211224. Coder Christ­mas 2021.

1. This is the story of a year in the life of an Old Coder, an autistic, and a survivor of violent physi­cal abuse and abuse of pro­cess.

It's 32 printed pages long. So it's the longest post that I've ever done out­side of book chapters and gag-order cases material. The text is largely new except for the back-story. Two favorite il­lus­tra­tions are reused.

The text and orig­in­al illustrations presented here may be dis­trib­u­ted under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International. For the pur­poses of at­trib­u­tion, the rights-holder is OldCoder (Robert Kiraly). Images created by others and used here under Fair Use remain under the own­er­ship and control of the re­spec­tive rights-holders.

I finished this on time
On time was the goal and the rhyme
I'll go into details
Details are what we hails
For those who like details
This is Happy Trails
If you don't like details
You're free to ride a trike
It takes details to handle a bike

2. Marco's class.

This is a small honor from 2021 that I'm proud of. If you see a video player be­low, click on the small triangle to play the video:

If it doesn't work, try clicking on this link instead. If a video player ap­pears, click on the small triangle.

This is a grade-school class in Perugia, the “green heart of Italy”. The teacher, in row 1 column 2, is Marco. I under­stand that he's a para­ple­gic but he doesn't let it slow him down. I helped him with a small project in Spring 2021.

Marco says, “This was the most beautiful, for me. Not only for the incredible success with kids... but because we moved special peo­ple to let a special project happen. I am so grate­ful for that.”

3. The back-story is a morning glory.

I lost my home of 25 years on Christ­mas Eve 2013.

This was due to what amounted to a rape by Jim Kiraly of 636 Atterdag Road, Solvang, CA and his son Tom Kiraly of 9520 West­min­ster Glen Avenue, Austin, Texas. For a 57-page PDF version of the story, click on the link below:

https://haggishell.com/gag-order/gag-order-story.pdf

Jim and his wife Grace had an odd Fundie cult mindset that sanc­tioned wife-beating. I was sent, at one point, to the Insti­tute for Basic Youth Conflicts, which hand­ed out lit­er­a­ture on the subject.

This is the cult organ­i­za­tion whose leader, Bill Gothard, was not­or­i­ous for call­ing girl students into his office while he sat with his erect penis exposed.

The Kiralys would have refer­red to it as God's Love.

In the early years of his marriage, Jim Kiraly beat up Grace to Kiraly the extent that he broke her nose. He also smashed things, what­ever was at hand, and tore up plants.

This largely stopped by the 2nd decade of the marriage but Jim con­tin­ued to rage for decades further. His eyes lit­er­al­ly bulged.

It was strange.

At Thanksgiving 2011, I told Jim and Grace that I was work­ing on a book. Jim assumed that it was going to be about the abuse. He didn't trouble him­self to ask. In Spring 2012 he and his son Tom tried to get a gag order.

It was as illegal as Hell. But nobody touches rich peo­ple for crimes like that.

I made Jim eat sh*t. There was no set­tle­ment. The Court refused to back one. There were non-Court agree­ments instead.

Jim threat­en­ed me after signing, so I tore up the agree­ments. He got nothing in exchange for a year of lit­i­ga­tion and, I was told, 6 figures in legal fees.

4. Coder Christ­mas 2013.

So, it was a happy ending. Except for the part where I ended up homeless.

My net worth fell be­low zero in Spring 2013 at the end of the lit­i­ga­tion. I moved out of my home of 25 years 9 months later on Christ­mas Eve 2013.

I had the place for another month, but I knew that I had to get used to being a tran­sient. So I spent that Christ­mas Eve waiting in line at Walmart to pur­chase an elec­tric blanket.

I con­tin­ued to travel to my former home until the deadline so as to dispose of my remaining possessions. It became dif­fi­cult towards the end. It's a decade later and I'm shaking as I type this.

Silent Night, Holy Night, all is calm, abuse is trite.

I'm do­ing O.K. But the night­mares are there. I don't wake up scream­ing; it isn't like that. I'm also not afraid of my abuser Jim Kiraly any longer.

But dur­ing the day I lit­er­al­ly shake. Not with rage as Jim used to do, or with fear, but with the sense that some­thing is wrong, that this is the wrong uni­verse, a uni­verse where it was pos­si­ble.

5. Suture for the Future.

Now the wife beater Jim Kiraly of 636 Atterdag Road, Solvang, CA is dying of being as old as dirt. If he isn't gone already; I haven't checked the records for a few months.

No further closure is pos­si­ble. But that isn't true.

The Kiralys stood for hatred, rape, and murder of the Con­sti­tu­tive Other: blacks, poor peo­ple, and autistics. I can con­tri­bute what I can to balance the fact that they ever existed. I can do it in their name. That will be closure enough.

In the U.S., a cancer of the soul has meta­sta­sized in the past 5 years.

It's the smudge on the world. The smudge of the type of per­son that has always been there but is now emboldened. The type that hates the dif­fer­ent, that makes excuses for rape, that drives 9 hours seek­ing brown peo­ple to kill.

The Kiraly type. Jim, Grace, Tom, and Ken Kiraly. Supposedly my bio­log­i­cal family. I have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

I'm going to assist with lawsuits re­la­ted to Fundie indi­vid­uals and those who abuse the poor in general.

I'm good with details. I have a knack for, as Jim once put it, “gathering information”. It's relaxing. I'll do more of that.

I'd like to found an After-School Satan chapter in Jim's and Grace's name as well. That would be nice. I'd like Jim and Grace to know that their photo will be on the wall in a pos­i­tion of honor.

6. Note for news media.

Jim Kiraly was VP of Transamerica for decades. Tom Kiraly was VP of Humana and Concentra and is pre­sent­ly CFO of Hanger, Inc.

Ken Kiraly — the most dan­ger­ous of the group — is VP of Amazon Lab126.

Ken's wife Virginia Chang Kiraly is a rising star in the Republican Party. Her attorney Harmeet Dhillon rep­re­sents or rep­re­sen­ted the ter­ror­ist Andy Ngo.

So, this is a Fundie Tech Violent Abuse Trump story.

7. Move to WA State.

Mr. Meow and Quadcore were two of the Hacker Kids that I wrote about in 2012. They were ages 12 and 14 at the start but they're adults now.

It's odd because they'd be my grand­child­ren. My grand­child­ren aren't sup­posed to be that old.

Quadcore lived in WA State. Not far, actu­al­ly, from my nephew James Kiraly, the one who works on Redshift at Amazon. More about that James another time.

In Fall 2021, I moved in with Quadcore. I rented a corner of a room. He used the money to buy an ill-fated car. We'll come back to the car.

Quadcore lived with his lover Calvin, Calvin's mother Shirley, and an in­con­tin­ent dog named Hannah. Some weeks, Quadcore's child­hood friend Tyler stayed with us as well.

So, we had up to 5 adults and a dog in a one-bedroom apart­ment. You could describe it as high-density housing.

8. Details are what life entails.

Quadcore's mother Vickie stayed with us briefly too. She'd been beaten up in Florida by a lover and peo­ple had shipped her off to Quadcore pend­ing decisions. She was deranged and I'm not sure where she ended up.

Vickie was worried about a cat that she'd left in Florida. So I made a dozen phone calls in an attempt to get the cat to WA State.

The woman said, “You're too detailed. It's dif­fer­ent and strange.” Well, hearts and flowers to you, sweet­heart. Wherever you went, good rid­dance.

9. Poop cannon.

I liked everybody else. However, it would have work­ed better if Hannah hadn't had the habit of pooping every­where.

Quadcore's lover Calvin tried to psycho-analyze the dog to get to the heart of the prob­lem. He spe­cu­la­ted that it was a dog self-assertion issue.

Quadcore was more direct. He chased Hannah once, shouting at her about the poop — he didn't abuse her but did lose his temper on this occas­ion. The dog ran into a wall and ejected poop on impact.

You should picture Hannah as a small poop cannon.

10. Cats vs. dogs.

Dogs like me. However, I prefer cats because poop is less of an issue with them.

Plus you can leave out food for cats and they'll eat it as they need it. With dogs, it's “Bark! Woof! Must gobble it all right now!” Dogs aren't known for self-control.

You also don't need to walk cats. The flip side is that cats won't go hiking with you.

I made these points to std::vector years ago. He chose a dog over a cat partly because of the hiking issue. Later, he told me, “My God, you were right! She poops abso­lute­ly every­where!”

11. Books are good.

In 2011, I was immobilized for half a year. There was no disability money. I was able to work for a few months as a recruiter. 3 years later, one of the peo­ple that I tried to place roared up to my office on a motor­cycle.

“You taught me English,” he said. This was std::vector.

We re­main­ed in communication for the 2010s. In Spring 2021 I sent his son Yan some books. I don't like to order things online, so Quadcore helped me.

I had to guess at which books might work, but I made the right choices.

The first choice was a book titled “How to Draw Fortnite”. In this day and age, that was a safe bet. I added a volume from the Order of the Stick web­comic series and one from the lesser-known G-Man series.

12. Fathers and sons.

Yan seems pleased in the photo. I'm pleased to com­ment, too, that std::vector and his son are close and that Yan inter­nal­izes posi­tive elements of his house­hold.

std::vector was injured years ago in a motor­cycle crash. He refused surgery and was deter­min­ed to use magical chi — really just force of will — to recover. He did yoga and Yan, who was just 5 at the time, expert­ly mimicked every move. It was a kick to observe this.

Life isn't like movies and TV shows. Most fathers are distant and some are abusive. I'm not a believer in magical chi but std::vector has handled his respon­si­bil­i­ties well.

13. Gifts.

For most peo­ple, gifts are pro forma.

Karen Kiraly, Tom's wife Karen Washmon Kiraly as opposed to our cousin Karen Austin Kiraly, used to send me pro forma plastic junk each year because I was on her list.

That's fine for shallow peo­ple. Those who reflect are aware that gifts serve mul­ti­ple purposes. Whatever the pur­pose, they should never be pro forma.

I was good at gifts.

My parents usually treated gifts from me like sh*t dropped on the carpet regard­less. Looking back, it was remarkable.

One year, I spent $400 USD on a little statue of an airplane. It was made partly of real gold. This was for a wed­ding anniversary. The airplane symbolized a journey through life. The couple just stared at it.

14. Gifts for Grace.

More typically, I'd give Grace a gift that I'd thought about for hours and Ken Kiraly, VP of Lab126, would say, “Oh, that's crap” or “What a piece of junk”.

Grace didn't want to con­tra­dict Ken, so she never did.

Ken is a lovely sort. He always has been. Remind me to talk some­time about his one sig­ni­fi­cant secret, the one that even Virginia Chang Kiraly doesn't know. It's a keeper.

15. A gift for Calvin.

I gave Calvin a birthday gift dur­ing my stay with him.

It had 3 parts as with Yan. The gift consisted of a “Magic the Gathering” card holder, a game fig­ure, and a “Pokemon” beanie.

I knew that the beanie would work out because he already wore a plain one and for mul­ti­ple reasons would appreciate one with a bit of color.

To minimize confusion, Calvin was an adult but unusually into things like “Pokemon” and games.

16. A gift for Jim.

I managed to make even grim Jim Kiraly, harsh and violent, blink once at a gift. Once in a life­time.

I purchased a dozen beers of dif­fer­ent and unusual types. I buried them in plastic peanuts in a large box. Jim had to dig to uncover each oddity and he seemed like a child as he did so.

It was the only time I ever saw Jim behave thus, just as there was only one time that I saw him shed a tear re­la­ted to sen­ti­ment.

The latter occas­ion, to complete the record, was the view­ing of the movie “An American Tale”.

17. Snow Car Doesn't Travel Far.

In WA State, I learned about some­thing new and myster­i­ous called “snow”. See the photo be­low.

Pro Tip: Don't use your hands or arms to brush snow off of the roof of your car. It goes very badly. If you're lucky, though, you might get to keep the limb that you use.

This is the CoderCar that I bought in Spring 2013. I was penni­less at the time as explain­ed previously. But I managed to get two dealer­ships to compete for my bus­i­ness and it work­ed out pretty well.

18. Time is Worth a Dime.

Quadcore's mother-in-law Shirley looked old. It was due partly to the fact that she was a recovering meth addict. But, really, she was old. Here's the thing about that.

I spent one year as a student teacher for a grade-school class for ages 8 to 10. I helped in areas such as pinhole cameras, hatching praying mantises, and teach­ing imaginary num­bers.

It's easy to teach imaginary num­bers to 8-year-olds. Just tell them, “Walk down the num­ber line from 5 to zero. Now turn right and step one step. Where are you?”

The thing about Shirley was, she was born in the same year as the 8-year-olds. So, how old does that make me?

19. More about Shirley.

I tried to be helpful to Shirley.

Her primary personal pos­ses­sion aside from clothes was a tiny MP3 player. So I down­load­ed YT videos by her favorite rapper, extracted the audio tracks, and trans­cod­ed them to the MP3 player. I think that she liked that.

I used Portable Gramps to create a family tree for Shirley. She and Calvin, her son, both responded positively to the gesture.

Note: Gramps is highly recom­mend­ed FOSS. However, if you build it yourself, you may need to patch it to fix segfaults. If you'd like to see my version of the source code, it's online at:

https://laclin.com/src/find/gramps

Be sure to apply the patch.

Shirley's one vice was a fondness for fake soft ice cream. The type that comes with cherries and nuts in little plastic cups. So I'd buy one of those every couple of days and put it where she'd find it.

One day, Shirley told me that I was too detailed and that I wasn't per­mit­ted to respond to cri­ti­cisms offered regard­less. So, I wrote her off as a poten­tial long-term asso­ci­ate.

She was nicer, though, even as a meth addict, then most normals are. Actually, I'd guess that most meth addicts are nicer than most normals. I'm not a big fan of normals.

One night I dropped one of my cell-phones out­side while get­ting out of a car. I realized this in the morning. I wasn't able to stand up to go out­side and look for the phone. Shirley went out­side and found it. I ap­pre­cia­ted that.

But I'm done with peo­ple who tell me that I'm too detailed. Or that I don't have the right to respond to what­ever is said.

My life was sacrificed on an altar half a century tall. The altar was made of hatred because that is what normals are made of.

If I'm to make a dif­fer­ence in the time that remains, details are the refrains. I've no use for peo­ple who have no use for details.

20. Respect.

Quadcore told mul­ti­ple people, “This man taught me all that I know”.

It wasn't true. I ap­pre­cia­ted it, though. It was more respect­ful than the treat­ment my little brother Ken Kiraly had offer­ed me.

I taught Ken to walk as a baby, to drive a car as a boy, and to code in 'C' as a young man. I got him his first job — it was at IPT — and housed him for 2 years.

Readers at Lab126 are invited to ask Ken Kiraly why he doesn't list the IPT job on his resume. I'd be espe­cial­ly interested in his answer to the ques­tion, where did he live until age 26?

The answer to the 2nd ques­tion is that Ken sponged off of his parents and me until that age.

Ken Kiraly spent most of the time that he lived rent-free with me cursing at me. It was odd.

Once we were on a shop­ping trip and I was buying the food that Ken was going to eat that night. Ken was ranting and raging at ran­dom. A Hispanic woman stared at us. She thought that we were a gay couple having a romantic fight in public.

I'm the one, too, who took care of Ken Kiraly of Lab126 on the occasions that our mother lay semi-conscious on the coach, a bottle of gin on the floor next to her.

I smashed my own hand in a car door once to distract our abuser Jim Kiraly who was about to beat or lit­er­al­ly kill Ken.

Ken repaid me as an adult with con­tin­u­ous rage — he inherited that from Jim — physi­cal violence on one occas­ion that might have killed me, and psychotic be­ha­vior on other occasions.

Ken Kiraly is a waste of skin. But, in a le­gi­ti­mate and reason­able sense that is con­sis­tent with U.S. laws, he and I have unfinish­ed bus­i­ness.

Mr. Meow, as a side note, lives not far from a school that my bio­log­i­cal nephew Michael Kiraly attends or attended: the University of Iowa.

I've sug­gest­ed that Michael and Mr. Meow might enjoy meeting some­time IRL at a Starbucks. However, I haven't heard back.

21. Coder Christ­mas 2020.

Quadcore came out as bisexual at the end of High School. He was prompt­ly kicked out of his house by his Fundie father and step-mother Michael and Heather.

I thought about offering to help Quadcore to relocate to Cal­i­for­nia. However, his life and lover were in the State of WA.

In an unexpec­ted development, Quadcore and his lover Calvin were able to re­estab­lish family ties with Michael and Heather. I attended a Christ­mas 2020 cele­bra­tion with the four of them and Quadcore's half-brothers Mason and John.

It was epic.

Michael's and Heather's house­hold included a metric ton of animals. There were cats, birds, and dogs the size of small vehicles. You wouldn't want to cross those dogs.

Mason and John were children, so they added the en­thus­i­asm element. John was autistic. However, in this Fundie house­hold, autism wasn't seen as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for physi­cal and emotion­al abuse.

Michael gave his son Quadcore and son-in-law Calvin practical gifts such as, IIRC, reveal­ing underwear and a dildo or personal vibrator; some­thing of the sort.

Michael showed me some­thing that looked like a glass penis. “Can you guess what this is?” he asked.

“Um,” I replied. “It's a glass penis. Or Jesus Christ.” I guessed Jesus Christ because the object seemed to be wearing a Middle Eastern robe.

“It's Osama bin Laden,” Michael said. Or I think that's what he said. It was a colorful and confusing night so it's pos­si­ble that I mis­under­stood this part. But a penis bin Laden might be con­sid­er­ed a festive holi­day ornament.

It was an unusual Christ­mas from a Fundie per­spec­tive.

If Michael and Heather see this, Hey. The hos­pi­tal­ity wasn't forgotten. In the time that remains, I'll probably never have a more lively Christ­mas.

22. Fire in the Hold.

I've done some cloud computing since 2012. It's work­ed out like this:

2012 to 2013: Amazon Free Tier, Amazon paid VPSes
2014 to 2015: Physical octocore hosted by Kappelin
2015 to 2017: A large VPS hosted by Kappelin
2017 to 2020: Small VPSes at DigitalOcean and Google Cloud
2020 to 2021: One dedi and small VPSes at mul­ti­ple hosts

These were all Debian boxes until 2021. In Spring 2021, some­thing unexpected hap­pen­ed. One of my data centers caught on fire. It was located in Utah. You can read about the fire at this link.

Sprinklers put out the fire. So far, so good. But it turns out that servers don't like to be soaked. “Splish, splash, server's taking a bath.” Nope.

This was serious because my dedi was at that data center. I need­ed my dedi. To coders, a dedi is as important as a teddy. :P

The dedi host CEO had allowed another firm to run the Utah data center for him. Sub­se­quent to the fire, he couldn't get them on the phone.

So, I traced some of the data-center peo­ple for him. One of them turned out to write Harry Potter fan fiction.

I told the CEO that we could contact the data center through Harry Potter channels. I found a num­ber of spouses and siblings re­la­ted to the data center as well.

The CEO turned out to be a practical per­son after my own heart. He'd already dug up some of the same in­forma­tion that I had.

He gave me a new dedi in a dif­fer­ent data center. “This one won't burn down, right?” I asked. He said that he didn't think so.

23. Steady Dedi is Ready.

So, now I had a new dedi. It was a new type of dedi that I need­ed to fig­ure out and set up. I decided to take a big step and run my own Linux distro, Laclin, on it instead of Debian.

It work­ed. Since Easter 2021, my distro is officially a cloud server OS. This is refer­red to as “eating your own dogfood”. Woof. For those inter­est­ed in distros, my distro web­site is:

https://laclin.com/

24. Linux Porn is Born.

I love my distro. Grace Kiraly once asked me, “How will you make money from it?” That isn't the point. The point is, if you need to do some­thing, do it well.

When I fix bugs, I try to pass the fixes to upstream. In Fall 2021, I got around to adding a nice multi-protocol CLI client to Laclin. This was a pro­gram named Remmina. It sup­port­ed RDP, SPICE, ssh, and VNC. I sent upstream some patches and the screen­shot below.

The screen­shot shows my distro run­ning Remmina run­ning three sessions con­cur­rent­ly, one session each for VNC, ssh, and SPICE. The VNC session is dis­play­ed and shows the same distro run­ning on a ded­i­ca­ted headless server.

To put it another way, the launch panel on the left is run­ning locally and the one on the right is run­ning remotely.

“This is Unix Porn, is it? :-) Amazing job!”

25. Memory allocator.

My favorite bit of my stay with Quadcore re­mind­ed me of what Ken Kiraly could have been to me.

Quadcore and I work­ed on our Linux distros and other software projects together. One week, he ran into a segfault. He came to see me at midnight. The conversation went like this:

<Quadcore> How do I debug memory allo­ca­tion segfaults?
<OldCoder> I'm work­ing. Can we dis­cuss this later?
<Quadcore> Yes. But how do I debug memory allo­ca­tion segfaults?
<OldCoder> Give me half an hour
<Quadcore> O.K. But how do I debug memory allo­ca­tion segfaults?

It was great. :-)

I gave Quadcore a memory allocator that I'd writ­ten 25 to 30 years be­fore.

It wasn't a small gift. I was proud of the software. It was a grand­father to grand­son heir­loom. He con­tin­ued to bump into segfaults but my ancient code offer­ed useful debug features.

In the other direction, Quadcore had use­ful distro insights. I'd been work­ing on my Linux distro since 1995. Quadcore's feed­back gave it a push for­ward.

He's the one who chose my current window mana­ger, jwm. And I'm the one who fixed crashes in jwm for both of us. I named one of his two Linux distros just as a grand­father might name a great-grandchild.

Now, that's a proper Coder family rela­tion­ship.

In a posi­tive note, my distro source tree went online in Fall 2021. The distro core isn't up yet, but this was a major step 25 years in the making. If you're inter­est­ed in distros, you can browse the source tree at:

https://laclin.com/src

26. Fast car is a shoot­ing star.

I bought Quadcore a car in exchange for a corner of his apart­ment. I gave him about 1/3 of the total in one lump sum and the rest over a period of months.

He work­ed on the car. He said that it was going to be fast. He planned to use speed tricks that would be illegal in Cal­i­for­nia.

I never got to ride in the car or even see it. One day, Quadcore drove it out of a parking lot and an uninsured driver smashed into it and totaled it.

Life is like that. It's a law of physics.

But Quadcore re­ceived enough money through legal action to buy an RV. He and Calvin plan to move into the RV in Spring 2022. This will mean changes. In par­tic­u­lar, Quadcore's rack servers won't fit in the RV.

In my circles, it isn't unusual to have rack servers at home. Quadcore had two of them and some Raspberry Pis as well. A balanced diet is a healthy diet.

Quadcore suffered a broken foot in the crash. So, he had to take time off from work. We spent some of the time on things like Markov Chains and a new script­ing language. God closes one door and opens another to code.

27. Six Degrees of FOSS.

In the 2010s, Quadcore was a marijuana worker for a while. He found out that an older co-worker, Zelig, was inter­est­ed in FOSS and so the two had that in common. I met Zelig once in per­son after I moved in with Quadcore.

The kicker is that Zelig had met my asso­ci­ate Kappelin a few years earlier in IRC. They were only casually ac­quaint­ed, but still.

Kevin Bacon doesn't appear in this story but Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon sort of applies.

28. Choices.

I lost my mobility as soon as I crossed the California-Oregon border en route to WA State.

It was bad this time. I was in a motel room and couldn't make it to the bathroom. I'd given away my wheel­chair and there wouldn't have been room for it in the car anyway. So, this was a prob­lem. It came and went for the next half-year.

Grace Kiraly of 636 Atterdag Road, Solvang, CA wanted to be­lieve that this con­di­tion was some kind of “choice”. This was so that she wouldn't need to feel bad.

Grace was a c*nt. Determined, hard-work­ing, and abused but never fright­en­ed. But cruel, shallow, a pre­ten­tious pseudo-intel­lec­tual, and a c*nt.

It's been 20 years since the con­di­tion started. I've had suf­fi­cient review by doctors now to say that, no, it isn't a “choice”.

Grace Kiraly's decision to hate the poor, the ill, and brown and black peo­ple, on the other hand... I'm sure that Jesus Christ will do cart­wheels of joy, robe flap­ping as He does, at the sight of her ap­proach­ing soul.

Enjoy your time in Hell, Grace, as you pleasure the Master who you were always meant to serve.

Quadcore and Calvin theorized that can­na­bis candy might help with the pain. They gave me the watermelon-flavored type. Tyler offer­ed me some home-made fudge things as well. I never noticed an effect from any of it.

In the 2000s, my broker had tried to get me Codeine-3 but hadn't been suc­cess­ful. This time around, I was pre­scrib­ed drugs that did help but these weren't drugs that one could take for an ex­tend­ed period.

So, dur­ing the worst of it in Winter 2021, I used a kitchen stool as a walker. That's how I got back and forth to the bathroom. Such dignity.

It is what it is.

29. Birthday 2021.

Loome, also known as Rubidiun and Dr. Beth, is my adopted son. He has been since 2012. I'll never forget the year or his attempts to make a dif­fer­ence.

Loome's health could be bet­ter, but I en­cour­age him to do what I failed to do out of fear that lasted decades; enjoy the time that one has.

Loome traveled thousands of miles this year just to spend my birthday with me. No other rea­son. It was his 2nd IRL visit. I was appreciative.

Loome is true ADHD. It's dif­fi­cult for him to make things happen unless he's engaged emo­tion­al­ly. His trip went off perfectly. He was engaged.

I might see Kappelin IRL for the 3rd time next week. That's nice as well.

30. Dan the attorney.

I moved in with an attorney named Dan. We got along well. He said that I was a good writer. I felt that this was perceptive of him. :P

Dan was a video fan. He'd seen “Casa­blanca” in the 4 most popular formats: movie theater, VHS, DVD, and BluRay. I told him that I'd make a USB3 movie SSD for the house­hold. I start­ed work on that project.

I purchased a pile of DVDs for 20 cents each and start­ed to rip them. Dan pointed out that DVDs, though a marvel of the 1990s, were crap today compared to BluRay.

Dan booted up a BluRay copy of “Gladiator” and played a battle scene. He was right. The DVD version was fuzzy on a big screen compared to the BluRay version. I'd wasted time and money on the DVDs.

So, I had to make my Linux distro rip BluRays. This is tricky and few Linux distros sup­port it reliably. But I made it work. My distro is now super­ior to most in this respect.

Doom9 deserves the credit. But no other distro seems to have taken Doom9's BluRay work as far as I have. DMCA doesn't fully explain it but that's a subject for another time.

31. Things happen.

Dan had two feral cats, Thelma and Louise. One day, dusk was ap­proach­ing and he hadn't gone out­side to feed them. This was unusual.

I asked a 77-year-old per­son who shared the res­i­dence with us, should we disturb Dan? The re­sponse was, no, he's probably dozing.

The next morning, the 77-year-old came to see me and said, “Well, he's dead”.

Dan was a few years younger than me. And he'd seemed fine. But he was gone just like that.

This was an intelligent per­son. Positive as well. It was a loss to the world. I also didn't know how to explain to Thelma and Louise that he'd never come to see them again.

The Beatles had a famous song about age. I'm going to be the age in the song soon. But after close to a decade the most basic issues remain up in the air.

Should I move to Solvang now, a city that Grace advised me to try? Or to Austin, where Kappelin lives?

Shouldn't there be a place again like the place that the rapist Jim Kiraly and his son Tom Kiraly took from me?

32. Abuse does stay with you.

Some types of Fundies mock abuse victims. Grace Kiraly felt the need to play down abuse. It's all for the same rea­son. This type of per­son is the abuser or the enabler.

Abuse does stay with you.

In September 2021, I start­ed to prepare a birthday gift for Grace Kiraly. She was born, for what it's worth, on October 01, 1933.

I planned to com­mis­sion a series of panels that featured Jesus Christ and Grace. She'd be torturing Christ and laugh­ing as she read her Bible. But I was dis­trac­ted by an unexpec­ted development.

One of my as­soc­i­ates, Jake, age 40, is the gentlest Fundie imaginable. He reminds me of Ivan, Grace's father and my grand­father.

Jake experienced a midlife crisis in Spring 2020 re­la­ted to dif­fer­ent threads of his life from child­hood through young adult­hood. I tried to help by starting a book with him. It seemed to help.

In September 2021, Jake exhibited PTSD. I talked to him about it and told me the rest of his life story. I set aside what I'd planned to write for Grace and wrote for Jake instead.

The police accepted the new doc­u­ments as a formal report. Jake then felt more in the way of closure.

To read what I wrote for Jake on this occas­ion, visit the link be­low and read the Childhood and Early Ray sections:

https://overcomers.group/doku/start

33. I tried some­thing new.

I've never been com­for­ta­ble around guns. I prefer to work with code. In code, mis­takes can be repaired using backups. There are no backups for lives.

However, I don't demonize weapons. I do prefer them to be at a safe distance. But some of my as­soc­i­ates have strong feelings about the subject. So, I've promised some of them that event­u­al­ly I'd go tar­get shooting.

I did so at Thanksgiving 2021. I hit a 3.5" inch tar­get with an AR-15 at 150 yards. It was beginner's luck, but that's pretty good regard­less. The photos be­low are for the as­soc­i­ates who were inter­est­ed.

My views haven't changed. I think that I'm more objective than most. Guns are dan­ger­ous. They need to be treated as such. But they're not demonic in and of them­selves. It's peo­ple who are angels or demons.

34. Work.

There's a YouTube video linked be­low. It's a music video by “Primus” titled "Devil Went Down to Georgia":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9uk9IcoQ0w

In this version of the song, the fiddler taunts the Devil at the end as follows: “I'm the best that's ever been, you son of a B*tch”.

I like the video because it's funny. I like the taunt because it's about me. In some con­texts, I'm the best that's ever been. But that and 50 cents won't buy a news­paper.

I work­ed harder than anybody else in the world for decades. As late as my 40s, I work­ed up to 6 weeks at a time with­out going home even to shower. I was a fool but that isn't the point. The point is that nobody work­ed harder.

I was sharp at times in investments as well. I made the bet­ter part of a million that way in Fall 2003.

Nobody has ever fully explain­ed 2012 to 2013 to me. But the gist of it is that Jim and Grace Kiraly sim­ply assumed — for no rea­son that has ever been provided — that I was lazy and there­fore impoverished and seek­ing to black­mail Jim in con­nec­tion with the abuse.

Um, no.

I'd been wiped out in the Crash of 2008. But I'd made it back nearly to a quar­ter of a million dollars by Spring 2012 using my wits and nothing more. Jim and Tom then filed suit and I was penni­less one year later.

Irony isn't about a board and laundering clothes.

I used to think that my biogical mother and her husband were useless but it wasn't so.

They should have been, and could still be, use­ful for the sensible and cost-effec­tive processing of defecation.

Come, Jim and Grace Kiraly of 636 Atterdag Road, if you haven't gone to the un­dis­cover­ed country, smile, open wide. My buddy Christ and I will make deposits.

Close your mouths, swallow, and don't mind the bit that squirts out of your noses. Reasonable peo­ple will agree that this is, at long last, a le­gi­ti­mate purpose for you.

Jesus Christ says, “Yep. Honestly, I don't know what else to do with them.”

Tom Kiraly's involve­ment has been explain­ed to me as follows: He was in the pro­cess of changing jobs and was afraid that the fuss would damage the prospects for his new suit and tie.

So, the CFO of Hanger, Inc. com­mit­ted a crime worse than rape and murder: abuse of pro­cess. The rape and murder of the Law.

Well, I suppose that I can under­stand a profit motive. Sure y not. But, still, peo­ple will agree that there ought to be le­gi­ti­mate and reason­able consequences for the most serious crime that is pos­si­ble, con­se­quen­ces that are con­sis­tent with and pos­si­bly pro­tect­ed under U.S. laws.

Technical note: The Hanger, Inc. mark is used under here Trans­form­a­tive and Fair Use times ten. No voluntary take­down will be done. Lit­i­ga­tion probably needs to fall under trademark law as opposed to DMCA. DMCA notices will be re­ject­ed on that basis. Thank you for attention to details. Details are good.

So, about a month ago, there was a buyout. A big fish ate a small fish. I lost the last of the 1099 work that I had.

I need to deal with not just age dis­crim­in­a­tion and H-1B fraud now but the fact that I'm a general­ist. The most valuable type of worker than a bus­i­ness can have. And, sub­se­quent to the dot-com era, the least re­spect­ed type.

But as my VP of IT — he's a good per­son — says: It is what it is.

Uncertain prospects for housing and work in early old age. No way to come back from the rape a decade ago. Jim and Grace escape to the un­dis­cover­ed country.

O.K. It's fine. As I tell my students, a step at a time is the rhyme.

35. Gene Heart Surgery.

A few days ago, I phoned DNA the Elderly Attorney. He's 90 years old now. The conversation went like this:

<OldCoder> Gene, what's up?
<Gene> Well, I had heart surgery. It was a valve replacement.
<OldCoder> You didn't tell me about this
<Gene> I didn't really tell anybody
<OldCoder> How did it go?
<Gene> I was sup­posed to stay overnight
<Gene> But they were short on beds, so I just went home
<Gene> I wanted to walk to the store but Joyce wouldn't let me
<OldCoder> Um
<Gene> They had to take out the pacemaker
<Gene> My heart was too strong for it

Gene isn't like­ly to change. If some­thing gets in his way, even heart surgery, he just kicks ass.

36. Coder Christ­mas 2021.

I have one active Minetest world this Fall. I run it for Edgy McEdge, a 22-year-old bisexual Fundie atheist from a QAnon anti-vax com­mun­i­ty in Mas­sa­chu­setts.

Sometimes, I think that my life has taken odd turns. But I suppose that I'm imagining it.

To down­load or listen to Edgy McEdge's violin rendition of “Go Tell It on the Mountain”, click here. Note: For this to work, your browser needs to sup­port Ogg Vorbis files.

The Minetest world is populated mostly by children and teenagers in India plus a few other countries. Last week, they asked me to do some sort of Christ­mas celebration.

So, I turned on a Winter Wonderland mode that I'd added to the codebase a few years back. Then I added a nice medieval city, Bremen, from a dead world. Finally, I added some new ornaments.

Then I told the world's in­hab­i­tants to go ahead and Christ­mas it up.

The screenshots above shows some areas under construction.

The little brown house and red-green sleigh are by Dark Princess. The snowman was made a few hours ago — as I write this — by Real Ved and me. Note: “Ved” is short for “Vedic”. For scale, the Christ­mas tree is about 2 stories tall.

The ice castle is by a girl named Osiris and the store is by another girl named Shadow Swimmer.

37. Git is a Hit.

I spent Christ­mas Day 2021 in a sensible manner: I updated a massive col­lec­tion of git repos. As of Decem­ber 26th, I hosted 9,035 repos on the fol­low­ing site:

https://git.minetest.org/

One Christ­mas gift to myself was to add about 1,500 repos [bringing the total to 9,035] and to make sure that each and every one of the 9,035 repos was up to date.

The other gift to myself was to finish this year-end story.

38. OldCoder surgery.

I had minor surgery on Decem­ber 23. So there was some physi­cal pain in­volved in finishing this. But it came out read­a­ble enough.

39. Exchange with std::vector.

<std::vector> I know you for a decade. All this time you insist that the past is present.
<OldCoder> That doesn't quite parse.
<std::vector> The past you keep de­scri­bing was more than decade ago. Don't get stuck emo­tion­al­ly.

<OldCoder> It isn't a decade ago. Where is my home? Where are my life savings? Where are my books?
<OldCoder> Somebody who lives as com­fort­ab­ly as you do has little bus­i­ness commenting in this manner.

<std::vector> I had nothing when we met. I just fol­low sound advices.
<OldCoder> I'm pleased to hear it.
<OldCoder> And you were thirty years younger than I am now when we met. You continue to ignore the sim­ple fact of mortality.

<OldCoder> I'm lit­er­al­ly double the age that you were at the time. I'll most like­ly be gone in 10 years. Nothing that you're saying is rele­vant.
<OldCoder> You also ignore the fact that the webpage is the story of the last year and how I at­tempt­ed to cope with the year. The same year that we're still in.

<std::vector> I wish that you had an easy going op­por­tun­ity to structure your life the way you want it.
<OldCoder> Excuse me, but “want it” implies that I'm asking for more than the op­por­tun­ity not to be homeless.
<std::vector> Yes, you deserve a place to call home.

40. Exchange with Sam Pawar.

Sam is an Indian that I've tried to help with a legal matter. Here's a chat that I had with him recently. It's a good enough close.

<Sam> Everything good and it's all 100% true.
<Sam> You came to our life like an angel.
<OldCoder> It's important to re­mem­ber that Satan was an angel.
<Sam> When any one speaks truth, then peo­ple call them Satan and more things. But, as a God point of view, you are angel.

The Old Coder is content.