And now, from the local news file...

I feel like a mouse caught in a trap 
of my own design. The renovation 
project consumes all of my time and 
will continue to do so for the 
foreseeable future. However, I know 
that I will really enjoy the new 
bathroom and office when they are 
done. In fact, it's the last major 
renovation on the house, so I guess 
I'll be free afterward. To do what? 
Who knows?

I was saddened to learn of the 
departure of kvothe from the 
phlogosphere[0]. I know that I should 
reconcile myself to the transiency of 
all things, but I like this community 
and find the departures disconcerting. 
Of course, new people arrive and make 
great contributions, redefining what 
we talk about here, so that's a good 
thing. In any case, if you're reading 
this kvothe, farewell to the dial tone 
and godspeed!

Last week, I decided to join Mastodon, 
and began looking around at various 
instances. I knew where some of you 
resided, so I decided to check out 
those places, only to find that 
pkotrcka had departed 101010.pl (I 
thought that joining that community 
might be a quirky thing to do, if 
they'd have me, but then without a 
fellow phlogger there, I 
reconsidered). 

A day later, pkotrcka phlogged about 
his decision to shut down that account 
and open a new one over at 
tilde.zone[1]. 

In the end, I decided to set myself up 
at fosstodon, since the local feed has 
news from a number of projects that 
interest me. I'm not sure whether I'll 
maintain that presence or not. My 
track record with social media is not 
good. I usually end up shutting the 
accounts down, because the nature of 
the conversations does not interest 
me. But we'll see. Maybe Mastodon will 
be different.

It's really cool to see that jirka's 
Blackbird finally arrived and that 
it's working after the initial RAM 
hiccups[2].

Lastly, a new (to me) laptop is on the 
way. My current laptop is a Lenovo 
ThinkPad R500, with most of the 
possible upgrades (processor, RAM, 
SSD, etc.). It's still very capable, 
but the screen has always been it's 
weakness. I didn't do a screen upgrade 
because there are only TN panels 
available. Higher resolution doesn't 
really matter to me if the viewing 
angles are still terrible.

So I ended up buying a ThinkPad L440. 
If you know ThinkPads, it's a less 
expensive (and thinner) equivalent of 
the T440p favoured by most modders, in 
that you can still upgrade the 
processor, which is impossible after 
that generation. I plan to throw my 
current SSD in it and upgrade the 
screen to an IPS version right away. 
The other upgrades can happen slowly, 
as I feel like spending money on it. I 
kind of enjoy doing that sort of thing 
during the Winter months when you're 
stuck indoors a lot.

Well, that's it. Time for breakfast 
and another day of renovating. Take 
care, gopherites!

[0] gopher://circumlunar.space/1/~kvothe/
[1] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/pkotrcka/0025
[2] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/jirka/Phlog/2019_07_07.txt