I had a guy busy moving his family across the US when they cancelled remote work. Management decided to do layoffs while they were en route. He was on the list. At the time, I was actively interviewing to GTFO of that place and when we were chatting about work stuff I brought up that a position I saw at one would be perfect for his skill-set. He seemed worried and confused by my insistence that he apply. Anyway, as expected he showed up and they canned him before I could even walk in the door. But he got the other job and ended up loving it.

Gentoo is fantastic for learning. It forced me to get intimate with internals I had no exposure to before. And I learned a lot of little tricks from it that accelerated my career. Or at least made it easier.

I’d try to find something a bit more beefy if you plan on compiling almost everything. And once you get it where you like it, take a backup or system image you can restore to. Because when it breaks, it’ll be a lot less painful to start over.

My old Thinkpads and even my first iPad had SIM slots. I kinda miss that as it’d be much more handy now. LTE and the precursors were painful to use at the time.

Audio gear. Car parts. Laptop. All were due for an upgrade anyway.