punkwalrus

punkwalrus, 1 year ago

Depends on “how dumb?” I had a Motorola RZR before my first iPhone(2), then before that, some camera flip phone (Motorola E815), and before that, an SCH-3500 flip phone. Before that, land lines only.

punkwalrus, 1 year ago

Being poor. In college in the 90s, my lead sysadmin couldn’t afford Minix for this system we had, so we tried to compile Linux on it. Three days later, we still failed, and gave up, but this was kernel 0.93 or something, so it had a ways to go. But I learned so much from that experience without paying for a university course or something.

Years later, I bought a copy of Red Hat 6 at a Costco. Windows 95/98 was big, I didn’t know how to pirate it, so I went back to Linux and it worked great on my “franken-puters” cobbled together from spare parts dumpster diving. Steep learning curve back then, though. Then I brought it to my workplace, went from UNIX admin to Linux admin, and soon I preferred it to Windows. Been my daily driver for decades, now.

Am I an evangel? A little, but I find that “right tool for right job” is a better approach. Linux is great for everything, BUT a comprehensive system like MS Office AND Active Directory simply does not exist in FOSS space yet; everything is cobbled together and a kludge still trying to catch up.

Obsessed? Kinda. I just assembled some ansible scripts to roll my own distro. Why? To see if I could.

punkwalrus, 1 year ago

While I never had it happen, it could give you wrong command line switches that do damage. For example, when I asked how I could list volumes attached to an AWS instance, it gave me a “modify-volume” command instead of “describe-volume” command. Thankfully, I caught that before I cut and paste it.

punkwalrus, 1 year ago

I was told this, too, but when I got to Functions and Analytical Geometry, they started suggesting calculators. Now kids have laptops, gees.

punkwalrus, 1 year ago

This is so true. That’s why there’s no shame in using Google or Duckduckgo or even Chatgpt. You have to know enough to phrase the right question, know how to filter the right answer, and then use it.

I can Google a Chinese dictionary, but that won’t make me fluent in Chinese.

punkwalrus, 2 years ago

I have shrapnel in my leg, it’s copper and brass, and I have had MRIs with no ill effects. Fucks up some CAT scans and xrays, but only if they are scanning that leg. It’s so small, though, that modern metal detectors don’t register it anymore.

punkwalrus, 2 years ago

Well, not just cakes are stored in these; sometimes rolls, cookies, or rotisserie chickens. Also the joke is that we care it’s loud because then we have announced that we are eating late at night. Sometimes this wakes people, and sometimes you just want to snack and not have a conversation, or at the very least be polite to people sleeping. Same with the microwave beeping three times loudly when you heated something up.

Also, “big cakes in the fridge?” implies that cakes are sold and stored by the slice. They are, but they also come in wedged shaped boxes made from this plastic. Also it is usually leftovers, like there was a whole cake, but now it’s a third of a cake left on some weird slippery cardboard tray. You had a party, most of the cake was eaten by others, but you didn’t want to waste the last bit. It takes up a lot of room, is fragile, and spoils quickly. But your significant other is on the couch sleeping off a hangover, so being quiet is considerate.

punkwalrus, 2 years ago

In high school, we had a science fiction club. I was vice president in my senior year. A year after I graduated, I was hanging out with some fellow graduates and one of them said, “How come you hated Christine so much?”

“Who?”

“Christine Smith. The blonde girl?”

“The blond girl who wore all those surfer shirts?”

“Yeah. Whats so bad about her?”

“Nothing. She was always so quiet. I barely remember her.”

“Yeah, well she practically threw herself at you, and you treated her like she didn’t exist.”

“She did?”

“Yeah. We even tried to make it easy. We set her up at parties to talk to you, and you just acted like she wasn’t even there. You were so rude.”

“I literally had no idea. I totally would have dated her.”

“Yeah, well, too late. She got so depressed after you graduated, that she ended up dropping out of everything and tried to kill herself. Shes been hospitalized and her parents moved away to be with her. Like, couldn’t you gave even said hi? Just because you made vice president of the club didn’t mean you were better than her or something.”

I literally had no idea.

punkwalrus, 2 years ago

The rich don’t want to impress you, they want to impress other rich people.

punkwalrus, 2 years ago

I lack that enzyme genetically. I am allergic to alcohol, and so when my stomach can’t digest beans corn, or even eggs, they sit in my intestines, start to ferment, and I am in a world of hurt.

punkwalrus, 2 years ago

Worked a job where I had to be a Linux admin for a variety of VMs. To access them, I needed an VPN that only worked inside the company LAN, and blocked internet access. it was a 30 day trial license on day 700somthing, so it had a max 5 simultaneous connection limit. Access was from my heavily locked down laptop. Windows 7 with 5 minutes locking Screensaver. The ssh software was an unknown brand, “ssh.exe” which only allowed one connection at a time in a 80 x 24 console window with no ability to copy and paste. This went to a bastion host, an HPUx box on an old csh shell with no write access to your home directory due to a 1.4mb disk quota per user. Only one login per user, ten login max, and the bastion host was the only way to connect to the Linux VMs. Default 5 minute logout for inactivity. No ssh keys allowed. No scripting allowed, was like typing over 9600 baud.

I quit that job. When asked why, I told them I was a Linux administrator and the job was not allowing me to administrate. I was told “a poor carpenter always blames his tools.” Yeah, fuck you.

punkwalrus, 2 years ago

It really depends. Autographs can seem very tangible, but photos are a better option IMHO, because I can show them off as “See, I was there, I didn’t buy this off eBay,” or something. But it really depends on what you want. IMHO? Neither appeal to me. Now, it may be because I used to run these things, and have met celebrities on and off the show floor. I see them as people in a weird profession, and feel a little… skeevy? Like I don’t name drop until it’s vital to the story, because I feel like I am using them. I have friends among these ranks to this day, and sometimes we hang out and shoot the shit, because they know I won’t ask them for anything. And they know I won’t spread gossip. Now, some people have wanted to take photos with ME, as “omg, that’s the president of Katsucon Entertainment” when I was that, but it was rare. I think celebs did it more than my attendees. Maybe as a scrapbook thing for them. So there are photos out there with some of the Power Rangers, for example, that I don’t have a copy of, but one of the actors has in his or her personal collection.

Embarrassment: I am in some of these people’s photo albums, and I don’t know who the fuck they were. Just a selfie in the green room. Because when I am at the con, I am working, not schmoozing. So the photos are probably pretty bad: just sweaty old me with a confused “uh, okay” stare in the photo.

I know with Stan Lee, and I name drop him because of the controversy of people taking advantage of him in his later years, I saw him at a Comic Con, practically being dragged to imbalance by a staff that was churning through attendees like an assembly line. This was about 4 years before his passing. He looked so old, tired, and frail. I was not working that con, I was working my table, but I just… felt so bad for him. And they were so strict about the rules. They actually walled him of with pipe and drape over 6 feet high so people couldn’t snap a pic of him while in line. You got something like 15 seconds with him, he was allowed to sign one thing, one snapshot, and answer one question. Then ZAP you were ushered out of the area. I recall it was something $210 for those 15 seconds.

One guest I worked with said the Marvel booth was terrible about how long she could spend with attendees. That’s why she often had her own table, to sit and chat with her fans. And some celebrities, like Mark Hamill or Patrick Stewart, are fucking pros at this. I never worked with them, but I have seen Mark, sleep deprived and exhausted, be as kind to the first person in line as the last. I feel like despite it all, he’s GRATEFUL of the opportunity. I can’t imagine the crazy either of them has to put up with. I saw a video where Patrick hugged an abuse survivor, and while that is amazing and kind, I bet con security just cringed in anticipation.

So whatever you pick, I guess my point is, be kind to them. They work hard, and they put up with a lot. It’s such a weird and surreal experience for a human to endure as a job.