When I was in middle school, the techy kid walked up to me with a piece of metal in his hand and said, hey, did you know you can take out this part of a lighter and use it as a taser? I thought he was cool and immediately took a liking to him. Turns out we took the same train to school, and soon enough we’d share our train rides. Soon after, he started staying over at my place. One day he was chilling on my bed and installed something on his laptop called “Mandriva Linux”. This is the day I met GNU/Linux <3

I worked with her older sister for a couple years, perfectly content being single. One day, randomly blurted out that I hated being single. Her sister asked me to describe what I wanted, I said a few things, and “You just described my sister! Let me introduce you.”

Apparently, she had already thought we would be perfect together. That was 16 years ago, and we’ve been married for almost 13. I could not ask for a more perfect person to have as my wife and dearest friend.

I walked into Katz’s Delicatessen and ordered the pastrami reuben. One bite later and I knew my life would never be the same.

I worked at a college bar for beer money. Her friends came in all the time, she did not. Then one night she did, and I was literally struck dumb - just like the stories. There was a few months of seeing her here and there, a few conversations - I had never met a woman so amazing. I was a bug, and she a goddess in every way. Imagine my shock when she handed me a napkin with her phone number on it and said “call me sometime.”

You bet your ass I called her the very next day. That was 28 years ago. The crazy part is things got steadily better over the years. Nothing got “boring” it got more exciting. Looks fade, but she’s more beautiful to me today than ever. Kids didn’t drag us down, they made things more fun. Bills and chores and life’s troubles became something we worked through together - teaching us that we can overcome just about anything and be successful. I’d argue all of our success is because we’re a team.

We truly hit the love lottery when both of us were “done” and didn’t believe something like what we have is possible. Put away your baggage, and keep an open mind - your napkin could be handed to you today.

Renaissance Faire, 1999, in northern California. She was a wench, I was a german mercenary (Landsknecht). It was lust and love at first sight. Four kids later, misfortune and death, and I’m still here, mourning her all these years later.

The year: around 1994. I was 14 or 15 and using a borrowed account on a local collage network. A student there shared his modem pool login info with his friend who was also my friend and he shared it with me. My first taste of unix was a DEC minicomputer in some cs professors office. I learned a lot of the ins and outs of unix and the internet… 2400 baud for pirating software and porn mostly. Eventually random ftp sites and netnews got boring and redundant. I got introduced to irc and was amazed at the instant interaction with other computer people. My friend at the time hung out in a specific channel, #chitchat2, and I joined it as well because why not. It was a pretty tight knit group of regulars that hung out there and talked about whatever… Nothing in particular. At 15 I felt pretty accepted by people for the first time in my life.

Being the budding wanna be hacker and scriptkiddie I also hung out in all the warez channels, #exceed, #ego, #warez, etc, and picked up on irc scripts and whatnot. SrFrog and his seminal lice script was my favorite of the time. I learned about patching and compiling a customer version of the standard unix irc client, and ran lice. It was pretty fun to mess with people and being 15 and relatively immature I spent hours riding server splits and nick-colliding people for the hell of it. There were some dicks that hung out in #chitchat2 so I did what I could to make their life hell. Looking back I was probably as much of an asshole and they were insufferable IT twits.

I also met a girl there who was in college in another state. She remembers me as being a gigantic asshole and super immature. She hated me and would refuse to talk to me. Over the next 4 years I grew up, turned my script kiddie nature into an actual passion for computer security. As I grew she and i became sort-of friends.

Eventually, when I was around 19, my family moved across the country, and she graduated college and moved the other way across the country to be with her family. We started talking more and more on irc, private chats, late into the night. Out of the blue she called me on the phone which blew my mind. I had dated on and off but this is the first time I ever had a member of the opposite sex who I felt was actually interested in me. One call turned in to once a week, then to several times a week. I had to get a job so I could pay for 400 dollar a month long distance bills (this was the mid to late 90s and I never invested time in the phreaking skills I probably should have). One day she sent me a message “I bought a plane ticket and am coming to visit you in 2 weeks”.

My heart exploded on the spot. I spent the two weeks saving what cash I could, I found a hotel for her to stay at (my parents were cool but not cool enough to let her stay with us, she was some random anonymous person I met on the computer, as they put it… Stopping short of calling her an axe murderer).

The day arrived and I met her at the airport at the gate. You could do that then. It was then, at 19.5 that I knew I was in love for real, not just in lust or in dire need of companionship. Our next week together was a blur of every: passion, incredible sex, amazing conversations, and our souls connecting on a level so deep I didn’t know such a connection was possible. It went way too fast and seemed to last a life time all at the same time. We even spent some time on irc talking with all our combined friends in #chitchat2. By the end of our time together, we knew we had to be together. I brought her to the airport and walked her to the gate. We were both sobbing but she promised that her next step was getting her shit together and she was going to move to where I lived.

The next 6 weeks was arduous. It might as well have been 6 years. But in August of 1996, she packed her bags and flew across the country. She lived alone for a couple of years until I had issues with my family and I moved in with her. 4 years after moving to be near me we got married.

Tomorrow, April 28th will be our 24th year wedding anniversary. It hasn’t always been easy but I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone else.

As for the love of my life, tru64 lead to Solaris, led to slackware linux, Debian, ubuntu, Arch, etc. my lifelong love of unix and unix like operating systems started 30+ years ago with tru64 and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Just kidding… It’s my wife that is the love of my life. We met “on that damn computer” as my mother likes to put it. Every year on our anniversary we go to where we had our first irl date. I sometimes pop back into efnet on irc to see if anyone has returned to #chitchat2 but so far haven’t found anyone. I’m still friends with, and grateful to the guy who gave me access to the colleges modem pool.

Ok Cupid (but this was 10+ years ago, I hear it’s gotten shittier since then 🙁)

Her character murdered my character in a MUD.

So I was at a dungeon and overheard two women lamenting the lack of lesbians in the local community. I then walked over and said “hi I’m a lesbian” to the both of them. Anyways I’m married to one of them now somehow.

I was a lazy jerk that just bombed out of the local college in record time. I figured I’d try photography trade school. She was a natural artist with no plan and picked the same trade school. We were in the same 6-month program. She specialized in lab work, I went into product photography. Class started October 1984. We had several family deaths, financial ruin, and other calamities - but supported each other through it all. Lived with family and in the car. Got my life on track in my 30s. Bought a house in 2000, married in 2004, kid in 2009. Now a boring but desperate suburbanite staring down the next downsizing wave and big medical bills.

I didn’t.

I played a song I wrote about cannibalism at an open mic night she was bartending at. She told me she liked my song and gave me a high five. I wanted to ask her out, but didn’t want to corner her while she was working, so I made some jokes and left.

She sent me a friend request on Facebook, so I sent her a message asking her out. Said something like, “Yo. You’re real pretty, and I wanted to ask you out, but doing that kind of thing while you’re behind a counter seemed uncool.” She said she was flattered, but she just started seeing somebody (I missed her by a week). She asked if I wanted to be friends, and I told her I was super attracted to her, so I wasn’t all that into being friends (in a super unshitty way). Being buds with someone I have a crush on is almost always a bad idea. But I didn’t completely close the door either.

I kept running into her, and we wound up getting closer anyway. I kept my boundaries (for the most part), and never hid that I was interested in her beyond friendship, but also wasn’t a lil creep about it, nor did I pressure her about anything, or try to guilt-trip, or any of those yucky things dudes do when they’re interested in someone who wants friendship. I was just very clear that I liked being around her, but wasn’t trying to be her best friend or anything from the get.

Her boyfriend was an abusive alcoholic, and like two yearas later, wound up on jail for a few months on his third DUI. She started hanging out more, I made my move, she dumped him while he was in jail (the only real safe way to do it), and now we’re engaged as fuck.

Sometimes people have to work shitty relationships out of their system, and I kinda pride myself on finding the balance on being around and available, but not TOO available, and real clear about my intentions. Wound up with the coolest, prettiest, kindest person I have ever met. I got hella lucky.

The foster agency told my mom I was ready to be picked up, and the rest is history.

On a drunk Thursday night out noticed my bike wasn’t where I thought I left it. Decided to steal a bike myself on my way home. A week later, again on Thursday night, ran into this girl and had a great time. She didn’t have a bike so I offered to bring her home. While getting closer to her house, I started to recognise the area… this is where I stole the bike. Asked her what happened to hers (legit question, everybody has a bike in the Netherlands) . Told me hers got stolen the week before. I started to feel awkward when we stopped exactly at the place where I had stolen the bike. Apparently this was where she lived. Told her this was where I grabbed a bike a week before. She looked at the bike, and I shit you not, it was hers. I hooked up with the girl that I stole a bike from. Fast forward a year and a half later, decided I do not believe in “Meant to be” shit and broke up with her. Some time later I meet a different girl, the love of my live… this is 20 years ago now, we’re now expecting our first kid.

My ex-fiancee and ex-girlfriend for 7 years was getting hit on by our boss. She used to brag to me about it. They started texting back and forth until suddenly she wanted to “just be friends” with me (which entitled “benefits”).

This was all about a month before our wedding. So naturally I declined being “friends” and slept with her bride’s maid. We decided the sex was good enough to try dating.

That was 12 years ago now.