brian christ
“There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
Five years ago today, Brian died of a heroin overdose. I didn’t know him for that long. I hung out with him a number of times for about a year or two, but he always struck me as a good guy. Not just a regular good guy, but a good nerdy guy. This is why I wrote up www.brianchrist.com as a sort of e-memorial. I was a young novice web programmer at the time and felt like I needed to do something, anything, in order to mentally process his passing. I wasn’t a stranger to death at the time, but when someone your own age dies (especially when they’re young), I think it serves as a wake up call.
So funneling all those feelings and emotions into work energy, I basically rushed out the most simplistic database-driven form posting app without much thought to architecture. Five years later, it is still basically the same exact page with a few minor additions along the way. It’s an interesting situation when you become emotionally involved with one of your side programming projects. Any time I think I should change something on the site, I worry that people will misinterpret my extra efforts into the site as some kind of disrespect to the memory of Brian. Maybe I’m just over analyzing all this stuff. If anyone else out there has anything to say on the subject of e-memorials or just any input at all, I’d definitely appreciate it. For now, I will continue to keep the site up in remembrance of Brian and wish him well wherever he is now.
