Looking back at my paratrooper days and how buck fucking wild I was, it’s amazing I survived.

But I did. Here I am.

The Butterfly Effect: What’s the Smallest Choice That Changed Your Life Forever?

Messaged a woman many years ago on ICQ in the middle of the night about Linux, expecting just to nerd out about tech crap.

She’s now my partner and really fucking awesome I might add.

Super easy. It’s A.

Took me 12 seconds. No other answer is even remotely possible. I’d never want to be a lawyer, but I’d nuke the LSAT so hard I’d be accused of cheating (has happened to me a lot).

Here’s why I can demand the things I do at work: I walked into my current job after the other person running the place had been let go.

There was no documentation of any kind. The hosting company was shit-tier. Some important parts of the infra I didn’t even have log-ins for and had to break into them or rebuild them. Everything was designed with the sole goal of saving money with no other thought or consideration. If there was something that was 100x worse but 10% cheaper, that’s what was used. Also, my predecessor was negligent and attempted to do more than they actually understood how to do. And was not well-liked, to say the least.

Since they had already been canned I had zero training, as already mentioned no documentation, and no preparation. There was no one to ask anything substantive of and no one to help me get started. It was all me.

And I rocked it. Maybe one of 1,000 of people in my field could’ve done what I did while keeping the actual product up in an extremely fragile and insecure environment.

It was admittedly rough for a while but now the company is in a much better place (hosting-wise and more metaphorically).

So that’s why I can and do send snarky emails to recruiters. I can roll that way because I can do what I do.

In general, I’d probably advise against following my example.

I posted a screenshot of the actual email because people don’t think I do what I do.

But I do.

It was so much fun rolling across Uzbekistan dropping $100 bills everywhere and seeing crazy shit. I wouldn’t want to do that stuff again, but what a blast.

I’m so glad I’ve led an awesome life. It didn’t have to turn out that way and chances are it would not. But I made it be that way; I willed it.

If you want to know why I was dropping hundies like a gangsta rapper, that’s because the DoD gave me a big stack of money that I couldn’t bring back but could spend on anything in country. I don’t even know how much it was. Maybe $5,000? Government efficiency¹!

1. That’s because it was unknown how much we’d need, if we’d have access to anything at all, and unknown how long we’d be gone or what kind of trouble we might run into. Of course there’d be trouble, we were paratroopers!

if you are extremely high agency, probabilities based on the average person don’t apply to you

— Isabel🌻 (@isabelunraveled) January 24, 2025

Yep. I do things people claim are “impossible” because I know I am smart enough to undertake them at very low risk.

What applies to normies I just do not give a fuckkkkkk about. Who gives a rip what some doofus who can’t even understand that climate change is a real thing believes or says? You think in jingles and I think in systems.

Guess who wins? If that’s arrogance, so be it.

That’s right. I’ve often been brought in to troubleshoot issues in products and technologies I’ve never used, and in some cases never heard of, because troubleshooting effectively is its own skill independent of any specific knowledge.

Knowledge is cheap and easily acquired. Understanding how a system works and how to get to the bottom of things takes a whole lot more. And that’s what I’m good at.

My organization has a computer slowness issue. Is there some kind of forensic consultant that can help us track it down?

This is the kind of issue I guarantee I could solve in less than a day if I had unfettered access, but stumps tons of IT people.

Without having looked at it¹, there’s about an even chance I could solve it in 15 minutes or less.

That’s just how I roll.

1. Though I’ve solved tons of nearly-identical issues.

Guys who have “no game” but had no problem finding partners, what was the factor that made you successful?

I have no game. For a good number of years, I just asked out a lot of girls and went out on a lot of dates (anyone who said yes, anyone who asked me).

That’s how you do it. It’s definitely harder now, though, where any expression of interest is considered harassment if you’re a man, and you’re also seen as a default rapist.

It didn’t used to be that way when I was actively dating so I wouldn’t be able to do the same these days.