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Once upon a time, a Marvell developed a product called the Sheevaplug to drum up interest for their "Kirkwood" ARM-compatible CPU line. This was a complete linux system hidden in a wall wart, whose design they gave away as a reference. This led to a number of Sheevaplug-based devices hitting the market, including the PogoPlug, a line of cheap NAS devices which are all based on the Sheevaplug design with various single-core Marvell CPUs. They are now discontinuing not only that line but also the service for the same, so the devices are cheaper than ever before right now, and this is a great time to pick one up — I got one for $13.

My long-time faithful automotive companion, the 1982 300SD, is on its way out as a 1998 A8 Quattro comes in. It's just old enough (and low-spec enough) to have come with an ordinary radio instead of a LCD navigation unit. Unlike the 1997 which became the parts car when I got this car, the CD changer at least speaks an ordinary and boring protocol and it can be emulated away for those who would like a line input instead.

I grew up a poor white boy-child in Santa Cruz, which means that there were three ways in which I was privileged, and only one of them was location. Growing up with a single mother with no car when surrounded by the affluent and mobile meant that those were the only ways in which I was privileged. Any place I did not reach via operation of my Chevrolegs had to be visited via the shame train, also known as "The Bus". And riding the bus incurs a stiff penalty.

Some while back, I bought a 1997 Audi A8 Quattro with a bunch of problems for a little too much money, let's just not talk about how much. Not a lot, but still too much. I've worked through most of them problems, but then had an electrical issue that sent me back to looking for a front-end harness. Long story short, I wound up buying a parts car for $300 and then driving it home in limp mode over the Hopland Grade, like a boss. And since it's nicer than my car, I'm just going ahead and swapping the long-ago-warranty-replaced transmission which I've had fitted with the Transgo main pressure valve fix into the newer, nicer, lower-mileage car. And yesterday, I actually managed to extract the motor and trans from the 1997.

Assassins Creed is a really nifty psuedohistorical series of parcourt assassination games, and Assassins Creed: Unity is one of the recent entries in the series — which was included in a Humble Bundle of most of the titles. This post is not a news flash. It is a summary I'm writing because I don't want to have to track this information down again, distilled from a couple of pages I found googling.