I don't yet know when it is supposed to happen, but some time in 2026, I will be heading to Montréal for surgery. The good and welcome kind. Outside of normal fears about surgery, I am very excited for this to happen and, well, the sooner the better.
One thing I have been thinking about lately is recovery time and how, once I am in that sort of middle period (pain managed, but not yet ...vital), what I intend to do with myself. I've never been very good at super long periods of passive entertainment like binge watching shows, but I also know that I won't be in any way to be out making photos during that time.
So then it occurred to me that I could at least do a little blogging and perhaps take care of some of the lower-priority things I've been intending to do with this website, like fixing footnotes and adding rss.
The problem with that is that I have a desktop computer and, though cushioned, my chair is a hard wooden dining room chair. I don't think that I will be in a good way to sit at the desk for too long until I've healed more either.
So then I thought about purchasing a laptop. A dangerous thought!
This sent me down a few avenues:
- Use Kathleen's old MacBook Air (2017), which is currently a lightly-used home laptop we share;
- Purchase a used laptop from the same local shop I purchased this desktop from;
- Purchase a new laptop from one of the vendors selling Linux-compatible ones. Lenovo seems popular; and
- Purchase a current model Macbook and just re-embrace macOS. Of course, I make this much more complicated than it needs to be.
After thinking about it last night, I decided that I can't bring myself to put money into a new laptop. I am quite happy with my desktop and don't really feel that a new laptop would be a good use of money. Money that I could use on other - more important - things.
I am also the sort who can't really use more than one computer. It's inevitable that I would just drift to one or the other, but not really both. I know that I would either set the desktop aside (when it should be used) or the laptop would stay in the desk (when it should be used, or I have wasted).
What's More Important?
Lots, really! One of my 2026 resolutions is to learn to sew! I am going to need fabric and patterns. Making film photos requires film and chemistry. In fact, once I took the new/used laptop option off the table, I might have purchased two lenses... like a Pre-Ai Nikkor-H Auto 50mm f/2 and Nikkor-N.C. Auto 24mm f/2.8.
This just left Kathleen's old MacBook Air as the option. Since she does not use it as her main computer (we both mostly use it to take video calls in the other room if needed), it would be available.
The only problem? It's running MacOS. I like using Linux.
I am not going to do anything to the computer, and it certainly wouldn't be the worst thing to use MacOS. Especially not for maybe two weeks and especially not since I really just need to type my dumb little posts in a markdown editor and push them to git, publishing them to Neocities.
Still, I can be a little stubborn! And I have a mid-2014 MacBook Pro in my desk drawer.
It just needs a new battery, and I know it would run, for example, ElementaryOS just fine. In fact, there is a good chance that it has Ubuntu on it now. A quick search on eBay shows that I can get a replacement for $50 or $60, which is much less expensive than a good second-hand laptop (let alone a new one), and the replacement seems like it needs patience more than anything else.
December 27, 2025