Spent two years with a shifty intermittently connected constant resyncing core node on an old laptop, failed the first flashing of Umbrel and getting apps to install. Gave up due to frustration.

Got a bitaxe. Two weeks later have three Bitaxes and umbrel syncing watching the blocks get verified and roll in from 11 years ago on my own instance of mempool.

Some may say I should have gone with Start 9 at this point. Or that I am way far behind where I should have already been.

But fuck it. I'm pretty psyched.