"Weird" Hardware
Someone on the Facebook Solitary Cycling community made a post asking the people who are "still" using manual gear shifting instead of electronic systems why they are doing so. This person does not seem to occupy the same existence I do, or even a neighboring one. I did not leave my answer, which is that my bike is 24 years old and those systems didn't exist when I bought it, that I don't have thousands of dollars to drop on a bike with bells and whistles that I don't need, and that even if I did, I wouldn't.
I have speculated about why, but I take some perverse joy in having and using hardware that other people don't like or understand. My bike is probably part of that. It's now old enough that the handlebars are non-standard size, and it uses rim brakes. It seems like it's getting harder to find bikes with rim brakes instead of disc brakes, and somehow that makes me want to cling all the harder to mine out of perverse stubbornness. It has a triple chainring gear train too (with only 7 gears in back instead of the 10 or more that seem common now), which is now seen as either a mountain bike thing or sometimes a specialized touring setup though some people say you don't even need them for that. Maybe eventually I won't be able to find parts, but I know there are people with bikes far older than mine that keep them going.
And it makes me think of my taste in computer hardware, though my reasons for those preference are, I think, more thought out and based in real needs and my use-case for them. If someone gave me a $200, 24", wide-screen monitor, I'd probably sell it and buy half a dozen old 19" 5:4 ones for $20 a piece to make sure I have extras in case mine die. Those are what I want. Bigger and/or widescreen ones do not work as well for me. I don't think I'd even want larger ones, even if they were 5:4 instead of widescreen. 19" is just fine for where they sit on my desk.
There are so many weird, boutique keyboard out there now, too, that save space by removing "unused keys" like page up/page down or home/end. I use those *constantly* when editing anything with code or text. I will fight you for my home/end page up/page down keys. I saw one lately with a programmable LED display on it too! Cute, but pretty gimmicky, no? And I type with my keyboard on a sliding tray mostly under my desk, so on-keyboard displays do me no good because I can't see my keyboard while I'm typing! (Says the girl who wants to paint her Kinesis keyboard pink. No I'm not always rational.)
Anyway, speaking of computer hardware, I'm going out tomorrow to buy a $20 video card from a seller on FB Marketplace that should let me attach 3 more monitors to my desktop if I want to. I don't know where I'd put a 5th one right now, but I'd like to have the option for when I figure it out. If I had 2-tall mounting pole, I'd definitely put it up.