Prose exists so that I do not forget the beautiful moments, memories, and meandering thoughts. Its intention is to facilitate a greater degree of accuracy in referential recall, for my own purposes, and to share one person’s experiences via photos and writings about where the many actions took me along the way.

Still though, Why?

Because of the coma, and the life-support machines, and everything involved with rebuilding cognition after being brought back to life. There are years of events which may never be recalled, whole sections of life which I’ll never fully remember having lost. Perhaps it’s better that way, but I will never know in either case, and that’s okay.

Priorities shifted, and now the freight train never stops. Sleep is difficult, rest can be fleeting, both bringing a challenging reality to the oft’ heard phrase, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Most people don’t know how that feels, and I do not think they would use the term so lightly if so.

I never want to forget this beautiful realm, its struggles and trials, kuschelig-weich süße küsse, the hugs and naps – and occasionally the complexities of corporate decision-trees too. This everything of being, in its infinitesimal grandiosity and minutia of glory, graced from Hashem or Lilith or the forever over-watching mountain gods too, perhaps?

On Spirituality or Nothingness

My sense of spirituality has no names and no demands of dogmatic mindlessness; it is this everything of every-day and every-time that I close my eyes to drift back into the nothingness of the Void. The nothingness of everything is always there, carrying me, calling for an eventual return, but not right now – give me one more day, one more adventure, one more embrace. Then, in-so-the interim of variable time, I may share them with you too.

Time and Timelessness

So then, this site is in some ways a grasp on the finite experience of time. A catalogue of imagery and concepts and concerns and emotions which exist only for temporary purposefulness, or ultimately meaninglessness. I’m not sure which, but here we are, and often times it’s just for the simple enjoyment of writing. A game which my mind plays with grammatical phrases, of equations and variables made of linguistics, of inference driven convolutional intentionality from the frontal-temporal lobes and dopaminergic pathways.

Since waking up those many years ago, a commonality of mind has been to focus on the present as much as possible; an exercise in occasional futility combined with a mostly Zen aligned stateful detachment. Day-to-day involves a meditative awareness of the senses while distanced cognition-threads process a long-held buffer of Parasympathetic Nervous System synapse firings, neurotransmitter floods and waves, accelerated DAT transport queues.

From the Void

From the void you awaken, into this body from which consciousness departed some lifetime ago. Inside the void all is null, an absence of existence, sensory nothingness, until the timelessness becomes a single photon of light. In an unknown span of time it expands, drawing consciousness back into the this shared realm of existence, back into the world of the living. From that void, an endless timeless realm where pain does not exist, the conscious mind “awakens”, and as it does the senses begin to scream in electrical amperage everywhere there is Aware.

The light expands and becomes the world, gaining contrast, and with that light appear shapes and structures without color. At first all is gray-scale, until slowly color dawns upon the senses, eventually distance and depth are concepts once-more, but there is no other sensory world. Scent, sound, touch, space and time, all remain back in the void.

Burning Searing Oxygen

Emotions, that conceptual link between awareness based feedback loops and knowledge of experiences did not come back immediately, if only to say that there was one binding sensory flood of continuity: anger laced despair. When the conscious mind re-appeared sufficiently to respond to its awareness of circumstance, the first thing I noticed was the burning of oxygen in my lungs - fed by tubes from the respirator machine, controlled by computer at the bedside.

Next was the burning in my neck, where the tubes were routed into a stoma - not through my mouth or nose - rather than the second incision crudely sewn two inches higher in the tracheal zone. An EMT had to slice open my throat for respiration, and through one set of vocal chord nerves the scalpel went, an emergent surgery on the floor in the dark of night. Only later, at the ER/OR was the stoma incised, the vertically sliced tracheal chasm zig-zaggedly sewn. The nerves never healed, and so my voice is soft but often fails, worn out as the day progresses. One set of muscles doing the work of two, but often not sufficient for anything at all.

Over time the senses came alive, mostly to their former capacity, except for memory. With memory it comes in chunks, as though an array is rebuilding, scanning, but often finding nulls. Short term memory was gone, with the weeks prior to the coma almost entirely missing from recall. Over time, STM Consolidation - the process by which our brains receive sensory data and filter/sort/prioritize aspects and elements and concepts of time from short to medium-term, then assessing and contextualizing and cross-referencing these into long-term memory. That process has improved with specialized medication and meditation, though this is a neuroscience topic for another day.

Hyperalgesic-Nociceptive Reaction Instinct

In the earliest days of awakening, still horizontal in the ICU, as my head would nod-off in a morphine haze (so much pain), the autonomic system would take over, and one or two hands would immediately race to attempt their forever game: trying to tear the hoses out of the stoma in my neck.

Surely, that did not go over well with the ICU staff, and eventually whenever my tired eyes would drift, a nurse would restrain my wrists to prevent the next autonomic attempt - those tubes HURT. Regardless, that type of physiological action was determined to be a neurologically positive sign which indicated that parts of the brain were coming back online for instinctual action (reduce pain immediately, even if doing so unintentionally ends breathing machine hookup).

The Knowledge Reset - via Reinforcement Learning

Of course, I couldn’t speak with the hoses still connected through the port in my neck, and once they were eventually out I still couldn’t speak. Either the brain didn’t remember how to contact the muscles, or the nerves controlling the voice box wouldn’t connect to the muscles - either due to pain or due to half of them being severed.

Eventually I would relearn how to speak, through a long and painful process over months, though it still fails on a near daily basis.

Inquiring with a specialist four years later, even experimental options would not apply, as the severed vocal chords’ nerves were too distant to reconnect end to end. Perhaps one day that will be resolved; until then my voice is soft and sometimes no-op.

Walking, all gone.
Dexterity by hand, also gone.
Balance, certainly gone.

The first time I was able to pull my legs over the side of the bed, while holding onto a nurse, the nanosecond either foot struck the ground, lightning surged upward — through the femur, spiraling along the thoracic spine, climbing into cervical vertebrae, and erupting through the cerebellum and corpus callosum, detonating across the cerebral cortex. There was no thought, no other sensation; existence narrowed to one unbearable truth: PAIN.

Electrical Signaling

In medical research and case studies there is a distinct lack of detail from patient perspectives on the topic of this process: awakening the somatosensory network of the Central Nervous System after a flatlined coma, not a medically induced coma, and not a short term coma. The CNS is an electrical system foremost, followed by chemical messenger pathways, both interwoven in a complexity which science has yet to fully model or simulate.

Part of not being able to walk, or to hold things, to speak, was the sheer inability for my brain to process the electrical signals unmoderated, ungoverned; in short, the signals were shorting out the sensory and processing equipment. Without sufficient memory the simplest actions and abilities are devoid of action.

Healing Processes

Part of the physical healing process was one of intense and ongoing patience and more patience and endless patient patient patience and more of being both concurrently in what seemed to be an endless forever. I was not a patient child; this was my least tuned skill set, but it is now my most etched-in-stone capacity, though everyone surely has their limits.

Sense of smell was deemed the least critical, as determined by whatever engines were managing the recovery process. Light sensitivity never stopped being a problem, to which no doctor has had answers. All of these abilities, so often and so easily taken for granted by so many, they form the foundation - the core of a person’s interactions with their world, and with those senses we define existence, what it means to be alive, what it means to engage with others, and by eventual extrapolation what it means to find and have purpose and meaning and definition and identity.

Referential Integrity

The ability to confirm the integration of data into the whole - not only a unit as its unique entry - but with its reference to which all else maintains interrelated definitions; Referential Integrity is not solely a term from the database engineering world, it is a way to see how the brain shapes the Self, how it infers meaning minute by minute from the individual experience with relationships (comparative, contrasting) to the whole of the experience. Our brains are processing and defining and redefining all of our sensory inputs trillions of times per day, moving memory chunks around according to some grander-than-awareness algorithm which necessitates the conversion of short term events into long term storage for retrieval years or decades later. This fascinating biological computer is the most beautiful and capable equipment which our species has ever come across - and so gods help me if I ever take that for granted in any breath until my last. The void is not going anywhere, it’s there always and forever, that much is knowable in my experience. So then, what purpose is there? The question has no definitive or singular notion to provide an answer; purpose is evolving and changing at all times, until there is nothing left.

Finally then..

So, philosophy of death and meaning and all of that.. in any case, Prose is a site for reflections upon a woven existence, one which has routinely provided awakenings into substantially altered facets of bicameral perceptions. These descriptions may not resonate with many, though this is not a site for mass consumption or awareness, and so that is okay.

In part, this site is an archive for those memories of fleeting years gone by, of present experiences which sooner than realized will forever and perpetually become that passing of time. Memories are a complex game, a puzzle of neurons - firing and transporting their transmitters to waiting receptors, remnants of the Central Nervous System’s programming as it was trained, over time and years - consciously and otherwise.. but that’s a story for another page, at another time.

[*] Unless there is no Free Will, in which case Causal Determinism implies that our consciousness correlates sentience as the role of an observer more so than one of pre-defined actional executor.

Yes, quite so, I miss the internet of the ’90s. The original idealism which prioritized being kind, helpful, welcoming, and infinitely curious about all things technical and complex and challenging.. instead we have mostly an internet where the experience has become “garbage in - garbage out”, and a wider array of assholerly than I expected to see three decade prior.

Nevertheless, we’re no longer in that era, and so here are my modern life accounts from a variety of networks. Often one may find my username existing as “winterschon”, though my active presence wavers and wanes - periodic silence, staccato quipped sarcasm and critique, and the inevitable return to torrential expressions. Can we have more Gopher, XMPP, USENET, and maybe even IRC + OTR over the ISDN.

Verification and Validity, Identity Defined

Generally speaking, if you don’t see a profile listed here, then it’s probably not a real account of my own. Do not engage and do not inquire to the unknown account - it only feeds the trolls and makes everything worse.

Ignore the Impersonators, Stalkers, Liars, and the Jüdenhasser Pseudo-Activists

Specifically, Twitter/X have the most egregious examples (which I am not back-linking), and of course their support team refuses to take those shitheel accounts down). If in doubt, please contact me on one of the networks below.

Can I send you an encrypted email instead?

Yes, and here is my PGP / GPG key from the MIT Keyserver:

• Personal GPG PubKey (A3E24F7A)

The Many Names of ‘Who Are You’?

Some people know me by one or two or four different names. I didn’t choose this life, so what else is there to say? People get married, divorced, stalked, adopted, disowned, disavowed, etc.. some people go into witness protection programs, some do not. Some get tired of doing so, and some must have online presence for their career - and for some there is simply no other choice.

Where is Madeline?

That’s my middle name. If you know me, likely you already know this, and if you know me very well, then you know that you know that you know that I know that you know this already. So double check your double-8, five-by-five, it’s too long passed and now’s TTGTFG - the endless slog, the Long Slow Distance, bekons just one more belay from the great beyond.

Where is Annaliese**?**

If you know me extra-more, from the sandstone expanses of Monument Valley, the Canyonlands, all of those falls on El Cap, the backcountry avalances we unstuck-ourselves from, to the summits of Sierra 14’ers.. then you may know my “what’s your wall name?”, or perhaps from the portaledges and frozen bivys and smashed scorpions carried-off in your stupid empty tequilla bottle (“no glass on the wall, asssssshoooooleeeee!”)… then Annaliese and Anja say hallo and hola and shalom from above and beyond the great so-long. 👋🌄💝

Industry

• Consulting Services: consulting.winterschon.com
• Ai Storage/Infra R&D: yukon.systems

Networks

• Mastodon (bridge):@eva@prose.winterschon.com
• LinkedIn (new-acct): linkedin.com/in/eva-winterschon
• SubStack: substack.com/@winterschon
• Instagram: instagram.com/winterschon

Asynchronous Comms

• Matrix: @winterschon:matrix.org
• Zoom: eva @\ winterschon.com
• Teams: eva @\ winterschon.com

Codes and Repos

• GitHub (personal): github.com/em-winterschon
• GitHub (startup): github.com/yukon-systems
• GitLab: gitlab.com/winternull
• CodeBerg (self): codeberg.org/winterschon
• CodeBerg (proj): codeberg.org/rfc1918
• CodeBerg (proj): codeberg.org/yukon-systems

Dots of (in)Consequence

Most engineers who come from a UNIX background, and maybe the newer generations who did not grow up using literal UNIX® [2], tend to travel their years with at least one personal repo for their range of ‘dot files’ - configurations for text editors, terminals, terminal emulators, shell configs, and so forth. Maybe that repo started out using UNIX’s SCCS, or the 90s winrar CVS, perhaps RCS, then SVN or Mercurial or Fossil, a big-check jaunt with Perforce, forced to use Git (it’s not great! quick, back to Perforce P4)!

Well you get the point, there are many ways to deal with challenges wrought by engineering’s evolving needs for multiple concurrent and distributed instances of source code control management. I’ve used all of the ones listed plus a handful of others, and while Git is less headache than CVS and SVN, it’s from the mind of a self-proclaimed dictator for life, and I don’t want to use it - but the industry demands ecosystem compatibility. So, the usual bitching aside, here’s my current dot-files repo.

• Dot-Files: codeberg.org/winterschon/dot-files
• Dot-Blumenkrieg [3]: codeberg.org/rfc1918/dotfiles-blumenkrieg

Technical Domains

• Hugging Face: huggingface.co/winterschon

Reference Points

• [*] If so, please message me via a valid profile from this page and let me know - as there exist impostors who’ve stolen my personal photos, professional likeness, and should be dealt with accordingly.
• [2] “The UNIX® trademark is owned by The Open Group, an industry standards consortium, which acquired it from Novell in 1993. It is used to certify that operating systems comply with the Single UNIX Specification {“SUS, that is suss..”}. The brand separates the trademark from any single company’s code, allowing multiple, independent implementations to be certified.”
• [3] Blumenkrieg translates to “Flower War”, and is mostly an inside joke about the near-immediate capitulation of Austria during the inevitable rearmament of the Kaiser’s German Empire as it evolved into the “Thousand Year Reich” which lasted about six. What kind of Jew isn’t capable of laughing at the ease by which the world looked on as my lineage and so many others’ were whole-sale slaughtered and exterminated at Mauthausen, condeming the part of my ancestral lineage to a brutal and inescapably horrific death - who had re-located at the time in Passau after escaping from Belarus pogroms.They all died, except for the very few who strived forward and managed to escape through the frosted-frozen Alps during storms of mourning and endless searching.

Systems, Storage, Networking

The following list of terms is never complete. New concepts added and adapted over time, you know the routine. Some things change, some.. do not.. and so we have language to reconcile those shared terms and meanings to convey and communicate the substance and substrates of lexicographical context.

ACL (Access Control List)

A list of permissions attached to an object (file/folder) specifying which users or system processes can access it and what operations are allowed. NFSv4 ACLs and Windows ACLs are two types (the former more POSIX-oriented, the latter more detailed). ACLs are often used as rules defining access permissions on an object (file/directory). In storage systems, ACLs specify which users or groups can read, write, or execute a file. NFSv4 and Windows filesystems support ACLs beyond basic owner/group/mode bits.

AFM (Active File Management)

A feature of IBM Spectrum Scale that allows caching and sync of data between clusters (for multi-site or hierarchical storage).

All-Flash

Refers to storage systems that use all flash memory (SSD/NVMe) as opposed to spinning hard disks. Provides much higher IOPS and throughput, beneficial for HPC and low-latency needs.

CSI (Container Storage Interface)

Not explicitly covered above, but contextually, CSI drivers allow these storage systems to integrate with container orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes) for dynamic provisioning.

Common Criteria (NIAP)

A framework (with Evaluation Assurance Levels, EAL) to certify IT products’ security. NIAP is U.S.’s National Information Assurance Partnership. e.g., an EAL2 certification might be required for government use of a storage device.

Deduplication & Compression

Data reduction techniques. Dedup finds identical blocks and stores one copy, saving space. Compression algorithmically reduces data size. Effective in reducing cost per logical stored TB, especially on systems like VAST, Pure.

Disaggregated Architecture

A design where compute (protocol processing) is separated from storage media enclosures. For example, VAST uses disaggregated compute nodes (CNodes) and storage boxes (DBOXes) connected via NVMeoF.

Erasure Coding

A data protection method that breaks data into parts, encodes it with redundancy, and stores across multiple disks/nodes such that it can withstand some failures. Provides space efficiency vs full replicas. This method for spreading data and parity across drives/nodes also allows data recovery if some parts are lost. More space-efficient than mirroring, used by Scality, Ceph, etc.

FIPS 140-2 / 140-3

U.S. government standards (older 140-2 and newer 140-3) for validating cryptographic modules. If a product is FIPS 140-3 validated, its encryption has been tested and approved for use in government systems (high assurance).

GPFS (General Parallel File System)

The old name for IBM Spectrum Scale, a distributed filesystem known for high performance in HPC.

GPUDirect Storage

A technology by NVIDIA that allows GPUs to directly perform IO to storage (bypassing CPU) if the storage and network support it. Reduces latency for GPU training data ingestion.

IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second)

A metric of how many read/write operations can be done in a second. Often used for measuring performance with small blocks (e.g., 4K). High IOPS with low latency indicates a system good for random small file workloads.

ISO 27001

An international standard for information security management. A product isn’t certified per se, but companies can certify their processes. Vendors adhering to 27001 ensure their product development and support follow security best practices.

Immutable Snapshot

A point-in-time copy of data that cannot be altered or deleted until certain conditions are met (used for WORM compliance, ransomware protection).

InfiniBand (aka IB)

Infiniband, a lovely networking protocol for low-latency RDMA enabled grid networks. Often used in clusters for HPC, OLTP, Ai/LLM Training and Inference, and Top-500 supercomputers. Often the leading protocol for high-speed networking, with encapsulation support for Ethernet (IPoIB) and others.

KMS (Key Management System)

External system to manage encryption keys (e.g., HashiCorp Vault, Thales). Many storage products integrate with KMS via KMIP (Key Management Interoperability Protocol).

Latency (storage context)

The time it takes to complete an I/O operation (e.g., read or write). Low latency is critical for small random IOPS-heavy workloads (like database or AI metadata). Usually measured in milliseconds or microseconds.

NFS (Network File System)

A client-server file sharing protocol allowing file access over a network. Common in UNIX/Linux environments for shared storage. A distributed file system protocol allowing remote file access as if local. v3 is stateless, v4 adds state, ACLs, and optional pNFS for parallel access.

NIST SP 800-53

A catalog of security and privacy controls for federal information systems. Being “aligned to NIST 800-53” means the system supports many of the controls (like AC- access control, IA- identification & authentication, etc).

NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express)

A high-performance interface for SSDs (especially PCIe SSDs). NVMe drives have low latency and high throughput, extensively used in modern flash arrays.

NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics)

A protocol to use NVMe (fast flash interface) over a network fabric like Ethernet or InfiniBand, allowing remote NVMe drives to be accessed with near-local performance. Extends NVMe protocol over network fabrics (Ethernet, InfiniBand) so that remote NVMe devices can be accessed with similar efficiency to local NVMe.

Object Storage

Storage that manages data as objects (with a unique key, metadata, and data), accessible via APIs like S3 or Swift rather than as a file hierarchy. Scalable to very large capacities and often easier to distribute than filesystems.

POSIX

A family of standards for Unix-like operating systems. “POSIX file system” implies traditional semantics (hierarchical directories, byte-addressable files, etc.). HPC codes often assume POSIX compliance for file I/O. The standard for maintaining compatibility among operating systems. In file systems, POSIX compliance means supporting expected behaviors of a UNIX file system (permissions, atomic operations, etc.).

QoS (Quality of Service)

The ability to manage and guarantee certain performance levels (throughput or IOPS) to certain workloads or clients. For storage, some systems allow QoS limits or reservations per user/share.

RBAC (Role-Based Access Control)

Admin/users roles with certain permissions within a system’s management (e.g., admin, read-only admin, security officer roles). Many storage systems have RBAC in their management UI.

RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access)

Technology to directly transfer data between computers’ memory over network, bypassing CPU to reduce latency (used in InfiniBand, RoCE networks).

RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet)

A protocol to run RDMA over Ethernet networks by making them lossless (using priority flow control). Provides InfiniBand-like performance on Ethernet gear.

S3 (Simple Storage Service API)

An object storage protocol (originally from AWS S3) for storing/retrieving whole objects (files) via HTTP. Many systems implement S3 for scale-out storage.

SMB (Server Message Block)

A network file sharing protocol predominantly used by Windows. SMB3 supports encryption and signing for security. Also known as CIFS in older versions. Allows file and printer sharing in LAN.

SPC-1 / SPEC SFS

Industry benchmarks for storage. SPC-1 measures IOPS in a database-like workload. SPEC SFS measures NFS or SMB throughput and IOPS for different workloads (like SPEC SFS2014_swbuild, etc. for software build, VDA for video streaming).

STIG (Security Technical Implementation Guide)

Guidelines used by U.S. DoD to secure systems (specific configurations to harden OS/applications).

Scale-Out vs Scale-Up

Scale-out means increasing capacity/performance by adding more nodes (horizontal scaling), whereas scale-up means using bigger hardware (vertical scaling). Scale-out is generally preferred for very large systems (e.g., Spectrum Scale, Scality, Qumulo are scale-out; Oracle ZFS is scale-up).

Snapshot

A read-only (sometimes read-write) copy of the filesystem state at a point in time. Useful for backups, quick recovery, or cloning datasets.

Throughput/Bandwidth

The rate of data transfer, typically measured in GB/s for these systems. Important for large file reads/writes (like streaming datasets for training or writing simulation output).

Tiering, Data Storage

Storage medium resource management design involving algorithmic methods for moving data between different storage performance types, with the goal of combining performance and capacity scaling into a model-able system with predictable KPIs.

OpenZFS and its ARC (Adaptive Replacement Cache) is the best example of tiered data structure design in OSS filesystems:

• L1-ARC == DRAM
• L2-ARC (Persistent Cache, Low-Latency)
  • CXL, PMem, or NVDIMM
  • NVMe (SLC NAND)
• 3rd Tier (Moderate Density, High-Write)
  • NVMe (MLC, TLC NAND)
  • Enterprise SSD (SAS3, SAS4)
  • Workloads: Write-Centric / Mixed, High-TBW
  • Write-IO/Day Specs: DWPD > 1.0
• 4th Tier (High-Density, Low-Write)
  • NVMe (QLC NAND)
  • Enterprise Dual-Head: SAS3 / SAS4
  • Enterprise Dual-Actuator: EXOS Mach.2
  • Enterprise Single-Head: SATA3 / SAS3 / SAS4
  • Workloads: Read-Centric, Low-TBW
  • Write-IO/Day Specs: DWPD < 1.0

Tiering, HSM

The “Hierarchical Storage Management” concept where data moves between tiers (hot data on DRAM (eg L1ARC on ZFS), cache-warm on SSD or NVMe, plus dual-head SAS for cold/large block storage, optionally with archive data on tape or object). Implemented in Spectrum Scale (as ILM policies), Weka (to object), etc.

WORM (Write Once Read Many)

A storage feature where data, once written, cannot be altered or deleted for a defined retention period. Used for compliance (financial records, medical data archiving). Implemented often via immutable snapshots or object lock.

Zero Trust Architecture

A security model where no implicit trust is given; even internal components must authenticate/authorize. In storage, features like requiring tokens for mount, or rootless admin, align with zero trust principles (assume breach and minimize attack surface).

Write Benchmarking (mdtest / IOR / FIO)

Common benchmarking tools for storage systems.

• Generally “mdtest” is used for testing small file metadata I/O.
• IOR (Interleaved Or Random) simulates parallel I/O bandwidth.
• FIO is a “Flexible I/O” simulator for common storage patterns.

pNFS (Parallel NFS)

An extension to NFSv4.1 that allows clients to directly access storage server nodes in parallel, rather than funneling all data through a single server.

pNFS improves throughput by eliminating bottleneck at a single NFS server. Part of NFSv4.1 that allows parallel data access from multiple storage servers to improve performance. Not widely implemented by all vendors, but conceptually eliminates single NFS server bottleneck.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (French: Notre-Dame de Paris) is a French Romantic/Gothic novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1831. The original French title refers to Notre Dame Cathedral, on which the story is centered. English translator Frederic Shoberl named the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1833 because at the time, Gothic novels were more popular than Romance novels in England. The story is set in Paris, France in the Late Middle Ages, during the reign of Louis XI.