I’ve talked before about Lenovo’s “Kaitian D10” tablet, which works as a dedicated Galgame machine. It’s great value for the price and totally fine at that price point, but there were still a few things about it that bugged me. Performance is too weak, it can only run Win10 Screen colors are good, but still not good enough The Secure Boot certificate expired, so it throws an error at boot None of these are huge problems, but they’re still a bit annoying. Then, by pure coincidence, I saw someone on eBay selling the upgraded version of this thing: the “Kaitian D11”, codename IdeaPad Duet 3 11IAN8.

I’ve been playing Galgames again lately, so I started looking for a new device. The reason I didn’t just keep using the Rog Ally X handheld is mainly that it’s inconvenient for slacking off — one look and it’s obviously a game console, way too conspicuous. So I started shopping around. My budget is really limited, so I unexpectedly found that a batch of these has recently shown up on the secondhand market: the Lenovo Kaitian D10. Plenty are advertised as being in great condition, but I figure they were probably recycled from somewhere too.

Not long after I sold off my HP Chromebook X2 11, I regretted it badly. I couldn’t find a tablet that met my needs anymore. Sure, that knockoff Surface from HP had all sorts of crappy problems, but compared to Android tablets that can only play games and watch videos, its advantages were pretty obvious. Then I saw this thing on eBay: Lenovo Chromebook 10e Another Chromebook tablet. Performance-wise it’s about the same as the Duet, but the difference is it actually has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and it comes with a keyboard cover that looks pretty solid. The only catch is it has no trackpad, but who cares—it’s a tablet, it has a touchscreen!

My old laptop was gone, so I decided to buy a new one. And since I was buying new, I figured I’d stick with the X1 Carbon line—especially since around Chinese New Year there were rumors that this generation would bring a ton of great changes. Sure enough, right around the holiday, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 9th was officially announced: a brand-new 4K screen, a new 16:10 aspect ratio, better speakers, a bigger battery, a beefier Iris integrated GPU, and a shorter key travel. Overall it still looked way better than the old versions—at the very least, that screen alone was worth bragging about. So I decided to go for it.

A while back my main eroge machine, the Chuwi Minibook, broke — the power light wouldn’t come on anymore. Since the warranty on that thing was almost up, I contacted the support lady to see if I could get it repaired. But nobody bothered to answer me for about two months, right up until I’d given up. Then the email came! She said it could be repaired, and explained the part I’d been worried about. I’d heard Chuwi’s after-sales was garbage — basically they just reinstall the OS and ship it back — but it seems crowdfunded products aren’t treated that way. Of course, I also found out why there’d been no reply for two months: the lady who’d been answering had quit, and they hadn’t hired anyone in those two months… Fine. In the end the machine got sent off, and I had no Windows machine on hand. That’s when I spotted what looked like a Lenovo Windows tablet in my wife’s inventory. The model was Lenovo MIIX 2 10, and it even came with a keyboard. So I asked if I could borrow it. “Sure, whatever. That’s your mother-in-law’s computer, seems like it’s been abandoned for ages.” So I picked up this Lenovo MIIX 2 10 and kept playing Gal.

Preface: My workplace just moved to a new office, and during the move my old computer stopped turning on. It was an ancient AMD machine anyway, slower than today’s low-voltage Celerons, and I’d wanted to replace it for a while — so this was a good excuse to put together something new. But at work my desk space is limited, and there’s no room under the desk for a tower either, so the “new computer” had some requirements: It has to take up very little space Within that footprint, as much performance as possible It has to run Win10 without issues As cheap as possible — under 1000 ideally After looking around, the Lenovo M73 that was popular a while back turned out to be a pretty good choice. After a bunch of research I decided to jump in.

I bought the Lipstick Power Adapter last year, and a while back it started acting up — it wouldn’t charge my ThinkPad X1 Carbon anymore. Actually, this problem is really annoying. First off, the adapter still charges: it charges phones, it charges a New MacBook, it charges a Switch, it can even charge a MacBook Pro. It just won’t charge the ThinkPad. Personally I figure it probably doesn’t support the PD protocol anymore. Thought about it for a bit, realized it was less than a year since purchase, so sending it in for repair was the only option.

My Pixel C’s screen shattered. I figured I’d find someone to repair it—maybe Google US could do a mail-in fix. So I contacted Google US support directly, went back and forth for ages, and they said it’s out of warranty, told me to find a technician in China Mainland myself. I said I don’t have the screen component, and they said “neither do we.” Fuck. What now? Guess I’ll buy a new one… Except there are basically no Android flagship tablets anymore! So in the end I bought this… Lenovo P8

The internet situation at my workplace is pretty unusual… Theoretically speaking — I mean theoretically, according to the leadership management regulations — every internet user in the entire institution should be rate-limited, with video and downloads throttled, and stock trading and remote connections prohibited. Not even our department is exempt. Except most of those rules were written by me… so my own IP sits outside the rules. Yeah, that’s against the regulations, but I’m the type who doesn’t give a damn about the leadership, and a fair number of the institution’s higher-ups have their IPs in the unrestricted group too. But the other guys and girls in my department are total bootlickers. Every day they see the boss and look ready to kneel; the moment he’s gone they’re ready to tear him apart. One face in front, another behind. They want to secretly watch videos and trade stocks at work, but when I offered to move their IPs into the unrestricted group, they shook their heads and said they didn’t dare.