Kinda like dealing with Microsoft Office… You can’t find anything in that “new” toolbar design because so many options are grouped together in ways that don’t make any sense. I’m so glad I never had to actually use that garbage even though I did enjoy the older versions.

It’s been a long time since I used Windows myself, however one of the big reasons for switching was the inherent instability. At once point I was developing code in Visual Studio and constantly loading/closing quite a few different programs to test things out. Windows just didn’t seem to handle memory-recovery and I would have to reboot every week or two (usually because of the whole OS locking up). In comparison, I run a variety of software on my linux machines which can involve anything from testing code in multiple browsers to image editing to 3D CAD drawings. Sure that tends to drain the memory but when I close something I get that memory back. I’ll frequently get down to the last 100K of RAM, close a couple programs that may be holding large caches (Firefox really hates me having hundreds of open tabs), and then I’m right back up and running again. Reboots may occur about every 6 months.

I have to support other people using Windows at work, which reminds me how much I’ll never go back to it. My biggest frustration is that Microsoft is constantly changing things. Hell you can’t even directly reach the control panel any more, you have to run searches to find the specific item you want. Want to check the settings of a certain printer? Good luck, that doesn’t seem to be available in the right-click menu any more. It’s just all these idiotic changes making it difficult to actually use or maintain Windows. Why should I have to google how to find something when everything used to be under the control panel or a right-click away?

Guess that makes me king of my own domain! 😆

Oh I came clean. We were actually trying to figure out HOW it happened so we could try and prevent the same issue in the future.

How many times can the same person post the same damn question in a ten-minute period? Seriously, you had to post that other question four times with very slight changes in wording? Just ask your shit ONCE and be done with it.

Worst thing in the office place was when some idiot left their window open in the middle of Winter, temps fell below 0F with high winds, and froze the 2" sprinkler pipes running over their office. Flooded most of the 2nd floor then started running through and raining out onto the 1st floor (and then into the basement). And it happened during covid lock-downs so it was fortunate anyone was even in the building to report it.

My own personal oopsie was checking network cabling in a small room, bent over to check things low and then wandered out to check elsewhere… Then noticed there was a LOT of commotion on the sales floor. Turns out I hit the power switch on one of the phone cabinets with my ass and shut down half the phone lines.

The ZX81 wasn’t too terrible, and I was also using Apple ][ systems at school at the same time. I think the worst part was the small size, but at least it still had a slight amount of feedback, and you could actually navigate it at a decent speed. Personally I would rate the idea of typing on a phone screen as the absolute worst thing I’ve ever tried to use.

It’s also lighter weight and thus cheaper to ship… But they promised that you totally couldn’t tell the difference in taste to food products! (Everybody could tell the difference)

And to think of how mad everyone got when everything was packaged in those ‘heavy’ glass bottles and jars, and manufacturers started putting everything into plastic because the glass was creating too much litter on the roads. Now here we are 30 years later and everyone is being killed by plastic.

Y2K would like to have a word…

There are no limits to anything you’ve mentioned, it seems more like you’re just ready to give up on life?

Career changes can come at any time, the older you get, the more knowledge you have, and the easier it is to do something else unless you wasted your whole life playing video games. Look at the things you’ve learned through hobbies, surely something would apply to a job?

Why do you think a healthy love life would ever end? I’ve known many people who are great-grandparents, lost their partner, and met up with others who are in the same position. Now they have two huge families instead of one. If you can’t get past thinking about sex, they make lubricants specifically for older people.

What do you mean by an active friend circle? Everyone changes their activities as the have a family and grow older. You adjust what you do as the body can’t keep up. That doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, it just means you find new things that you enjoy. Hell some lady set a record for parachuting at the age of 104 last year, and the guy she took the record from got back out a couple weeks ago and set a new record (he’s now 106). If you think you’re ready to roll over and die in your 50’s then you’re not even trying.

Quite frankly I’m in my mid-50’s. In the past year I actually decided to look at where I’m at for retirement because I intend to enjoy the hell out of it. Doing a little shuffling of my finances to try to boost some of my funds over the next 10-15 years, but otherwise I feel like I’m in good shape to kick back, do some traveling, and work on a bunch of projects. Retirement just means you get to start playing without work getting in the way. Even before then, I’m planning on building a trailer this Summer and cleaning up the motorcycle so I can get out and start riding again soon. There’s no such thing as life being “over” before you actually die.

Interesting, I wonder where I got that from? Ah well, thanks for the update.

Didn’t he reject the Secret Service detail after losing the last election? Or were you referring to if he gets elected again?

One of the articles I read yesterday stated that in the state of New York, this type of conviction has about a 1 in 10 chance of including a prison sentence (up to four years). The judge determines the sentence, and may also weigh in with whether a monetary sentence would be meaningful to the defendant, but also things like remorse (which Trump has shown none) and the number of convictions (which are a lot).

Even if we get lucky enough to see Trump sent to jail, he can still get out on bond while appealing the case, so it could be a year or more before Trump would ever have to spend a night behind bars.

Heh sorry about that. There’s also a zfs conversation going on where I had suggested disabling the ‘dedup’ option. I’ve never heard of dedupe being used in the context of the shell history, so yeah, I got confused.

I only include it because pretty much every guide on zfs setups recommends disabling it these days. I don’t believe it’s anything I’ve every had to use despite several drive crashes over the years.

I think this is the only change I’ve made that affects my history… It simply ignores multiple copies of a command when you repeat it multiple times, making it easier to up-arrow through the unique things I’ve executed.

export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups

Also in this model, the sun and moon cannot be seen in the sky at the same time, except during an eclipse. And the stars never change through the seasons, they are fixed points that look the same no matter where you are at on Earth.

Sectors that cannot be read reliably will get marked out, but I’ve seen plenty of HDDs that tested fine but still had obvious issues when reading data from certain areas. If your OS happens to be within that area then it becomes a problem very quickly, and you’ll probably lose data before the drive marks those sectors as bad.

Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet… Yes a failing drive will significantly slow down a computer. Drives are built to be fault-tolerant, so if it reads a block of data and that doesn’t match the block’s checksum, the drive will attempt to re-read the same data until it gets what it believes is correct data, or until it gives up and sends a failure to the computer.

So now imagine your drive is in a state where nearly every block is having trouble being read, so it re-reads each block several times, adding a significant amount of time to every operation. A scan of the drive may indicate everything is working correctly if the drive does eventually return valid information, but the drive itself is having to work very hard to get this data.

One thing you might try to check for internal errors is running a read/write test of the drive, and recording the speed these operations were performed at. If that number is close to the parameters of the drive (you can check with the manufacturer or online reviews to find real-world drive speeds) then the drive is probably ok. However if the test is running a lot slower than the expected speeds, it’s a good bet that your drive is failing and you will want to back up the data as soon as possible.