Canopyflyer

Part whirlwind, part most stability I’ve experienced in my life, and part adjusting to a new norm.

My life in the mid 00’s was… Interesting. Mrs Canopyflyer and I met in 2004, got married in 2005, moved 400 miles for her job in 2006 and baby #1 was born in 2007.

So by 2008 I was getting used to:

1. Being a newish husband.

2. Being in a completely new city where I knew no one.

3. Being a new father.

Farscape

Yes.

The multithread Passmark score on that CPU is 13254.

That’s many times what you really need for the work you’re describing above. There are a lot of games it could play pretty easily and games are far more demanding than a Zoom call.

The 7000 series Latitudes are actually OK machines for the most part. Once in a while Dell will have a model with a problem, but not enough to really worry about. As far as storage goes, spreadsheets and the like do not take a lot of room. If you want to lug around a lot of media files, like movies and TV shows then you will run out pretty quickly. Otherwise I wouldn’t worry about it.

For my personal systems and those for my family I usually pick up older Dell laptops/towers and refurb them myself. I usually get several more years out of them. The system I’m typing this on is a Dell Precision 7550 that I rebuilt a year ago. Its predecessor was a Precision 7540 that my youngest uses to run games on and do his homework. My 7550 runs Battlefront II and BSG Deadlock easily.

9 to 10 hours a day for me.

But I work from home and work in IT. Also, my two main D&D groups play online as we’re spread out all over the country.

Japanese Literature Course. Dr John (what he liked to be called) was the professor and I had him for an English class already and liked him.

The class was not overly large, maybe 12 people and we met in a conference room rather than a typical classroom. This event was a couple of weeks into the class and Dr John was getting increasingly… Erratic… I guess is the way to describe him. The class was supposed to be more about open discussion than lecture. However, it was full of sophomores who for the most part were used to sitting for lectures. I think Dr John was getting more and more erratic during class in a hope to get the students participating. It had the opposite effect unfortunately, until he started saying some things that I thought were just wildly incorrect and I called him out on it.

I literally got a look on my face, which he noticed instantly and he asked what my opinion was… And 19 year old me replied to my doctorate level professor; “Dr John I think you’re full of shit.”

Everyone’s eyes went wide and people looked stunned, including me because it was an instinctive reaction on my part. I fully expected to get kicked out of the class, but Dr John actually smiled and asked; “Ok Mr Flyer, please explain to me just how I’m full of shit.”

And I did… At least I tried to as at the time I was just a 19 year old moron attempting to take on a middle aged man that had decades of study. What ensued for the rest of that period was he and I going back and forth. Of course he easily dismembered all of my arguments, but he was respectful and we had a real dialog going on. I felt I learned more in that one hour than the previous three semesters.

While that day helped break some of the other people out of their shells, I ended being the only person in the class that earned an “A”.

My oldest when I pick him and my youngest up from school one day:

“Dad, have you ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons.”

Me with tear in my eye thinking about all the books, miniatures, dice, and other accessories from playing D&D since 1978. Only stopping when they were born because I didn’t have time and my wife and I had moved 500 miles to a new city. This was before the days of Roll20 and other VTT’s and I didn’t know anyone in this area back then.

Tonight is leftover night.

Chicken in Red Thai Curry sauce over rice that I made this past weekend.

Minoxidil has a very narrow efficacy.

P&G’s project was aimed primarily to cure baldness in… Women and not men. Surprising I know, but back in those days baldness in women was viewed as a more lucrative target market. They were also going for much stronger and broader results than what Minoxidil generally provides in order to compete with it. Minoxidil was developed by Upjohn in the 50’s.

Je ne parle pas Francais.

Funny enough, I’m good friends with the woman who was the lead researcher of Proctor and Gambles’ program for a hair growth product back in the 90’s. Ultimately, P&G was forced to abandon the effort after many many years.

My friend stated she could grow hair on a cue ball. The only issue was the cue ball wouldn’t survive the process.

Short story long… It is possible to cure male and female baldness. The only problem is the patient would not survive the toxic cocktail that growing hair requires.

Wind and Truth is my personal longest single book listen as well.

Otfen.

I graduated at 42.

Was I embarrassed? Why would I be?

Any windows you want to restrict access to, plant these things:

Pyracantha

They are no joke. Just remember, if you need that window for emergency egress it will not be a pleasant experience. Probably better than dying, but not by much.

One time, this was back in my skydiving days so a very long time ago, the drop zone’s CASA 212 was down due to a bad hydraulic pump. The pump finally arrived and the DZO asked me to help him install it. He was a certified A&P, I just had a lot of experience wrenching on cars but it allowed me to get a lot of free jumps due to helping him out on things like this.

He handed me the pump, which was a LOT lighter than I expected and told me with a smile: “Don’t drop it.”

In inquired as to how much it cost and he replied: “$10,000.”

I was holding a pump in my hands that weighed barely 10 pounds that cost more than my car (this was circa 1998 or so).

A couple years later the igniter box on the port engine died and I helped him replace it… That was a cool $15000. The engines were about $250,000 a piece back in those days.

When I took a class to get my Concealed Carry Permit, on the very first day the instructor made a very interesting statement.

“If you are somewhere where you feel you need a gun to feel safe… Why are you there in the first place?”

While I did go on to get my permit I never once carried. I never went anywhere where I felt I needed it. If I became uncomfortable at a location, I left.

She still asks on occasion, but she takes me more seriously when I say it’s nothing all that important.

Oh if I’m thinking through something that we both need to have a say in I absolutely share my thoughts as she does with me. j

I had just bought a Camry Hybrid and my wife and I were driving in it doing errands… I have a tell when something is on my mind and my wife invariably asks what it is. Usually it really isn’t anything significant and that time was no different…

Except…

I launched into a very detailed explanation as to how the Toyota Hybrid Synergy system really works and it lasted till we got home… Did I mention we had three stops and we’re on our way to the first?

She has not asked what is on my mind since.

Spite.

Honestly, it was all junk.

A few years ago my wife and I decided to finish the basement. The first step was to clean it out, which involved going through all the junk that I had inherited from various family members. My mom always asserted that all of it was very valuable and CONSTANTLY checked that I still had it all and was taking good care of it.

I went through each item one by one and looked them up. Dishes, nick knacks, all of it. It took me hours. The highest value item was maybe $10. Several large and heavy boxes that I had been obligated to haul around to all of the places I lived for the last 30 years, as my mother constantly asked me about them. It was all worth maybe $100, if I made the effort to attempt to sell it. Which would have taken a lot of time as we’re talking dozens of fragile things. It just was not worth it.

I shoved it all into the trunk of my car and took it to the dump. My Mom died in 2011, so she wasn’t around to check up on all that crap.

God damn I was so pissed. 30 fucking years of hauling that worthless junk around probably cost far more than it was worth. My mother was so insistent that I even had it sitting around taking up space in my basement 12 years after her death. Just another one of her little power plays.