Canopyflyer

I still use a Yahoo account I created back in 95 (I think, it might be a little later).

I have named some of the cars I have owned.

1970 Chevy Impala: Liberty. I purchased it from a guy that lived in Liberty, KY.

1997 Nissan 200SX SE-R: Dot. It was one of ~700 200SX’s made that year that was the Pacific Blue color and it reminded me of Carl Sagan’s “The Pale Blue Dot” documentary.

2003 Acura TL: Sally. No specific reason, other than it just fit the personality of the car.

2014 Camry (current car): Pearl. It’s painted in Toyota’s Cosmic Mica Gray and it glitters in the sunlight, vaguely reminiscent of a pearl.

Just for reference, I’m 54 and have had a license since 1986. Liberty was my first car. There are a few cars not mentioned above, because I just never named them. The 200SX was the second SE-R I owned. The first was a 92 Sentra SE-R, which I liked a lot more than the 200SX, it just never got a name.

USA here.

1. Indifferent to sports. Football, baseball, and basketball are at best insipid. Hockey is at least somewhat interesting, but that’s only because my youngest plays. Even then, I do not follow it.

2. Don’t care about guns. Yes, I can shoot. It pissed my right-wingnut, Kyle Shittenhouse worshiping brother off to no end, when I could out shoot him, with his own guns. Did I mention he has 6 years in the Army and practiced with his weapons at least once a week? It took me maybe 10 shots of practice to start being more accurate. My vision is worse than his too. Still have no interest in owning one. I keep a Claymore next to my bed for social occasions at home.

Professionally, not at all. My company doesn’t use Crowdstrike. Unlike one of my former employers who had thousands of systems down for days. The Field techs there made a killing in overtime.

Personally: My (54m) oldest kid (17m) was stuck at Laguardia for 10 hours. Fortunately, a great gate agent at LGA got him on a flight that evening, with a first class upgrade, to get him into an airport about 1.5 hour drive from the house. I picked him up at midnight and home by 1:30.

Two fish in a tank.

One turned to the other and asked; “How do we drive this thing?”

How do blind skydivers know when to deploy their chute?

When the leash goes slack.

Here is a derivative of that one:

Two guys walk into a bar. The third one ducked.

What do you get when you pull the wings off of a fly?

A walk.

No and I’m already to that point.

It’s just my two older brothers that are left. One is a narcissist and not worth my time. The other is a rabid Gravy SEAL who would rather have Kyle Shittenhouse as his brother than me.

It’s not just politics that separates me from them, there is a lot of family history of disrespect and attempted abuse.

54m here, can I join in?

Pay yourself first. You pay rent, you pay a car payment, add paying yourself first. That payment can be as little as $1, but it goes into a savings fund AND IT IS GONE, just like any other payment EVERY MONTH. When the savings fund gets to an amount that it can be rolled into something that makes more interest, do it. But that money is GONE, for all intents and purposes. When do you use it? You will know, when you can pull it out for something that is not an emergency, but rather something that will last the rest of your life. No, cars don’t count.

Cars, trucks, etc… Here is the thing about cars and trucks. THEY ARE A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY AND THE NUMBER ONE WAY YOU STAY ENSLAVED TO MAKING PAYMENTS ON EVERYTHING ELSE. But wait Canopyflyer, you say with a roll of your eyes, I HAVE to have a car, because there’s no public transit where I live. Dude, I live in the United States, no one takes public transit here, I fucking know. So thanks for dropping anchor there admiral obvious. Buy the most reliable and cheap to run car you can possibly find. That doesn’t mean an old shitbox. Buy a car that’s a couple of years old that has a reputation for reliability and has already lost that first year’s depreciation. I currently drive a 10 year old Camry LE, that I bought with 7k on the odo. Using a car to show how big your cock isn’t, is the epitome of stupidity and is disastrous to your future financial health. If you’re driving the latest SmallCockMobile with a $1k payment +… You are a complete fucking moron.

CAVEAT ON VEHICLES: If you can have someone else pay for it, then sure, go buy that ego mobile. That includes the company you work for, or if you’re in a business where you have to have a certain type of vehicle. I have a great deal of respect for a person that works with their hands and needs a truck to carry their tools.

OK, maybe that’s two bits of advice, but both are financial, so I’m sticking with it.

Frell.

Not Allomancy? Being a full Mistborn would be cool, but I’d take being a coin shot.

Hemalurgy is right out of course. Really don’t want spikes sticking in me anywhere.

It was the Halloween boogie 1999 at Skydive Greene County in Xenia, OH. We were jumping a CASA 212’ which at the time was the largest jump ship in the US. It was Sunday morning, first load of the day and I was sitting up by the cockpit. The previous night was filled by a party and a ton of beer.

At about 9000 feet my bowels started rumbling, at 10k I released. All 30 people on the plane started gagging. The pilots opened the rear door to air out the cabin. As any pilot will tell you, a fart at altitude is a dangerous thing.

The Drop Zone Owner warned us that if he catches the culprit, that person would receive a permanent ban from the DZ.

I was suspected, as were a couple of people that had been sitting near me, as that part of the plane is where the smell was most intense. But no one fessed up.

I jumped there for another 7 years.

Do you think it’s Oreseur, or Tensoon?

I’ve seen that exact scene in Atlanta trying to get to Alpharetta from 75 S by 675.

Dungeons and Dragons miniatures and all the paints I want to paint them. When I was a kid, I couldn’t afford more than just the characters I was playing.

Now I have hundreds and my wife, who has a lot of artistic talent, has taken to painting them with enthusiasm.

I just saw my last sentence and cringed. I meant to say there’s no reason for you to NOT crack a book and start learning. Sorry about that.

Programming, or Software Development is not Sysadmin work. While becoming a Software Developer will give you some Sys Admin skills, that’s the long way to go about it, if your primary goal isn’t to be a Developer.

Experience sells in Information Technology. Next in line are Certifications. Getting a helpdesk job would be your first step. While working on the helpdesk, start studying for certifications. It is said that Microsoft Engineers drive their Chevy’s, Network Engineers drive BMW’s, and Linux engineers fly their private jet to work.

If you have no experience, then start looking for low end help desk jobs and start studying ASAP. There are many online study guides and courses.

Self study here, but I’ve been in IT for almost 30 years now.

For someone that is determined most of the certifications out there can be attained through self study. That’s how I got my MCSE, CCNA, Red Hat Linux, and CLP (Certified Lotus Professional, yeah I know, no one has ever heard of it). I studied while working a helpdesk job and was hired by the sysadmin department of the same company. I attained the CLP, because at the time 2002 or so, there were not many Lotus/ Domino admins and there were a lot of companies, particularly insurance companies and Coca Cola, used it extensively. Being a Lotus/Domino admin got me a lot of attention at the time, but today it is worthless.

Knocking door to door with a cert and no actual experience will be a much tougher route to take, but it is definitely possible.

If it is what you want to do, there is no reason for you to crack a book today and start learning.

Around the kids, when they were young, we used French for those things we didn’t want them to know about. She’s fluent and I don’t really speak it at all, but took it back in High School and remembered enough vocabulary to make it work.

Today, both our boys have taken years of Spanish and they speak in Spanish for those things that they don’t want us to know. LOL

Around other adults, my wife and I have a system of looks that we give each other. We can have an entire conversation just by giving each other looks.

Oh thank god. I was starting to think I was the only one.