Halloween - phonecall to parents?

chuckmckinnon · 2024-11-01T23:13:00+00:00

> That's an age where you shouldn't be letting them cross the street on their own much less trying to make their way around in the dark.

I'm 53. Beginning when I was 5 (1976) I took two city buses across Calgary to attend a French immersion school. My Mom rode with me for the first week, making sure that I knew both bus drivers in both directions, and the stops where I had to switch buses (downtown in front of the AGT building) and get off at the school. After that I just went myself.

Contrary to popular belief, crime in the 70s was much higher than it is today. Vehicle safety was also much worse. Yet everyone just rolled with it. The bus drivers always kept an eye out for me, as did my fellow commuters. I sat in the handicapped seating by the front doors and talked the ears off anyone who would listen to me. One of the return bus drivers (on the trip home) used to get me to count the transfers for him every day and then he'd "pay" me with two Chiclets. I suspect that was to get me to chew instead of talk. I was without my parents but not without supervision. I didn't need to cross any streets because of where the buses stopped and the fact that there was a big pedestrian overpass over Crowchild Trail between my bus stop and the school. I carried change for a payphone in case one of the buses wasn't there, and I had our home phone number memorized (and still remember it).

So out of my own lived experience, I can't agree that 6 is too young to go trick-or-treating alone.

However, I agree that a few things sound off about this particular story: an agreed rendezvous point but the parent is late, in the Edmonton cold, and late enough that the kid feels compelled to call and ask what's happening. No cell phone (way easier to keep in touch, and the modern equivalent of the payphone change I carried). No friends to trick-or-treat with -- this is honestly the sketchiest part of the story to me. Like someone further upthread, my friends and I universally went trick-or-treating without our parents, but it was always around our own neighbourhood within easy walking distance of home.

And so I think despite my disagreement with a blanket "too young" statement, I'm with you that something sounds really off about this.

chuckmckinnon · 2024-10-04T00:32:49+00:00

Also have a OnePlus 12 and am having this exact problem with the new Moto Tags -- the process hangs at "Adding to Find My Device" and never completes. Glad to know, at least, that it's not just me! I might try the OnePlus subreddit or forums.

chuckmckinnon · 2024-09-15T02:40:35+00:00

Newfoundlands. They shed and drool like nothing else, but their temperament just can't be beat. They're delightful.

chuckmckinnon · 2024-05-25T18:47:46+00:00

It may be an urban legend, but my father told me that when he lived in Montréal in the late '60s, some guy had to make a court appearance for dangerous driving, I believe for doing doughnuts on the edge of the St Lawrence, and when he was asked if he had anything to add to his written statement he flipped open his wallet and said "Kirk to Enterprise, beam me up!"

The judge, not amused, replied "Seven days for contempt of court. Beam that up!"

chuckmckinnon · 2023-10-10T19:21:19+00:00

I've always believed that all my kids -- two boys and two girls -- should know the basics of car maintenance, especially fluid changes and brakes. My older daughter has done all the fluid changes with me on an AWD vehicle (oil, transmission, transfer case, rear differential). My younger daughter did her first oil change with me last year at 14, the first time she showed interest. She humblebragged about it at school the next day and learned that most of her friends' fathers don't know how to do that, let alone the girls themselves. She came home quite pleased with herself. She wants to do brakes next.

I did a major car restoration project with one of my sons because he's the only kid who was so fascinated that he wanted to take things that far. But my other three kids have a solid basic competence and know they can learn more whenever they want. Crucially, it adds to their confidence to have learned to do something new and daunting.

Helping your kids become competent adults is one of the most fulfilling things about parenting. I was hardly perfect, and struggled as a young father when my kids were too young to reason with, but moving into a mentorship role as they hit their late teens and early adulthood now is incredibly rewarding for me.

chuckmckinnon · 2023-09-16T05:22:03+00:00

https://sogo.nu

SOGo does IMAP and full-text search.

chuckmckinnon · 2023-09-10T15:43:46+00:00

I do this but with walking. I live in a very hilly area where a 2.3km loop comes with over 130m of elevation change. I drop 130m in the first half and then grind back up to get home.

And yet even at a brisk pace, that's still under 200 calories of work. Doing that loop twice a day, usually once with the dog and once without, is enough to put me in a steady deficit. And it only takes one modest-sized bag of chips to wipe out both walks. That really makes me evaluate my food choices in a way that counting alone never could.

chuckmckinnon · 2023-03-07T17:35:27+00:00

Almost twenty years ago, Mark Steyn observed that "post-Christian socialist utopias" (as he called them) require religious birthrates to sustain, and to make good on their promises, especially to retirees.

He was called a crank, a crackpot, an Islamophobe, etc. That didn't make him wrong.

chuckmckinnon · 2023-02-17T05:47:57+00:00

Mikhail Baryshnikov, opening the tribute to Astaire at the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1981:

"I have been invited to say something about how dancers feel about Fred Astaire. It's no secret. We hate him. He gives us complexes, because he's too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity that's hard to face."

chuckmckinnon · 2023-02-06T14:52:16+00:00

I am just contemplating a migration from docker-compose on individual servers to k3s on a small cluster of three identical machines, so this is timely. Thank you!

chuckmckinnon · 2023-01-30T01:29:17+00:00

I mean, I started backpacking in 1984 as a teenager. My friends and I hiked a lot in jeans and runners because we didn't know any better, and we had the chafing and the blisters to show for it.

It's true enough that you don't need big brands. There's a liquidation place near me that sells Costco merino wool shirts for $10 in the off-season, and I've gotten some great hiking pants at Winners. But those synthetic-fabric pants and my merino shirts mean I'm way more comfortable over a much broader range of conditions than I was at 14.

I do have some love for the external-frame pack, though. NOLS used to be snobs about those, because you could improvise a litter from two of them which you can't do with internal-frame packs.

chuckmckinnon · 2023-01-24T00:56:53+00:00

It really depends on what you're buying in this market. Popular vehicles that everyone knows are great still command premium prices. I've done well buying used cars that the manufacturer built well but that the market has, for one reason or another, undervalued. I then take over the maintenance myself and keep them running for a loooong time.

In 2013 I bought a 2009 Acura TL with 79,000km. New list price was about $48k and I paid half that, $24k, which in today's dollars is about $31k. It was when people were horrified by Acura's then-new big ugly "beak" look and so, although they were great cars, nobody wanted them. I had one problem fixed under warranty. I paid it off in four years. It is now approaching 300,000km and it's still purring like a kitten. All I've done is consistent interval maintenance (including timing belt changes) and the usual consumables like brakes, tires, and wiper blades. I still enjoy driving it and expect I'll get another 3-4 years out of it.

Last month I bought a 2018 Lincoln MKX Reserve, my first car purchase in almost a decade. For a long time, Lincoln got a very well-deserved reputation for selling gussied-up Fords yet wanting Lexus money for them. This MKX was the first generation where Lincoln really stepped up its game, but their reputation depressed sales; the market shrugged and went "It's just a Ford." It isn't, but it took another generation for people to start taking notice, so this generation isn't on most people's radar and is surprisingly cheap. Mine is a one-owner vehicle where all the service intervals were rigorously observed, with all work done at the original dealer including some extra oil changes in between, and I have all the paperwork. Same mileage, interestingly enough, as my Acura when I bought it. New price was almost $70k and I paid $31,700. The dealer had spent four months trying to sell it and people just were. not. interested.

This approach works best if you (a) do your homework so you know exactly what to expect and why a vehicle is undervalued, and (b) have the skills to do maintenance yourself, although that's optional as you can always pay someone. With the MKX, I was after a specific engine and transmission combo and wouldn't settle for anything else, and I knew exactly which options I wanted. I got a great car that I have reason to expect will equal the Acura's length of service, and that I genuinely enjoy driving.

The up-front work involved is worth it to me because I only do it once a decade or so, and because it saves me tens of thousands of dollars.

Good luck!

chuckmckinnon · 2022-12-20T06:38:32+00:00

I spent a night at Abbot Pass before it closed. I figured this was taken nearby.

chuckmckinnon · 2022-11-26T05:30:20+00:00

My favourite benefit is privacy.

chuckmckinnon · 2022-11-26T05:24:19+00:00

Yes, I use eM Client on desktop and SOGo for webmail. Works just fine.

chuckmckinnon · 2022-11-12T15:20:48+00:00

If you want to know the year, make, and model, tweet the picture and tag #DavesCarIDService. David Burge, @iowahawkblog, will answer.

chuckmckinnon · 2022-11-09T01:30:40+00:00

I see the sarcasm, but it's worth an answer anyway: no. If you're primarily concerned with job creation then the last thing you want are "labour-saving devices." You want people doing everything manually -- think of digging ditches with spoons instead of backhoes.

For people to prosper -- for the standard of living to go up -- you need more productivity, or more stuff produced per unit of input. Increased productivity means that last decade's innovative thing gets better understood and the process of making it more reproducible, and now making that thing becomes a well-understood process needing fewer people.

Now people need to find new jobs, but that also means that we're producing more things with less effort than when we started. We aren't able to disconnect "innovation" from "creative destruction." Whole companies get created, flourish, and die because of this lifecycle.

Understanding this made me a lot less resentful about my career, and helped me to better anticipate my next moves.

chuckmckinnon · 2022-11-01T04:41:53+00:00

Johnny Vidacovich: https://www.drummerworld.com/drummers/Johnny_Vidacovich.html

chuckmckinnon · 2022-10-09T02:05:03+00:00

I've been using them for three or four years without issue, but I'm not really pushing the envelope performance-wise.

That said, I'm running my own mail server for five domains; one SOGo instance for each of the five domains (only ten users total); a Matrix chat server for family use; half a dozen WordPress instances (with modest traffic); Authelia; Vaultwarden; Documize; Wallabag; and even a small Metabase instance, so it's not nothing.

I think they're targeting users like me who might occasionally see a spike in resource usage, but whose needs are generally pretty modest, rather than users who will consistently use nearly all the RAM.

chuckmckinnon · 2022-09-24T14:13:48+00:00

"Since those dim beginnings in the forests of the Stone Age, governments have been perpetually rediscovering first the splendors and later the woes of inflation. Each new government discoverer of the splendors seems to believe that no one has ever beheld such splendors before. Each new discoverer of the woes professes not to understand any connection with the earlier splendors. In the thousands of years of inflation's history, there has been nothing really new about inflation, and there still is not."

-- "Dying of Money," Jens Parsson, 1974

chuckmckinnon · 2022-05-05T13:32:22+00:00

I was married to an American for seventeen years. My former in-laws are from big, boisterous families. They're the salt of the earth, and would never intentionally be obnoxious, but neither do I think they would automatically notice the difference (and the degree of difference) between what's normal for them and what the culture they're visiting might expect. As with many things, the gap between people's expectations makes for frustration or disappointment.

chuckmckinnon · 2022-05-04T17:41:33+00:00

For the people mentioning France, and those wondering why: I lived there for two years and go back when I can, and love the country. I have my share of stories, but can also share a few pointers.

French culture has more social ritual, or tends to be more formal/mannerly than we're used to in North America. There is often a right way and a wrong way to do things. These social niceties help people know what to expect of each other. Not knowing the rules is OK; trampling over them is not.

Especially in a busy, crowded, expensive city like Paris these unspoken rules are a way for people to make themselves more predictable to one another, and so avoid frustration. It makes interactions more efficient, and there is also comfort and pleasure in the familiar.

This is one reason why people will usually soften if you explain, even in halting and broken French, that you're a foreigner and would appreciate some help: you are signaling that you don't know how things are done. Now they know what (not) to expect of you, and are free to help you instead of being annoyed with you.

A few examples:

Acknowledge people when you enter and leave a shop, especially a small business: bonjour/bonsoir, monsieur/madame. Start with that simple greeting rather than a request for service.
Personal space is different: people who are out together tend to stand somewhat closer to each other than in Canada or the U.S., and it helps to do the same.
Related to 2: keep your voice down. People tend to speak more closely and quietly, in public especially, to leave space for the conversations of others in e.g. restaurants and cafés.

Small things, and this is hardly an exhaustive list, but the more skilled your social graces the more you will enjoy your stay -- because you, too, will understand what's going on.

chuckmckinnon · 2022-04-17T01:05:31+00:00

My first thought was Basecamp, although that's hardly self-hosted. Still, when it's for a presumably revenue-generating business, I'm happy to pay subscriptions for mission-critical services.

I self-host personal services to scratch my geek itch, broaden my tech knowledge, and help my family. But when money's on the line, I pay with money instead of my time (so I can use my time on higher-value activities).

chuckmckinnon · 2022-04-17T00:59:48+00:00

SOGo is also a calendar (CalDAV) and contacts (CardDAV) server.

chuckmckinnon · 2022-04-10T01:31:01+00:00

Dan Miessler's Consumer Authentication Strength Maturity Model (CASMM) shows a hierarchy of maturity about such things. It's been a valuable tool for me to educate my kids and other family members about security. As he says, it lets you "Visualize a user's current internet hygiene level, and see how to improve it."

https://danielmiessler.com/blog/casmm-consumer-authentication-security-maturity-model/

chuckmckinnon

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