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Taylor Singletary
Taylor Singletary

Posted on • Originally published at Medium on

The life, death, and resurrection of my dear friend Charlie proxy

When Charles expires, he no longer breathes in your traffic orchestrations. His little thready lungs simply stop working, the ports all closed. Charles’ eyes shut, and he stops remembering and recording.

Insert a coin to continue what was a pretty good life for Charles. Helping you.

Maybe Charles remembers more than he lets on. Maybe Charles is still alive enough to pass a few packets around to NORAD. Charles is waiting for your payment.

I have a Charles Proxy license I purchased in 2010. That makes Charles and I pals. I actually call him Charlie. I don’t think the 4.0-series Charles likes nicknames.

Of course, Charles was way cooler back then before everyone else heard of him. He used to play LARPAnet festivals with his band, Charlie Proxy & the Unsecured Connections: the Masquerade. When I hear about the kids today not paying for their Chuckles, I just get mad.

What about James?

James is a far left deadbeat free as in who cares black sheep of a brother to Charles. They never really got along, though when James was young Charles showed little Jimmy everything he knew about port forwarding. Charles trusted Jimmy then but then he got hard into secured tunnel packet sniffing, stealing shared secrets just to keep the habit. Based on my friend Charlie’s advice alone, Debian refuses to package James to this day.

You finally buy a license

Charles restarts but is not what he once was. His lurking all murky. His wild patterns match too greedily, lazily even. He refuses to check or sum, drops shady characters as the bits rolls by, confusing ones for zeroes and zeroes for elevens and elevens for line noise.

If only you’d paid for Charles sooner.

Mr. Nosey by Charles Roger Hargreaves

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