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	Stardate: 20230716.1344
	Location: In an airplane
	Input Device: Gemini PDA
	Audio: Rumble of airplane
	Visual: Flip-out tray table, safety information pamphlet
	Emotional: Slightly refreshed from nap.
	NOTE: This was phosted on 20230727.0942 since I was overseas.

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	The Old Computer Challenge has concluded. I enjoyed taking on the
	challenge, as well as reading about everybody's experiences in various
	protocols out there, gopher, gemini, irc, hypertext transfer, etc.
	When I first read about the challenge, I told myself that I needed to
	particpiate this year. I enjoy when the "smolnet" communities call
	for participating in shared experiences like occ, or ROOPLOCH, or
	christyotwisty's monthly 5 questions, and we are able to
	come together as community and have fun![1][2][3]

	There are many things I have learned, not just from my direct
	involvement with my old hardware and software, but also from you
	people in the community. I have been keeping notes and still continue
	to take notes of what you all share.

	It is refreshing to be in a community where we can do stuff like this,
	even if it is on a smol scale, but also a global scale! I observed
	that there were so many different countries across many different
	time zones involved. Just being on IRC on #oldcomputerchallenge in
	libera.chat had people greeting me "Good morning," when I was still
	finishing up "yesterday's" dinner and have not yet phosted my occ
	notes for the day! Sometimes this feels like what I miss about
	local BBS from before...it feels local...but global (globally local?),
	and we can all feel free to participate without getting too lost with
	overcrowding, drowned by the firehose, people with troll agendas, and
	other distactions that has kept me away from the larger social media
	groups. Plus, the comments and feedback are m0ar intimate and personal.

	It is also nice to be among friends, old and new, who share the same
	interest and curiosity with old computers and just getting things to
	work just for the joy of old computing. As I have experienced,
	there is still much worth there and much that can be repurposed or
	reimagined into old hard/soft-warez.

	From my dealings with the Sun Ultra 10 (voltesv), the hardware, aside
	from the NVRAM, is still in decent shape and still has current
	options available to explore. The installed Solaris is very limited
	but I have found other operating systems to try. I plan on spending
	m0ar time exploring the Ultra since it is no longer in pieces in my
	garage.

	The Asus eeePC 701 is still very useable and quite frankly, can be a
	"modern" replacement for my general daily use. My "killer app" is
	still the terminal with all of the different tools that I keep using
	there. I still mostly use the web like I did during the web v1.0
	days of static web pages and web searches. Even with mastodon, there
	are alternative clients and I do not have to be stuck using the web
	GUI.

	The OCC had me revisiting the toot CLI client and it showed me that
	I do not need a GUI to stay connected. My masto-scrolling is much
	m0ar efficient and for pics with descripions, I can still open the
	images in a separate window. If there are no descriptions of the
	image and I cannot easily guess what the picture is by the fugly URL,
	then I guess I miss out on the picture. Oh well, no FOMO for me
	there.

	It was nice to be able to connect to both old computer's desktop
	environments remotely from my Wind0ze workstation for work during
	my breaks or long virtual meetings that did not require my active
	participation. I would connect to the eeePC's desktop via the
	x2go client and then connect to the Ultra from the eeePC's
	desktop via x11vnc. Still very functional.

	Overall, this was a really nice activity that I enjoyed and gave
	me a chance to (re)connect with old and new friends in the smolnet,
	learn some new things, and revisit personal computing's past. I
	think I will continue the adventures with the old computer and
	make m0ar of an effort to spend time in that area. Thanks to
	Solène for the challenge and the community for participating!
	Hope to do this again with you next year!!!

	[1] Solène's Old Computer Challenge
	[2] Solderpunk's ROOPHLOCH
	gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/1/%7esolderpunk/roophloch
	[3] christyotwisty's 5 Questions
	gopher://sdf.org/0/users/christyotwisty/5Q-Index.txt

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