Re: Gopher Resiliency (circumlunar.space), 11/20/2019
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I appreciated user  tomasino's reply[1] to a  post on gopher
resiliency that I made recently[2]. I wasn't sure if I ought
to put "rere" in my  filename though; what's the gopherspace
best-practice there? I'm thinking a single "re" will suffice
in all cases...

First of all,  the story about the NES  magazines: The life 
cycle of those,  to me, was wonderfully  complete. Had they 
been thrown out or donated sooner, it wouldn't be as pretty 
a tale.  The fact that you  kept them and and  watched them 
transform  into their  final  useful  state was  beautiful. 
Perhaps it's overly indulgent to  view it that way, I don't 
know. What is beauty anyway?                                

It's not the  objects themselves that matter  in this story,
it's your relationship with them;  they were special to you,
and their end needed to  balance with their meaning. Without
that  balance,  I'm certain  there  would  be some  lacking,
linger perhaps only as an insignificant regret- but a regret
nonetheless.

Cut to the scene of the pathological, compulsive hoarder. Is
something broken in  there (yes, there is)  that doesn't let
them have  this complete lifecycle connection?  Maybe we can
understand them  better, those of  us that have them  in our
lives.

As for  gopher content,  I'm not sure  where it  falls here.
Sometimes I  write, and I  love what I wrote.  Sometimes the
keypresses  come from  my soul.  Other times,  I just  write
because I feel a need, because  I'm bored, to avoid work, or
any other number of reasons.

Thank you,  tomasino, for your  kind words about  my content
on  your server.  The  story  was a  two-sided  one, just  a
dipping of toes into sci-fi,  which I have shockingly narrow
experience  in when  juxtaposed  with my  other hobbies  and
interests.  My frustration  with those  comes from  the fact
that I started only with a  premise in mind. I felt like the
story didn't have any real  meaning beyond that premise, and
I didn't  know what to do  with it. No outline,  no goal. It
was fun, but  I guess I felt like it  wasn't what people who
enjoy  sci-fi would  want  to  read. Maybe  I  need to  keep
writing it just because it's fun and for no other reason.

As for the  resiliency bit, I think your post  has driven me
to a  resolution. As  you said, "Our  stuff is  mostly text,
after all, and that doesn't  take up much space." Therefore,
why worry  too much about  it? Like you, running  across old
stuff  on Gopher  has never  bothered me,  it's really  very
interesting. As long as the  admins of the servers will keep
it up, I think  I'll just leave it up. If  they get tired of
it,  things can  move from  there... and  who knows  when we
might pick up that old project and dust it off, for one last
hoorah in it's lifecycle?

[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~tfurrows/phlog/2019-11-14_gopherResiliency.txt
[2] gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/tomasino/phlog/20191115-re-gopher-resiliency