Added an ISO for Linux mint 22.2 (along with a few others)
Booted from the USB stick
Ran the Mint installer
Unmounted the drives when prompted
Chose the “Something else” option and confirmed by running Disks that it had correctly chosen to use the 2 TB external Samsung SSD.
Installed and done!
It seems to be running fairly decently. I’ll tweak a bunch of stuff (I need to disable Secure Boot to get it to recognize refresh rates higher than 120 Hz, for starters) and see how it goes. Before installing Mint, I also had a look at Kubuntu for the first time and I liked what I saw, but I’ll stick to Mint for now and do more distro-hopping somewhere down the line.
On my new PC (I’ll have another post soon on what I’ve installed and choices I’ve made/avoided this time around), I have the following drives:
A 2 TB Samsung SSD (main drive)
A 1 TB WD drive (secondary)
A 2 TB Samsung external SSD (no specific purpose yet)
An 8 TB HDD (backup/camera photos)
A 4 TB NAS (backup, various files I want accessible from multiple devices)
I have Windows 11 Pro set up on the main drive and have been planning on setting up another dual boot system, using Linux Mint again, as I did on my older PC. Somewhat randomly, I chose to use the external SSD for Mint.
I booted from a live Mint USB stick and went through the installation. I let it choose to automatically configure the dual boot after verifying that it would install Mint to the external SSD.
Or so I thought.
The install took a very long time. I was patient, I let it do its thing. At the end, it prompted me to remove the install media (USB stick) and hit ENTER to restart. I did, expecting to see the GRUB menu where I would have 10 seconds (by default) to choose Mint, Windows or enter the BIOS.
Instead, I very briefly saw mention of hitting F2 to get into the BIOS, then it loaded into Windows. A survey of all drives showed none had Linux Mint on them. The USB stick, however, is asking to be formatted in Windows, which leads me to believe that Mint installed on the USB stick.
This would seem like a very silly thing to do, but it would explain the very long install time. Why would it install to the USB stick? I do not know.
What I am contemplating doing, though, is taking the 1 TB SATA SSD in my old PC–which has Mint installed–and putting it in the new one, then running Boot Repair to get the GRUB menu working properly. Maybe.
After several false starts (I haven’t documented earlier attempts), it almost feels like the new PC is trying to reject Linux–or at least Mint. Maybe I can try another distro again.
I have tried adding various dark mode toggles to the site and all have not looked quite right, which keeps me from sticking with them. If you read this site and find it too bright, it actually looks pretty good in the reader mode of most browsers. Reader mode will work on individual posts, but not from the main page.
I’ll continue to look into better light/dark solutions. And I may tweak the colours (again) for 2026. Maybe I’ll go dark mode.
I’m also playing around with how to display categories and such. The dropdown menus are space efficient but look a bit utilitarian. On the other hand, they almost have a retro charm now. Another thing to ponder.
Here is a cat celebrating the new year.
I like the personal touch of it being signed by Cat.
Some of the thoughts are not fit to be heard by other humans. These have been omitted.
Getting ready
My older PC dates back to 2019, so it’s getting close to around seven years old. This seems to be the typical lifespan of my PCs, so I began looking for components to build a new one before year’s end. I was not in a rush, though that changed toward the end when ram prices suddenly went insane (thanks, AI companies!) I’d originally planned on going with 64GB but will stick with 32GB for now.
For other components, I bought nearly everything on sale and I made a change, going with higher end gear than usual. For example, the CPU I chose, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, is their top consumer CPU. I usually go mid-tier. The graphics card, my first AMD since the 9800XT I got with a coupon for a free copy of Half-Life 2, to give you an idea how long ago that was, is likewise the fastest they currently offer to consumers–a Radeon 9070 XT.
By buying on sale, I saved a lot of money. I haven’t added it up, but it’s probably between $600 and $800. This kept the overall price closer to my usual mid-tier range.
Building the PC. Twice.
Every time I build my own PC, I generally have a lousy, joyless experience and vow to never do it again1. Then I do it again, because the now seven-year gaps between builds is enough for the memory to fade into “Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.”
For the record, I once again vow to never do it again. Note to future self: THIS TIME, LISTEN. I may still buy everything, but I’ll pay someone else to assemble it. They’ll do a better job with the cable management, anyway.
The whole thing was complicated by a defective component. I’ve packed the component up and will be returning it for a refund in the next day or so. This is always annoying, but there’s one component in particular that makes it even worse, and that is the motherboard, because everything connects to the motherboard.
It was the motherboard.
On the recommendation of a friend, I got my first-ever ASRock product, a high-end motherboard that weighed a ton, had RGB bling and came with an inscrutable quick start guide that failed to mention all of its components.
It also, as it turned out, had a bad ram slot. This meant I could only run with a single stick of ram. Not acceptable, of course. So I had to take everything off the motherboard, pack it back in its original box, find another motherboard and hope the whole mess didn’t happen again as I built my PC for a second time.
Because this was my first experience with ASRock, it’s very unlikely I will ever buy one of their products again. I’m sure they’ll manage without my contributions.
I went with an Asus motherboard, as I’ve used them multiple times, including my 2019 build, without issue. The second motherboard worked fine, and I am typing from the new PC now, hooray.
However, there was a complication with the second build and the new new motherboard. One of the two screws on the HSF simply would not line up and screw into the motherboard, as it was supposed to. I have no idea why one screw would not line up, but it would absolutely not line up. I spent about 20 minutes on it, growing frustrated, angry and getting the urge to go Hulk. I ended up walking away for a while. When I came back, I got it screwed in and done in a few minutes, as is often the case with these things.
But the experience reminded me how little the process of assembling a PC has changed in 30–or even 40–years. It should be a lot better than it is now, but this is the world we live in.
The new PC lives
One of the things I like about having a new PC is starting fresh. I spent some time decluttering Windows 11 (this task gets longer all the time, sadly), and now I am sticking to my rule of only adding applications as I need them. It’s a great way to see what I really use.
Here’s the list so far (last updated December 19, 2025):
Applications:
Asus DisplayWidget Center (adjust settings on my monitor)
Battle.net client (game client)
Diarium (journal/diary)
Discord (chat with my gaming pals of 20+ years)
Epic Game Store (game client)
Firefox (default browser)
Godot (game engine)
Notepad++ (substitute for Notepad)
Obsidian (note-taking)
Scrivener (fiction writing)
Signal (chat with the one friend I convinced to use it)
Steam (game client)
TickTick (to-do lists and reminders)
Vivaldi (alternate browser)
Waterfox (alternate browser)
Games:
Bongo Cat (this is just pure silliness and not even a real game, but it amuses me)
Diablo 3 (I’ll stop one day)
Diablo 4 (for when I stop playing Diablo 3, see)
Miscellaneous:
Aptos font family (Hey, I like Aptos. Maybe I have no taste.)
PowerToys (some of the utilities, like the command palette, are all but essential to me now with Windows)
Diablo 3 was interesting, because I downloaded and installed the Battle.net client, then copied over the Diablo 3 folder from my old PC to the new one. I directed the Battle.net client to the new location, it grumbled about how it was the wrong version, so I clicked the Install button and a few moments later, after probably writing the new path somewhere, it was ready and fully playable.
I have two SSDs installed: a 2TB main and a 1TB secondary. I want to put a Linux distro on the second (I actually already did, but kind of munged things, so I wiped the drive in Windows), and I’m mulling over what to try. My 2019 PC has Linux Mint, which I’m most familiar with, but I may hold off, as 22.3 is due imminently–unless I go for something else. I’m not hardcore or leet, so it’s not going to be Arch. Sorry, Arch lovers!
Anyway, I’m glad the PC is up and running. I’ll probably post a few more times about setting it up, tweaking things and such. Hopefully none of these posts will be horror stories.
You may be asking yourself why I have repeatedly done something I claim to strongly dislike. This is a valid question. It comes down to just wanting to do it myself, not because I don’t trust someone else to do it, but because I know I can, and therefore, should. Yeah, it’s kind of dumb. This is also why I repeatedly vow to never do it again, because I recognize the dumbness. ↩︎
Last year, I began my search for a WordPress replacement in earnest, and signed up for a yearly plan using Ghost via https://www.magicpages.co/.
I have no complaints about the service or support, but 20 years of using WordPress proved a bigger hurdle to overcome than I thought. I really like some aspects of Ghost, but just as often I run into limits. It’s possible some of the limits might be theme-related, or could be overcome with CSS or something else, but I find I have little patience anymore to go down these rabbit holes to get things to work the way I want. WP is far from perfect (I could write a book–probably just from my posts highlighting WP’s issues) but I know it and have adapted to its flaws and weird bits.
I feel Ghost is close, but not quite it. Or maybe it is and I’m not willing to put in the effort.
Either way, I’m sticking with WP for at least a little bit longer. I’ll continue to ponder a move, but the urgency is no longer there.
I’ve had two cases recently where a device I have continues to work perfectly in every way, except for its primary purpose.
Last year, my camera, a Canon EOS M50, was experiencing occasional glitches, but I learned to live with them. Then one day, while out solo shooting birds at Piper Spit, it stopped taking photos. It would act like it was taking a photo, but would not actually finish the job.
I went through its settings and everything on the camera–including shooting and recording video–worked perfectly. It just stopped taking photos.
I ended up getting a new camera. It takes photos.
The other happened just recently. My iPhone 12 has occasionally sent a call directly to voicemail for no apparent reason. Now it rotates through several behaviours:
Call immediately goes to voicemail, I get alerted to a “missed call.”
Phone rings, I pick up, but the time on the call stays at 0:00. The person calling goes straight to voicemail.
Best of all, sometimes the phone doesn’t alert me to a call at all, not even putting a missed call in the call history.
What it doesn’t do: Actually allow me to take a phone call. I can still make calls without issue.
I did a cursory search on this and found a “Telus neighbourhoods” thread with dozens of replies reporting the same issue–but on every make and model of phone under the sun, both Android and iPhone. A multitude of “Changing this one random setting fixed it for me!” posts suggest the problem likely comes and goes based on the whims of the Telus network. It’s possible getting a new phone wouldn’t even solve the issue.
For now, I’m giving it time to see if it goes away (I did update and reboot my phone, as well as twiddle the dial on a few phone-related settings). If it doesn’t, I’ll probably grudgingly get a new phone.
Yes, it is time for my once-a-decade PC build project. Terrifying. Enough time has passed since the previous build that I’ve almost forgotten that each time I do this, I swear I will never do it again.
All the parts are gathered. I cleared a space. I grounded myself, both against static and mentally. I put down the motherboard on the space I’d cleared (I planned to install everything on the motherboard before putting it in the case, save for the video card). I peeled all the plastic film off parts of it, something I’d never had to do on a motherboard before. I installed the ram (I used my iPhone’s Magnifier app to read the correct slot layout on the PCB).
And then I stopped, because the SSDs were next and the quick start guide that came with the motherboard seemed to not mention anything about how to install these and it was not immediately obvious, as the M.2 slots were hidden with shrouds and heat sinks and whatnot, with no clear way (to me) to access them. I contemplated looking online.
Then I actually just called it quits. For the day. Apparently my patience for this sort of thing has ebbed a bit since the last time.
But a friend with the same motherboard1This is why it’s handy to buy components that friends own offered tips and I’m ready to go for the next attempt. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe!
The motherboard in question, an ASRock 870E NOVA. I may have called it a mother*** a few times.
I’ve seen references to sleep tracking via smartwatches being about 80% accurate, best at sleep start/stop times and kind of sketchy on the rest. This is sometimes presented in the context of, “Would you trust a heart rate monitor that was only 80% accurate?” The answer, sensibly, is no.
And so it is with my Garmin Forerunner 255. When I bought it two years ago, it replaced a Series 5 Apple Watch on my wrist. I lost a lot of smartwatch functionality–I can now see messages, but can’t reply on watch. Nearly all of my iPhone’s ecosystem is cut off from it. It mainly tracks steps, heart rate and my workouts–mostly runs.
I accepted the trade-offs and don’t miss the things it doesn’t do. For running, I prefer it over the Apple Watch, because the screen isn’t touch and it operates just as well in the rain as it does when it’s sunny. The interface is controlled by buttons, which can be easily pressed when wearing gloves. It’s functional and works.
Because the battery life is so good (I charge it when I jump in the shower–this is all it needs to stay topped up), I use it for sleep tracking.
Two nights ago, it gushed about how great my sleep was and gave me a score of 83/100 (Good). Last night it did the opposite, giving me a score of 60/100, which is only 1% above “Poor”. It said stress was high, I was restless and awake a lot. I just generally had a lousy sleep.
Except when I woke this morning, I didn’t feel I’d had a lousy sleep. I felt good. I felt rested.
Was my watch lying to me or was I lying to myself? Maybe both my watch and my body/mind were engaged in some fibbing? I have no way to know for sure, short of taking a scientifically sound sleep test.
But it did remind me of times past when the sleep stats didn’t match my perceived experience and that 80% estimate of accuracy. Smart devices can be helpful, but they can misdirect to where they cause stress that would not otherwise exist. I’m more mindful of that now than I was two years ago when I got the watch, so “bad” sleep nights that don’t feel bad to me don’t get me down, they just make me go, “Hmm.” And most of the time the watch’s report matches my experience, so I don’t think much about it at all.
Ironically, part of the reasoning for the low sleep score was the watch’s claim of yesterday being stressful. In the morning, the band snapped in two and I couldn’t find anywhere local that sells replacement bands. I ended up grudgingly ordering a knock-off band from Amazon, then used a bunch of gorilla tape to put the original band back together (for now). So if there was stress yesterday, it was the watch that caused it. 😛
My awesome watchband repair job.
Bottom line: Don’t let a smart device dictate your mood or life. Think of them as what they are–imperfect advisors.
I’ve been using LanguageTool to check my spelling (and to a lesser degree, grammar) here on my blog and it’s been fine, other than being kind of obsessed with commas. I recently came across Harper, which is an entirely offline, private grammar checker and started trying it out today.
My impressions so far:
No obsession with commas
It seems a tad more basic, but covers the essentials
UI is functional, but could be a little nicer
It really is fast
No AI!
It is distributed by Automattic, so if you have issues with the creator of WordPress, you may want to stay clear
I’m going to stick with it for a while, but if this sounds interesting to you, it’s available as an extension for Firefox and other browsers. Learn more about it here.
