date: Sun 15 Feb 2026 09:51:12 PM PST
subj: computing a dead fantasy
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I often look around, and back at my life and think what a pile
of computing. I'll see the sacrifices I made in the name of
computing and career, in contrast with what I sacrificed and
wonder what was I thinking. I see the people in my life, and
those that used to be and always wish I had more time with them,
but at the time I had it, I was trying to be something in
service of machines. I never really made the dream come true. 

The dream was very undefined, but it was a mix of John Carmak,
Neo, Bjarne Stroustrup, RTM, Ken Thomson, Merlin, Kevin Mitnick,
and the greatest RMS (Richard Stallman). In reality it was a
wizard. I never was even close to anything like them.

So some days I think of trashing my humble pile of computers. So
many of them are hammy down systems, and SBC, a few 8 bit
systems, but all complicated enough and full of junk to become a
source of frustration for anyone, including myself. But then
I'll get an idea for a moment to try out some OS, or software,
maybe a game or two, in the end lately not much is happening
with my systems. I wonder if my brain was friend when I took
some anti depressants years back, and or burnout just got the
best of me. 

Once I had even more systems, older systems, and I decided, I
need to get rid of them. Systems I had carried around since
before year 2000. One day I pulled them out of the closets, put
them into my 1984 Toyota pickup and off to RE-PC recycler. Three
years later I wished I hadn't done that, but as time progressed
people asked me do you want this old system, I just couldn't say
no. I have no idea why, but my collection started growing again!
Almost all of them have a working OS on them, except a semi
broken NT C.H.I.P. I'm only one person I can't use all these
systems. Some of the older desktop systems are real power hogs
compared with today's systems, and with soaring electricity
prices I don't even want to consider powering them up.  

Its an obsession, computing.. what are we doing? The dream seems
dead in the face of new systems and LLM technology, non of which
my old computers can run.  So my internal grasping, fooling
myself, people are doing anything with older systems, like
actually connecting with them in a meaningful way. Will anyone
really even care about computers than have a cdrom drive, or
even a zip drive, I have my doubts. Its all about Jarvis and AI,
even though its not really AI at this point. LLM's are what
people think AI is. Its that what we are guessing machines. I
know for sure I've don't a lot of guessing in life, although I
did find some truths a long the way. 

I started my computing journey on a C64, and then on to a i386.
Neither of these systems were powerful, but I used them the best
I could. Now I can't even think what the point of having an
ultra fast system would do for me. I can't think why it would be
meaningful to have LLM's run the show. What's a computer head to
do when the only thing to figure out is how to get an LLM
running, and letting them configure and run the system. In the
near future computers are going to become meaningless, if they
haven't already.

OK I wrote this, for now my thoughts are here, maybe you two
have these kinda of thoughts about computers, or other items
that took your attention, which now seems meaningless. If so
email me, we can talk about it.