Before I begin this tale, I warn you, you may not like what you read. But eh, your this far so read on fellow MLA'er.I shall begin with a brief overview of the situation that I was in. I was in my sophomore year of high school, and I had alot of school things that was keeping me busy. On top of this, I had no computer that could access our not so good local dial up internet service, so I was forced to use my step father's, Pionex 400mhz Celeron.
Now your probably thinking that practicly any computer can get on the internet, well for me it was yes and no.
My main Mac (read main computer) was a Power Mac 7100/80 with 48mgs of ram and Mac OS 8. Which I which anyone one could have gotten online. Well, I had/still have no job other than ref'ing hockey in the winter time. That and my 7100 was in the basement which had no phone jack. Sooo, I had to use the Celeron. Blech.
At the time my step dad was quite, actually very restrictive of his precious Wintel garbage. My mom is almost, not quite but almost computer illiterate. So she thought that if I went to the wrong website, some mysterious hacker would take control over the system. So my internet habits were from the beginning restricted by the ever so powerful force of the PAF™.
I had become a mod along with my friend from school skamen. And had made some great friends with you guys here and back in the days of the beginning threds of the MLA on the MAF. But I was feeling (belive it or not) a bit envious of everyone and depressed because I couldnt buy a mac that could run newer games, software or OS X. All of my friends had family computers or even their own computers that they could chat and surf and game on. But I could only use the Pionex for web, and even that was as I said above, restricted. My parents would not buy me a computer. So I was on my own.
Now comes the dark part of my story.
Because of the way I was feeling, everytime I heard a referance, here or on the MAF to how cool the newer macs were or how awsome someone's new mac was, or even stuff like OS X has that built in just link it up to your (fill in the various 68k name/model); I would get angry and just shut off the computer.
Because I modded (and still do 
) the Newton forum I really had not much to do here, so I just ever so slowly stopped posting. And just kinda stopped lurking, then stopped comming altogether.
After a while, I had saved enough cash to get a mac that would be able to surf. I bought a Powerbook 3400c. Mine was a beauty. A fat bloated, overweight cow, but it was a beauty. Finnaly a Mac that could use the internet and actually run things like iTunes! This was big news for me. The specs were as follows:
Powerbook 3400c: aka HAL 9000
144mgs of ram (maxed out)
a 3 gig hard drive
I belive it was a 8x Cd-rom drive (may have been 16x)
12.1 inch active matrix display
and weighed a ton.
As I cooled about my comp situation, skamen and I began to joke about whether or not you guys (this being the mods and ~Coxy) would remove us as moderators of the Newton forum. We would check the forums from the school computers. And we always worried that because we posted on the MAF and so does coxy and a lot of the rest of you; that we would get seen and removed. But it never happened. It eventually came to the point of openly making fun of the MLA and all those people who were wasting their time with those old computers.
As my junior year of High School rolled around I picked up a 6116cd from a friend of mine for free. This got me thinking, man I should get back into the 68k thing again. I have some cash, I could get a laptop or something.
I eventually bought a Color Classic, got a Classic Preforma (cant remember the #). I wound up selling the Preforma to skamen, and sold the Color Classic on ebay, because I couldnt buy more ram for it and it was too slow to really do anything with.
Around Thanksgiving my one good friend (he is known on the MAF as Aqua Man) was going to get a MDD G4. But he had a Digital Audio G4 733 that he said was too slow. He needed cash to pay for the new comp, and I was looking into getting a 466 Digital Audio G4 or a B/W G3 at the time. He sold me his G4 (at a very discount price considering they were selling for 1200 bucks on ebay) and bought his new comp. I now had the Mac that I currently use.
I started visiting the MAF off and on only for short periods of time... Just enough to read one post and leave, because I had other things to do. In addition I didnt know who a bunch of the people were. People like Cory, cats, and shaktiman.
One day I stumbled upon a post in the War Room that pertained to me exactly. Yes all you non mods here is some inside info into one of the topics of the War Room. A mod (I forgot who) had proposed that the MLA do a "cleaning of house" on absentee moderators. They were bringing up options for replacements. (Sorry not telling who they were considering ) I thought that I basicly would be severed completely if I was stripped of the Modship that I had worked for. (Skamen and I were the first to submit content for the website, after wards ~Coxy had all the mods do it) So I responded to the topic saying not to replace me and that I still would like to be a mod. I had once again taken up the Stick of Mod-Hood™. And then started coming here once again.
I wanted to get back into the 68k groove so I was looking to get a Duo. I had always heard about how cool they were, and I wanted one. I eventually bought it, and I love it! 
I suppose that I should actually appologize to all of you and especially to ~Coxy. Because I wasnt here doing my job as a mod, and ~Coxy, you probably remember how we begged to be mods. Yeah well, I took advantage of that and threw aside my responsiblity.
So my fellow soldiers, that is the tale of the MIA: Mod Christophillis
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Christophillis- Portable Squadren Commander
68k Macintosh Liberation Army
Total 68k Macs Liberated: 6.02x10^23
Or just 6
Number One, you have the helm. I'll be in my ready room.
Edited by - Christophillis on 06 Aug 2003 22:14:50
By Popular Demand: My Long MIA Unvailed
Posted - 06 Aug 2003 : 22:13:49
68k of the Week: kastegir's PowerBook 180.