I dumped a batch script into a dev’s startup folder that would draw the text effect from The Matrix all over the screen. I thought he’d immediately catch on but apparently he stood up and started yelling about his workstation being hacked.

When I worked at an MSP in early 2000s they would “prank” new hires with a site that did this. It would keep creating popups so you couldn’t close them. That stopped after customers heard it. More horrid graphical “pranks” replaced it of course.

Gentoo is fantastic for learning. It forced me to get intimate with internals I had no exposure to before. And I learned a lot of little tricks from it that accelerated my career. Or at least made it easier.

I’d try to find something a bit more beefy if you plan on compiling almost everything. And once you get it where you like it, take a backup or system image you can restore to. Because when it breaks, it’ll be a lot less painful to start over.

My old Thinkpads and even my first iPad had SIM slots. I kinda miss that as it’d be much more handy now. LTE and the precursors were painful to use at the time.