I recall a fan theory that the Rugrats cartoon was actually a figment of one of the character’s imagination as their mind unraveled following off-screen traumatic events.

Basically the writer took it as a challenge to explain a children’s cartoon show in the edgiest way possible

My high horse

sudo apt update/sudo apt upgrade

It is actually very easy to break your install by doing this if you have made a habit of installing random .deb files from around the internet

APT can’t update things that are not in the repository and .deb files typically only work for a specific version of the OS (which is to say, they will probably work when you install them but break when you update).

You should in general never install a .deb file directly. Sometimes it might be necessary in order to install a program that the developer doesn’t support, but that lack of support should be a flashing warning light that the package will probably break something in the future.

There are ways to purge your system of orphaned .deb installs, and I suggest doing that before large upgrades

If you’ve never seen Cabin in the Woods and even slightly like the horror genre, do not read any more about it. That movie is absolutely the best if you just go in completely blind

Back in the day my college had very strict filtering on the WiFi. I learned how to use SSH tunneling through PuTTY to bypass the firewall to connect to X-Fire. I was so 1337.

I can still hear the ripping jeans sound effect

Shut it!

In 2008 or so I was in the college bookstore coffee shop and a girl I’d never met asked me to use my laptop to look up this video on YouTube. She stood behind me and watched while I laughed but when the video we over she was gone and I never saw her again

In Soviet Russia, bar keep tabs on YOU!

Wild animals are wild.

I once rescued an injured duckling from our cat and nursed it back to health.

I fed and watered it several times a day while it convalesced. Each time I reached my hand in the box that tiny adorable creature thrashed its wings and bit my fingers.

After about 3 days I had had enough of it biting the hand that feeds. It was barely larger than a marshmallow but it was kicking my ass.

I decided it must be strong enough so I returned it to its mother, who was conveniently still in the nearby pond. It launched itself toward her and literally ran across the water to be reunited.

That part was touching, so I guess it was worth the effort, but I learned a valuable lesson. Imagine if instead of a tiny bird it had been a dangerous predator with fangs and claws

Suuuuper don’t eat that. Heavy weight gear oil is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted and I had only a tiny amount of it

Maybe actual excrement tastes worse, but I wasn’t curious enough to try tasting that

I think the 2009 icon depicts a paper portfolio folder next to an LCD monitor. The computer case is elsewhere under the desk.

The 2026 icon depicts only the LCD monitor

THERE WERE NEVER ANY COOKIES!

I just wanted to say, I enjoy your writing style. You very vividly illustrated your emotions

Thanks for answering honestly. You really painted a picture, which is distressingly relatable. I hope you feel better soon. I’m rotting rioting rooting (ha, autocorrect wanted me to be much more metal!) for you

I have said “schfourteen-teen” about once per week for the past 20 years

…I’m not sure anyone has ever gotten the reference

I did that too, but back then it was called Backtrack Linux. I bought a special Atheros chipset WiFi card for my laptop’s PCMCIA slot. The built-in 802.11b WiFi card worked under Linux but only by using the Windows ME driver in NDISWrapper, which didn’t support promiscuous mode.

The Atheros chipsets could be configured (by flashing the firmware with a blob I got from a BBS, if I recall) to capture the traffic from nearby wireless networks. In particular, I wanted to pick up the signal from when a device first connects. There was a bug in Windows XP that could cause the WiFi to drop briefly, then promptly reconnect. By triggering that bug over and over I could capture a lot of reconnect packets in a short time frame.

Then I’d save the data to a big file and pipe it to Aircrack and extract the Wired Equivalent Privacy password.

I was a 1337 H4XX0|2 B-)

I think you might actually have a black hole cat

I agree with the consensus that this was a good thing to do.

It was perfect to leave before the shopper could reject it because it allows her to save face. Either she did need it but was too proud to admit it, or she actually didn’t need it and can just pay it forward.

Since you left quickly it made it clear there was no expectation that she should pay it back to you specifically, which could have had unsavory implications

I haven’t noticed this at all and now I’m concerned that I’ve interacted with/upvoted bots :/