I've been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix for the past
couple of days. I remember seeing it on TV when I was a kid and remembered
a decent amount about it, but honestly it's been so long that it feels
like a fairly new show to me. It's really enjoyable, my only real
complaint being that there have been *far* too many oneshot characters
with the exact same voice/VA and it's extraordinarily noticable. Some
characters' voices also don't really match their person. But eh, whatever.
I have no idea if my voice (whichever dominant one I'm using, anyway)
matches my person or not. It probably does. Who knows.

I really like how the show tries (even vaguely) to represent east-Asian
traditions and culture, of course mixed with its own lore. The sort of
spirit the show has really clicks with me, especially surrounding bending.
It's my own belief that the human spirit has a deeply embedded root in
nature that we often forget and suppress, and the motions of ones' own
spirit/soul can be deeply powerful expressions. Dunno if that can move
water, but still. (And if that sounds like a bunch of hippie mumbo jumbo,
that's all cool; it's 3am for me again, and I'm a bit out of it anyway).

Tomasino recently posted some questions on his phlog for people to answer,
so I figured I'd join in on the fun. Here they are:

1. Think back and try to remember the most satisfying drink of
   water in your life. What's the story of that drink?

Not water, but Dr. Pepper. We've had horses ever since I was a child, and
as part of having horses, we also periodically buy hay. Hay, being dead
grass, isn't the most expensive thing in the world, y'know, but when
you're 1) poor to begin with and 2) buy a LOT of it at once, that golden
grass might as well be actually made out of gold (or at least plated in
it). At the time, I was I think nine years old, and my mom and stepdad
had just bought a big 40-bale load of hay and had it outside the shed on
a trailer. My stepdad wasn't home, and my mom called me to come help her
quickly try to move all the hay to underneath the horse stall at the
shed, because there were storm clouds and it looked like rain was coming
soon (which would ruin ALL of it). My mother and my weak 9-year-old self
spent what felt like forever running back and forth with haybales and
getting them underneath the shed. Finally, we got done, and she offered
me a can of Dr. Pepper, which at the time I didn't even like, but I took.
And boy oh boy -- that was one satisfying drink. (I actually DO like Dr.
Pepper now, and honestly that's probably part of the reason).

Side note the storm blew away and it never even rained TT o TT )/

2. Have you ever personally witnessed an act off human compassion
   that brought you to tears?

I can't really say that I have, but in general I'm also extremely guarded
around tears in public (for no good reason). I remember being in
kindergarten and playing on the the playground and running and hitting my
leg on the metal playground/slide thing. My teachers were there, so
instead of crying in front of them, I just went down underneath the metal
thing and sat there for a second until I was fine. I've just always kind
of been that way. I'm sure I've seen things in person that were moving to
me, but I've always just been instrinsically guarded of my emotions. No
idea why.

I do remember whenever I was around seven or eight years old, I was in my
dad's room and looking in his wardrobe mirror and I teared up because I
was so happy about how good my parents were. Honestly, if there's
anything that would ever get me to believe in past lives, that would have
been it, because at that point I had no real experience in knowing anyone
with bad parents nix acknowledging how sh*tty my stepdad was at that
time. My parents were divorced, my mother remarried, me and my brother
living in separate households, but still my parents did every single
thing they could to work together as parents and be as much in both me
and my brother's lives as humanly possible. They genuinely loved us both
to just an incredible degree and we were the most important things in
their lives and the way that they loved us and worked together spoke
that. Even as a child and not really having conscious awareness of that,
it moved me, and I still remember the image of looking at myself in that
mirror and crying and thinking about what great parents I had.

When I was in my senior year of high school, I was chosen as the STAR
student at my school because I had the school's highest ACT score. As a
result, I had to choose a STAR teacher to go with me to a banquet/award
ceremony in the state capitol - a teacher I felt had a big impact on me
during my time in school. I didn't feel it would be fair to pick one of
my high school teachers; they were all great and picking one out of the
bunch just didn't seem right. Instead after some deliberation I picked
Ms. Boone - my gifted teacher from elementary school (who I had once a
week every week from second to sixth grade). I hadn't really even talked
to her in years, but LIFT played a big part in shaping my mind and
encouraging my creativity as a child, so I felt that that was the right
decision. I remember when we were at the banquet eating together, she
said to my mom, "You know, it always just amazed me how well you and his
dad worked together and came together to everything." That was the moment
it really became conscious for me; Moma and Deddy weren't your average
divorced couple. They were my parents, and that was more important to
them than anything. I stared back at my reflection, eight years old
again, crying in the mirror, smiling in the past and smiling too in the
present.

3. When is the last time you fell off a bicycle?

I don't really live in an area where it's safe to ride bikes, so I
haven't owned a bike since I was a child. When I did own bikes, it was at
my dad's house.

The last time I remember falling off of one was when I was maybe nine or
ten years old. My friend Johnathon and I used to would ride from the
dirt driveway and barrel down the hill toward the house for fun. I don't
remember if he was there that day or not, but as far as I remember I was
barrelling toward the house and went to make a hard stop on the bike. I
*did* stop, but I also slide forward and the bike fell over when I
stopped, resulting in me hitting my inner thighs on the metal and having
bruises surrounding my groin. I remember my dad helping me up, and I
remember going to show my friend the bruises (which he did not want to
see, but we were nine and I didn't care lol).

It is also worth noting this is was a "girl's" bike, without the crossbar
from the seat to the handles, which, like, thank God. I wouldn't want to
imagine how bad it WOULD have been HAD it had the cross bar. I will
straight up never understand why "men's" bikes are just ball-crushers,
and quite frankly if I ever buy a bike again, it's going to be one
without a cross bar. (Also I like baskets and think they're cute. I'd
rather have one of those than a metal rod threatening my own).

Anyway, that's all to the questions! If you want to check out other
people's answers, you should check out Tomasino's phlog for links. You
should also totally answer them yourself and drop him a line to tell him
you have! Spread some positivity! :p

Speaking of positive things, I should get a batch of 5.25" DS/HD floppies
tomorrow from floppydisk.com for use with my Altair (or I guess any other
machine that would support them). I'm also waiting on a CP/M manual to get
here so I can read more about building programs in CP/M 2 and ed (aka not
the Unix editor but the CP/M one). I'd really like to maybe write a text
adventure for the Altair -- although, I've been saying that for years
about a wealth of different computers and it's never happened eheh, so
we'll see. I'm not big on Infocom programming and would rather program
something I better understand, so 8080 assembler seems right up my alley.
(That, or just BASIC, but compiled).

I've also been thinking about doing a playthrough on Twitch or something
of Madness and the Minotaur for the TRS-80 Color Computer. I have a CoCo2,
and my mom talked about how she played MATM when she was younger, so it's
been something that's interested me for a while. I don't have composite
video out on my CoCo, which is sort of an issue for text readability, but
unless the guy who used to make the composite board mod starts making them
again, I guess I'll just have to deal. It would be pretty cool to play,
especially on stream, so we'll see :>

Anyway, tha- oh! Before I go!

I was featured on a weekly podcast named Domingos Negros (Black Sundays)
this past Sunday, June 7th, for my online Altair 8800 project! My power
went out the second it was supposed to start since there was a tropical
storm going on outside, but thankfully I was back up and running and going
after a couple of minutes. If you have the time, please check out the
archive of the show; I've posted the link onto my Mastodon
(@[email protected]) and in the YouTube description on the Altair
8800 livestream. This is their only English-only broadcast so far as far
as I know, so if you could show them some support by watching, that'd be
awesome!

By the way, if you post the URL of the video on their peertube instance
into the search bar on ours (toobnix.org), you can like and comment on
their video using your SDF toobnix account. I'm sure they'd appreciate it.

Anyway, that's all for now! ^ o ^ )/
Have a great Tuesday, everyone!