Featured

Blog?

About

This computer, which predated Apple & the TRS-80, was instrumental to the beginning of “personal computers” and resulted in the creation of Microsoft. This in turn resulted in Linus Torvalds wanting something better so he created Linux.

Linus Tech Tips is pro Linux

Linus Tech Tips put out a video titled “I Don’t Think I Can Go Back To Windows…”. I think it’s pretty significant he has 16.8M subscribers. He’s mostly MS-Windows. But occasionally puts out a computer agnostic video. A few months ago he interviewed Linus Torvalds, and built him a computer. He and 2 co-hosts came to the conclusion that they are sticking with Linux in some capacity.

It’s significant… but is it a good thing? When it comes to Linux being mainstream, I have never thought it’s a great thing. I always think of the Eagles song The Last Resort…

They call it paradise
I don’t know why
You call someplace paradise
Kiss it goodbye

Calendar

I just assumed it would be easy to find a website that has a decent large monthly calendar for the current month. But so far I’ve struck out. Size-wise something like this (click to enlarge). Except this has no Father’s Day. You know the day that’s been around for over 100 years. Like the cheap Dollar Tree calendars have. You know a day I might like to see and be reminded of (if my father was still alive) on the calendar, and is on most calendars you would buy, including the cheap Dollar Tree calendars.

No Father’s Day but Juneteenth, a day I (or most other people) never heard about until a few years ago, but apparently it’s been a thing since 1866. The day was officially recognized as a federal holiday on June 17, 2021. Of course, Mr DEI, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law.

Shouldn’t June 13th be Juneteenth? We could start on January 13th, it would be Januaryteenth… and so on.

Juneteenth is on my cheap Dollar Tree 2025 calendar… of course. But not on my cheap Dollar Tree 2014 calendar. But Fathers Day is. Or probably any calendar before that, honestly probably not before 2021. Few heard of it… or cared.

What a stupid name Juneteenth. Before labeling me, I also think Generation Jones, which I’m supposed to be in, is a stupid name too.

I did find this. At least it has Father’s Day! And Juneteenth… rolls eyes. But it fills just a small part of the screen. The page is way to busy. Also frankly I don’t care about Catholic holidays. So it’d be nice if those were separate options.

I just want a large calendar with common calendar days and holidays on it.

Erector Set and GI Joe

I don’t know why I’m posting this in a mostly technical “blog”. I guess, because I grew up in a time pre consumer level computers and electronics. Well there was some consumer electronics. So my interests tended to be mechanical. Building, constructing, tearing apart. I did a lot of tearing apart, old broken objects back then. My dad never told me not to. I only tore apart old broken objects. I took gasoline engine mechanics in high school, and liked understanding internal combustion engines and working with my hands.

There is a recent YT video Titled “What Happened to the Erector Set? “. I don’t ever remember asking for an Erector Set, but I think I would have loved it. On the other hand my parents bought me a GI Joe which I also never asked for, and I hated it. But I didn’t tell them that. It was a very popular toy at the time and I know my parents just wanted me to have the best. However I always looked at GI Joe as a doll like Barbie. I doubt that I ever spent more than 10 minutes playing with it.

My point is my beloved parents totally misread my interests in this situation. They probably thought GI Joe is 50 times more popular today than the Erector Set. So we’ll get him that.

Mini AI computers

I think I’m late to the game on this. But that’s what happens when you’re a loner and live in a bubble. Just now hearing about Nvidia Jetson Nano and Jetson Orin Nano. Again, I just like to comment on things, even when, like this, I don’t know much about the subject… just to give myself a timestamp.

Beelink also has Mini AI computers based on the Ryzen AI chip. But at this point it sounds like Nvidia is ahead of AMD in AI.

Plug-in Solar

I’m just learning about this. So I may describe some things wrong. But I wanted to mark my interest. My recent solar portable power station has led me to explore other solar options. Plug-in Solar (also called balcony solar) is a technology that is very popular in places like Germany, where a few Solar panels and these inexpensive power stations can simply just be plugged into a electrical outlet inside your house, to provide power and reduce the grid power you need. It can be self installed in a hour or two. Not all US states currently permit this. These roof mounted solar panels usually require expensive installation, permits and inspections. Because they can pose danger to linemen working on power lines in a power outage, because the power can back-flow into the grid. This plug-in solar provides certified protection against this potentially dangerous situation. This is a $500 solution as opposed to a $20,000+ roof solar panel roof installation.

Also these expensive roof mounted solar panels, can damage the roof and make your home harder to sell.

My computer apparently just rebooted?

Was watching YouTube videos. Fell asleep for several minutes, awoke to a black screen, I didn’t sign on just moved the cursor and it awoke to 4 empty virtual desktops… no browser running… no monitor running, as I always have in the last virtual desktop. I did an uptime and it said…

08:55:39 up 5 min, 1 user, load average: 2.71, 1.89, 0.90

I’ve been on the computer for several minutes. Did it “hibernate”? I don’t even remember if that’s a symptom?

I need to return my HP EliteDesk 800 G5 Mini

Was working with STG USA on my HDMI audio issue. They eventually said “They don’t support Linux”. My reply was as follows…

It's a shame because other than HDMI audio, it seems like a nice computer. Also there are many YouTube videos showing Linux running on this computer. I did ask Amazon's AI "Rufus" BEFORE I BOUGHT IT if it ran Linux. And it said "yes  it works well with Linux" even adding "it has excellent Linux driver support". See attached image. That answer is different today. Being that HDMI audio worked perfectly on my other Linux computer, I kinda suspect it's a BIOS issue. Anywho, I'll return it. I'll probably end up buying a much more expensive Mini computer.