Elmore Leonard. Dude was a massive influence on popular culture. He was instrumental in teaching Tarantino how to be Tarantino. He wrote the books that SO MANY great movies and television shows were based on.

Hunter Thompson. His gonzo style is often imitated but rarely duplicated. And it’s such a goddamn simple concept, but no one else managed to do it with his flair.

Disney released an animated movie a couple years ago called Strange World. It was a wildly mediocre movie with a plot that had a very obvious pro-environment, message that was subtle as a brick.

But what really ruffled the conservative feathers was son character who had a gay crush. For as preachy ad the rest of the movie was, the gay crush subplot was amazingly well done. They treated it like any other hetero love interest subplot. It wasn’t preachy or hamfisted or campy… it was just a family being happy for the kid.

As the defacto Excel guy in my office… I’m sorry. Also, I’m kind of proud of what I managed to accomplish.

That reminds me of The Venture Bros. There’s a villain called White Noise who is basically anthropomorphic television static in a humanoid shape.

He was a white supremacist television repair man before his “accident”.

The writing on that show was so goddamn sharp.

That’s what I did when I didn’t have physical access to the network where I was living. My little Asus that I flashed with Tomato saved my sanity.

Yeah. I’ve had a couple of their little travel routers which are a lot of fun. But apparently you can’t flash custom builds on one of their more recent models.

What were your must have packages?

Just one word: plastics.

You’re casually blowing off two of the main reasons why I still have to use Windows.

Is there a Linux alternative to Excel that will allow me to reliably write and execute VBA macros that I can then deploy to my windows using co-workers?

Is there a Linux alternative to Photoshop? Doesn’t even need to be the most current version. I’d be happy with something that is functionally comparable to Photoshop 7.

I’m not being glib with those questions either. It’s been probably ten years since I’ve really used Linux. If there are legitimate alternatives I’d absolutely give it another go.

Put on Bluey.

KWGT and KLWP. Worth every penny to skin your home screen to your exact desires. It’s basically like adding several layers of extra functionality to your launcher with custom coding and some surprisingly great GUI tools. I’ve seen people do some insane shit. Throw in Tasker and you got a stew going!