buy nice or buy twice.

thursday, june 29th, 2023.

There's an idiom, "buy cheap, buy twice," and its rhyming corollary, "buy nice or buy twice."

This one rang true last Friday when my $50 pannier's zipper broke before work. I was able to repair it somewhat with a pair of needle nose pliers, but the fix won't last. Plus, the canvas material isn't exactly waterproof.

Yesterday, I ordered a set of Ortlieb Back-Roller Classic panniers, which are incredibly well-regarded in the bicycle commuting and touring communities. A little frustrating to replace the basically-new panniers I already have, but these will do the job a lot better and last for years. Plus they're actually waterproof— which means I'll feel a lot better about packing my work laptop and bringing it home with me from time to time without fear of it getting wet in the process.

I'm really kicking myself over repurchasing such a new piece of equipment, but I am somewhat comforted to know that every (reasonable) dollar spent on my bicycle commuting gear will be repaid quickly in saved gas money. Not an excuse to go all out on a fancy multi-thousand-dollar road bike, but a small comfort when an idiom comes to bite me in the butt.

manjaro linux: a few weeks in.

I brought my ThinkPad X250 with Manjaro Linux with me on this vacation to keep up with some legal paperwork I have to do. Plus, you know, update my writing here and play a few games during some of my downtime.

Man, this Manjaro distro is great. Everything just works, and I've been able to find and install every piece of software I care to in the official and AUR package repositories. I've also been having a blast playing GOG.com's version of Into The Breach, which runs really well on this potato of an integrated graphics card.

I hacked together a quick script, vw-remote to update this wiki remotely, since I've been using tethered Wi-Fi from my smartphone. Editing the wiki locally is a lot smoother than doing it remotely over SSH or mosh on an intermittent connection.

This ThinkPad has really been through it with me, and I'm happy that it's still running admirably after all these years (Gosh, this thing came out in 2015?). I can't speak to Lenovo's newer models, but this laptop has really been one of those sort of "buy nice or buy twice" things for me. Happy that Manjaro Linux keeps it running so smoothly!

I suppose that's all for now! The rain this morning is starting to break. We'll have a nice lunch, pack our bags, and go visit the beach this afternoon once it warms up again, I think!

Until next time, be well! :)