Tag: technology

Excited for my new computer

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

What is a recent purchase you are excited about?

https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts

It’s been a fair few years since I built my gaming PC, and a couple since I upgraded the GPU. Thankfully, the GPU is still in a good competitive position for the current market, so I don’t feel the need to upgrade it again (because that would be expensive enough as it is.)

Thinking on how long it had been since I built my PC, and watching my roommate go through the motions of upgrading his, I decided to follow suit (the FOMO was real.) So, I ordered all new parts, including a case, and I started a ground up new PC build using the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D that hit the market almost two months ago.

I had ordered all the parts prior to my vacation, and got most of them before I even left, so I put together everything I could while I waited for the new SSD and the CPU itself. Both were on back order and I wasn’t expecting them to arrive before my trip, which meant I wasn’t going to be missing out on playing with it while I was gone. The SSD was supposed to arrive the day after I left, but it showed up the day before, so that was alright. I just installed it right away and went back to waiting for the last part. The CPU.

I wasn’t expecting the CPU to show up until mid-January, but for some reason it managed to ship early. I got the notification while I was gone and had to have my roommate keep an eye out for it. I’m still surprised that it showed up as early as it did, because I was also planning on cleaning and reorganizing my gaming and hobby desk setup when I got back. Unfortunately, in that area, I haven’t done that yet, which means I haven’t finished setting up the new PC. On the bright side, though, my roommate and I did install the CPU and made sure that everything worked after getting the OS installed (he had a heck of a time getting everything working when he did his build, which I’m grateful for because it meant I could tap into that knowledge if I ran into similar issues.)

So, now I’m just kind of taking my time to get caught up on my cleaning and then I can get to gaming again. Maybe I’ll even do a couple of streams in the near future!

A desired skill: Technomancy

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What skill would you like to learn?

Okay, so, technically, “Technomancy” isn’t real, but I thought it an amusing name to describe something that used to be limited to the imaginative worlds of science fiction.

You know those scenes in movies or shows where some hacker can take a bunch of seemingly random junk, like motherboards and other hardware, and create some kind of tool to solve their problem? That’s what I’m talking about. To know that I can take random parts, understand them enough at a glance and cobble something together.

I already have some of that kind of knowledge, or at least the way of thinking and processing, to make it down this path. I’ve patched together some scripting and automated flows to get the end results I want for reports. I just wish I could do the same with physical hardware. Thankfully, a lot of that is much more possible today than it ever has been. There are plenty of educational resources to learn the programming aspect on top of the electrical component pieces like a Raspberry Pi or Arduino board. It’s just a matter of taking the time to do it. Of course, it would also help to have a specific project in mind to motivate me down that path.

Sadly, I have so many other hobbies that I’ll likely just leave Technomancy in the “desired” category for a while longer.

Technology makes a difference

Taylor Burian1 Comment

How has technology changed your job?

Growing up I always watched my Dad leave for work in the morning and come home in the evening. After I finally graduated college, I was doing the same. Leaving home for the office in the morning and returning in the evening.

Well, until the pandemic happened. It’s the same story as a great many people. Technology had come a long way in the decades preceding the pandemic to allow millions of people to work from home. In my Dad’s case he lives in the country and has fast enough internet to do his work and stream Netflix. Myself, after restrictions in my State were lifted, I chose to go back to the office because I don’t have an entire house to myself to make an office and I didn’t want to feel locked in my bedroom all the time again.  Well, after a couple years of that, I more or less went hybrid, but only based on need. That is where technology has changed my job.

I have a work laptop set up at home near my normal computer and hobby space, and a desktop machine back in the office. On the days I work from home I can remote into my desktop and take advantage of its better hardware and processing power, and then minimize that window to use my laptop properly for other things. It’s a little awkward, having a pseudo four monitor setup on a laptop screen and one spare monitor, but it works. The days I choose to work in the office I just need my desktop and the three monitors I already have there, no need to remote into a less powerful laptop.

That’s about the gist of it lately. I know it’s one of the biggest topics in the last few years but I don’t use any sort of AI tools so I can’t talk about how those may have changed my job. So we’ll leave it at the remote telecommuting for now.

Too many inventions too quickly

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
The most important invention in your lifetime is…
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It’s hard to pick an invention from “my lifetime” when I don’t even know what was truly and originally invented IN my lifetime.

When I first started to write out my answer for today’s prompt I had settled on Wireless Technology, but the more I thought about it there are certain elements of “wireless” that are older than any person still living today. So, I stopped writing about it, deleted everything and took a break.

Now, I’m sitting down several hours later to think about it and I realized that technology has advanced so quickly and confidentially that I don’t know what to pick.

I think, just for the sake of putting SOMETHING out there, I’ll stick to an abbreviated version of what I had thought about before regarding wireless technology.

Most people take for granted what is considered “wireless” because they don’t think about them, or because the technology is obsolete and no longer in use. Like TV remotes. Still in use, but people these days probably forgot they existed (until I mentioned them just now) because the vast majority of people probably don’t need them anymore! So, although the TV remote might not have been invented in the last 35 years, wireless technology has continued to evolve. The electromagnetic spectrum, which includes the infrared light TV remotes use (even Nintendo’s Game Boy Color had IR sensors), is the backbone of all wireless communication, and we harness it in so many ways. Between that and the invention of The Internet, they have drastically altered the world we live in today. Broadband and shortwave radio eventually led to Bluetooth technology which is probably the most relevant for today’s prompt because it was invented in my lifetime (but I didn’t want to settle with just Bluetooth because it’s a subset of the wider and more important idea.)

Anyways, this is all just my opinion, so whatever. Wireless Technology is the most important invention of multiple lifetimes.