I learned how to make financial Excel sheets that will make whoever attempts to use them for anything fail miserably. Self-tested. At work. 

Possibly. In contact with some people now.

I didn't see anything. Was just black, and then no memory until I came back.

BTW, I recently read that when you die, your body releases all kinds of chemicals from it's various glands, and you, as they said, "seriously trip balls." I.e. hallucinations and other crazy stuff. That may explain the lights and other stuff.

Does it matter that any different past that I am able to imagine is still based ONLY on my collective experiences? I can imagine different paths that my life could have taken, but the results are still entirely limited by my imagination based on what I have seen and known. It is limited only to what I can describe using words from languages I speak, limited only to places I have seen (either in real life or in pictures/videos), and although I can choose to suspend logic, it's generally only following a sequence of possible events that I would expect it to follow based on my experience of how things follow one another.
In short, for me, there is no *you* that is any more than simply the sum of my life experiences. I also know that if I get a traumatic injury to the brain or a disease like Alzheimer's, I will be a completely different *you*, whereas your theory would suggest that the *you* will remain, because it transcends the physical body.
Can you explain why people with head injuries change personalities and become different *you* people? Or explain what the difference is between you, the brain physically wired to receive experiences and shape who you are, and the *you* that you are talking about? Because besides me having a brain with a differing collection of experiences, I don't get it, and don't see that difference as any more magical than, say, two different rivers that have different shapes and paths.

Virtual World currencies (Linden), the gateway drug  

Found out about it in May 2011, instantly understood what it meant (thanks to SecondLife experience), and was hooked. Bought a bunch at $6, then at $12. Read Rick Falkvinge's article about its potential, and about how he moved his savings into it (I heard he cashed out before the crash). After that article, made the decision to use Bitcoin as my main short-term savings account. Bought at $14 and $16, bought A LOT at $22, then continued to buy about the same every two weeks with every paycheck as it kept declining all the way to $2.50. Never stopped believing, and kept buying, then kept doing that as it came back to $5, $7.50, $10, and so on. Despite the rise and crash, thanks to "dollar-cost-averaging" my savings account is worth thousands more than the USD that went into it. People laughed at the crazy risky idea, but my "short-term savings" of a few $k used for vacations, emergency fund, and whatnot, has suddenly grown into something that will soon surpass my IRA/401k, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop any time soon. It's been covering some very nice world travel vacation trips for me
Oh, also, the two GPUs I bought in May 11 paid for themselves in two months. I hope the giant ASIC will too.

Bought $5,000 worth of BTC today, and withdrew the BTC without issues. Everything seems to be working ok (I guess aside from some customer support/ACH issues)

I don't think this word means what they think it means. Using fancy scientific words that people generally don't understand is one of the big signs that it's bs. Used to be magnetic, or electric, or nuclear effects.

We create information. Are we supreme creator Gods because of it?
But there doesn't need to be someone to create information, either. What I meant was that information is a concept that is meaningless without something to interpret it. Doesn't matter who created it, and without an interpreter, it is just noise. The sun creates photons, which race down to earth, and some of which get blocked by trees to cause shadow. The mess of photons and shadows is just noise. However, someone can interpret that noise to find out what time of day it is. No supreme creator needed for creating that information, or to interpret it. Ditto for earth's magnetic fields and warm/cold climates supposedly interpreted by birds.
If you wish to believe that some divine being is needed for that, feel free to. I don't see any reason or evidence for it.

Information is only information if there is something to understand it, record it, and recognize it. Using that understanding, the universe is quite chaotic.
Admittedly, though, order and chaos are human concepts. What we see as ordered, such and boxes stacked alphabetically, may seem chaotic to someone with a different language alphabet. Likewise, boxes being placed chaotically all over a warehouse without any seeming order, look perfectly structured to a robot that remembers the location of each box in its database, and placed then based on how much time it would waste placing and retrieving them. So, in that sense, all we can really say is whether the information is stored efficiently based on the time it takes to recall it, and the quality of recalled information. Compared to written words, recorded videos, or data stored on computers, our memory storage is EXTREMELY inefficient.
Though that physical method of memory storage and recall is I guess what gives us a chance to be unique, defining us as who we are with every new neural link and every new neural break. And all we are really doing is trying to use our inefficient brains to make structure and sense out of a chaotic world. Why? Because evolution said that's the best method of survival.

OK, then tell me why? Why does one of my opinions, based on evidence, and corroborated by everyone else in the world, is just as right as your differing opinion, even if it was not based on evidence and only you believed it?

Amoebas think? I figured they  just reacted to chemical stimuli depending on whether that stimulation suggests food (compatible with absorption) or danger (can cause bad internal reactions), based only on how its genetic code tells it to interpret that stimulation. What happens if you stab an amoeba with a tiny needle, or show it a piece of art? Will it react?
But then I'm not a cellular biologist, so what do I know.

Who is to say that our minds and thought processes are not chaotic? If anything, the fact that our minds and thoughts are so random, chaotic, unpredictable, and most importantly unreliable, is proof that they are a product of a "non-living chaotic process devoid of consciousness."
No information exists in a sense of physical matter. Books are composed of paper and ink, computer files are composed of steel and electrons, and your memories are composed of carbon-based cells that form neural networks. "Abstract ideas" are just electrical impulses, racing through your complex neural network, that decide to take a detour and try to explore a different neural pathway. There is nothing special about redirecting electrons to go down a different path, no matter how much your ego wishes there was.
Also, atheism isn't a religion or a belief. The "a" in atheism specifically means "lack of." I am an atheist not because I "believe" there is no god, but because I "don't believe" others when they tell me there is a god. I don't have a belief, I just don't find other's beliefs convincing.

You are right ONLY if you have your own personal definition of proof that is not generally accepted by the rest of society, or if you are insane.

If I put down two sticks on the ground, then next to them put down two more sticks, and that way prove to you that 2+2=4, which you can see, feel, and if you listen to the clacks of the sticks as they hit the ground, hear, that is my "good" proof that 2+2=4. If you claim that it's not 4, you better have a damn good proof, and saying "it is in my opinion that 2+2 does not make 4" is not as good a proof as mine. Continuing to claim so will make you seem deluded, and will make your statements irrelevant. Facts don't care about your opinions.

If your point was that wild, unsubstantiated claims, such as those proposed by religion, should be irrelevant, i.e. should not be taken as truth, or given any value, and should be outright rejected when confronted with contradictory proof, then yes?
My point was that my opinion is relevant and yours is not because I have proof to substantiate my opinion, and you don't. I'm not even sure what exactly you are arguing.

Let me ask you the exact same question, but with a slight difference.
You have a computer. It has a bunch of programs you installed, a bunch of files you created or downloaded, and all the settings are set up to be the way you want them to be. That is *your* computer, among the entire universe of *not your* computers.

Let's look at the moment in time 2 hours before you booted your computer for the very first time.
At this point the Universe has only been producing *not-your* computers and the Earth is populated completely by *not-your* computers. Now what is it in the physical/biological process that warrants that in 2 hours *your* computer will be booted and running for the first time? Why doesn't the Universe just continue producing *not-your* computers as it always has done. Can you imagine the computer you call yours will be born in 2 hours and it will be just another *not-your* computer with its own software and personalized settings?

^^^ That is how I read your question. And the answer is, it actually is the body, and my experiences through, it that make me *me*. Nothing more. Moreover, the *you* and *not you* property isn't all that drastic or binary. My arm is me. If it gets severed, it is no longer me. For disabled people, their wheelchairs and prosthetics are very much a part of *them*. If I have a cancerous growth, it's *me* but not really, because I don't want it to be me, and it's genetic code isn't exactly me. The only *you* that matters is the physical brain, just as the only *your computer* that matters is the physical location of 0s and 1s that store your files and settings and make your computer yours.

My answer is:
Then this game's existence would be irrelevant. Reality would be whatever we sensed and detected in this game, and the game itself would be reality. If you claimed you know that this is all a game to trick us, and the reality was different, then we'll have two options.
One would be that you show proof that there is a game, in which case we would adjust our understanding of reality to include this game.
 The other would be that you have no proof and there is no way to test for your claim of there being a game, in which case your claim will be dismissed as complete and utter nonsense, just as claims by people who "know" that big foot, fairies, and unicorns exist, until such time that you provide proof, and we go to option one.
In short, your "knowledge" of a game, and it's basis in reality is totally irrelevant without proof.

Or whatever issue Roman had two days before popped up again. Love all the jumping to doomsday conclusions around here.

And again. Someone needs to put Roman on speed dial 

There was no "appearance." It was a very slow development from nothing, through a very mentally undeveloped state as a toddler, to more and more developed state through childhood and adulthood,  as my brain recorded various experiences and formed neural pathways that help me relate new information to my present day experiences. My particular life experiences, which were a direct PHYSICAL influences on the network structure of my brain's neural network, is what make my particular consciousness *my* particular consciousness. And "we" as in human species. We are no different from very complex network-based computers. And once our technology allows computers to think the way we do, and store our consciousness on machines, you guys will be going around causing all sorts of violence against intelligent machines and people who upload themselves to such machines, because you will think they don't have "souls" or "consciousness" any more, and thus won't consider destroying them as murder.