Professionally, I'm IT Cybersecurity Manager with a growing, Cincinnati-area company.
Personally, I engage in a lot of projects that engage with food, cats, pens, bikes. I'm also a geek, who loves computers, and likes to experiment with a variety of tools and technologies. This is both something done for the pure enjoyment of learning, as well as to keep my professional skills sharp.
My primary system, named bandman, is an Apple MacBook Air M3, in the "Midnight" colorway. It's lightweight and elegant machine. I can slip it into my bag along easily, with not a lot of added weight or bulk. The battery life is simply amazing. They say 18 hours of actual use, and, while I haven't pushed it that far, I can certainly tell that "all day" battery is real. If I'm taking it out for a single day and it has a full charge, I don't worry about bringing a charger. It's got enough power to run a Windows virtual machine or occasionally edit video, so I don't feel the need for one of the "Pro" models. If I had to make one change, I'd add an extra USB-C port instead of the MagSafe charging port, but that's a minor quibble.
Between the USB-C only nature of the MacBook, and a general desire to keep the system "clean," I've been trying to go "dongle-less" for my day-to-day input devices (that is to say, avoid having special receivers for them). This has driven me to embrace Bluetooth for them wherever possible. At my desk, I have a Logitech MX Ergo trackball. This supports multiple devices, and has a few extra programmable buttons. I use a Royal Kludge RK84 mechanical keyboard--I enjoy the old school feel of a mechanical keyboard (and the RGB lights are fun!).
Rounding out my desk setup is a hand-me-down Lenovo Q24i-1L, a 24" display that lets me "spread out" whatever I'm working on, or have some streaming video (like a bike race) going. While its specs may not be the most exciting by today's standards, it meets the fit-to-purpose criteria I have for it. I also have a Bose SoundLink Mini Bluetooth speaker that's probably over a decade old, but works great, and, if the battery has diminished at all, I haven't noticed.
Sometimes I need to take my setup to another location (such as a different room in the house). For this, I have a ViewSonic VX1755 portable monitor. This has been on the road with me, and throughout the house. It's also been pressed into service when tinkering with some other system, or by others in my household.
For work, I use whatever WorkTop2 and associated hardware (and software) I'm issued. The main exceptions are some of my Work From Home (WFH) gear, such as my monitor and trackball. I have a Logitech POP mouse. It has Bluetooth (to be dongleless) and an auxiliary button, which I have programmed as a global mute (i.e. I can come on or off mute regardless of what program is in the foreground). I also have a Logiteech H800 headset, which is no longer produced (also Bluetooth). Both pack into a small form factor to fit readily in a bag--both get taken with the MacBook where appropriate.
Naturally, I'm running Apple One of the "common applications" I use to just get stuff done is Microsoft Office. My use of this ranges from begrudging-but-need-to-interact-with-the-world (Word) to genuinely like better than the alternatives (Excel).
For generating text, such as this web page, I use GNU EMACS for Mac OS X. I have it tweaked out to work well. Beyond the fact that it pretty much can do everything, it's multiplatform, and works well in a GUI or command line. This lets me use it remotely on other systems. I can use it as a general word processor, using Markdown for formatting, and Pandoc to convert it to another format, such as Word or HTML.
I've been trying a few different notetaking applications. The two core ones I use are Simplenote and Notion. Simplenote is free and, well simple, using Markdown for formatting. I'm also able to create and edit notes in EMACS. Notion lacks that ability, but has a lot of interesting capabilities, such as simple databases, ability to present as a web page, and group editing.
The main other non-typical thing I use is Inkscape, a vector graphic program.
For software, more and more, most work is paperless, but a lot of our toolset still tracks back to 8.5"x11". PowerPoints become dense with text so they can be handouts, rather than having a separate white paper. I think what we really need is something that is more digital-first, and scales from something I read (dense with text) to suitable for a presentation (capturing key ideas and core data). Tools like Notion, I think, are a step in that direction.
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