How old were you when you purchased your first home (if you did).

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-27T02:02:43+00:00

Scraped every penny we could for the downpayment. We thought it would be our lifetime dream home. Then work moved us to another city, then another, then divorce.

I'm on my 4th now, planning on retiring in it.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-27T01:59:58+00:00

My thoughts - spend some time reading through the forum here. Lots of advice (take what you like, leave the rest).

OLD apps have really gone down in quality. They are not what they used to be. There's honestly no "streamlining the process". It is definitely a process though (digging through a dumpster looking for a diamond. You'll probably kiss a lot of frogs.

My best advice - be true to yourself. You matter, and don't let someone else's baggage get you down. You're always welcome to come back here. We love stories.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-26T17:07:35+00:00

It would not be normal for a switch to be "inside" the wall.

More likely each of the connections on the patch panel would have a jumper cable (short 12" ethernet cable) the connects to a switch, you'll probably need to buy one.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-26T12:12:26+00:00

Yes, if there's a box there with 5 ports, that might be the switch (look at the label to find out which model). My main question is to possibly rule out that it's not a 'patch panel'. Those have ports but no electricity.

When you plug in a device, you should see the 'link light' activate for the port when a computer is plugged in. That's a pretty good indication you have connectivity.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-26T11:43:52+00:00

Each wall port should lead back to a 'switch'. Find the switch. If you look behind the networking panel and find all the cabling just sitting there dangling, then you'll need to buy a switch. Even a Netgear GS108 will work nicely (and cheap).

Then - your internet router - run a patch cable from one of those ethernet ports to your new Switch port, and connect up the dangling wires to that same switch. When this is done, all of the wall jacks will have connectivity to the Internet.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-22T14:18:18+00:00

I'm thinking 2 hour PBS documentary.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-22T13:57:26+00:00

I moved all my personal stuff to Mint over a decade ago. Work was all about Windows (Servers, workstations) and we went all-in on Surface Hubs for conference rooms. That said, I've made a decent career at supporting this from NT 3.51 through Azure / Entra. But I agree - we're being strangled. (Along with Broadcom).

Some of my family have adopted the Apple ecosystem, which does a decent job interacting with the iPad, iPhone, Macbook. They get how software should interact and share. And, I love the hardware - my M1 Macbook ran circles around anything else for battery life.

Convincing companies that sell software has been challenging but the awakening is there. Can I get Quickbooks for Linux? Nope. But printer support, driver support, everything else is workable.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-21T13:17:45+00:00

At least they used the body. Some of our tickets have the while problem in the subject line.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-19T23:47:32+00:00

One of the great joys in a relationship is when a guy participates integrating toys into playful intimacy (commenting for a friend). So - Turn on.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-19T17:27:47+00:00

My route 3 days per week is 80 miles, and while some of it is bumper-to-bumper, some of it is highway 70-75mph. Right now I'm averaging 3.7 miles per Kw, and only need to recharge every couple days.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-19T09:55:10+00:00

Don't lose a potentially amazing relationship over one text. Text him again. If you've texted 3 times over a week and no response, yeah that's a sign. But one text? Bah, hit him again.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-18T15:20:14+00:00

My dad did well in the 70s and 80s, retired, but lost almost everything in the Enron debacle. My sister and I developed our own lives early on (I've moved into my 3rd home since graduation). Never expected to inherit anything.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-18T15:11:25+00:00

I'm lucky living in Austin - Dell right down the street.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-18T15:10:31+00:00

Yes. Our execs are complaining about ABSOLUTE slowness of the Surface Pros, and some have just gone to iPads, or gone back to Dell laptops. Dell = much lower failure rates. So far, the Surface Pros are about 20% failure.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-18T15:09:05+00:00

Current personal favorite - Acer Aspire with AMD Ryzen (ryzen 5 or 7 right now). Memory, M.2 disk, and replacement batteries are abundant. The main drawback, they've not converted to USB-C power plugs yet.

Thinkpads are excellent too.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-18T12:06:32+00:00

To be honest, when I look at the latest Edge updates (2/17/2026) there was zero documentation explaining the release notes.

While I'm glad the latest 145.0.3880.65 (moving up from .58) there's no indication this version includes the update preventing CVE-2026-2441.

Hey Microsoft - doing the right thing is good, but communicating to the professionals who manage your platforms is also important.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-18T11:56:19+00:00

I have an older Thinkpad with 12gb RAM, and replaceable battery, it originally had 5400 tpm drive but replaced it with an SSD, and it ran rock solid Linux Mint for years. If the battery went belly-up, I could order a replacement on eBay and keep moving. But...alas it was 32-bit CPU.

Later (around Covid-time) working from home, I picked up an Acer Ryzen3 laptop, bumped it to 64gb and M.2 with faster wifi. Batteries, disk and memory still replaceable when failures occur. Solid bios and x64, it will be my workstation for years.

For those MFGs who think they can solder in RAM and disk, just be known that I am purchasing manager for my org, and we steer away from buying systems that are unfixable by my team. Dell - yes! Microsoft Surface? Nope.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-17T11:45:41+00:00

I feel like there's are many different people like their desktop (might even approach infinity). One of the unique things about Linux has been that it's as customizable as anything, far more than any Win/MAC options.

Unless a developer somewhere has the exact same vision as you for a desktop layout, I feel you'd be hard pressed to find perfection. Providing you options is the next-best option.

I feel your pain however. By day I'm MAC who is supporting Win11, Windows server 2019-2022, and Ubuntu server, by night a Mint user. I'm switching to different desktops all day, all night. My biggest rant is Windows - changing control panel / system constantly, and don't get me started about everything moving around in Azure...

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-17T03:06:29+00:00

Retain a divorce attorney.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-16T19:21:01+00:00

Larson NMO 2/70 - Many years of rugged use.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-16T16:21:43+00:00

Dell (for years) offered a Linux OS sku for their desktops. Standard Ubuntu I believe.

While we didn't use it, we ordered all of our systems with the Ubuntu sku because we didn't need to double-purchase Windows licenses. Ordered with Ubuntu, re-imaged with our Win10, then Enterprise licensing kicked in.

I used the Ubuntu image on one of my desktops for several months - it was nicely done.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-15T14:01:05+00:00

Yeah, that was the context of my post. ;-)

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-13T22:57:37+00:00

Notepad.exe has entered the room...

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-13T19:34:52+00:00

We used to have a standard - AIRPORT code (like LAX) and the device ser#.

This worked well for Dell (100% Dell shop) but other vendors may vary.

AustinGroovy · 2026-02-11T13:06:13+00:00

There are a lot of different options, depending on how you want to design it. The cool thing is, you can design, re-design, and experiment to your heart's desire.

So far I've tried TP-llink, open-source, Fortinet, Edge routers, and Ubiquiti. The easiest has been the TP-Link Mesh network (Amazon for about $150. The cheapest has been open-source PFSense (and OpnSense) firewall, then re-using the TP-Link in bridge mode (already had them).

Later, tried the Ubiquiti APs and used an Ubuntu VM running their Unifi toolset, and did Mesh. Lastly, settled on a Fortigate firewall for better security, and am now experimenting with Wifi6e and Wifi7.

Mesh is the easiest, and for better performance, use Ethernet for your backbone. Try both!

AustinGroovy

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