I've been absent for the last week or two, thanks to ongoing computer trouble with Windows 10 (as usual). I finally managed to get my newer laptop disinfected and installed Manjaro (which is based on Arch). After only three days, I decided I don't like it and went back to Debian (12 this time, since 10 had issues with recognising my machine's WiFi hardware).
Not even a day later, once I've finally got a machine configured the way I want it, the blasted thing fails to boot, won't even POST. I don't have time to diagnose the fault nor money to pay anyone to look at it and replace whatever has died. I'm typing this from my old laptop, which has no battery life whatsoever. However, it's still going strong well into its seventeenth or eighteenth year, apart from a few broken corners and missing some of its plastic housing. It's connected to an old UPS with a battery that doesn't even last long enough to shut down the machine when it first starts beeping. The result is that I spend about four hours out of every sixteen unable to use my computer (which, having all my backed-up files on it, has less than 5GB free, causing my XMR wallet to malfunction). So it goes. I feel like a fool every time I make the mistake of thinking I'm making progress, only to have life kick me in the teeth again. You'd think I'd have learned by now that I can never win, but no, I clearly haven't. I'm never buying a fucking laptop again; it's caused me more trouble tan it's worth and I deeply regret buying the last one that I did. I'll buy a compact/mini PC (or whatever it's called) or a tower, something that I can build myself or open and replace parts easily. Maybe an SBC like a Latte Panda or Udoo Bolt might be worth my while, since they're (slightly) cheaper. At this stage, though, I can't even afford a $3 USB-to-TTL/UART diagnostic serial cable to see if I can figure out why my BeagleBone Black isn't responding to the uSD card containing a flasher image of Debian 7.1 (since the images I downloaded for 8 and 9 don't decompress properly).
Maybe one day I'll get to the point of converting all the software I use into Web-based apps hosted on my own site (probably with Unstoppable Domains), but that still presents the problem of having a machine to run a Web browser in order to access it.
Anywho, I finally managed to withdraw a small amount of BCH from Faucet Crypto (despite the fact that it's over 70% of the daily limit). Hopefully, all the hours I've spent there have paid off, but I'm not holding my breath. I've also done quite well on Fire Faucet, but I do wish I'd withdrawn my earnings when XNO was at ~$0.63 instead of ~$0.735. I'd have made a small profit, considering I've gone from ~11 XNO to ~9.7 XNO in the space of two weeks. Ho-hum, what fun!
Thumbnail Image: Julia Larson on Pexels
