misfiled as "Keet, Electric" @ElectricKeet@awoo.space

My TI-99/4A was my first computer. I started programming when I was five years old, typing in code from a variety of sources and learning until I could roll my own from scratch. I used it to create images, small games, sounds, and music.

When my high-school biology class made models of DNA, they used gumdrops and toothpicks, wooden balls and dowels, the usual. I worked for days to code a demo that showed DNA unzipping and replicating. I _earned_ my A+ for that project.

Good times!

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard :

"Some PS/2-to-USB adapters are unreliable with early Model M's that require more power than the adapters can provide."

*sighs* I've used this heckin' awesome keyboard for about twenty years. Maybe it's time to move on, to replace it.

I'm not getting rid of it, though. It goes in the closet along with my Speak&Spell and my TI-99/4A. There aren't many objects I didn't make myself that have quite this much _me_ in their stories, you know?

I really, _really_ want there to be an environment variable in Windows 10 that tracks (various aspects of) whether my laptop is plugged in to its docking station, especially one that I can straight up use as a path to set up programs that let me declare configuration profiles on the commandline.

For example: the commandline `retroarch -c %GPU%.cfg` could point at "discrete.cfg" if docked, but "integrated.cfg" otherwise.

I'm gonna have to learn PowerShell to make this a reality, aren't I?

I let my mind's eye wander over the conceptual form of it all, reveling in the awkward beauty of what machines that meat is capable of dreaming into existence—

I startle when the screen lights up of its own accord to tell me that it's low on battery.

<too tired to list jokes here, feel free to provide your own>

I drop the cable and position the headphones just right, as comfortably as possible to provide perfect sound. I connect the cable to the phone. Now I'm holding the end of a cable to plug into _me._ and provide the tunes directly.

The experience becomes transcendent and liminal, a different relationship with the technology in some subtle but fundamental way. I blush. It's not directly sexual, but it somehow sends the same signals through me.

I lie down in bed, head comfortably propped up by pillows and THC. Next to me, my phone sits ready to provide music. In one hand, I hold a pair of very familiar and comfortable headphones. In the other, I hold the cable to connect things up.

I've stopped mid-motion to reconsider. I could simply plug the cable into the headphones and put them on my head as normal, and in a mere moment I'd be listening to music as usual.

Or....

My wife, @literorrery, reflecting stonedly on a day of accomplishments:

"I eated all of the soup out of the soup."