The mini’s are the latest new hotness for desktop computing. I’ve been running a dirt cheap $90US, mini for 2 years now. It fits extremely well on my desk, just tucked in under the monitor leaving plenty of room for all the other tasks I do daily.

Will it play the latest hot new video game? Nope. But it will run OnlyOffice, FreeCAD and FreeDoom just fine.

Still got to have the money. And police departments need to have budget to replace equipment.

I have been elected to a city council several times and have gone over police budgets and it was no easier for the police to get money replace a squad car or get any of the “goodies” you think are so easy to them to get. There is only so much money to be had in any city budget.

Let me introduce you to ‘We ain’t got no money to buy anything’ trick.

Replaced by who? And where is the profit in selling something to someone who has no money to buy?

You act like you don’t understand police departments need grants to buy those things also.

That’s unlikely. You need to get grants from the federal government, chiefly the DHS, to get money to buy major equipment. There ain’t anymore federal grants remember. Small volunteer, (70% of all fire depts in the US), services are especially reliant on those grants to replace major assets.

Source: Been on committees to spec and buy ambulances and fire trucks and turnout gear. Even boots and gloves sometimes.

An Antiquarian I see. Carry on my good fellow!

Perhaps the best line ever uttered in any movie. Rowdy Roddy Piper maybe a B movie actor at best, but he was meant to play that role in that movie.

I have often wondered: Who wore a kilt best. Bruce Campbell or Rowdy Roddy Piper. Campbell was a Sharp Dressed Man in his kilt for sure. But Piper wrestled in one for years-- it was his trade mark garb.

I pronounce it AbbyWord and Gnumeric. I’m too old to have need of a full office suite anymore-- Libre or not.

French Canadians, (Québécois), believe it’s a way to fight other Canadians. If it works against Americans? Well that’s just a bonus.

I already wear a smart watch and use the vibrate reminders. It’s not particularly effective. After a lifetime in the harsh sun, there ain’t a lot of feeling left. Maybe once out of three times I might notice the vibration if I’m not distracted doing life things.

As a boomer with tinnitus, (I’ve had since maybe 4 years old), and now hearing loss, I can’t hear shit on my cell phone at 50% volume. And I have alarms set to remind me to take certain inhalers at set times during the day, (Thanks Long Covid!). So, yeah, I have the volume up enough to probably piss you off. It pisses me off too-- I hate those things and having to live like this. But it’s not like turning the volume off or down is really an option for me.

But chances are I probably forgot the damn thing at home anyway.

An interesting real time experiment to see how long it takes for stratification caused echo chambers and/or extremists zealots from both ends of the political spectrum to seize control of the platform. Turning the platform into a hellscape of zealots fighting each other for dominance and the eradication of all the others.

Sadly, humans as a rule need adult guidance for polite interactions to prevent violence. The sad part is it has become impossible to pick said adult capable of doing the job. And anyone in their right mind should run from such a job anyway.

That’s nice. But those are not the parts that generally die. Now get the control board that runs the whole show-- that’s the main failure point. See what that would cost to replace. I just searched for the control board for my 12 year old Maytag front loader. One source only: $367 dollars, (they know what they got). Is a 12 year old washer with limited parts availability really worth that much money to fix to scrape a couple of more years out of it if the motor goes tits up in 2 more years? I can drive to town and buy a basic top loader and haul it home and have it installed by this afternoon for just $200 more. And it will probably be fine for the next 10 to 12 years. (I’ll probably be dead by then away).

I just replaced a 10 year old dishwasher this last summer because the pump was dying. No replacement to be had on the whole planet. I need to replace an 8 year old microwave now because the handle is broken and the door cant be be disassembled to replace it without destroying the door. If I could get it apart, I’d be 3D printing a new handle as I type. And I’m not even going to bother searching for a whole new door.

Cheap easy repairs on washing machines are long a thing of the past. Between proprietary digital potted control boards to 3 phase motors, the parts ain’t cheap. (I’ve bought a few to repair them before I learned better) To the sheer unavailability of the repair parts. Make fixing you washer and dryer a time consuming, expensive, and often impossible task.

By the time you figure out the time spent searching for the part you need, the availability of said part, the cost of the part, the expected life of the rest of the machine, cost of all the time spent, you can pretty much be sure it’s cheaper and faster to just buy a new one. I can’t think of one major appliance I owned in the last 30 years that was worth the time and effort to repair. And I’ve tried repairing washers, dryers, dishwashers, microwaves, and refrigerators.

The only washers I’ve ever owned and were worth fixing was those old wringer/washers your Great Grandmother had when she was young. Straight up mechanical machines run by one simple switch, a vee belt, shafts and gears. That’s the reason those machines could keep going for 30 or 40 years.

And resulting health data sold for mere pennies. So health targeted ads can be flooded to your personal device.

Those are the lazy people. Lazy people refuse to learn new things. You don’t sound lazy.

Don’t be like them. Hang out with those people that piss excellence.

I suspect it might be easier to teach high school students. You get them younger and they don’t know no better. Fewer things to unlearn. But the skill gaps can be eye opening for sure. I’m old as dirt. I got my feeble tech start in front of a printer terminal-- we didn’t have such things as monitors. I don’t think I saw my first DOS prompt until I was maybe 19 or 20. But we stilled played Oregon Trail and some Space Invader game. And we loved it!

And the first rule of KDE is “There is ALWAYS a widget!”

As a “boomer” myself, I do know the secret of the ‘right click: Save as’. Who do you think thought up the idea-- that’s right, a Boomer. And we taught Gen X about it. Not my fault they didn’t pass on the ancient and now arcane knowledge to future generations. But I suppose you need to know how to use a mouse before you can right click anything. Having attempted to teach 3D CAD to high school students, my first job was to show them how to use a mouse and why fingers and CAD don’t mix. And do it before we could actually move on to the subject matter they were supposed to be learning.

Still I do use an app for rotate my backgrounds and quotes. The app Variety works well with KDE Plasma with a large selection of repositories to choose from with beautiful backgrounds without taking up extra space on my drives. But what do I know, I’m just a boomer.

I do enjoy all the NASA photos and National Geographic backgrounds served up to me on a rotating basis without needing to take up local storage space to do so. But I ain’t running Windows either.