Mmm. Yes. I like where this is going.

Yep, we’re in that “breaking shit before VCF” cycle. My car’s CarPlay system has been having little issues so I yanked it, poked the manufacturer for firmware, got the firmware…and bricked it. Oops. (The dongle I used was a freebie so I’m not mad but that was $30 I wasn’t wanting to spend.)

Ah to hell with it, moved my Audigy 2 ZS and 3.2 Northwood into the 98 Shuttle and it definitely works quite well. Here it is in Keen 5, my phone’s microphone doing a horrible job at catching the audio.

Starting off the year with a quick doodle made on this 1993 Quadra 840av I recently acquired, the most powerful of the 68k Macintoshes ever released! Mostly stock save for the Radius video card + ZuluSCSI for SD card + WiFi. Awaiting a 128MB RAM upgrade for some Photoshop shenanigans later!

Year of Linux? Nah. With the way things are going this year it’s going to be the year of retrocomputing because that’s going to be the only hardware you can find for a reasonable price, even inflated due to “omg rare vintage”

I swear I lost brain cells reading the comments on this one Everyone not reading the article and thinking this means Microsoft is forcing online accounts again when it’s just them killing phone activation for your Windows license. Far as I know that’s been dead/dying for a while, now.

fuck everything I’m going back

Very random ask but did Daz3D like, kill any archives of Bryce 5.0? Because I can find archived copies of 2, 3, and 4 all over, but 5.0 is completely gone.

It's fascinating to see the changes in one company's logo over the years.

Announcing BlueSCSI Ultra, Ultra Wide and (coming soon) SCA. bluescsi.com/ultra

Oh yeah. Before I head off to bed… …the G4 Cube’s final form begins to take shape.

Kinda needed a win tonight so decided it was time to commence operation “turbocharge the XP Shuttle” and boy oh boy did I build a small but mighty XP system.

Sometimes, I hate my brain. "Okay, we got this pretty good portable XP setup with this mid-2010 white MacBook, it's performant, not too crazy, etc." *remembers Apple actually did something right for once with the MacBook Pros of the time* "But what if we could do...better?"

Before I go to bed, it blows my mind we’re 10 years removed from the shit show that was 2016. My life got absolutely turned upside down and I made a bunch of decisions that still haunt me to this day. I really, really hope 2026 isn’t going to be 2016 2.0, as much as it feels like it is.

Starting a PWEI tribute band named “Windows 98 Will Eat Itself” All I did was install Serious Sam and ran through the demo level, and then had the audacity to restart the computer.

Rounding out 2025 by doing a blogpost about the hell I've gone through dealing with business networking (and not the LinkedIn kind).

I could talk about 2025 here but I think Assemblage 23 said it better and if there was ever a time to call this an evergreen song it is now.

So, things are happening. I needed to repaint my car’s emblem anyway so I decided to test fire the paint process I plan to use for a certain retro computing project…and I am *in love* with this color. And it works well with the dark gray primer. (It’s Rust Oleum Blue Cosmos.)

Oh yeah me talking about Linux for a sec reminded me I needed to prep for #VCFSoCal and get the AIM fun stuff running. Also remembered hey, I have a Debian server, why not just toss up a local instance for testing? And, well.

I still think it's absolutely hilarious how Microsoft has the worst timing with Windows 11 and its increased system requirements. 11 released: We're in the middle of a silicon shortage, people can't upgrade their computers. 10 loses support: AI is causing a silicon shortage, see above

2025 ✍️

Late Fall Rootie shenanigans. #nudibranchs #cowgirlup

Oh yeah, since @vcfsocal.bsky.social is getting ever closer... I'll be doing the same thing I did at West: Bring your #Nintendo #3DS for some StreetPass fun! I'll have mine hooked up behind my table (and maybe wander with it, if I can) Got a fair few pings at West, so let's try again! #VCFSoCal

Man. I kinda missed night drives. Putting on some cheesy 80’s music (not pictured) and blasting it so loud you can’t hear the road noise. And just being in your head for a minute. Of course a certain friend wanted to ride shotgun.

Oh yeah, they’re getting desperate. “This email was sent because you signed up for Gemini” My dudes, the only thing I did was *checks notes* sign into YouTube on my old iMac.

Apple, you may kiss my whole ass.

Tonight’s project is taking down the 2012 iMac I’ve been using as the garage machine and figuring out some OS thing for it. It was running Monterey via OCLP but having video issues, so I wiped it and installed Win10 LTSC, only to have THAT have driver issues because Apple sucks.

Something that has been incredibly annoying on the greater internet Those people that will hear one person state something then make it their divine duty to act like a know-it-all because of this, and comment on every bit of comment involving $THING like they're the all-seeing authority of it

decided to play some of the BotW NES demake

Not sure if anyone else feels it but man. This xmas just felt kinda dark. Like I'm sure we have that dreary feeling post New Years, when all the decor comes down, the festiveness ends, and it's just dark, unrelenting, cold winter until the weather starts perking up again. That's what it felt like.

Rootie says merry Christmas and really wishes that Christmas tree would return her hat. #seaslug #nudibranch

My prayers were not answered and my room is still leaking. FEH At least it’s leaking *less* than it was.

Rootie says merry Christmas and really wishes that Christmas tree would return her hat. #seaslug #nudibranch

I’ve seen two reviews about the C64U pop up and they both seemed to give it glowing praise. Which hey, that’s pretty cool. I’m not a Commodore guy but I know plenty of people who are, and I’m glad to see this doesn’t seem to be Just Another Nostalgia-Fueled Cash Grab

On that note I was looking at doing another Geekenspiel order and oh you beautiful human, this is perfect. So perfect. Putting it on my list (because yes I am at some point stuffing a Quad in this Shuttle)

I want to do unto this Shuttle (the one that started it all for me) as I did unto the Ultimate Windows 98 Machine last year: *STICKERBOMB THE CRAP OUT OF IT.* Mentality here is that these were portable machines for LAN parties, why not have one that looks like a traveling suitcase?

🎄 in the deep sea

HTC HD2: the official phone of “that’s right! It goes in the square hole!”

And now we pray to the gods of roofing that it holds up because I really don’t want another week of my room smelling like dirty rain water.

HTC HD2: the official phone of “that’s right! It goes in the square hole!”

"She’s an outlaw loose and running" Came the whisper from each lip "And she’s here to do some business With the big iron on her hip"

One of those cases where Linux saved my ass: got XP Shuttle 2.0 up and running but the onboard NIC refused to work. Spent time troubleshooting before realizing the reason it wasn’t pulling an address from my router was because the MAC address was zeroed out. Hm.

Kinda realized I have another example of this that’s kinda worse: one of my favorite industrial acts is VNV Nation and for his most recent album one of the singles used AI-generated artwork. Really sucked, and wasn’t happy about it. But I still enjoyed the album itself, at least.

Alright, most adulting things done, I need to go tear into that Shuttle PSU and pray to the tech gods all the blown capacitors are the same kind. I have been getting EXCEPTIONALLY lucky here, most boards I've recapped have been all same blown caps so I can just hop on wherever and get a 10 pack.

Guess we’re going back to 2020. Yay.

wishing everyone who defaces perfectly fine tualatins to stuff them in xboxes/people who gut perfectly working LC575s to do the Mystic upgrade a very sincere "please don't do that, thanks" (orphaned boards and damaged-beyond-repair CPU pins are free game, though)

Oh yeah, in some good news at the end of the year, at least... Got the car triaged for some weird things I noticed. The result: 1. Oh yeah your drum brakes were out of adjustment, easy fix but you still need shoes (getting done soon) 2. The rattle you were hearing was the splash guard, lol

This kinda gets down to something I've been meaning to talk about: You can still build a killer XP system pretty cheaply these days even as they're more in demand! The secret? Budget Win7-Win8 era GPUs. They sucked for their respective time frames, but still have XP drivers and work great there.

Also re: my current IT clustershag I really wish I had a better way of taking notes on stuff. I wish I could have Obsidian, but self hosted so I didn’t have to pay a monthly fee for it.