Editors note: I wrote this back on 7 February 2015
The 1995-1996 school year I was a freshman at Sweet Home High School[a] and had participated in a trip to Walt Disney World to participate in a Band Performance with my peers (Disney Magic Music Days). This entire event, from the loading of the busses to the trip from Buffalo, New York to our destination and back had been recorded on an 8-hour EP video tape.
I had originally possessed this specific video tape as a teenager. Over the course of time, however, I had lost this amazing heirloom as I’m sure a lot of other have. I’m sure that there is a copy of this somewhere that I can acquire so I can digitize it and be able to enjoy it though the future times.
This iswas my tiny blog on my progress in locating this by working back 20 years in my brain.
In my randomness of youtube videos that play in the background while I mindlessly work I found one that seemed harmless. Little did I know this would be another one of those difficult videos.
https://youtu.be/cwYKD8nCWjo
The first video is about Daniel Villegas who was incarcerated for 25 years, which started from a false confession at 16 years of age.
The second one turned me into tears. It was about the sentencing of Trey Alexander Relford who pled guilty to robbing and murdering Salahuddin Jitmoud, a 22 year old Pizza Delivery Driver. The father, Abdul-Munim, was able to make a statement before sentencing, and that statement is something that every person wants to say but has more trouble finding the justification:
“Trey Alexander Relford. I feel so, so sad for you that you have to be in this situation. I wish I could help you as I helped my son to be a good citizen. If Salahuddin were to be here, if he alive he would forgive you. That’s the way he was, that’s the way he is. I’m not angry at you for being part of hurting my son. I’m angry at the Devil. I blame the Devil (the Devil) who misguided you and misleading you to do such a horrible crime. No I don’t blame you. I’m not angry at you at all. I want you to know that. I forgive you on behalf of Salahuddin and his mother.”
Then Mr. Relford made a statement apologizing, admiring what a father could do and not comprehending the pain of losing his own 4 year old daughter. He thanks him for his forgiveness, and they proceed to openly shake hands, then embrace.
The third one is about James Roeder and his wife Ashley. Ashley was pregnant during the robbery, and the judge placed a no contact order. While they were separate Ashley gave birth, and the Judge allowed, contrary to the no-contact order, a temporary exception for James to meet his son. He was sentences to 4 years, and Ashley got probation.
The fourth and final is about a Justice of the Peace and the marriage of Dean Berkenhoff and Monica Morrison. There was an objection at the end, and it was because of the need to want Colton Berkenhoff present. Colton was their 11 year old son who passed away suddenly in 2012, and his organs were donated. The ceremony revealed the heart recipient, where mom and dad got to hear Colton’s heart again. Simply an overwhelmingly emotional event.
My early 20’s are a bit of a mystery, but an interesting story nonetheless. It is also one of the most difficult points of my life since many events happened with family and friends, and there is little documentation present to support it. Most of these paragraphs will be to-wit, and I will do my best to stitch together things.
Oddly in my list of Youtube videos that are recommended to me on a daily basis happened to be an old song from a band called Flyleaf called “Fully Alive”. This was one of many songs from my youth that I had forgotten about and was overly ambitious to listen to the second I had seen it.
After enjoying the 2.5 minutes of high-pitched vocals and hard rock I had a brief epiphany: “Fly + Leaf = Flyleaf” How difficult would it be to attach an insect and a plant together and create a new band name? Whipping out the programmings I had found 3 solid references and let the computers do their workings and posted the results up on github, and further hosted it here for maximum clickability.
Alas, my curiosity of this song and the immediate conception of the “band name” program did not stop there. The lyrics needed a bit of attention to as they seemed unusually specific:
On February 5, 2015, I had signed up with DigitalOcean and checked out my first “Droplet”. It was a 2vCPU host with 2GB RAM and 40GB of storage running Centos 6. You were well worth the cost of $20/month and did everything that I asked.
Today is your last day of life. I’ve moved on to a new host that has 2vCPUs and 2GB of RAM, but 60GB of storage and runs Centos 8. It’s also $5 cheaper.
Before I shut you down and terminate you I’d like to say that you did more than you were designed for. You were excellent in how you handled updates and installing software that you weren’t designed for. You almost had a 4-digit-day uptime but for some reason, I felt the need to reboot you.
[root@VPS ~]# last | grep ^reboot
reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.1.2.0 Thu Dec 19 09:17 - 14:06 (134+03:49)
reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.1.2.0 Sun Feb 17 16:50 - 09:17 (304+16:26)
reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.1.2.0 Sun Dec 30 15:45 - 16:50 (49+01:04)
reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.1.2.0 Sun Dec 30 15:43 - 15:45 (00:01)
reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.1.2.0 Mon Dec 10 21:38 - 15:43 (19+18:05)
reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.1.2.0 Fri Feb 16 11:15 - 21:37 (297+10:22)
reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.1.2.0 Sat Dec 2 19:59 - 21:37 (373+01:38)
reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.1.2.0 Sat May 27 10:11 - 19:59 (189+10:48)
reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.1.2.0 Thu Aug 4 05:06 - 10:11 (296+05:04)
reboot system boot 2.6.32-431.1.2.0 Thu Feb 5 18:41 - 10:11 (841+14:29)
[root@VPS ~]# shutdown -h now
Broadcast message from mjheick@VPS
(/dev/pts/0) at 14:07 ...
The system is going down for halt NOW!
[root@VPS ~]#
I’ve shut down other hosts before without giving it a second thought. This, however, is one of the hardest and scariest things I’ve had to do in a long while.
Farewell, my friend at 104.236.197.67. May the bits be ever in your cache.