John Carr

A multi-decade nerd, mostly in information security and retrocomputing. When I'm not a nerd, I'm a parent to a few kids and foster kids, a few foster animals. Also, a cyclist, and vegetable gardener.
I'm a reforming gothkid - I still love the moody music, but I'm kinda disconnected with the scene.
I'm an introvert who loves public speaking and doing stuff on social media... I'm just awkward AF in personal interactions.
Vocal LGBTQIA+ #ally. Heavy defender of #TransRights.

#linux #cycling #netbsd #pkgsrc

Last Notes

2026-01-06 01:53:38 UTC

- reply

Hearing how you gave away your collection is heartbreaking. I don't know how you did it. Even now with everything available for streaming, I'd still want physical copies. (And, I absolutely remember longboxes. I just never kept mine, although I should have).
What I learned is I got older is that I care way, way more about the music and less about the medium. While I have all of these albums on cd, when I was younger, I also collected. I used to have a huge Cure and Bjork collection of rarities, imports, etc. But what I started to realize was that I was amassing a pile of all the same songs over and over again on different singles. It just didn't do as much for me. Plus, I got really excited about the prospect of having them on vinyl, but I don't think I actually understood why. As I got older, I cared more about owning the songs I wanted on the best sounding format. I know it's heresy, but that isn't vinyl to me. Luckily, I only had about 40 or so records. I could've gone deep down that rabbit hole too.
That said, thank you so much for your offer! I think that since my goal is to Pare down my belongings and make space, it probably makes more sense to sell the records instead of bringing in a turntable. Besides, I know myself. If I have a turntable, then I will want to get a new amp. Once I have a new amp, I'll want new speakers. Then I'm chasing the dragon.. :)

2026-01-05 04:36:40 UTC

Holy cow... I have about 30 records I'm looking to get rid of because in the 30 years or so I've owned them, I never bothered buying a turntable. I kinda knew that the The Cure was collectible, but I never really knew, until now, how insane it all was. It takes almost 10 minutes per album to figure out which version each one is because every. single. one. has about 293874092874 variants.
... and that means I'm going to go through all this, no one locally will buy them, and I'll end up just taking them to the local record store anyway.

2025-01-03 22:18:42 UTC

Alright - since someone else did it an #intro recently, I guess I will too...
I'm John, formerly Cranky_JC on the Twitters. I've been doing InfoSec & IT since the '90s. I've been a consultant, pentester, auditor, architect, engineer, leader, speaker in the past - I'm part of the dying breed of generalists. I was part of the original MISec crowd in Detroit, but haven't been able to keep up with it as much lately (stupid work and home lives).
I'm currently middle-management at a fintech company in my work life. In my personal life, I'm a foster parent, adoptive parent, fur parent, gardener, cyclist, vegetarian, and reformed craft beer snob that kinda fell out of it during COVID. I love all things goth, jazz, and spicy stuff. Lately, I've been kinda wanting to get back into BBSing for some reason I can't really explain.
My wife does a lot of fiber arts and would love one of @npub1vtx…e7wk 's llamas if they're up to be borrowed.