On the great pleasure in setting up new devices

I got a new laptop, a cheapo one which I've been talking about a while now.

I've spent the last two days setting it up, and I realized I enjoy nothing more than setting things up so I may use them to double and triple and quadruple my productivity and enjoyment. Often that's a total waste of time, more time is wasted on setting things up than is ever used but sometimes it pays of rather handsomely. For example, when I set up the basic tools in emacs to set up writing for my work blog it significantly increased my productivity. And when I wrote dozens and dozens of nonsense posts here sometime last year talking about how much I was going to be writing and what a great time it was going to be ohh boy, that could have ended at that exact time but no I followed up on a lot of those promises and here we are, not too shabby a year thence.

Most of the device setup these days involves installing google stuff, removing the default settings to basically fight against google and syncing everything up, installing apps and signing them up. So it's not as great as it used to be. Much less hassle if you'd like to think of it that way.

But this one's a chromebook and I didn't get it so I could become a passive user, no sirree. I spent a few hours setting up the google part of it, my browser addons and other settings and got quite comfortable with it. Then this morning I realized I could get it into a place where I wouldn't have to deal with google at all, so I reset the system, and redid everything from yesterday. But now it's better because for the first time in my life I have a real-world updated linux machine that I can carry with me at all times without having to do a lot of troubleshooting on the road. I've set up emacs, I've set up my shell with is zsh, the sound won't work because apparently something to do with hardware support whatever but I'm using bluetooth lately anyway, and it's  been great. A couple of more pieces of the puzzle and I'll be killing it, seriously.

It's not lost on me that the obsession may be an attempt to avoid doing other more important work. It's also about control though: being in control of the software I run, the companies I trust, and the way I like my settings. Give me a default 'off the shelf' device and I'm as comfortable as sleeping in somebody else's bed by the roadside. It's just not me, digital devices and virtual workspaces have become inherently important...they're a part of our physical existence and identity, and an unfamiliarity with them is of course going to invite a certain...discomfort.

Maybe we can extend this further for other arguments, something that should be a different post. What if you've been using the same UI for ever and the company makes a big change, are you more likely to abandon the software entirely? Is facebook and instagram users identity like party or national identification or do we think they're completely comoditised products, impossible to differentiate from one another, like dollar-store wrenches.

 I fear I know the more likely answer but I don't want to think about it too hard. More conversations incoming!