#firechat

She just bites it off.

Unfortunately, we were defeated by the most implacable of foes in D&D: the real world. The campaign went on hiatus and eventually was cancelled because of real life things that deserved to take priority.

You know… sometimes the tiny person in your head controlling things trips and falls on the control panel.

A ton of Floridians are downloading Firechat while they still have Internet/cell phone reception. Firechat is a mesh network app that connects to other nearby phones directly via bluetooth and/or wifi. Unlike centralized networks like cell towers and ISPs, mesh networks become more efficient the more users are connected to them.

There are some limitations: a phone cannot send messages unless there is another phone in range (about 200ft) OR there is a connection to the Internet or cell networks. That means there needs to be a critical mass of phones in the area for it to work.

If you send a message and there aren’t any phones in your area’s network that are connected to the Internet or to the person you’re sending the message to, then the message waits until new devices come in range. As people move about, the messages are passed along until they get to the open Internet or to the recipient. Thus it works like punk mail but for text messages.

The app is pretty buggy and a bit slow. The security of it is also not perfect, although it does claim that messages are encrypted until they reach the recipient so it’s a little better than punk mail in that regard.

HOW TO SEARCH FOR CONTACTS AND FIND PEOPLE ON FIRECHAT

I had a hell of a time trying to find the contact I particularly wanted to talk to, even though I already knew his username. The “Discover people on Firechat” option seems to always return zero results no matter what. BUT there is a workaround: Search among the followers list of verfied user “FireChat”. By default every user is following FireChat’s official account when their account is created.

Go to your own profile

Tap on “following [#]”

Tap on FireChat

Tap on “Followers [#]”

Type in the username of the person you want to send a message to.

Time for Chapter 4!

Wonderwall - A Cockles Mixtape - Chapter 4

Excerpt:

Misha sat in his car, waiting for the song to end. He figured he would give Jensen a minute or two to process before he went up to the door. He knew Jensen was home alone without plans. Danneel, Jared, and Gen had made sure of that, booking the girls spa trip a week ago and Jared’s trip to Los Angeles at the same time. He had spoken to Dani that morning and she had wished him luck. He had gotten a similar text from the Padalecki’s, a picture of them together both giving him the thumbs up. People were rooting for them and it once again confirmed that he was doing the right thing.

Once the song was over, he picked up the little wrapped box on his passenger seat, gathered his courage, walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Then he waited. And waited. Nervous now, he rang the bell again. A moment passed and just as he was about to get his phone out to call Jensen, the door was whipped open.

Jensen stood in front of him wearing only a pair of sweatpants slung low on his hips, feet bare, hair a little mussed from his nap on the couch, his green eyes wide open in surprise. Misha couldn’t stop his mouth from watering if he tried. He grinned at the man in front of him.