Dreaming of lime gerbils in a cheese sauce

Diaspora is dead and I long ago moved from the big bulk host to thenomad@hackers.town (https://hackers.town/@nomad) for my mastodon activity.

I keep https://wheretofind.me/@nomad up to date so it's best to look there.

With the pending closure of G+ I've created a few new social media identities.

Disapora - https://joindiaspora.com/people/4d01a9df2c17433850000099
Mastodon - @thenomad@mastodon.cloud

I'll also be at least reading here more regularly, though I've long been out of the habit of longform posts so don't know if I'll be saying much here.

I've just posted the URL that points to the Faces of Pride 2024 album. I've posted it restricted because I don't want to feed the scrapers and AIs. If you are logged into DW and can't it but would like to feel free to ping me for access.

(I posted this to my mastodon account then realized that it should be here since it's long-form.)

The discussion of historical Unix file system layout recently came up in a chat so I thought I'd share it here as well. I started in 1985, so can't speak to what came earlier than that. This is based on memory so should not be considered authoritative.

In BSD 4.2 we had / (aka 'root), SWAP, /tmp, /usr, /usr/local (optional, perhaps), and some place for user home directories like /users or /homes. (Or, if you were broken, /mnt). If you had multiple drives user homes frequently went on one of them instead.

There were binaries in /etc (ifconfig being the main one I remember, might also have been shells), as well as /bin & /sbin (which were on /) and /usr/bin & /usr/sbin. /sbin was for things like fsck(8) which weren't for "ordinary users".

On-disk layout was usually something like /, SWAP, /usr, ... The idea was to make / and SWAP as fast as possible (they were on the speediest part of the disk) then put the rest where it could be useful.

There were fun things like /usr/tmp and /usr/log that were writable, so just about every filesystem on the host was RW.

We kept /tmp separate so it couldn't fill / and break things. Likewise /usr was separate because of /usr/tmp and /usr/log having the potential to fill up and break things.

The big thing: disks were small, expensive, and slow so the stuff in / was *just enough* to boot the host. /sbin and /bin had important binaries you'd need to start the system and fix things if mounts failed (e.g. fsck(8)) but nothing else - that all went into /usr/bin.

Eventually Sun wanted to do the "diskless node" thing so they created /var and moved all the writable filesystems out of /usr which could then be common to all hosts.

Over time, as disks got cheaper and larger, someone moved everything out of /bin into /usr/bin, leaving a link behind for us Old Farts.

Then someone else didn't like the idea of /usr/local so created /opt (I think that's Sun's fault as well but won't swear to it).

So we wound up with /, SWAP, /usr (later /usr just became part of /), /var, /homes-type-filesystem, /tmp, /opt, and optional filesystems like /usr/local.

I hope this top-of-the-head recollection was sufficiently understandable and at least slightly interesting.

The ghost sat on the rim of the well, dangling its legs over the rim and feeling pensive. It had been a while since anyone had been there to make a wish. Had it done something wrong?

Its day brightened as it heard the sounds of two people approaching. A man and a woman came into view holding hands but she didn’t look very happy. The ghost hoped they’d make a good wish it could really sink its teeth into granting, not one of those stupid fame and fortune ones it usually got.

The man said “See, I told you there was a wishing well here.”

“Not much of a well. Where’s the cute little roof and the bucket winder thingie?”

“What does that matter? It has a good reputation.”

“Uggh. I hate it here. You’re always dragging me around to see places and they never live up to what you say. I’m going back to the car. When we get home, we’re through!”

And she stomped off.

The man looked sad for a moment then walked over to the well. Tossing a coin in he said “I wish for companionship. Someone who understands me and likes the things I like. Someone I can understand and support.”

Hearing the man’s wish the ghost realized that two wishes were about to be granted that day. Taking corporeal form for the first time in perhaps hundreds of years it ran over to the man, beaming happily.

The man looked up and said “Who’s a good boy, then?” The ghost barked a friendly greeting and wagged its tail happily. “What are you doing out here all alone? You don't have a collar, are you a stray?”

“Bark!”

“Do you want to come home with me then?”

“BARK!” the little black dog ran a circle chasing its tail then headed off in the direction the girl had gone. “BARK BARK!”

The man followed, chuckling “I see. This well deserves its reputation.”

When I was 13 and just starting to explore my sexuality I read a book called "Everything you wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask."

For the most part it was the usual 1960s-1970s era sex-ed book but the chapter on homosexuality was ... criminal.

It was *incredibly* homophobic. No hope, everything was terrible. It said things like queers will molest anyone they can, spend their lives masturbating in the back of porn theaters, etc etc etc. Based on that description I *knew* that couldn't possibly be me so I must not have been gay, right?

It set me back *years* in acceptance of who I am. It wasn't like I had any counter-examples. This was the late 1970s and we had no good role models.

This is one of the reasons I'm out now, so kids can see someone who is successful and not living the way that book says. Being a counter example is very important to me.

When the book was reprinted in the early 2000s, they updated everything else but left that chapter pretty much intact.

*If* you share this book with a younger or questioning person, make damn sure you discuss the reality Vs what that book says. Better yet, don't share the book with anyone else.

When I was but a young #sysadmin my boss told me a story of a brilliant kernel hacker (of the good kind) who left a 'gift' behind when he moved on to a new gig. I presume this story wasn't true but it sounds so good I wish it were.

Our protagonist hid a bit of code somewhere in the system that would occasionally print a message on a random (active) terminal saying "I want a cookie." If the person using that terminal typed "cookie" the message would stop and all would be well again for a while.

However, if they didn't type cookie the messages would get more and more insistent, saying things like "I want a cookie NOW!"

Eventually, if it didn't get its cookie, it would crash the system.

They couldn't find the code so they just left standing instructions with all users, if the system (known by then as the cookie monster) asked for a cookie, give it a cookie.

If this is true I won't be able to shop at Trader Joe's anymore. :/

https://www.kuow.org/stories/employees-say-capitol-hill-trader-joe-s-closed-store-as-retaliation-for-protest-participation

With the results of this week's city council elections in mind, I hereby change the names of two areas of #Seattle

My neighborhood is now "Nimbyania Amazonia" while Capitol Hill, formerly the #Gayborhood, is now "Amazonian Douchbrovia".

Please make a note of it.

I've assembled my album of photos for Faces of Pride 2019. I hope you find them enjoyable. Please feel free to comment and share.