The server is now shut down.
It is now 2023, a few years have passed at this point since I have closed down bitblock. 2020, covid, being stuck inside. It was a pretty shitty time to be alive if I’m being honest. This server was something that I helped start, along with my friend Caleb. At the start, it was hosted on some raspberry pis I overclocked and left sitting on the floor in my room. This was a nice start, but we all knew if we wanted this to stick around long term I was going to need more than this. August of 2020 rolls around, I think I was turning 13? After playing around with the pis for awhile, I decided to step it up a little bit and asked for a real, rack mounted server for my birthday. While it was an older device, it surely got the job done better than the raspberry pis it replaced. The server began to grow, we were all stuck inside of course, what else was there to do besides hop in calls and play Minecraft? It wasn’t like we could go anywhere. Time passed. The server grew. Where were we now, 2021? Oh boy! Another dumpster fire! Caleb moves to Texas at the end of 2020, and on a cold December morning was the last I ever saw of him face to face, although we continued to talk online through the following months. Although he started the server, at this point he handed the torch to me and I took full control of it. The following months seemed to be going well. I went back to school in the weird hybrid setting, kinda back but pretty much not. June rolls around, and just like that, middle school is over. At this point the server starts to slow down, its really only a small group of people still playing. I keep it up, not only the public part, but at this point ive gotten pretty deep into other projects, like hosting my own websites and enjoying the quiet before the storm that is high school. Summer passes, pretty uneventful as everything is still locked down pretty tight from covid. High school starts. The server is pretty much dead at this point, five or so people play on it still which were just the admins and other close friends of mine. August passes. September passes. October passes. November. November happens. November 12th, 2021. Caleb decided to end himself. Losing one of your mentors and closest friends definitely throws your life for a loop. Overcoming this was and is probably one of the toughest things ive had to overcome. Weeks pass and other shit goes down as well. At this point ive all but lost interest in this project and much of anything. Months pass, dust settles. At some point I finally pull the plug on the server and make it private. I wish I hadn’t deleted that discord server, looking back almost two years later it would’ve been nice to look back at that time. Time keeps on ticking. Picked up photography at some point. Freshman year’s over already? I continue to pursue my hobbies, mainly photography, but still hosting some websites and game servers for people. Time continues to pass. Life is lived. People come and go, such as life. Depression is fun. I continue to live life, sorta. My will to live at this point is quite low as the past years had just been a downhill rollercoaster of horrors. Where were we? Oh, its 2023 now. Life finally starts becoming like it was before that dreadful day on March, 2020. Things have changed a lot since then. I’m an entirely different person than I was then. So many people I were close to are gone. 2020 may have been a shithole, but I made some great memories and friends out of such a bad situation. Sometimes I wish I could go back and relive some of those moments that bring me joy, but they are long gone by now. Cherish the time you have with those you care about, some day they will be over and there is nothing you can do about it. You can sit there and be sad about it or you can try your hardest to remember the happy parts and enjoy the good you got out of it. If I could pick one thing to get out of the past three or so years, its that no matter how dark it is and how much it seems like nothing good could ever come out of this, there will always be a light at the end of the tunnel. Things will always change. Sometimes good, knowing myself, probably for the worse. Here we are now, its July 1st 2023. I’m still alive. I’m grateful for these past years and what they have brought to my life. The good may be what everyone wants to feel, but that bad is what you learn from. Its been bittersweet, but its over. Bitblock is over. The past is over. If you dwell on the bad that happened in the past, you can never heal from it. It just keeps on following you and ruining your day. If you are seeing this in the future, it means a few things. You are probably reminiscing on the past like I was when I wrote this, and my servers are still up somehow. I wont be selling this domain anytime soon, so as long as my 2010 HP ProLiant DL160 keeps kicking, as its has been for almost the past three years 24/7 now, this site will be up. If I dig up any screenshots that are from this server, ill add them too. If you participated in this server, id love to hear how you guys are doing now. Its been almost two years since ive chatted with some of you. My discord is the same as its been, dragonkeeperalex. Anyway, now that ive given all of you my life story for the past three years, I will now permanently archive this webpage and it shall stay as it is until the day it inevitably goes down. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped out with this project the past years, it really was something that helped keep me going and helped everyone stay occupied and social in such a dark time. Its been a pleasure, goodbye.
Alex Gomes, 7/1/23
https://www.instagram.com/dragonkeeperalex/
https://alexgomes.net
https://dragonkeeperalex.net
alex@alexgomes.net
Welcome to The BitBlock Network! We have an assortment of games for you and your friends to play and enjoy, like Survival, Creative, Bedwars, and more to come! Feel free to check out our discord server and dynmaps above!