And now, from the local news file...

I feel like a mouse caught in a trap
of my own design. The renovation
project consumes all of my time and
will continue to do so for the
foreseeable future. However, I know
that I will really enjoy the new
bathroom and office when they are
done. In fact, it's the last major
renovation on the house, so I guess
I'll be free afterward. To do what?
Who knows?

I was saddened to learn of the
departure of kvothe from the
phlogosphere[0]. I know that I should
reconcile myself to the transiency of
all things, but I like this community
and find the departures disconcerting.
Of course, new people arrive and make
great contributions, redefining what
we talk about here, so that's a good
thing. In any case, if you're reading
this kvothe, farewell to the dial tone
and godspeed!

Last week, I decided to join Mastodon,
and began looking around at various
instances. I knew where some of you
resided, so I decided to check out
those places, only to find that
pkotrcka had departed 101010.pl (I
thought that joining that community
might be a quirky thing to do, if
they'd have me, but then without a
fellow phlogger there, I
reconsidered).

A day later, pkotrcka phlogged about
his decision to shut down that account
and open a new one over at
tilde.zone[1].

In the end, I decided to set myself up
at fosstodon, since the local feed has
news from a number of projects that
interest me. I'm not sure whether I'll
maintain that presence or not. My
track record with social media is not
good. I usually end up shutting the
accounts down, because the nature of
the conversations does not interest
me. But we'll see. Maybe Mastodon will
be different.

It's really cool to see that jirka's
Blackbird finally arrived and that
it's working after the initial RAM
hiccups[2].

Lastly, a new (to me) laptop is on the
way. My current laptop is a Lenovo
ThinkPad R500, with most of the
possible upgrades (processor, RAM,
SSD, etc.). It's still very capable,
but the screen has always been it's
weakness. I didn't do a screen upgrade
because there are only TN panels
available. Higher resolution doesn't
really matter to me if the viewing
angles are still terrible.

So I ended up buying a ThinkPad L440.
If you know ThinkPads, it's a less
expensive (and thinner) equivalent of
the T440p favoured by most modders, in
that you can still upgrade the
processor, which is impossible after
that generation. I plan to throw my
current SSD in it and upgrade the
screen to an IPS version right away.
The other upgrades can happen slowly,
as I feel like spending money on it. I
kind of enjoy doing that sort of thing
during the Winter months when you're
stuck indoors a lot.

Well, that's it. Time for breakfast
and another day of renovating. Take
care, gopherites!

[0] gopher://circumlunar.space/1/~kvothe/
[1] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/pkotrcka/0025
[2] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/jirka/Phlog/2019_07_07.txt