Monday, December 12, 2022

I Generally Enjoy Working Outside. This, Not So Much

Last night, Manjaro informed me that I had a bunch of updates to install for various software packages, including Chromium. So I did. And now Chromium won't launch on the beloved Raspberry Pi 4B. So I'm outside at 5 in the morning, working on my Chromebook at my little patio table. Which would be fine if it wasn't 50-odd degrees and pitch black other than my monitor, and if I my LastPass  master password didn't seem to have changed (without me changing it) since the last time I had to actually log in.

Additionally, today WOULD have been a continued test of whether my solar setup for the Pi is enough to get me through two cloudy days, but now I'm not actively using that machine, somewhat reducing the power draw.

Yeah, I know, first world problems.

Update, 8:30am: Because I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, it completely slipped my mind that I had an instant solution right there at my desk -- an SD card with the 32-bit version of Manjaro, and all my software in 32-bit versions the KDE Plasma version, rather than the xfce version, of Manjaro. I could have just shut the machine down, swapped SD cards, and been right at things. But no biggie. I sat outside shivering in the dark and got the first round of morning tasks (some daily proofing and social media work for a long-term client, and the day's email/social media editions of Rational Review News Digest) done before remembering. Came back in, did the swap, started in on the second round of morning tasks (gathering content for RRND) ... and while my power station did get down to 25% storage, I see that even this early on on a cloudy/foggy morning, the solar panel is delivering 25 watts. So I should be able to make it through a second consecutive not-especially-sunny day without grid input. Huzzah.

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