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  I know some of the retro computing folks here will appreciate the new addition to my collection - an original NeXT sticker, courtesy of a friend who is the son of a former NeXT employee. (That's probably as close as I get to a NeXT cube for my collection any time soon!)

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  For the retro computing folks - I reinstalled a G4 iMac over the weekend and was stunned to find out that Apple is still running update servers for 10.4 Tiger. What!? Now I'm telling myself that no, I don't need to acquire ancient DIMMs and an IDE -> SATA adapter to upgrade it. Also of note - if you haven't messed with old PPC macs, there's a community 10.5 version called Sorbet Leopard out there. (And of course, after posting this, my staff were more i...

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  Before the massive AI driven cost increases for hard drives, SSDs, and memory, I had been planning on buying and setting up a new NAS. I missed that window, but my current NAS is getting old enough that I wanted to have a path forward in hand. So now I have this (shown without its case) - Beelink's mini NAS, a 6 NVME, N150-based tiny little thing with dual 2.5 gigabit ethernet, 16 GB of DDR5 soldered on, and it's about 3.5 inches square. Such a cool and creative little device...

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  20 years ago I was handed some AAUI to 10baseT fiber transceivers to play with, and had a little fiber segment on my home network, just for fun. The intervening decades never saw me with a personal need for fiber connectivity, but last week I moved my NAS to a 10 gig connection - with SFPs, a new 10 and 2.5 gig switch, and all the speed upgrade that entails. That same 20 years ago? Purdue was proudly connected to the Teragrid (the national high speed backbone) at 10 gig - blazing fast!

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  I know a few folks here were tracking the status of the InCase version of the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard. It has finally released, and is available in the usual places. https://www.amazon.com/Incase-Sculpt-Ergonomic-Keyboard-Encryption/dp/B0F5YNL62D The full desktop set with the ergo mouse doesn't seem to be out yet if you're like me and wanting to replace the full set. I've just about worn out my mouse's internal plastics on a couple sets!

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  I've been playing with Google's Antigravity AI IDE, and have enjoyed it. But it also led to me typing a line that really struck me: "I wonder if I can vibe code a BBS-style door game as a Slackbot". I think I can, and 1990's me is pretty tickled about the idea.

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  This is a bit different from my typical posts - it's directly work related, and it's a job post. But it's also exciting. Miami University is hiring the inaugural director for the Ohio Quantum Computing Institute. https://miamioh.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/miamioh-faculty/job/Director--Ohio-Quantum-Computing-Institute_JR103868. There's a lot going on at Miami - and in Ohio around quantum, and the Institute is intended to grow Ohio's quantum workforce....