every year around 9/11 i have posted this in various places... now i have a blog to post it to, and i decided to post it early this year...

here is the latest version of it...
for those who have read it before, there is a chronology fix and i added a follow-up thread that i had somehow missed before that has important info...


in the Dreamcast Technical Pages message board archives (now known as the AlwaysGame.com SEGA Forum), i found this thread about a regular of their board, Thomas Vazquez, aka "z167704", with whom they had shared many hours playing PSO, Quake, and other Dreamcast online games, turning up missing right after the september 11th attacks... in fact, they had played Daytona USA with him the night before...

it all makes for a rather long read, but, this is some heart-wrenching, unbelievable stuff and there is not exactly a happy ending here...

i think the whole ordeal is relevant to everyone...

it all starts with this thread

and then, on september 25th

october 12th, aftermath and more of what the future may be like

and you could have a look at this

and this all has to do with a subject i yell about quite a bit...
the people who say that we should all "get off the internet and go out and meet some REAL people" or that you do not have "real" relationships on the internet...

tell THESE people about "real" and how these are not really "real people" they know and how they don't really have "real relationships" between each other...