Patrick McAndrew

Updated 4 weeks ago

Metallic 5

March 12, 1980 – August 26, 2021 11:40 a.m.
AKA Mindkiller. Hacker, music enthusiast

“Had dreams about pat all morning. We were at the beach on a different planet, not together but at the same time. We spoke shortly can’t remember about what, then I was looking for him but I think he drowned in the ocean. It’s not like the ocean here. Not fit for swimming. Giant waves. The rest of the dream people kept calling me looking for him and especially looking for documents that he had or he signed. I kept telling them I didn’t know where they were!! Then I started crying cause I knew he was dead and also that I was frustrated I couldn’t find the papers. At least I got to process some emotions. Maybe I said goodbye. I will be expecting a visit from him in the next few weeks. I usually get visited by the dead in the weeks or months after they pass. I’ll let you know…” – Rachel

Pat was a longtime friend, roomate, and party buddy. Known as the “‘Jeff’ of Boston” because of his wild ADHD manner and libertarian hacker ethos, Pat lived a full life until succumbing to complications from liver failure in 2021.
Growing up in Nashua, New Hampshire, Pat showed great promise at an early age. At age 15 this prodigy met Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems, who gave him work.
His brother died early on to suicide, and his birthday haunted Pat every year.
He worked in security at a host of internet startups, and from 2006-2008 lived with me in Brooklyn. We lived life to the fullest.
Pat introduced me to dark industrial music. All the music clips on this page came from him. Much of my taste in music comes from him. Even today I often hear just the right track, and imagine him next to me commenting on how “tapped” it is.

Million Dollar Bill Pat
We never got around to printing these.

I was an Ayn Rand libertarian at the time – I had worked for Ron Paul in Texas when I was in college – so we were two peas in a pod. I was running Nootrition.com, a smart drugs website, importing from China, so bags of white powder were everywhere. The deli across the street sold us “Green” and “White” Parliaments, and we took Mucuna Pruriens, an ayurvedic plants that replenished our dopamine levels. All these factors worked in tandem.

We revelled in conspiracy, collaborating on his “Mind Killer” CIA doxxing project of their activities in the MK Ultra Project. Pat really wanted to stick it to the Man. He also had a trance radio station, which had bandwidth cost that proved to be too costly.
See his Mindkiller website archived here. Here are some screenshots:

Pat got his “shockwave rider” email address from a 1975 science fiction novel. “Like most of the world, in 1970, I read Future Shock. I was just entering college, and it was not only a trendy book to read, but it was also a very important look at what the future might hold. Then, in 1975, an English science fiction writer named John Brunner wrote a novel based on the world that Future Shock might look like– The Shockwave RiderThis novel still reads well today, and it is astounding in its ability to predict what the future might be like, just like Future Shock and the rest of Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s oeuvre has been. One of the most prescient creations in the novel was the computer worm. Brunner described its operation pretty much exactly as they work today. Toffler has been more right than wrong in his predictions, which is about what a good futurist can hope for. Of all futurists, only Robert A. Heinlein, the go-daddy big ur-futurist of them all has a higher prediction batting average. Toffler, and Brunner, both gave me a profession…one that I’ve been working on ever since…I have always wanted to be an “encyclopedic generalist” which is what Brunner called a futurist, and pretty much, now I are one. So now I have to go figure out what to say to an idol of more than thirty years that doesn’t come out, “Bbbbbdaaaaaadaaaaabadaaaaah! Mumpf!”

Here is one of dozens of parties I threw that he greatly enjoyed:

More on the Boston crew. He and I had so many more insane adventures.

Alien Worlds God Whale

I pulled myself out of the beast in 2010, but he stayed in like Ahab. He told me he got pulled over drunk in Boston, but the Irish cop let him go after he saw his license. “Get straight on home!” But after getting out of New York, I stopped everything, even smoking. Newly sober, what I previously had viewed as cool hacker antiauthoritarian ethos grew, in my eyes, into a dark cloud that had eventually gathered into a storm in the Trump era.
We finally had a major falling out over politics – Alex Jones harassing Sandy Hook parents specifically – and he claimed I was living in the past with this website. Our friendship was never able to recover – we had gone different paths, and we were both equally resolute in our passions.
Regardless, I always respected his intellect and missed his friendship.

He made music with his friend Josh:

Pat’s collab with Josh

When COVID hit he had decided to move back home, go to college and set his life straight, but it was too late. I reached out to him in the hospital, and wished him the best. He liked that. Josh saw him the night before, and his mother was at his bedside as he passed away.

From Josh:
Yesterday, we lost a man who was one of a kind. Patrick Mcandrew was like a brother to me, my band mate, and best man at our wedding.
I know he has a lot of friends on here, and I want to say a few things.
I met Pat in 2000 at a rave, he was living in NYC at the time, and dating a friend who introduced us, I remember “This is Pat, he loves Industrial music, you guys should talk”
Shortly afterwards he moved to a house in Winchester, MA. and we began working on music together.
We went on vacations, Pat always hooked us up with plane tickets, and made sure we had a blast. At his core, he was a kind and generous person who always wanted to be sure that everyone around him was having fun.
He was the life of the party, and the glue that brought so many close friends together.
We had a science gang, “East Side Science Squad” (with way more than 4 members 🙂 )
We had a group, called, “The Council of Doom” which we all had T-shirt’s.
We had our own holiday, every Friday after Thanksgiving, “The Day of Unlearning”
Pat was a master of his trade, he was one of those geniuses who did not need college to become a sought after professional in his field. He designed and maintained many data storage systems for large companies. His encouragement to work with technology was the catalyst for me, being able to bridge my world of music and audio with a career in tech.
Pat also introduced me to a roommate, who would then a few months later, introduce me to my wife, Jessica.
I mention all these things to express my gratitude to Pat.
He has taught me so much, I would not be the person I am today without him.
I know his impact on everyone who knew him was profound in some way, and having touched so many peoples lives, his memory will live on, and he will always be with us.

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