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 (@jebug29@mastodon.sdf.org) 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!