Hey There!
It;s 7:34 AM EDT, 63°F, Humidity 78%, Wind 8 mph N, overcast, AQI 42
Yesterday was a bit of a hellish day. I cracked through my morning routine and added a walk as well. Arriving back home, I had a bit of breakfast, and then got down to business pretty quickly.
Let me just say right here that the whole entire day was eaten up by working on getting my computers in shape for donation, and working on high finance with Son2 for his house. Between those two activities my day was completely taken up,
The first thing I did was take an inventory of all my computers. It turns out I have 15 computers and 2 iPad Minis. I had no idea at all I had that many computers. They're a combination of old Chromebooks, miniPCs that I used to install Linux, a couple of old MacBook Airs, and my current daily driver the MacBook Air M2. I also just bought an HP Stream 14 for travel, so that's included as well. I also have a computer from Son2 that's an old gaming tower, but I don't count that because it's not mine. It's a little embarrassing to realize you owned that many computers.
The issue here is that I have to make sure there's no personal information on any of them when I give them away, so that means finding ways to wipe them clean and get them to their initial state. So yesterday I powerwashed two of the Chromebooks. One was easy, the other gave me issues but eventually I got it powerwashed.
The third one is tricky, and I maybe have gone down a path I shouldn't have. It is a model no longer getting updates. I managed to get it powerwashed, so theoretically someone could have used it at the most basic level for web surfing and such, but it would have been a security risk, and a lot of websites probably wouldn't have worked. So I thought to try and put Linux on it. I took it apart and I have a new eMMC drive coming today which I hope can replace the one currently in there. Then I will have to overwrite the firmware protection. Then I will have to install the OS. It may have been too much, but I will know in a couple of days.
The 4th one is an old Asus Notepad 200S which had Windows in some form on it. But it only has 2GB of RAM, so it's way slow. And the battery is dead. So after 4 unsuccessful attempts, I finally got Lubuntu Linux installed on it. It was such a pain getting a bootable USB stick prepared and then set up so the computer would boot from it. I don't want to go through that again. So right now I believe I have 4 computers to donate all in working condition of some sort, with all my personal data gone.
In the meantime, Son2 is trying to get the down payment for his house into liquid cash. It's a pain in the ass. I have to drive to Rochester today to hand him a check he can put in his bank to help speed the process if possible. Now that he's bought the house, the pressure is on to close and do all that shit. Above the down payment he is going to need another $7K for fees and closing costs. Yikes. I am glad I am not house shopping in this new environment.
After the hectic day finally subsided, I managed to grill some chicken thighs for dinner, while DW made some home fries and cut up some veggies. I had to finish the Notepad process after dinner, and then I finally sat down for the ballgame, which was another loss. The season is getting shorter, and at this point it's really pointless to do anything but wait until the playoffs. I did watch a video on electric cars that I probably didn't need to watch, but it passed the time. Bedtime was 11:30 PM.
Notable Deaths: Harald V, King of Norway, 89. Ratko Mladic, the "Butcher of Bosnia," 83.
That's all for now 'Til We Meet Again! '