http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/mckinstry.html

An anonymouse posted this on Antyx. Interesting. Pistol-whipping his ex-wife? Armed standoff with the police?

... previous suicide attempt and subsequent time in a mental hospital.

yeah.  he was an interesting guy.

I dont think any of that qualifies as the 'real' McKinstry though.  its all just stuff that happened.

Fuck, I've spent the last four nights translating the manuals for Chinese scooters from Estonian into Russian, give me a break. :)

Are you in hell?

<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,61458,00.html">The Real Jorn Barger</a>

"Are you in hell?"

Not if I'm getting paid for it.

OK, so they deserve each other. :)

Flasher, that link has been posted on ?off at least a half dozen times.

McKinstry always denied the pistol whipping, although he pretty much copped to the rest.

Well then, Warner, I guess I'm not as pathetically addicted to bad drama as you are. :P

Did this guy ever do anything actually real that wasn't just part of a publicity whoring exercise? Did he ever write a major application, create a significant open source application, found a company of any consequence, provide some kind of enduring thought leadership? Anything except post threats of slander on NGs?

I'm a bit confused. He kind of seems like a deranged latter-day technogeek Steve Allen with much less substance.

The Suckdot parody from 1999 (http://www.suck.com/daily/99/12/13/daily.html ) had a spoof article about wiring sensors into the visual cortex of a cat. Now I know where one (or the other) came from...

Apparently he clicked the mouse to take a cool telescope picture...

>> I've spent the last four nights translating the manuals for Chinese scooters from Estonian into Russian <<

From sex toys to scooters.  Your boss seems to be pretty diversified.
:-)

Oh, I've been done with the inflatable dildos since spring 2005. This is entirely unrelated, an actual translation gig from a bureau (I'm listed as a freelancer in a lot of places).

It's not the most annoying translation work I've done, and it pays decently, there's just a lot of it. I expect around 18 000 words at the end of it all.

It does bring out an important point, and one I'd like to state for the record.

Chris McKinstry has had a decade long history of making outrageous claims on the internet and engaging in inflammatory conversations.

Immediately prior to his post, he had a fight with his girlfriend. He also had, apparently, some trouble at his job, and had just moved. He's attemptd suicide before, was hospitalized for it, and has publicly admitted to a lifelong battle with suicidal thoughts.

He posted his suicide note simultaneously to his blog, our forum, and another forum he frequented. In the weeks prior to that, we had very little contact with him, except when he occasionally dropped by to post a link to an article, or dropped in unexpectedly on a thread.

Anyone who believes that we had anything to do with his suicide, other than standing around helplessly watching it unfold, is taking a seriously dim view of people's susceptibility to rude behaviour.

That goes for anyone who harbors even the sleightest belief that we were somehow the precipitating cause, and especially for anyone making those implications publicly. That's just the lowest form of low, but I guess for some people, preserving their own apparent innocence is worth kicking someone when they're down.

I also hope anyone who feels any guilt over this event can take some comfort in knowing that there was nothing you could have done in the recent or distant past to save him.

Sounds like an extremely marginal personality. Also sounds exceptionally self-absorbed.

I wouldn't say that ?off had NOTHING to do with anything the guy did, for the simple reason that a personality that marginal is usually looking for a reason to jump off a cliff, and the equivalent of a snicker could do it. That doesn't imply any responsibility whatsoever on our part.

At the risk of sounding like a tree-hugging weenie, there's a lot of things one could do with their life if you decided that your present life wasn't worth living. I can think of any number of international relief organizations that need volunteers.

Instead, rail away on the internet and try to be the center of attention. What an absolutely profound waste.

"there was nothing you could have done in the recent or distant past to save him"

While I absolutely agree that nobody on ?off should feel guilty over McKinstry's suicide, I'm going to have to take exception to this statement.

I believe that men bare the responsibility for their actions, but I also believe that we all share some responsibility for each other's well being. We *can*, at times, help or hurt one another in deep and profound ways.

Regarding Chris, my personal opinion is that he enjoyed the ?Off community, even Warner. There were other things, God only knows how many, that drove him to his decision. It is a shame that others around him that may have had a saving influence at one time in his life could not have helped him more.

If you look at that URL in the OP, you'll see that his history is littered with flame wars.

At some point someone decided to create alt.mckinstry.pencil-dick.

He thrived on this sort of conflict, there was nothing particularly unique about his interactions with the folks at ?off.

I knew Chris when he lived in Winnipeg.

His online soap-opera (CR6 or CRap6 as we called it in news:wpg.general) pissed away oodles of money and took off after his creditors were circling.

When someone obtained his weblogs from CR6 (his FTP server had anon access to them. Oops) and posted a summary of how his boasts of astronomical hit counts was grossly overexaggerated, he, in typical McKinstry fashion, threatened to sue.

Search the Manitoba court archives, he was a regular defendant: http://www.jus.gov.mb.ca/

His attention-whoring is finally over, move on, nothing more to see here.

"I expect around 18 000 words at the end of it all."

In a manual for a scooter?  Isn't that overkill?

Two ATVs and a scooter.