Ladies don’t start fights, but they can finish them! — The Aristocats

I never want any of my children, boy or girl, to depend on someone else. I want them to be able to feed themselves and keep a roof over their head. I want them to have all the skills they need to be independent. I especially want my children, especially Girlie Bear, to know to fight like a cornered cat if someone threatens or hurts them. When I was growing up, very few girls were equipped to stand up to others. It was social taboo for a man to hit a woman, but it was almost as bad for the woman to fight back. My goal is that I won’t need to be the overbearing father when dates come around, because by the time that happens, the young man or woman will know that my child doesn’t need my backup to defend themselves.

Toussaint: How did you know I have dry leprosy, that it isn’t contagious?
Papillon: I didn’t.

— Papillon

You have to take chances in life, or you will gain nothing. Most of the time when you do something, you will have most of the information you need. But every now and then, you will be forced to make a leap of faith. You may fail if you try, but you will never succeed if you do not. I think the trick in those circumstances is to know when something is important enough to make a blind stab, to have the skills and resources to deal with the consequences, and to not be surprised when presented with an unexpected result, good or bad.

This is my family. I found it, all on my own. Is little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good. — Lilo and Stitch

When Irish Woman and I went to get married, it took almost an hour for both of us to describe the twists and turns of our family backgrounds. Between marriages, divorces, deaths, parents, guardians, and everything else, the pastor was scrubbing his face with his hands as he tried to understand it all. He then pronounced our family as “biblical”. His reasoning was that nobody in the Bible had a nuclear family. Someone always was widowed, or had two wives, or was being raised by an uncle or grandparents. That was a great way of saying what I’ve come to feel: Family is not genetics. I love my blood relatives, but I love the family I’ve gathered over years of travel and heartache just as much.

Scotty: Computer! Computer?
[He’s handed a mouse, and he speaks into it]
Scotty: Hello, computer.
Dr. Nichols: Just use the keyboard.
Scotty: Keyboard. How quaint.

— Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home

One of the hardest things I do in IT is to continually learn about new technologies. But the  hardest thing I do is to teach others about old technology. You hang out in any big operation, and you will find the antiques. They’re old, and they’re slow, and they keep the lights on, so no-one messes with them. A huge percentage of the world’s business is still done on mainframe, and the Cobol programmers aren’t getting any younger. Convincing a 22 year old that they need to learn how to maintain and improve that code is almost as challenging as wholesale replacement would be.