something happens and you can't be there, it's better to not have broken a vow. Even if you can't help it.

I learned a lesson about this a long time ago. It stuck with me. I made a promise to someone that I couldn't keep. I also made a vow to God that I went back on. It was a dark chapter in my life at that time.

I later realized God forgave me. And that I should do like the Bible says, to let my communication be yay and nay, nothing more.

You can vow to God that you will try the best you can, but life is full of uncertainty. You never know what the future holds for the next day. Or a moment of weakness you may have. Or what will happen later.

I try my best. I love people and prefer making them happy over myself. I try to do that. This world has made things where it's not as simple as that, so I take on the personality of who I need to be to get things done.

When I ask myself who I am, I do not know. However that is where my faith in God kicks in. I know I'm a child of my Father Yahweh. I know what my morals are and how I live my life.

I know who I love, and that's when I know who I am.

I've got family members that want to hurt me and those that are close. However, they in no way will change my faith in God.

God is above all of that. Even in Psalms, David talked about it. How it looks like the wicked prosper. If you read through Psalms, you notice a lot of emotional states of David. Sadness. Fear. Happiness. Sorrow. Faith.

And Thanksgiving.

David was the king back then, but only a man. And he realized that, in the end, God is all that matters. He is the one that judges.

God sees all, and will deal with everyone accordingly. He sees our afflictions and sorrow. The Hebrews were in hard bondage for 400 years, but in the end God came and saved them and destroyed their oppressors. Set them free. And they became a powerful nation.

Your family is powerful and lives wickedly. However, God sees all. He is not a respecter of persons. No matter what title they have. They could be President and it wouldn't matter.

God loves you, and knows what you're experiencing. He is not turning a blind eye, but will repay. It looks hard now, but put your trust in him, and all will be well.

“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart, and lean not to thy own understanding. In all thy ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

Just look at Joseph, his family were going to kill him, but then sold him into slavery, and hard bondage. But God was not asleep. He turned what was a very bad and wicked thing, into a great thing.

If Joseph's brothers had not sold him into slavery, he would not have risen up in the ranking and became a governor and have the highest position under Pharoah.

If that had not happened, his whole family would have died from the famine. Including his brothers, dad, and relatives. So his abuse actually turned out to save the life of his loved ones, and even the people of Egypt.

My main point being, you are not alone. Even when it feels like you are. God is with you. He always will be. Trust in him. Put your faith and trust in him.

Believe, and you will see miracles.

121224.8. The photo below shows the birthplace of Silicon Valley or one of them. I live a couple of blocks from the scene.

The business is dead. It was one of several produce stores that tried to occupy the building. In the 1960s, this was the site of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory.

121224.9. Kenneth Kiraly is said to be the inventor of the Amazon Kindle and a technical lead for Lab126. He lived in the apartment complex shown in the photo below for a while. It was located a few blocks from my own apartment complex.

Kenneth eventually grew tired of the complex and moved away. But it served his needs towards the end of the 1980s. Only the latter part of the decade. Most of the 1980s, he lived with me or his parents, James and Grace Kiraly.

Kenneth Kiraly was manipulative and he therefore had an easy life. To the best of my recollection, during his multi-year stay with me, he didn't pay for rent, food, electricity, or other expenses. I paid for pretty much everything.

Kenneth liked to curse me even while I was buying our dinner. So eventually I asked him to pay rent. He moved out immediately. Our parents provided his housing after that until he was roughly age 26.

Around that age, 26, Kenneth was ready to get his first apartment. He chose the one in the photo.

Grace Kiraly and I took Kenneth to a diner to celebrate his transition to adulthood.

There was an accident during the meal. My skull was cracked. It's my understanding that I ended up with a subdural hematoma. The incident happened over two decades ago but I never recovered.

Some years later I ate another meal with Kenneth and was injured again. I guess you could say that Kenneth was not a good luck charm for me.

Life is interesting. You do what you can but things happen. This is normal.

121224.10. I talk to strangers more readily these days. Usually it's to offer help.

Is this altruism? Difficult to say.

I'd like to get back to researching altruisum. I need to write about why some people are similar to Christ — seeking to help those in need or at risk — and why others are like James Kiraly, Grace Kiraly, Thomas Kiraly, and Kenneth Kiraly — self centered and full of loathing for the vulnerable.

I can't work on the project much presently. I'm dealing with legal attacks initiated by my abuser, James Kiraly.

The best I can do, most of the time, is to help people myself. To attempt to follow Christ in a manner that is different from that of the Kiralys. A manner that does not mock Him. To reject the piety of people like James and Grace, the self congratulatory blindness that defines those who see what they wish to see.

In 2012, I volunteered to work on software for a brain injury clinic. The Kiralys took the project away from me. And me away from the project. My family hurt people who didn't need to be hurt further. But this is not the sort of thing that troubles the Kiralys greatly.

I do what I can do online now. But I look for ways to interact with people face to face and to help when it's possible.

Little of this passed through my head on Christmas Eve as I chatted with strangers at a store. I just wanted to help.

I was waiting to use the machine shown in the photo below. It converts coins to dollars. A middle-age woman and her son, college age, used it ahead of me.

They were Russian. The woman did not speak English. The son had not dealt with this type of contraption before. I talked them through the buttons that needed to be pushed. The menus that urged them to provide personal information. Even appliances try to trick people these days.

In the end the machine did its job and changed more than a thousand coins into dollars for them.

A simple encounter. And I'll never see these people again. But they were real in a way the Kiralys were not. They thanked me for my assistance. Something the Kiralys have rarely done in half a century.

The Kiralys look at me and see an object. A thing to be used. A manifestation of the other; the shadow that haunts the dreams of the primitive. Others look at me and see somebody kind and useful.

If it comes to a dividing line between myself and the Kiralys, a way to tell us apart, I think the line is a simple question. Who honors God? And who reviles Him?

As a technical note, the object in the photo with little feet painted on it was some sort of piggy bank. The people involved saved pennies in it for seven years.

121224.11. It's been a few days since I last ate. As of Christmas Eve I think I'm hungry. However, at this point, I don't know what's best as far as the food issue goes.

I enjoy food on the days that I eat it. Cherry tomatoes, avocados, fish sticks, and chicken drumsticks remain favorites after half a century. And the meals I had last week seemed especially good. But, when I eat, there are negative effects that can last for more than a day.

The effects may be described as a sort of “shock” problem. I've had the problem for years. It's my understanding that it may be connected to a hypothalamus, pituitary, or thyroid glitch.

121224.12. There's something else out of order that's visible now. This part is new. Not sure how to describe it. If the problem is scurvy it's correctable. Otherwise it may be the same thing that put me in a wheelchair for a while and twisted my hand.

Grace Kiraly diagnoses the key issues as insufficient prayer and lack of “responsibility”. I think that an over-active immune system is a more likely culprit than falling below the Pharisee® Brand Minimum Daily Requirement for prayer.

Regardless I suspect that food, or possibly the wrong type of food, is a bad idea at this point.

121223.1. Slept 6:00am to 10:00am Sunday. When I woke up, breathing shifted quickly to the altered state. After a while I fell asleep again for a few hours.

121223.2. I was still unwell on Sunday. But I was able to do a few things.

I talked to several people, including a High School student who'd asked me for advice. He told me he had serious ADD and didn't qualify for college. He was worried that he'd be forced to go into the military. We settled on a plan involved raising his grades while he continued to work on FOSS projects; the latter was a priority for him.

I also wrote some network code for Kappelin. It was a simple task but I enjoyed it.

121223.3. The picture below shows Coderland on a rainy winter day. The buildings are typical Mountain View apartment complexes.

121222.1. This photo is by a reader named Teco who lives in South America. Posted with permission. Teco describes the scene as follows:

“I found an old photo I took about two years ago. It needs a few retouches, but I hope you'll like it. I liked the sunset. I liked how the sun lighted those clouds. It gives a nostalgic feeling.”

Nostalgia. Feelings about a place and time where things are different. Maybe it doesn't matter if the place and time are actually there.

The possibility it might be real, that somewhere, somewhen, there is a place to be safe, a place where things are all right... perhaps it is all right to be moved over the possibility.

Image processing: The image had a dreamlike quality as it stood. Little work was needed or done.

121222.2. In Spring 2012 I phoned Service Core of Retired Executives, also known as S.C.O.R.E., to discuss altruism. My father James Kiraly, learned of this call and a similar call to a pastor who discussed Christ Followers with me.

James filed legal actions intended to prevent me from making further calls. He was afraid I'd mention things he'd done in the past. This despite the fact I didn't say a word about that aspect of James's past during either of the calls in question.

If Michael Bonetto of Hoge Fenton wishes to assert that the preceding is inaccurate, that even one syllable is not correct, my attorney will be pleased to review specific written statements to this effect.

Until such time as specific written statements are received, I offer Michael Bonetto's own words as possible evidence related to the motives of both Michael and James.

As a related note, I believe that Michael may attempt to characterize the statement of simple facts about James's attempts to stop a book, Michael's confused attacks on First Amendment activities, and Michael's likely involvement in Abuse of Process and/or actual prosecutable crimes as “harassment”.

However, altruism, the idea of it, is important to me. So is the idea of faith. These are subjects that I've started to look into. It's my understanding that Long Cause can't stop the research. So the books, and there are a minimum of two books at this point, will continue.

The other day, I received a small gift that lifted my spirits. It was the following communication from a reader. His remarks are presented here without a single edit. This is what altruism is about. This is what is real. Not the hatred that the Kiralys embrace.

“well what I meant was, you helped me make myself more stable and happier in general, I meant that I want to help you if you need help”

121222.3. Slept a long time on Saturday morning. 2:15am to 12:00 noon.

121222.4. I went out to eat today for the third day this week. It's the first week that I ate so much in a long time.

Later in the day I even ate a left-over apple that Liselle gave me on Tuesday 121218. A snack shortly before writing this as well. So I had a Christmas feast the week before Christmas.

I wasn't sure at first that I should have gone to eat again. But I'm glad that I did. If I'd skipped the meal, I'd have missed something important.

The manager of the restaurant that I chose came up to speak with me. “I'll be gone until March,” she said, “due to cancer.”

She'd just completed chemo. Had lost her hair but looked strong. She'll be all right. I was glad to see her and wished her well. I told her that a number of people in my life, family members and friends, had gone through cancer and that many of them had made it through.

I thought about this meeting afterward.

Grace Kiraly, my mother, lied to me about cancer. She said that she needed to go for medical treatment, so she couldn't talk “any old time”. However, as I understand it, if she actually had cancer, the treatment was past and she was headed for a cruise vacation or something of the sort.

Today a casual associate spoke to me simply and honestly about actual cancer. Things that she was dealing with that were real. She owed me nothing but she gave me the truth.

How should you assess somebody? Their worth? Does being open matter? The ability to speak honestly about the way things are... is this more important than being “respectable” and therefore a “good person” ?

In this case, which person is the one that I should value? The liar? Or the woman who is open?

121222.5. The picture that follows is a Random Cake. Posted with permission.

Random had a birthday. It wasn't a major occasion, from his perspective. But, regarding the cake, he adds:

“It meant that somebody else in this world cared about me. And the ice cream was really really good!! Those cookies look good enough to grab right out of the monitor.”

Random and I go back a ways. As far back as Twisted Time and I do. While I was editing this post we talked about different issues. Things that are as important as cakes.

“I'm more isolated than you,” he noted. “I used to think I didn't need anybody to talk to but now I don't know.”

I asked him: “What is your life for?” He said something surprising:

“It is to help somebody somehow. Maybe to teach. To teach someone is to leave something of yourself behind. I wish to help better the world in some small or big way.”

This wasn't like the Random I'd known. He'd been intelligent enough, above Thomas Kiraly though not in Kenneth's league. I'd taught Random what I could and he'd done acceptably well from a technical perspective. However, over the decades, he'd made few attempts to connect to people or to be useful.

I asked him when his new feelings had started. And how he was going to help people. Or live on; this was clearly a mid-life crisis related to feelings about mortality.

“After I became 40 years old,” he said, “I think I became different. Some part of me will end up online... there's no better way to live on.”

I pointed out that he was saying things similar to thoughts I've expressed. I asked him if I'd influenced his decision. His final words on the subject were:

“I think everybody wants to be immortal in some way.”

Note to Mr. Meow: You met Random once. I thought it would be interesting to put the old and new worlds together. Same as with Twisted Time.

Image processing: I removed Random's name from the cake, cropped and scaled the image, and adjusted the contrast.