It's a Thanksgiving miracle! I wasn't expecting my clarinet to be repaired for at least another week or so, but I got a text from the shop late in the afternoon today that it was ready to be picked up.

I've written several posts about how I acquired and got my current laptop working – a Dell Latitude E7470. It's several years old, but it's been running like a champ and has come into my possession at the perfect time, given my current hobby project.

Getting a new shared Mastodon instance going is a lot of work! I've put in a lot of hours the past couple days on getting ZCMI.social off the ground. It's not just the technical side of things with domain, hosting, and administration – there is a lot more to it.

My new Andor sticker arrived and it looks great on my laptop!

The battery cable I ordered arrived today. I installed the battery without too much hassle and now I have a 100% working Dell Latitude E7470 laptop for a total cost of ~$250!

I've been thinking about what tech-related upgrade I'll focus on after I get my laptop fully working (still waiting on one more part).

The battery I ordered for my Dell Latitude 7470 laptop arrived today. However, it didn't come with the cable needed to connect it to the motherboard. So I still can't use my laptop as an actual laptop until I get that cable. I ordered one and it should arrive next week.

It's been at least a couple decades since my clarinet was last taken in for maintenance and repairs, so this was long overdue.

The RAM and SSD I ordered came two days earlier than expected! I just installed them in the barebones Dell Latitude E7470 I got earlier this week. The new battery is still en route, so it'll need to be tethered to the power cable for now. It looks like everything else works!

I bought that bare bones Dell Latitude E7470 laptop from my son for $100.