Running multiple virtual machines might be one use for all that RAM. I completely agree about going with a NUC (or similar x86-64) unless power consumption is a concern. I stopped buying SBCs once Intel platforms started competing on the low end.

Weird Al is a national treasure

I always recommend Pop_OS! for beginners. It’s IMHO a lot closer to what Ubuntu used to be, uses apt and/or flatpaks (and no snaps), has sane defaults, a good installer, a decent company behind it, nvidia drivers included and their upcoming Cosmic desktop environment looks sick.

Also, I feel like this is a better Fedora-based distro for beginners since it’s harder to break:

https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/silverblue/

Yeah, I’ve read about his refusal to let people enjoy it. That’s a shame, as it’s one of my favorite MST3K episodes.

Keep circulating the tapes!

I wonder if there’s beer on the Sun…

Talk like Yoda, you do

Oh so YOU’RE the owner of ObsessedWithPlasticExistence.com

I’m flattered!

True to the OnlyFans stereotype, most of the chats were overtly sexual. I had to wade into several prosaic fantasies about babysitters and office blowjobs, some of which included laughably florid professions of love for me. I couldn’t help but ponder how disappointed these men would be if they could somehow see me sitting in my home office, sipping hibiscus tea as I typed out commands for them to manipulate their genitalia or deposit their semen on certain parts of my body. The most surreal moment came as I noticed the faint sounds of my daughter and her puppy watching Bluey together down the hall, right as a subscriber was waxing poetic about how much he wanted to eat a macaron from between my ass cheeks; the juxtaposition made me question the entire course of my life.

I would trust the Ferengi more than Boeing executives at this point.

What you say!!?

As the enshittification of everything gains momentum, I could also see this as an intentional “oops!”

But we are talking about HP. They are now and always have been completely incompetent PC makers. I had friends back in the early 2000s with broken HP desktop computers that I refused to work on because they were the hardest to get working again.

I think epoxy is the best bet, but next time you need to use super glue, try adding baking soda to the mix. It makes super glue much stronger.

It seems to be saying, “Oh, really?”

Whatever you decide, make sure you’ve got a backup of any important data before you start making any partition changes. Things go wrong occasionally even when they shouldn’t.

That’s so highly disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising to me given how often doctors have been arrogantly wrong about my issues.

I’m sorry, my dude. I wish it would have worked out better for you. Maybe it still will with more time, but I know that’s cold comfort right now.

I just wanted to say good luck, we are all counting on you.

Belgian yeast likes to get a bit hot, by the way (and the beer tastes best when fermented on the warmer side of the yeast’s preferred range). That might be a decent choice for a test batch once you get an insulated space setup.

I can respect working with no power. I did that for a while too. Everything I mentioned is pretty power efficient though.

If you want no electronics in the mix at all, insulation is about your only option. Since fermentation is an exothermic process, you’ll also want to make sure you can keep it from getting too hot. Your beer will taste a lot worse from the yeast getting too hot than it will from the yeast being too cool.

You can buy inexpensive temperature controllers, and if you can do simple wiring, it’s not too hard to add a power outlet (and an enclosure). From there a fountain pump some tubing, a cooler full of water and either a heat source or a cold source can serve as a simple way to regulate your fermentor’s temperature.

The heat source could be something like an aquarium heater or a sous vide heater and will sit in the cooler (always on, not run to the temperature controller). You’ll tape the temperature controller’s sensor against the outer wall of your fermentor (with some insulation taped over it. A paper towel folded a few times works fine), put the fountain pump in the bucket of water with the fermentor, and run the tubing into the cooler. The output of the tubing should be run back into the bucket.

When the fermentor gets too cool, the temperature controller will kick the fountain pump on which will take the water from the bucket and run it through the hot water in the cooler and back into the bucket. This will slowly raise the temperature inside the fermentor - and slow is what you want with yeast.

You can replace the heater with ice or frozen water bottles if you need it to cool your beer in the warmer months. I did this for a while before moving to using a chest freezer and reptile terrarium hear mats regulated by the same temperature controllers.

🕺

If you value your time more than you like to tinker with your printer, then the cost makes sense.

If you like to do more maintenance and prefer to save the money up front, then the budget printers make sense.