corsicanguppy

a huge ask

No, it's a huge request. This isn't a used car lot.

And after so many decades, many abusers are just dead now.

I'm told that the time it takes a polar bear to discover, stalk, hunt, kill and partially devour you is on the order of 10 minutes.

Most people do not survive a polar bear passing them in the bush.

It's both cool and sad that you could interact and give witness to a species before its inevitable collapse.

Mainly sad.

In December '94 I was running through Banff at a speed that was ridiculous for winter driving even before we consider it was a white '91 geo metro and 1am in a snowstorm.

And there it was. But, night-zoned and lulled by the hyperspace homage in snowflakes lit by the headlights, the first thing I saw was just a series of knees.

"Oh fuckfuckfuck," said my brain to itself as I executed a classic Moose Check maneuvre at an ungodly rate of speed in absolutely unsuitable conditions, missing the moose by a distance smaller than the amount of caring our conservative political candidate really has for the plebes he wants to manage for fun and profit.

After an interminable series of fishtails from trying to straighten up after going nearly sideways on the slippery roads in the blizzardy dark in a frightenly remote part of the highways, in a car that wouldn't be seen in the ditch or ravine by searchers or passers-by until some later Spring, I managed through luck and wordless appeals to a capricious god to straighten the attitude of the car and keep it on the roadway.

And my future wife woke up in the passenger seat and asked what was going on, sleepily wondering why the turns are so sharp and why I'm cursing.

"It's fine; but I saw a moose back there. Really close, too!"

The one physical thing I took with me when I left the infantry in the '90s is a pair of really-new standard issue Canadian combat boots.

I wore them in the Calgary winters, walking to work with a looped cassette of Thompson Twins Cool World Play with Me, trimmed as a form of 1990s pre-CD-era 'repeat'. I stomped all the way there for my 2-hour shift (fuck you conservatives and your shitty labour laws) and I'd stomp home or off to the other job.

When I went to America, 5 years after that, I had a chance to buy a really-new standard Canadian Navy 'surplus' overcoat with the zipped liner. There was no NJ winter that thing didn't dominate. I'd gone back to sneakers for the years I was in America, but I was rarely cold.

But the sneakers hosed the bursa in my heels and now I'm relegated to sandals that are neither the boots I love nor fitting with the overcoat. Both sit on the closet pending a bilateral arthroscopic calcaneoplasty. whee. I'm on the list, and pre-covid the list was 2 weeks long but I wasn't a suitable candidate. Now I am, but the indolent hillbillies, used during COVID as a cheap political tool - by the cons again - bullied the docs into rage-quitting; and the wait list is a year.

My hatred of our pseudo-aristocracy for their hatred of people aside, the navy overcoat that fit so well in new Jersey and the combat boots I could kill in a series of Calgary winters remain my favourite pieces of clothing.

No. I am Spartacus.

Wait, that doesn't make any sense.

You've never worn a hat?

Huh. This is an S10. Duck and cover I guess.

I'm running ZFS at two jobs and my homelab.

Terabytes and terabytes. Usually presented to the hypervisor as a lun and managed on the VM itself.

I don't run proxmox, though. Some ldoms, some esx, soon oVirt.

Didn't one politician this year try to stand up to AIPAC and end up losing to an incredibly well-funded opponent? If so it would definitely have a chilling effect.

Are you me?

This guy wouldn't use an S to pluralize "e-mail". The UK school system didn't leave children behind.