HiWire

What is this ship? 💩 I downloaded Monterey yesterday but I haven't had a chance to put it through its paces yet. It's very purple. 😈 P.S. I had to run Monterey on a 2020 MacBook Pro this morning to wipe a Big Sur volume and both Finder and Disk Utility crashed several times. I think most people should wait a few months before upgrading to Monterey.

A Corvette named Rambo:

Happy Birthday!

It's a great album. I've got most of her other albums, but this one is special.

Happy Birthday!

One of my big concerns with the old 16" MBP was the reported fan noise from connecting an external monitor. It's nice that they wanted to make sure thermals were under control (without throttling performance), but I prefer a silent computer if possible. The new one should be quiet.

I was looking at the old refurb 16" Intel MacBook Pros last week: had one at near $6,000 and a less extreme one at around $4,000 (32 vs 64GB RAM, 5500M vs 5600M, and 2TB vs 4TB SSD). That's a lot of money to ask for something with a 2018-era CPU and a 2019-era GPU. At least you'll get more performance and battery life out of these new ones. The pricing of the current M1 Mac Minis and MacBook Air computers, especially refurbished, offers one of the better values I've seen from Apple (relatively) in years.

Framework announced their parts marketplace: https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/14/22725935/framework-laptop-modular-marketplace-launches-spare-parts-upgrades-expansions I looked at the new Surface devices, but none of them work particularly well for my coworkers.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

I'd like to visit there some day. It lives in my imagination thanks to Swallows and Amazons!

The Jam – Sound Affects

I remember the AC-20 had a short range, which makes the imagery even more hilarious. The BattleTech sourcebook writers may have been paid by the word: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/battletech-the-1980s-in-space-forever.751195/ The "Unseen" mechs were a major part of the game for me (I was also a Robotech/anime fan), so the new, ugly Mech designs haven't captured my imagination like the originals.

Yes, I still have the BattleTech Technical Readout: 3025 with the classic Mechs and the first MechWarrior (1986) RPG book. The Clan invasion was interesting, but I'm not sure I like where everything went after the Clan timeline (i.e., when I'm reading on sarna.net and the BattleTech wiki). At least you have a lot of choices for settings and technologies.

Thanks, I lost track of the BattleTech games after the previews of MechWarrior 5 a while ago. Looks like BattleTech is more my speed – I found the pace of the MechWarrior game plodding, even if its graphics are nice. I loved Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun games. Spent a whole summer a few years ago finishing Shadowrun Returns, Dragonfall, and Hong Kong.

Cool. I thought about doing the same thing myself with the old BattleTech board rules (along with CityTech, etc.), but not in Python. RIP, FASA.

Was the game Snake? 🐍 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_(video_game_genre) I've found the 16" MacBook Pro prices insane... paying thousands of dollars for old hardware, middling performance, and fan noise (with external displays) is unacceptable. Or maybe I just don't make enough money from my computers. People are going to be dumping their Intel Macs once their software workflow has moved to native Apple silicon support. The refurb 27" iMacs offer the best performance/value in the Intel Mac lineup, but obviously they aren't portable.

It's also popular in the Philippines. I've never purchased Spam, but I don't have anything against it. My mom used to buy tins of corned beef when we were kids.

What's old is new again... Sound Blaster compatible card for IBM PS/2 Microchannel computers:

Biscuit History Lemonade

I like this Felder PCS sawdrop. Spent the morning reading about brigandine armor – protect all the things!

Happy Birthday!

St. Vincent – Daddy's Home Annie Clark got the funk like Midnight Vultures via Pink Floyd