Big Sky Blog

Oh my God!

I remember Cliff from way back in the Fight-O-Net and MTNet days. He ran Bloom II in Great Falls

He and I got into quite a fight when I made some moderation rules for the “Montana Chat” echo. I emailed him offline, and we ended up talking on the phone for a good hour and a half. We were fast friends after that.

A friend of mine was married in Great Falls, so I took the chance to go and visit him personally in the middle of 18 “Riverside Drives.” He showed me his BBS setup and told me stories of his cop days.

I’ve often thought of him in the intervening years, and wondered if I’d ever catch his name on a blog.

RIP, Cliff. The PGP Sig turned out not to be such a big deal after all. :)

[...] 1/12/2006 Goodbye, Old Friend Filed under: Montana — Craig @ 20:59 Via Big Sky Blog, I learned of the death of an old friend of mine, Cliff Ayers. Cliff used to run the Bloom II Board in [...]

A little more background on a wonderful man and Great Falls computer pioneer Cliff Ayers.

I was first introduced to Cliff in 1990 when I logged on to his bulletin board “The Office” which he ran on a Commodore 64! Introductions behind us we soon became very good friends and I was one of the few privileged to become a “Member of the Board” on the Office BBS.

I am not too good with timelines, I don’t remember exactly when the Office was shut down, I do know that Cliff was still active in the BBS scene in Great Falls. Along with Phil Helms (Philo’s Bloom County BBS), Cliff ran, as Craig stated, Bloom II on a PC until the ever growing internet sadly made dinosaurs out of the BBS’s.

During our BBS years, Cliff assisted in setting up events we called “Nerdfests”. Again, I am terrible with timelines, but I do remember the first was at the Kings Table in the mall (a buffet restaurant that used to be in the lower level) and another at Odd Fellows Park down by the river. Those events were always a blast as we got to put faces with names we had read on the BBS’s, often for the first time.

I am ashamed to say it has been a few years since I last visited Cliff in his Fort Benton home. As I sit here and prepare to go visit him for the last time it is with a sad heart I say that he will be dearly missed and always remembered every time I type out an e-mail message.

Ah yes… I too… fondly remember Cliff. While we were often in adversarial(sp?) roles in various message bases, we always had respect for each other.

Scott Dowdle…now that is a name I haven’t heard in a long time! And how is Scott doing? Your no longer in Great Falls are you? Are you still in Montana?