The marketing on this was horrible as well. I was 6-7 in 1987 and I didn’t even know this was a He-man movie until I saw it years later on HBO.

First thought was, you don’t need to update an Azure. Second thought was tech people really aren’t good at coming up with unique names.

Sabrina the Teenager Witch - the one from the 90s. It’s super corny but my daughter loves it, so we watch an episode or two after dinner.

I look him up and down. I’ve seen it a thousand times. He is all bravado and boot jingles. Dressed like he stepped straight out of a Western Warehouse. I could tell those shiny boots had never stepped foot on a ranch. Just puffed-up pride wrapped in a cowboy hat, trying to mask the desperation of someone who’s never been anywhere else. And doesn’t realize he is the one getting fucked by the system.

“You’ll be seeing me soon, huh?” I say, watching his eyes flicker. “Let me tell you something, partner. If you don’t straighten out that attitude of yours—if you don’t drop this little act and do your job like a professional—I’ll find someone else to sell this house.” I let the words sink in before delivering the knife twist. “Maybe a dame.”

His mouth opens, then shuts.

“Oh yeah,” I continue, my voice smooth as the whiskey he probably pretends to drink neat. “I’ll bring in one of those ‘progressive libs’ you despise so much. Maybe someone fresh out of California, with a Prius and pronouns in her email signature. Someone who’ll take your commission, your sale, and leave you standing in the dust.”

His face twitches. The bravado cracks. He swallows hard. His grip loosens on my hand.

“Good talk,” I say, finally letting go of his hand. “Now get to work.”

My wife and I sat across from each other, eyes heavy with the kind of exhaustion you don’t shake with a good night’s sleep. The school had made its choice—they put our boy in harm’s way, ignored the words on paper that were supposed to protect him. An IEP, they called it. Just another stack of bureaucracy to them. To us, it was supposed to be a shield. But shields don’t work when the people holding them don’t give a damn.

So we made our choice too. He wasn’t going back. Not to that school. Not to a system that saw him as a problem instead of a person. We are taking matters into our own hands—homeschooling.

And Texas? We were done. Finished. Washing our hands of it. This place chews people up and spits them out, and we aren’t waiting around to be next. Somewhere out there, there had to be a place where education means more than lip service, where kids aren’t just numbers on a budget sheet.

Tomorrow, we meet the realtor. Sell the house. Cut the ties. A clean break. A new start. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find a place where they gave a damn.

Tums or Pepto will give you instant relief, while you wait for the proton pump inhibitors to kick in.

I have 6 programmable keys on my keyboard. I have macros for a few snippets that I have to type a lot and my email because my company has a stupid long name that I’m sick of typing out.

Karma - there are way too many shitty people who just continue to be shitty because nothing ever comes back to bite them. Meanwhile, people who actually try to help are kicked around the most.

Zebra F-402 - I write really small and their fine tips flow great but don’t run. Plus they’re cheap enough that I don’t care when my wife or kids steal them out of my desk.

I was in the military and we had this big conference table that could fit a good 12 people at. About once a month our boss would give us the key for the weekend and we’d play Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, and Red Alert 2 for 12-18 hours straight while pounding back Mountain Dew Code Red.

A few year back, I took my daughter to an urgent care clinic. She was around 2 or 3 years old. While in the waiting room their office phone rang and my daughter jumped and went, “What was that?” because she had never heard a landline ring before.

Inserts disk: click, click, click

“fuck, I knew I should have put that on a CD-RW.”

Believe it or not, I recently have to script transferring files to and from a BBS. Got to love working with state governments.

It tastes nothing like OK Soda

For those who are younger than 40 or not from one of the few test market cities - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Soda

Avenged Sevenfold - Exist is a 15 minute song that is about the big bang all the way to Earth forming and cooling.

American Pie - Don McLean it’s the history of rock and roll from the 50s through the 60s

I’m curious at what age you read it. Because I first read it at 15 and thought it was the best book ever. I would even recommend it to people for years.

Then I read it again in my late 20s and had the same reaction you did. I thought he just came off as a whiny little shit. I still feel embarrassed that I recommended that book to people for over 10 years.

I remember telling my wife this after I reread it (she was someone I recommended it to) and she was like, “yeah, I didn’t want to say anything at the time, but I hated it.”

I tested out Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mint before landing on openSUSE. It by far has been the most stable. Especially when dealing with my Nvidia GPU and getting CUDA working.