The last time I was excited about hardware was 2008, when I spent hard earned Starbucks money to buy a 12" iBook G4. Since then, I've been spoiled by company provided Apple laptops at each place I've worked. They've all been beautiful machines, each faster than the last. What's missing in each of those was a sense of excitement and pride in ownership. I stopped maintaining my own home server, piecing together and recycling old hardware. I didn't need to do custom software builds to squeeze the last bit of performance, another new laptop was always just around the corner.
Since leaving my job and starting to build software for fun again (jch.app), I've slowly rediscovered that original joy of computing, from software down to hardware. I've dusted off the cobwebs off this blog, adding RSS and dark mode. I installed Debian Bookworm (my last linux was, checks notes, Debian Woody, released July 2002) on a e-waste Thinkpad T480s (thanks Dad!). Production is hosted on a 2016 macbook pro with a dead battery and a set of bash scripts (yolo).
I still love Apple hardware, but when there isn't the pressure of deadlines, it's more fun to figure things out along the way.