Goodbye old friend 😢

It’s not often that I upgrade or replace computers and I have spent nearly $2000 on devices in the last month. 😱

😢 Out with the old, in with the new 😍

My living room media center setup is going from a Mac Mini 2,1 (1.83 ghz Core 2 Duo) to a Mac Mini (Late 2014) 1.4ghz Core i5

Even Software Update was telling me to buy the new Mini 😆

The situation reminds me of a story told by one of my favorite college professors:

The wise man sees the world has changed and surprised by it, he says “you’ve changed!” and moves forward; adapting to it and finding new ways to seize new opportunities. The foolish man, recognizing he is at a disadvantage angrily says “you’ve changed!” and expects the world to adapt to him, staying where he is and falling into obscurity and poverty, missing out on new opportunities.

I haven’t been able to go online with the old one in a while since it’s stuck at Mac OS X 10.6 (from 2006) and the Airport is a bit slow. The ESR version of Firefox I was using tried to auto update and ended up downloading the wrong version and the only compatible version I was able to find was an Italian language 2009ish ESR release so that didn’t work out too well and I went from being able to watch YouTube videos to not being able to load the Apple website. I tried to boot a recent version of Linux to give myself another 2 years before I had to upgrade but it seems to have a 32-bit bios even though it runs a 64-bit version of MacOS which makes finding a current Linux distro problematic. The other problem is when booting Windows 7 there was no sound drivers and the sound card wasn't even detected by Windows. (Side note: This is a problem I have also come across in Chromebooks.) I do not like to compile drivers so off to Amazon I went!

This upgrade kind of hit me in the nostalgia. I excitedly unboxed the new Mini and shared the experience with an old friend with the same interests and had to stop a moment because it made me sad to think I was putting away my daily music device and YouTube device and just like that it had no more use although nothing was wrong with it aside that the world had moved on already. It was something like pushing aside an old friend. So I cleaned the old Mini up with some alcohol wipes and put it in the box.

I love Apple products. I don’t say it metaphorically. I really do love them and always have been a huge geek for them since I was a kid and got my hands on an Apple II/e.

I say “see you in the camper” but we all know this Mini is headed to the closet and won’t be seen for at least another 10 years or at least until after I forget what’s in the box.

But hey, this is the price one must pay to trade crypto on the living room TV…

A few other "recent" purchases

HP 15.6" Windows 11 netbook

Oculus Quest 2 128gb

Gateway 11.6" Ultra Slim Notebook

I think I might have gone a bit overboard...now to find a suitable replacement for the iMac 7,1 (Late 2007) on the other side of the living room...