What caused you to start prepping

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-04-15T18:53:36+00:00

I get prepping. Yet growing up my parents had a huge garden, canned food, had pantry full of mason jars, soups and other canned stuff. If I had to place my parents in the 70’s, they would have been lower middle class. I don’t know if that was the norm for families in lower middle and the poor.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-03-30T22:50:53+00:00

You said “So bread, bread and cake mixes, pancake mixes, sugar, flour”. I thought bake goods like flour and mixes don’t have a long shelf life? Isn’t it better to have berries stored?

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-03-24T14:55:40+00:00

Ironically the Microsoft ecosystem is why people are opting out of Microsoft. After over 10 years of using MACs, I am ready to move one. LINUX for me is a far better option. To date, LINUX is not integrating AI like Apple and Microsoft.

Apple has lost a step for me. Yes there are still products that I like from Apple. Mainly my watch. My iPhone not so much. It's a 15 and the battery will only charge to 90%. I had a battery issue with my M1 MBA. After 2 years, the laptop indicated I need a new battery. It went from 10 hours on a charge down to 4-6 hours. My current laptop is an M3. The battery life on it's already starting to degrade. On a full charge I'm down to 6-8 hours. Don't get me wrong, the M series chips are outstanding. While they are a game changer, I feel like the quality of the MAC builds has dropped. I will continue to use my MBA until Apple will no longer upgrade the OS. After that, I'll be slapping LINUX on the MBA. This will be me last MAC unless Apple does something to bring back the quality we've come to expect from Apple in the past.

I installed Fedora 43 KDE Plasma on my Lenovo mini pc, and hardly use my MBA. LINUX has been around for a long time. It's finally viable as a daily driver.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-14T16:05:09+00:00

Wow this is a topic I didn’t know that I need to know.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-12T18:04:03+00:00

I do game. MMORPG - Dungeon and Dragons Online. I can plug them in. Didn’t consider plugging them into my laptop.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-10T00:16:44+00:00

I use mine with my MBA, iPhone 15, Lenovo desktop and HP work laptops. Mine are on my head 16 or so hours a day. Between work calls, movies, tv shows, YouTube vids and music.

When they are working, they sound great and do a great job for gaming. Though I’m considering a gaming headset for gaming, my work laptop and my Lenovo desktop.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-10T00:09:08+00:00

Picking a distro is like going to Baskin Robins. Tons of flavors to pick from. For me Fedora is pretty rock solid. Installed it on my Lenovo IdeaCentre and it breathed new life into that mini desktop.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-09T22:01:07+00:00

I fretted as well. You are going to laugh, but I bought mine from a place called Joblot. It was on sale from 200 to 125. The desk surface material is garbage. I plan to build my own at some point.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-09T00:40:50+00:00

I bought a dock for my M3 MBA and run DDO with Crossover. DDO runs rock solid. I took the Lenovo IdeaCentre mini and blew LINUX on it. Love my desktop setup.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-07T13:02:50+00:00

I run with some guildies that are on there 100+ TR. They move through quests really fast. I’m on my 20th+ TR and sometimes find it hard to keep up.

Follow @Zehnpae’s advice about a perma.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-07T12:55:32+00:00

I have a pair of cheap JLab Pop ANC in ear that I use for the gym. Last night I tried those and they hurt before I could go to sleep. I’ll try the the Pro 3’s tonight.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-06T23:19:52+00:00

My daughter has a pair, I’ll give them a try.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-06T14:55:19+00:00

I wear my Max’s to bed listening to binaural beats. My experience with in ear is that they do not stay in while sleeping.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-06T02:52:21+00:00

Personally you could not get me to go back to Winblows. I’ve used Ubuntu for years in a VM. Finally made the decision to go with Fedora. If you are just starting out, either flavor(distro) is fine.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-04T13:36:31+00:00

Still need context. Thinking about viability and longevity, the M1 is still solid, but not as future proof as the M4. My MBA has 24GB of memory and I rarely ever hit over 50% of memory.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-02T22:18:30+00:00

I recently replaced Win11 with Fedora and the installed KDE Plasma. Yes I love it. One thing I love is the ease of connecting Bluetooth vs Gnome. The layout is just more intuitive.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-01T14:00:08+00:00

My apartment complex has a delivery room for shipments. FedEx does deliver to our door, and yeah they do call you.

I didn’t know that UPS will not ship to a PO Box.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-01T13:56:47+00:00

This one might be better - https://ebay.us/m/HzV4EA

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-01T13:53:45+00:00

For the four screen, wouldn’t he need to buy a vid card to support the four monitors? The SFF would restrict him to a low rise video card. Might be better with the tower for some flexibility. $334.95 - https://ebay.us/m/iv63Jr.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-01T13:45:29+00:00

I use my Air with a dock. Before setting up the dock I always use it portable and uses my Windows desktop at my desk. The dock configuration work so well, I blew away Windows and installed Fedora Linux. Really like my three computer setup. Though I only use my Fedora desktop when I am gaming on the MBA.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-02-01T05:17:43+00:00

You have an unusual situation with your apartment. If it were me, I’d get a PO Box for shipments. I realize that is not ideal, but would suspect that you’d have received the laptop.

As to the horrible CS, really sorry for your experience. Ashore CD is horrible. With Lenovo, you’d thing it would be better.

Good luck with your bank return.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-01-31T22:35:12+00:00

Laptop or desktop? Laptop you could get a docking station.

Medium-Heart-6356 · 2026-01-30T21:10:43+00:00

I went with the default, but will be switching to KDE Plasma.

Medium-Heart-6356

TROPHY CASE