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70 Years WTF · post

Dear Vikki, I'm re-rebooting

Mike Wolf · 2024-12-17 · 748 words · original ↗

A humorous and intricate Rube Goldberg-style machine designed for rebooting a computer, featuring overly complicated components like pipes, gears, pulleys, and whirring gizmos. Labels on parts of the machine include 'Reboot Process,' 'Error Management,' and 'System Recovery.' At the end of the contraption, a toaster comically ejects a burnt slice of toast with the word 'Error' charred onto it. The scene is colorful, playful, and exaggerated, with a whimsical and cartoonish art style.

Hi Vikki,

I was going to write a blog post about re-rebooting today. Not just today. Several days, including today. Haven’t done it yet. Maybe today’s the day. Or maybe tomorrow.

I didn’t remember having written this blog post about rebooting, because I hadn’t forgotten having written it.

How can you remember something if you haven’t forgotten it?

But even though I hadn’t forgotten that I had written it, I had forgotten what I had written.

So I went back read that blog post about rebooting..

I still do not remember it. A learned it again. And now I’m aware both of that I wrote, and what I wrote.

When I went back to reread it, I saw that Vikki had left a lovely comment.

Thanks, Vikki. Here’s Vikki’s Substack. Don’t say I never did anything for you, Vikki.

I liked your comment (if you are Vikki—her comment if you are not) and then liked it. (You see the difference, right?)

And then I went to your Substack (I mean your Substack, Vikki—not your blog if you are not Vikki, but instead Vikki’s Substack) and read a things you or Vikki had written, depending on who you are.

And then I started writing a reply to Vikki.

And then I decided I’d start the re-rebooting blog post by copy/pasting my reply to Vikki into a new, fresh draft, and continuing from there.

Of course I had to edit the reply. So it’s different. Better, I think. But I was inspired by Vikki, and I decided I’d dedicate the blog post to Vikki. (Or to you, Vikki, if you happen to be Vikki.)

Anyway—re-rebooting.

I thought “You have to start re-rebooting somewhere and this is where I will start.”

And then I thought, “This might be the end, for a while.

And then I thought: “I don’t seem to be able to finish writing the things I start.”

And then I thought “That’s not true. When someone writes you an email, you almost always write back.”

Yeah, I wrote that in this post, here. Thank you Past Me.

I’m not proactive, but I am responsive. If you send me an email, I will answer it. If you reply, I will reply back. Before you know it, we’re having a conversation. But if I get busy and communication drops and you don’t initiate, I’ll just go on with my life as though I didn’t care.

But that’s not true. I do care. I do respond. I just don’t initiate. Unless there’s a project

So I’m going to trick myself into writing more by using this one weird trick.

If you leave a nice comment like Vikki’s then I’ll reply with a post, dedicated to you.

If you don’t leave a nice comment like Vikki’s I’ll imagine that you have, and I’ll reply with a post, dedicated to you.

If I remember.

Thanks Vikki!

Love,

Mike