# Problem

When time ran out for Gamesys in Edmonton, the conditions of my termination were very generous. They gave us basically all the hardware we used. While it wasn't nice to be out of a job, particularly a job I enjoyed as much as that one, it was a nice thing to be given a MacBook.

A little while ago, Kim ran out of patience for the slowness of her MacBook Air. Since I was mostly using my iPad and my phone for home diversion (Netflix, etc) and I had a work computer for doing work things, I gave her the MacBook Pro for work.

About six months ago, I got interested in writing and programming at home again, which led to the issue of what was I supposed to use? I won't use my work computer for personal projects since the question of who owns that source code isn't one I really want to ask.

# Solution 1 - Archaeology

I've had a green Dell Inspiron since 2008 when I decided to take my talents away from Intuit and start contracting. It's never been a top-of-the-line laptop. I did make sure to maximize the RAM when I bought it. 4 GB seemed like plenty at the time. The battery has been replaced once and probably could use it again. I thought maybe I could make a go of linux on that machine and use it for writing + some lighter dev.

I'd been running Linux on the Dell for awhile, but the boot times on Linux Mint were obscenely long, so I tried some minimalist distributions. Unfortunately, something about my wireless adapter meant that I could install the distributions, but not access the internet. So I eventually went to Ubuntu, which worked with my wi-fi, but still had the longer boot times. I switched the startup to load into a CLI window rather than a desktop environment, which cut the boot time in half or so, but still took too long.

Eventually, I did what I should have done months before and googled the errors I was getting. Yes, people had had these issues before. Yes, there was an easy fix. I implemented it and had the boot time down to less than half a minute. Which is awesome.

Unfortunately, this is still an eleven-year-old computer with what was a middle-of-the-road processor when it was new. Lighter dev is about what that computer can handle, but running a couple of application servers while also booting into a desktop manager and running chrome with some extensions really put it through its paces. And that was if I stuck to vim for my code editing. I could do that for the front end part of my application, and I got better at editing Java code in vim, but it's pretty far from ideal. Eventually, the workflow got to me and I accepted that I just needed a better machine.

# Solution 2 - Pine From Afar

I've done a lot of development on Windows machines. It works and mostly doesn't get in your way. But I feel like a unix-based system will always be my preference. (At least now I can admit that it is a preference. There isn't really anything that Linux or OS X can do that Windows can't) So when I started pining after computers, given that I didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on a MacBook, I looked at PCs that would run Linux well.

I thought about the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. It's well-regarded, and the path to getting Linux running on it is well-documented. There have been some power management issues, and driver support is never entirely clear to me. So I didn't jump right away. I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to be sure of operating system and hardware, and I wanted a machine to work on right away rather than play with and coax to work, I should probably just get a Mac. Which led me to the idea of buying used.

# Solution 3 - Kijiji

Selling things on Kijiji has always been a bit of a mixed bag for me. People who haven't paid anything yet are less invested in things, they're always looking to pay less than you're offering it for -- sometimes insultingly less -- and sometimes they just don't show up. Conversely, the things I've bought on Kijiji have generally been good -- video games here and there, a watch. And I got my first computer from a 90s Kijiji analog, the Bargain Finder.

My first attempt to buy a MacBook on Kijiji flamed out. The computer was up for sale and I answered the ad. I offered to meet at a Tim Horton's and they flaked out, pulled the ad, and ghosted me. Not an auspicious beginning for my consumerist adventure. But the lure of savings and time to productivity called to me and I persisted. I eventually settled on the computer that I'm writing this on, feeling pretty good about my purchase.

# The Other Problem

I was feeling less good about my purchase the first time I tried to use the computer as a laptop. I had it on my lap and lifted it by the corner when it froze. I restarted it, and it was fine. But the next time I used it on my lap, it froze again. Weird, but ok. I looked up MacBook Pro power issues and freezing, and my research suggested restarting in a different way to resolve some power issue. I did that but it didn't work. It kept freezing.

This morning, I tried to start up my computer, and I was hit with three beeps, then a pause, then three beeps again. I googled warning beeps and learned it was because of invalid RAM.

I knew my RAM was not faulty, because it has started properly every time before today. I did some further research and learned that improperly seated RAM chips can lead to the same problem.

I popped open my case and pulled out the RAM. I didn't see anything wrong with the chips or the housing, so I re-seated the memory and put everything back together. I started up the computer and there was no issue.

I've moved the laptop around, holding it by all the corners and edges, and I haven't experienced the issues I had before removing and replacing the memory. I'm not naïve enough to think that my power woes are completely gone, but maybe they are. As it is, there isn't much risk in acting like it, anyway. I want this computer for productivity, not for playing around with so much, so I'll save more frequently and I'll hope that the problems are solved.

# Future Plans

Removable RAM means I can expand it. I want 16 GB of RAM, which should be really easy to find, and I want to increase the hard drive from 128 GB to at least 256. I'm not downloading audiobooks or movies on this thing, so I shouldn't need more than 512 at the outside. But with that, and a potential battery replacement in the next couple of years, I can see myself being happy and productive on this computer for the foreseeable future.