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Keep It Simple Stupid

March 17, 2026

I've ignored any personal tech related projects for awhile now, but over the course of the past few years I've done some improvements to what I'm using at home.

This list isn't extensive, it's a list of minor things that needed to be done or things that are solving a problem I had at the time. None of these are major undertakings or time sinks, but they do take time. It's taken me far to long to understand how valuable my time is, which is why I'm not doing more. When corporate America trains you to stay hungry and spend all your time improving for the bottom line, it's impossible to stop that leaking into your personal life. This leak was something that was hard for me to seal, but once I did I didn't want to do anything tech related at home. To an extent, I still don't, just to a lesser degree. My thinking has shifted quite a bit, I'm not focusing on how do I make my home setup better/more complicated/etc. , but how do I simplify it enough that makes it less of a burden for everyone in the house and allows my spouse to understand what's going on enough to manage if something where to happen to me (thanks a lot disaster recovery planning). I've talked to some in the tech field that have such a complicated setup that when they've asked me for advice on how to plan for the future I've told them to throw all of it out because their spouse won't give a flying f* about it. I'm taking the advice my dad gave me back when I was a kid and applying it across my life with broad brush strokes; Keep It Simple Stupid.

Which brings me to the next tech necessity on the horizon, upgrading my aging Windows 10 desktop. My full setup is in a previous blog post, but it's an older i5 with a fried r9 390. I've spent more time than I've liked to admit trying to find the optimal solution, but here's the conversation that goes through my head when thinking of this.


“Ok, let's replace this thing”
“For an OS, I can't upgrade to Windows 11”
“I grew up with Windows systems, my career is built off administrating Windows systems, maybe I should build, or look at getting, a machine that can run Windows 11”
“I'm sick of Microsoft, I look at it all day everyday and I can't take it any longer!”
“Let's look at how much it is to build a new computer”
“Wow, these prices are kind of crazy”
“You know, I don't need a big desktop, I have one now and it just takes up to much space let's look for something smaller”
“Wow, this smaller build is even more expensive”
“Well, I don't game or run virtual environments anymore, I don't need tons of horse power when I'm just managing documents, backing up my media, and attempting to make music. “
“Let's look at mini PCs”
“Wow, these things are awesome! These newer chips are so good that this is perfect!”
“Oh, they come with Windows installed, that's a bummer since the price of Windows is baked into the cost of the device.”
“Ehh maybe I'm ok with that, I can just install Linux and eat the cost of the Windows license.”
“Hmm, which Linux distro should I should I run on it”
“Year of the Linux desktop? Weren't we talking about that years ago?”
“Sure are a lot of distros out here”
“Am I making the wrong choice by going Linux?”
“Shit, I should just install Windows”
“I really can't stand to look at Windows anymore”
“Everyone is talking about how the new mac mini is a great value”
“That thing is the perfect size and it seems pretty powerful.”
“I don't have any experience with macOS”
“Am I leaving one corpo OS for another?”
“Man, it does everything I need it to do but I get even more attached to Apple.”
“Nah, I'll get the mini pc and run fedora”
“Ok, how do I sync my iCloud photos so I have a backup of them?”
“Hmm, iCloudpd sounds promising”
“Oh yeah, Linux doesn't have a native Blackblaze client”
“That's fine, I'll just use something like B2 or iDrive”
“Ok, I can easily set that up on a schedule”
“Rats, Reaper has native Linux support but zero plugins that I use are compatible.”
“I have an old laptop from work I can install Linux on to try these open source ones.”
“Which distro should I pick?”
“Why is setting up low latency audio such a pain?”
“I can't have youtube playing and use my DAW simultaneously?!”
“Oh, I can, I just have this configured wrong.”
“I made the changes and it's still not working”
“Wait, so I have to figure out how to get this working on my laptop and then see if I can do it again once I install it on my desktop?”
in dads voice“Keep It Simple Stupid”
“What am I doing?!”

I wish I could say that this conversation in my head has only happened once, but it hasn't. I even had a conversation with Claude about it, it didn't even start with that, it was just me trying it for something else but it evolved into comparing hardware and use cases and everything in between. I'm not happy with myself for using Claude, but maybe AI will be a good future post to go into why. To be transparent, I've been using Ubuntu on an HP elite book for a few months for basic tasks and I do enjoy it. I'm only using it for Libre Office, Git, and Firefox, which is all I need from a portable device. This thing is old though so I don't want to reuse it as a primary device, and the DAW plugins are also stopping me. I have yet to decide on a solution, but I do know one thing, I'll continue to hear "Keep It Simple Stupid" in the forefront of these conversations, and most tech related conversations, to use as my guiding light.