Modern Simple Living

Road Trip & Travel Log ★ Austin, Texas 200 Miles, One Day, $183 200 Miles One Way 5.5h Total Drive $183 Total Budget 91°F Texas Heat The Drive 200 Miles to Austin About 200 miles one way. In hindsight, I should have left earlier and with a full tank of gas. I ended up stopping halfway to fill up when the Camry could have easily gone all the way — but a brief 10-minute stop was actually a nice break. Total time on the road was about 5.5 hours, with the gas stop at the 3-hour mark. Lesson learned fill up the gas tank night before and leave earlier. Budget Trip Spend Category Cost Hotel $50 Gas $67 ...

Gear Review The Austin Surplus Score: Victorinox Gems for Pennies Finding hidden value in the bins of a local Texas surplus store 6 Items $9 Spent ~$69 Total Value Table of Contents ① The Austin Surplus Find ② The $9 Haul ③ Maintenance & EDC Update Section I The Austin Surplus Find I got a chance to visit the Surplus Store in Austin and it lived up to its name in finding cheap Victorinox Swiss Army knives. They had them arranged in several set of bins ranging in price from $1 for basic 58mm Classics to $3-4 for 91mm and specialty scales 58mm Classics.   Pricing Tiers → Basic 58mm Classics — $1.00 per unit → 91mm Models — $3.00 - $4.00 per unit → Specialty Scales 58mm — $3.00 - $4.00 per unit Section II The $9 Haul Most were in rough shape and had seen better days, but there are a few hidden gems. For a total of $9, I scored six 58mm Swiss Army Knives: → Memory — 58mm model with internal storage → Signature — 58mm model featuring an integrated pen → Rambler — Multi-fu...

Gear Review Upgrading My Linux Rig with an Inland 256GB SSD Breathing new life into a 2014-era HP15 laptop with a simple hardware swap. 15 Minutes Install Time 3 Installation Attempts 256GB New Capacity $38 Estimated Cost Table of Contents ① The Upgrade Project ② Performance and Storage ③ Additional Thoughts Section I The Upgrade Project I recently received a free Inland 256GB SSD Hard Drive from a friend and decided it was the perfect opportunity to upgrade my Linux rig (an HP15 i3-4010u from 2014). Although the laptop runs perfectly fine with a traditional 500GB HDD, the performance benefits of switching to an SSD were too tempting to pass up.   Upgrade Difficulty Ratings I’m rating the difficulty of this upgrade on a scale of 1 (Easy) to 5 (Difficult). → Physical Installation — Easy 1. The physical installation of the SSD was straightforward since I'm familiar with disassembling the HP15. It took me about 15 minutes to swap in the new SSD. → Linux Installation — Medium 2. T...

Style Going Green with Jackets in 2022 Experimenting with color, style, and fit — and the lessons learned This year, I decided to embrace green for my jackets. I splurged on a dark green varsity jacket and an olive green chore overshirt jacket. I'm still waiting for Adidas to restock a collegiate green track jacket that I have my eye on.   The Look Finding My Style I've found that green suits my wardrobe now that I have all the basics in place and am ready to add a bit of color. My go-to look has become somewhat of a uniform: blue jeans, white shoes, a black or white t-shirt, and a green jacket. This combo really helps break the monotony of sticking to only white, navy, or black jackets. The Purchases Planned Purchases I opted for entry-level versions of these classic jackets to experiment with styles, colors, and textures, with plans to upgrade to better-quality versions later. The exception is the Adidas track jacket — I alrea...