That may be my longest diary title since these:

1. "We Fall from the Choco-Cloud into the Chocolate Lagoon" Shelving the Entropy and Atrophy Trophy
2. A Sunset, the Speedboat, a Cascade of Ocean Mist, and The Dolphin's Cry: I Wanna Change My Clothes, My Hair, My Face!

For the past several days, I have been on crutches. From NO recent injury, my right foot has swollen to the point of pain and I cannot put weight on it. Last night, my crutches got tripped up by a turn on the carpet. When I slammed on my right foot to recover, I shrieked in pain and crashed backward onto the floor.

"It's times like these you learn to live again:"

YouTube Link

It's times like these that lead me to change. Was it long ago I had those 4 AM lifting sessions followed by the 5 AM cardio at BRC? Where I am now and where I was before—well, what immediately comes to mind comes from a band I first listened to at 15. Thus, Blackhawk provides some insight of this linear application:

...from I Can Sure Smell the Rain...

...passing by Almost a Memory Now...

...to Every Once in a While...

...with a resolution of That's Just About Right:

"Real life", he says, "is the hardest impression
It's always movin' so I let it come through"
"And that", I say, "is the glory of true independence"
"Just do what you do what you just gotta do"

Your blue might be gray, your less might be more
Your window to the world might be your own front door
Your shiniest day might come in the middle of the night
That's just about right

This personification of a music catalog in the stead of my fitness relationship provides a colorful, spatial space. It's apt—we've been together since April 2018 with all the compulsory ups and downs...

...I'm in love with Fitness.

With a clean-shaven face that demands an Adventurer's beard, a Carnivore's hunger, and a Dreamer's crutches, I now repeat what I once said in 2018, "I leave the freezing of fears and the felicity of foods and head out to the les mauvaises terres à traverser tonight."

A couple of nights ago while I was considering re-upping my year-long cell phone plan—how I do love those Ryan Reynolds' Christmas cards—I found myself in a sentimental mood. On a whim, I googled my childhood home phone number. It's like that Garth Brooks lyrics, but for me:

Just for laughs, I dialed her old number
But no one knew her name

Google provided only a single link for my search results. The website preview connected the number to my Mom, who passed away in 2015.

I clicked the link. Everything was what I expected except for one GLARING entry: there was a phone number there that could not possibly be hers! I googled the strange number: it is for a couple who are 1-2 years younger than me.

Here's the kicker: this couple lives 0.8 miles away from my college girlfriend's childhood home. Curious! I looked up the address on Google Maps—I once played chess at the nearby park that's a 5-minute stroll away. You might say, "Well, that's a nifty coincidence, perhaps unlikely, but you lived in close proximity to one another, right? It's not mind-bending. Perhaps the site had its wires crossed?"

The thing is, my college girlfriend lived 740 miles away!

Thus my Mom is randomly associated with a phone number that's shared by a couple who's just a 2-minute drive from my old girlfriend's place, closer than what Walmart Neighborhood Market is from me today. This is in a town of 18,000 that took me 11+ hours to reach via interstate. When I flew, I had to board 3 flights to get there. Incidentally, when my Mom moved, she moved 20 hours down I-40 in the opposite direction!

And this is random? That's the story we're going with?

This unnerves me.

I spend a lot of my time trying to make my world make sense. I don't have a problem with some random number being associated with my Mom. But, how is THAT neighborhood connected? In the scheme of things, it does not matter at all—just a tumble over the improbable. When folks say "stranger things have happened," this has GOT to be one of those things!

On a no-way-whatsoever-related note: how does one enter the Powerball? Followup: how ethical would it use those winnings to acquire a tiny island in the South Pacific, declare it as a sovereign state (thereby avoiding taxes), and set up an operation to sell Snoopy knockoffs? It may be improbable, but I'm banking on a Snoopy comeback. That Red Baron bit is gonna be gold.

The geek in me
Needs you to be
The code in my script
To debug and see
'Cause I'm a geek in love
And it's you I run to
Yeah, the geek in me
Needs the tech in you

-ChatGPT's parody of Shania Twain's The Woman in Me

Signifying something, this is the first post I have composed in Linux since my return to Bartlett, specifically written on Linux Mint 21.2 with FocusWriter and Visual Studio Code. While I dabbled with Corel Linux at the turn of the millennium, I never had it on any of my computers in those days. So, it is a weird bit of trivia for me.

I have not had a Linux box since living near campus. I had that New Year's Resolutions of embracing the Google ecosphere while adopting the user experience of a Mac user.

In practice, I soon had my own homebrew Ruby setup running Jekyll, so how can I say I am anything like a typical Mac user? I have nary a thread of hipster duds! And instead of a pair of cool specs, if I cannot see the screen, you better believe it that I blew the thing UP! I find that most disappointing about my M1 Macbook: instead of using the increased resolution to provide sweet-sweet, crisp fonts, they just all go small on it. Instead of having the consumer in mind, they tap into this desire to belong to The Cool Kids Table:

"Don't be like your mom, mom jeans are cool now!"

"Tattoo-faced singers have an unknown depth and are in no way pretentious!"

"Squinting your eyes at the display makes you look...mysterious..."

Diatribe aside, why am I bringing Linux back—instead of a Suit & Tie, it's a...

I'm in my Linux shell and CLI, shell and CLI, CLI
I'm in my Linux shell and CLI, CLI
Can I teach you a few commands?

"Your AI buddy"

I suppose it is for every reason I have ever written on the subject in the past. But, I like the additional control I have over my computer. We as a society have slowly adopted a certain control over our e-devices, so much so that to free our phones, the phrase is called jailbreak.

Isn't that absurd?

I fear this mentality will extend beyond the confines of software/hardware. At what point must we sign off on an Acceptable Use Policy of our own lives? I totally voided my warranty during that zombie apocalypse.