I went to college in 93, and they ran a Unix mainframe with thin clients connected to it in the computer labs.

I didn’t really know much about any computers then, but I learned quick and had nerdy friends teach me a lot. Home computers ran DOS, but this fancy thing called Linux had entered the scene and nerds played with it.

I remember it being a bear. My comp sci roommate did most of the work, but he’d dole out mini projects to me to help him out. You had to edit text files with your exact hardware parameters or else it wouldn’t work. Like resolutions, refresh rates, IRQs, mouse shit, printer shit - it was maddening. And then you’d compile that all for hours. And it always failed. Many hardware things just weren’t ever going to work.

Eventually we got most things working and it was cool as beans. But it took weeks - seriously. We were able to act as a thin client to the mainframe and run programs right from our apartment instead of hauling ourselves to the computer lab. Interestingly, on Linux, that was the first time I had ever gotten a modem and a mouse working together. It was either/or before that.

It was both simultaneously horrific and fantastic at the same time. By the time windows 95 rolled out, the Unix mainframe seemed old and archaic. All the cool kids were playing Warcraft 2 and duke nukem 3D.

I’ve actually had someone thumb their nose at linux because of that name. “You mean the hat OS? The one those weird guys use? No thanks.” I’m paraphrasing but ya, that association is there for some people.

The real kick in the nuts is that Sonos is quite handy if you’re looking for whole house audio. Or it used to be.

Decent speakers that run over WiFi and don’t require knocking holes in walls. Could stream from your NAS, from a line in jack from a tv, or bridge your “real” stereo to your sonos products.

But they keep breaking all the things one by one. At this point I’m just waiting for someone to hack the speakers so I can use them with a foss alternative.

Pathetic.

For my 75 year old mother who doesn’t do anything besides Facebook. Ya an iPad is perfect! ;)

She thinks it’s a full blown computer and it’s impossible to break or install a virus on it. iPads can be surprisingly good for that purpose…

This is honestly such a pile of shit from Microsoft. Right…. Grandma is going to resize her partitions with those ridiculously cryptic instructions. She’s totally going to figure out which partition we’re talking about, she’s totally going to open a command line interface as admin, heck she totally even knows to find those instructions. Its hard enough for people to distinguish between “ya that’s windows update, click that button” vs “no that’s a phishing attack, never click that button”

Now the rest of us who know what we’re doing have to fix everyone’s PCs in the family. Keep pushing everyone to iPads and Linux Microsoft…

If I knew who you were and what company you worked for, I’D report that to HR. If that ever happened at my office I’d fire the guy without even consulting HR. I’d confiscate his stuff and walk him out the door, HR can clean up the mess.

If there was one hint of retaliation by another employee, I’d fire them on the spot. If there is any hr or manager retaliation to you, you call a lawyer. You’ll be paid extremely well.

The situation you described is so black and white in your favor - your management and hr department should be quaking in their boots that you don’t sue.

I worked at a college bar for beer money. Her friends came in all the time, she did not. Then one night she did, and I was literally struck dumb - just like the stories. There was a few months of seeing her here and there, a few conversations - I had never met a woman so amazing. I was a bug, and she a goddess in every way. Imagine my shock when she handed me a napkin with her phone number on it and said “call me sometime.”

You bet your ass I called her the very next day. That was 28 years ago. The crazy part is things got steadily better over the years. Nothing got “boring” it got more exciting. Looks fade, but she’s more beautiful to me today than ever. Kids didn’t drag us down, they made things more fun. Bills and chores and life’s troubles became something we worked through together - teaching us that we can overcome just about anything and be successful. I’d argue all of our success is because we’re a team.

We truly hit the love lottery when both of us were “done” and didn’t believe something like what we have is possible. Put away your baggage, and keep an open mind - your napkin could be handed to you today.

I agree. I’m the guy who picks, buys, assembles, and installs the OS and programs for like everyone around me. I enjoy doing it, they enjoy getting awesome PCs for good prices.

My next build for them will absolutely not be Microsoft. The average person can get away with an iPad running iOS for their computing needs. So it’ll be a user friendly Linux distro going forward.

Glassdoor and all other businesses that operate on the “holding companies hostage” model are trash, always have been, and people who use them should know better / expect this type of behavior. They are imo even lower than the Facebooks and twitters of the world.

Not surprising.

Pretty sure there were cars around 15 years ago with remote start, heated seats, and fancy ways to lock and unlock. No there weren’t phone apps, but nobody wanted that - key fobs worked just fine.

My 2021 jeep’s key fob has an unbelievable range and works fine. My wife’s ford does have a phone app, but it’s completely free.

This is nothing more than a money grab.

Interesting - I haven’t had this issue with the gui. Thanks for the heads up!

Same

Feels just like Apollo did.

I literally did this on a new pc two weekends ago. Downloaded win11 iso, installed, typed in the key off my win 7 cd rom retail packaging that’s god knows how old, done.

I’ve long since moved to linux and just dual boot win11 for games that don’t run well in linux. I won’t buy a key at this point just for that.

My daughter has a learning disability. Dyslexia and some weird kind of error with certain fine motor skills. The diagnosis from everyone? ADHD-put her on drugs. What drugs would you like? If one drugs doesn’t fix her, we’ll try two drugs.

Thank god my wife and I resisted. Nobody could explain what was going on and how drugs would fix it. I ain’t gonna lie, her elementary school days were rough. But now, straight A college student in her junior year.

I’m sure there are people looking for it, but my experience was default diagnosis by doctors and schools pushing adhd onto kids where it wasn’t appropriate.

You know I’m right, but it’s cool af seeing your fish and corals.

Dooooo eeet

Do it, you know you want to. >:)

Just a tank and some lights, add some flow and boom! You’re there. Just get some salt and testing kits to keep things in balance. Those Hanna checkers are nice if you want to splurge - but that’s it, you’re done! I mean…. You have to get the fish and corals too - but you can make friends and get frags for free! Then you’re really done. Everything beyond that is automation, you don’t have to do any of it (although you can really dial in your nutrient balance if you use protein skimmer, algae scrubber, refugium, media reactors). But you don’t want to do that because then you’ll need a sump (but aren’t sumps handy? Who doesn’t want a sump?). Just make sure your stand accommodates everything-you don’t want to rebuild a stand. Leave room for controllers and uv meters and all that other stuff just in case you add it in the future - which you’re not going to becasue it’s expensive and overkill…

Surprised there’s no reef tank people here. Imagine spending $5000 on a 20 gallon fish tank - BEFORE spending any money on corals.

Ya it CAN be done for $50, but nobody does that.

I went back to the office on my own. A long time ago. It should be noted that I like my bosses, peers, and my job in general (I mean it’s called work, not fun - but it isn’t miserable)

1. ability to build better relationships with everyone - it’s too easy to sling shit over email. Whole different experience actually talking to somebody - especially when one of you needs something difficult.
2. separation between work and home - I don’t like home feeling like the workplace.
3. remote work people are heading towards a future of being Bangalore’d. If your job is currently being split up into the part that needs to be local and a remote part - you’re only a few years away from watching someone overseas do it for 1/10th the cost. Be needed in person people!

I thought I’d love remote work, but I hated it.

Ok I’ll play, I got a good one with a dose of revenge for fun.

Me, my young daughter(4) at the time, and my pregnant wife were standing in a very long line line to buy movie tickets to the latest Disney flick (I think it was Nemo). There was only one teenage girl working, there were clearly some staffing issues going on, she was mega flustered, and the wait was truly long and unbearable. But whatever-stuff happens, not the poor girls fault. So we wait as patiently as we can.

We are next in line. There’s like 50 people behind us. Some cow of a Karen just strolls up and cuts the entire line right in front of us. She looks back over her shoulder, smiling, and says that she cannot wait in this long line because she needs good seats. I’m kind of a jerk, and I would have enjoyed giving her a piece of my mind, but… small daughter, pregnant wife, etc. I behaved. People behind start flipping out.

I’m thinking this entitled bitch needs a slap, and just as she turns around with her successfully purchased tickets from cutting an entire line, she whirls around flinging her excessively large designer bag over her shoulder. The strap breaks, and stuff goes EVERYWHERE. Tampons rolling around, lipstick cases under arcade machines, stuff all under people’s feet under the ropes, etc. Truly glorious.

So now she’s horrified and has to pick everything up, and here’s the best part - nobody lifted a finger. All these people in line just ignored her, and her pathetic “excuse me”, “could you”, etc. she went from entitled Karen, queen of importance, to a cockroach scuttling around on a dirty movie theater floor, and everyone just silently looked down upon her.

Petty? yes. I’m sure she’s still a mega bitch still. But karma was served that day.