Weekend Lounge ~ Strange World

Welcome to the weekend!

This time we're going to take a look back at someone who was an infamous internet figure years ago before his unfortunate early death. Because this is the Advent season, just before Christmas proper, I tend to like to remind myself as to why I'm doing the sort of thing I am by looking at examples of those who have done just that despite the disadvantages we sometimes stumble through. I this case however, the handicap was much more intense.

Terry A. Davis was an eccentric programmer who created the operating system known as TempleOS. He started his life as a hardcore materialist, like a lot of people who grew up in the mid-20th century, before he began to see the world as a much different place. A genius programmer who only got better with time, he tried to contact the government for work and something happened as a result that has never been fully clarified, which ended up changing the course of his life. He didn't become a Steve Jobs, Wozniak, or Gates, instead becoming someone much different. Considering how those figures eccentric Silicon Valley type ended up, maybe there was something to what Terry went through and would later discuss.

At the same time as this was happening, Terry's mental health and well being was declining in that it became difficult for him to express himself properly and even communicate with those around him. No one really knows where this came from, because it seemed to happen out of the blue. This newly atomized existence for Terry allowed him to become a sort of figure for both simultaneous ridicule and admiration as he tried to hold it together despite all the factors working against him to live as the person he needed to be. This was who he was until the day he died in an unfortunate train accident many years later.

Terry's legacy, TempleOS, can be found here!

This isn't a happy story in the modern sense, but there is something inspiring in this tale that is hard to pin down if you are a materialist. There was a clarity through the obfuscation, and a meaning in the seeming meaninglessness to what defined him. It can't really be described without seeing what he was like for yourself. There was no one like Terry A. Davis, for good and bad, but he is still very much missed to this day, which is a good indicator of how much he actually was liked by those who followed him, in the end.

If I'm burying the lede here, it is because I don't want to warp the reason I'm talking about him in the first place. Yes, Terry could be very funny, both intentionally and unintentionally. Problems or not, he was just a very animated guy, and he said a lot of offensive things while trying to express his thoughts despite working against his own disabilities. But none of that really matters when you look back on a lot of what he was actually speaking about underneath the funny words and over the top expressions the internet lives for and enshrines as memes for future generations. Much of what Terry figured out ended up coming true and it's amazing that he did so despite the problems he suffered with throughout his life.

Few people actually disliked Terry A. Davis, even less have as time has passed and since his unfortunate accidental death at a much too young age. Despite the problems he fought against that piled against him as he aged, and despite the memes that followed in his wake, there is something about Terry A. Davis that sticks with those of us who have been around since the early internet as something as both a warning and a Cassandra to things that would happen and are now occurring in the modern age. Terry was right, God truly does speak to us all the time. We just have to listen.

Check out the video above if you want a good summary on who this figure is and why he endures to this day, and how he figured out the glowies long before anyone else ever did despite the disadvantages he had in life. All he had was his trust in Jesus Christ and the skills he was blessed with, and that is all he leaned on as he navigated a world he knew he didn't belong in.

If you want more information about Terry A. Davis, there's plenty out there, including an X account that posts images and blog entries from TempleOS that you can find here. Terry is an interesting figure and one that still manages to inspire to this day for a very good reason.

That's all for this weekend and I will see you again soon!

Remember, always run the glowies down with your car. It's the only way to be sure.

My story "Fade Away to Anywhere," a tale of missing time, the apocalypse, and mysterious enforcers breaking through space itself, can be found in the most recent issue of Silence & Starsong!