CreepingNet's World

Believe it or not, I'm actually not a mennonite when it comes to technology. I'm pretty astute when it comes to current day laptops and desktops. I have been a certified Dell technician off/on since 2005. I am also CompTIA A+ Certified and I make the money to do all this stuff on this website doing I.T. support. I also spent 7 years doing hardware and software support for the various teams at Microsoft in Redmond, WA. I am famliar with Windows, Apple Macintosh OS X, and Linux. Currently I've moved 100% OpenSource at my house because I'm sick and tired of dealing with the same frustrations at home when I'm not getting paid to deal with them. Seriously - OpenSource rules!

I don't exactly hate any of the hardware platforms, they all have good and bad that go with them. Apple makes great hardware but they do a great job (which isn't so great) at planned obsolescence. Dell makes great stuff that lasts awhile but the docking solutions SUUUUCK (especiaully ANYTHING from ANY make that uses a USB-C docking station), HP is alright, Lenovo is my brand of choice for PCs but they'e hard to find at a good price on the second hand market without buying something closer to 1999 but after 2005 but before 2013. You remember the "no Child Left Behind" crap of the 90's, I applied that to computers - no PC left behind - PC, Mac, Sun, or whatever the heck it is. If I can throw linux on it, and daily drive it, I will!

Typically, I'm a Linux user, but I'm not one of those guys who believes Linux is the only operating anyone should use....here's my stance on operating systems....sorry, this is going to be BRUTALLY honest...

Windows - Microsoft Windows has been a thorn in my side for many decades, Windows 11 was finally the straw that broke the camel's back. Just seems with each release of their software, they are taking over your computer more and more, in a way that surprisingly Apple does not as "orewellian" as some people see Apple as being. I get paid to work with their stuff, and work with it I do, it's hilariously predictable what is going to cause issues next with Windows these days, as history seems to be repeating itself (IE->Edge vs. Netscape->IE, 64-bit vs 32-bit, Powershell vs. CMD, Metro...er...I mean "New Style" U.I. vs. oldschool COntrol Panel....and the list goes on and on). Maybe someday they'll get their crap together but until then I can't be evangelistic about Windows anymore. Just too many problems!
Apple - Basically, Commercial NexStep/Unix based operating system made to look like a modern version of the O.G. Macintosh System Software from the 1980's. Unlike M$ who basically changes their crap seemingly every other day (it's really Patch Tuesday but...ya' know), Apple is consistant in execution, and if you have some *nix skills, you can make it do things I don't think Apple Corp intends for it to do - Linux-y things! ;) So typically, I use it on old Apple Hardware until it becomes so useless I'm better off running Linux on said Apple device.
Linux - I've turned into primarily a Linux user, even on MacOS I'm using mostly OpenSource Linux Applications as opposed to stuff from the Apple Store (I think the only Apple Store App I use on the regular is GarageBand TBH). I prefer Linux Mint which is based on Ubuntu and hasn't done me wrong yet (though driver support on Apple Hardware - audio in particular - is hit n' miss). It's not perfect, but it's the least annoying about updates, the freest of free (don't need to buy a special computer, or a product key from a reseller for $99), it runs on darn near anything, and it doesn't piss me off with the frequency Apple or especially WINDOWS does.

PICTURES	SPECS & DESCRIPTION
2015/2024 FrankenDell "Piecision" XPS 15	Quick Specs 6th Gen Core I7-6700HQ CPU @2.60GHz 12GB of RAM, DDR4 500GB m2 SATA HDD Intel HD Graphics 530 w/ NVIDIA Booster Gigabit LAN On-Board 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi Dell WD15 Docking Station Linux Mint (Latest) To be quite frank, I'm not even sure where I got this PC from anymore. It was a long time ago, someone gave me a crapped out carcass of a Dell XPS 9550 with a busted up touch screen and a buldged out battery. Now me, at work, during COVID, in desparate times, started learning how to cross-reference Dell model parts and figured out how to "Kit-Bash" various Dell models together that share the same platform to make some wacky unique thing. So I've replaced the RAM, Battery, Screen (which probably came from a Precision model because it's the same part as those use), power jack, and did some metalwork to the trackpad. The old clunker runs great, but it's ain't pretty. Maybe this should be the spirtual successor to Damon's "Millennium Falcon" Pentium Pro - hehehe - she ain't pretty, but she's got it where it counts!
2015 Dell XPS 13	Quick Specs 4th Gen Core i7 4510U @2GHz Dual Core 8GB of RAM 128GB mSATA SSD Intel Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Gigabit LAN On-Board 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi Dell WD15 Docking Station Linux Mint (Latest) A co-worker of mine had this and didn't want it anymore because it won't run Windows 11, and said I could have it or he'll recycle it. So I decided to take this pretty killer little Core i7 under my wing as my "tiny" linux Laptop (as compared to the more delicate but more powerful "FrankenDell" above). What's funny. I remember these being some of the better laptops that came out in 2013 when Microsoft/the Industry in general started pushing toward touch screen convertible PCs. Yes, the RAM is soldered to the motherboard, and I'll probably put a new mSATA drive in it someday of much larger capacity, but for right now, it's a nice little laptop. I usually use it for things like working on the site...maybe soon hand-drawing images for the site in GiMP (I'm actually a rather skilled artist - go look at my pixel art on the Ultima V page - I drew all that freehand in Graf-X II).
2015 Apple iMac 21.5"	Quick Specs 5th Gen Core i5 1.6GHz 8GB of RAM, DDR4 1.44MB External USB Floppy Drive 512GB LiteOn Solid State (SSD) Intel On-Board video 4000 Gigabit LAN On-Board 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi Mac OS X Monterey (12.xx)/Linux Mint (Latest) Now recently upgraded, the once "Garage Mac" is now back in the house running with an SSD after taking my chances for the first time on opening up and upgrading a Sealed Mac. I made every mistake in the book (crack to the upper glass layer, broke the power button - but repaired it), but it was a real good idea anyway, since I managed to get this thing running and you can't see the crack in the glass anyway, so I'm pretty happy. Also the SSD upgrade is like night and day on this machine - it really RIPS with the SSD. Everything that took insane amounts of time has now been HALVED! Because of this, the mac Mini is now the Garage Mac. As of 12/2024 this one is making the Transition to Linux Mint, while keeping MacOS for the purpose of Garage Band and/or Atari VCS Development (yep, dabbling in BATARI BASIC).
2014 Dell PowerEdge T610	Quick Specs 2014 Dell PowerEdge T610 2x Intel Xeon E5530 2.60GHz 192GB of Memory 4TB RAID 10 DVD ROM Drive Pretty much 100% Headless (all the time) - but now has a nice HP VGA LCD so no more kooky laggy messing with it after reboot CentOS Linux 8.1 An old colleague named Dalius gave me this in late 2019, and it's since become my file server, Plex media server, game server, software server, and general storehouse of various data and things in the house. That said, mostly all it hosts is crap that's not really of any monetary value anyway, and it's highly firewalled from the Internet. I got this because Dalius overheard me talking about wanting to mess with some Enterprise Class Server hardware. Well, accumulating parts from some friends here and there over the years in the I.T. Industry allowed me to max THIS out. 192GB RAM, 2TB RAID, 2x Xeon CPU. It's a monster. I'm running it till it dies. That said, this is where I learned about using CAB Deployment Packages from Dell to install drivers during O/S installation, how to configure and use an iDRAC (though oddly I have to use the 486 or a VirtualBOX host to access it because it's so oooold), and generally, dick around with doing Server things with it. I know it's a monster, it eats electricity like a Semi does diesel (well, half as much, I only keep one PSU connected at a time, LOL), but it does the job, and it does it great, so I can't complain.
Mid-2010 Mac Mini 4.1	Quick Specs 2010 Mac Mini w/ DVD-RW Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz P6888 16GB of DDR3 RAM 1067MHz 500GB SSD Slot Loading DVD-RW Drive (Repaired) NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256MB macOS High Sierra 10.13/Linux Mint (Latest) The Mac Mini was bought at Goodwill for $12 in early 2024. I upgraded the RAM, maxxed out at 16GB, for $32 off of E-bay. The machine also had it's original 320GB HDD ripped out, recouped the cost of the whole machine and then some, and replaced with a 128GB LiteOn SSD. It's loaded with macOS High Sierra 10.13 because that's the last version of MacOS that it will run, and it does not run too well on Linux Mint - just too slow. The computer was being used as a desktop upstairs for awhile, but I wound up moving it down to the garage, it's far more hardy anyway, and far less likely to accumulate the insane amount of dust I bluew out of the iMAC after being down there for about a year or so. At the end of 2024, I upgraded the SSD to 500GB and split install between OS High Sierra 10.13 and LInux Mint for the anti-commercial OpenSource Transition that I do to these Mac devices as they reach commercial EOL and enter OpenSource second-life.