Yeah. I am not going to buy different hardware to run an OS I don't want. They'll walk the bad stuff back with Windows 12. Or they won't and whatever.

Scene: A cubicle office in a large technical building in some city, we'll call it Dilberton.

Engineer 1: Hey Eddie, whatcha doing?

Engineer 2: (rapidly types code into a PC) just putting the finishing touches on the latest update.

E1: All across the whole product line?

E2: Yep. Soon as this hits, we'll be able to take full advantage of the new Nvalid chipset

E1: You mean the GeezorGak 'Gnarly Gnome'?

E2: The one and only (presses enter button) Done and done.

E1: But that's not out of Beta yet, They don't even have advance orders.

E2: And when it does hit the market we'll be ready.

E1: That's a whole new architecture. What about all the current customers with existing hardware? Everything will stop working.

E2: They'll have to upgrade.

E1: You didn't include any legacy options?

E2: Legacy, what's that?

E1 You used to work for Microsoft, didn't you

E2 (blushes slightly) Guilty

E1 So you expect all our customers to just go out and buy all new hardware to support your update?

E2: It's a consumer culture. the people love buying all new hardware.

E1: You used to work for Apple as well, didn't you

E2: How did you know? Have you been reading my resume?

E1: Just a lucky guess.

Oh, let me add one more.

While trying to upgrade the server, I received the following message on two different locations:

"We can't tell if your PC is ready to continue installing Windows Server."

I didn't make that up. Somewhere, a programmer thought that would be helpful information.

The first time I got that error was because I didn't have enough drive space. The error could have said, "you don't have enough drive space." Instead, it said... that.

The second time I got it was because there was no direct upgrade path between the old version of Windows Server I'm running and a modern version. Could have said that, too.

While trying to upgrade an old Windows server, the upgrade failed because "you have WinZip 6.3-80 installed."

I checked Add/Remove Programs and the Registry. I 100% do not have WinZip installed.

After an hour of troubleshooting and searching I discovered that on an attached drive that stores old backups, I had a copy of WinZip32.exe. Not installed, not being used... just sitting there about five folders deep in a directory path that begins with r:\home\backup\BBS\...

Just wanted to throw that out there. That Windows server won't upgrade if you have a copy of WinZip32.exe sitting in attached NAS storage in a random backup folder.

Oh, and Microsoft doesn't tell you the name of the file or the location. I got the name of the file from a hidden log file left behind by the installation and then had to go find the file for myself.

A+, Microsoft. A+.

Those games that advertise on YouTube are offering their program in a version for the PC. Not a browser game, but an actual download. So I download their installer and it proceeds to do its business.

The game starts with a pop-up box which reads "Please confirm you have read and agree with our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy before you start the game" and an Agree button at the bottom. The words I have marked in blue are white on a dark background. The items I show in underlined orange are links to open a browser window displaying their Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions, of course, and that's the exact way it does it

The link to "Terms and Conditions" opens the page to their Privacy Policy, and the link to "Privacy Policy" opens the page to their Terms and conditions.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Sat May 17, 2025 11:39 am I enjoy Flack's line, "I used to be good at computers." I get it.

You guys are seriously starting to make me worry about being over 50 in a few years.

I enjoy Flack's line, "I used to be good at computers." I get it.

I needed more storage space so I bought an 8TB drive off Amazon. They said it would be delivered "overnight." They've never done that. There's always some problem. Three days later I just asked for a refund.

I bought another one from of those resellers on A
Amazon. This one literally beeped on boot. Refunding this one too.

At first I thought it was me until I heard the plates get stuck and the beeps. I think we are still good with computers. It's everyone else that got lazy and corrupt.

What make of laptop is it so I'll know to avoid getting one?

Closing lid = enabling display....whaaa?

I started editing a new video on Wednesday with Vegas and it crashed. This isn't uncommon as Vegas is the biggest piece of shit software ever made. It makes Windows look like a porn star covered in baby oil. It's so terrible and they only offer a couple of upgrades for each version before you have to pay to get the next version, and they always promise that the next one will fix the bugs from the previous version... and sometimes it does, but it always adds new ones. Always.

After Vegas crashed I closed and reopened it and it crashed again. Then I rebooted, tried it again, and it crashed again. And again. And again. It got to the point where I could edit for 60-90 minutes before it would crash Explorer and blow everything up. Imagine working with a word processor where you have to hit Alt-F, S to safe after every sentence. These videos take me 6-8 hours to edit so crashing every 60-90seconds is a real PITA.

I turned to Google and all you can really find is a thousand other people complaining about how terrible this program is. And your options are paying for an Adobe subscription or switching to DaVinci Resole, which is a whole other thing. Resole is open source and doesn'pt do what other editors do and that's people's go to response anytime anyone complains about any video editing software. It's like the old Linux zealots. "Man, my computer is--" "Install Linux." "Yeah but the problem is--" "Doesn't matter, install Linux." "But it won't ru--" "Install Linux." It's like that.

Next I spent several hours tracking down drivers for everything single thing attached to my laptop and either updating or reinstalling them. NVIDIA drivers, updated. Thunderbolt dock, updated. DisplayLink, updated. Laptop BIOS and firmware, updated. Of course in the back of my mind I'm wondering if some recent Microsoft update didn't fubar the whole system and that I might be fighting an uphill if not unwinnable battle here. After every update I have to reboot and try it again. Crash. Crash crash crash.

I then went down the YouTube rabbit hole and found a thousand suggestions. Ruling out throwing money at the problem like replacing my SSD or adding RAM, people offer at least 500 options you can tweak which of course none of them do anything. It's just like the people who really think chkdisk fixes anything. So I fiddled with the memory settings and the cache settings and this and that and none of it fixed anything.

I'll FF to the end because nobody really gives a fuck about any of this. During one of the reboots I went over to watch my laptop's screen (which is like 6' away from my workstation proper) and noticed that the laptop screen was closed. Usually it's open, but I guess over time gravity won. It doesn't really matter because I use external monitors for everything. I checked Windows display settings and all of my monitors and refresh rates are the same except for the one built into my laptop. Now, normally the laptop is open and the monitor is disabled. But for some reason when you close the lid, it becomes enabled. I did not type that wrong. When the laptop is open the screen is disabled and when it's physically closed, it's enabled.

I opened the laptop lid, the screen disabled itself, and the crashes stopped. Apparently having a monitor with a different resolution and/or refresh rate caused Vegas to lose its mind. It also caused me to lose MY mind.

I used to be good at computers.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Thu May 15, 2025 4:22 pm I woke to see that MS thinks I have bad memory.

How do you remember?

Microsoft engineers hate all of us and they think their bytes don't stink!

I started having crashes, so I had Windows 10 run a memory scan the next time it restarts. Si ce MS doesn't let me fucking choose that, my machine restarted last night.

I woke to see that MS thinks I have bad memory.

I replaced two sticks and I am running the scan. I have 48 GB of RAM.

Mocrosoft's idea for this is to run it before the OS comes up. Okay. And also nothing on the screen indicating how long it will take.

I dunno man. I think they could figure out how to display an elapsed time and approximate time remaining.

Was Mrs. Rice once married to Uncle Ben?

Da King wrote: Tue Apr 15, 2025 8:17 pm I thought I was anal by actually looking at my statements every month. I know a TON of people who dont. I think I annoy my wife when I ask "What you did buy at <insertstorehere>?".

I cant imagine looking at them all every day. Well played.

When I first became seriously disabled, i.e. unable to walk, I started auditing my sister's credit cards, making sure she wasn't being incorrectly charged for anything. I mean, I don't care, she can buy anything she wants, it's her money, I'm just making sure she - or me or my brother, when she has asked us to buy something - is the one spending it. That's all, just making sure she has no fraudulent charges.

She said the fact I'm querying her about the stuff she buys made her hesitant to spend money!

I had a history of doing this. Back in California circa 1983-87, I worked as a bookkeeper, programmer, and data entry clerk for Mrs. Rice, who was a real estate broker, tax preparer, and enrolled agent for the IRS. (An enrolled agent is a non-lawyer authorized to represent people in appearances before the IRS or in tax court.) That was one of many jobs I did, reconciling all her bank statements and credit cards, including auditing bills of management companies who handled properties of hers in other states. (I have a story about spending $20 of her money to find 1c; I'll tell that elsewhere.)

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Wed May 07, 2025 8:18 am Years ago, Google Drive changed how it worked for spreadsheets. If you copy a value from a website, like your credit card, and pasted it, it made "Paste with Formatting" default. Of course that was stupid. It should never have been default. It could be a user setting! If they had implemented that for Google Drive. But none of these people use their own shit, so that was never done.

I realized just how fucking frustrating it is for me, someone balancing his bills every day. This is a daily frustration. You gotta manage your own happiness in 2025.

Is there a program that anyone can recommend that is an offline spreadsheet? I'm the jerk who isn't going to pay for it. I just want to be able to have a bunch of tabs of a template with rudimentary math for every pay period and ***not have it paste with formatting by default.***

This seems like a good thing to ask chatGPT about.

This is a bit right? I can mail you my pirated Office 95 disk if you need one. Would like to know why "fill" is the default and not "copy" even there though.

Years ago, Google Drive changed how it worked for spreadsheets. If you copy a value from a website, like your credit card, and pasted it, it made "Paste with Formatting" default. Of course that was stupid. It should never have been default. It could be a user setting! If they had implemented that for Google Drive. But none of these people use their own shit, so that was never done.

I realized just how fucking frustrating it is for me, someone balancing his bills every day. This is a daily frustration. You gotta manage your own happiness in 2025.

Is there a program that anyone can recommend that is an offline spreadsheet? I'm the jerk who isn't going to pay for it. I just want to be able to have a bunch of tabs of a template with rudimentary math for every pay period and ***not have it paste with formatting by default.***

This seems like a good thing to ask chatGPT about.

Roody_Yogurt wrote: Wed Apr 16, 2025 10:46 pm This reminds me of how I sometimes choose Amazon's slowest shipping method when they offer to throw some digital credits which I eventually use for buying or renting videos. The frustrating thing is that they don't charge my card until the item is shipped and it occasionally messes up how much I think I have at my disposal later in the week. It's like, I don't care when you actually ship it, but just charge me right away so it doesn't fuck me up later. (because, yes, I'm using a debit card)

ICJ - I think he does this because he wants us to order more and wants to eat the processing less: just leave your payment card locked until Amazon complains, open your card, log in and update payment method for the order.

I also make sure to never choose the just one delivery garbage, if I didn't have a box of pens I'd love to make him send a whole truck to me for this:
Items:$0.89
Shipping & handling:$0.00
Estimated tax to be collected:$0.09
Order total:$0.98

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Wed Apr 16, 2025 10:19 pm Yes, but!!

I sort of like it coming out of the bank account at regular intervals. It lets me know "how I am doing" for the two week period before I get paid again. As I have and use a Mastercard, Visa, American Express and Discover card, I would not want to hold the aggregate total in my head when I can just pay them off each day or days. Sometimes they don't let you pay it off every day, I have found.

Good on you. Thats a ton of discipline right there.

This reminds me of how I sometimes choose Amazon's slowest shipping method when they offer to throw some digital credits which I eventually use for buying or renting videos. The frustrating thing is that they don't charge my card until the item is shipped and it occasionally messes up how much I think I have at my disposal later in the week. It's like, I don't care when you actually ship it, but just charge me right away so it doesn't fuck me up later. (because, yes, I'm using a debit card)

Yes, but!!

I sort of like it coming out of the bank account at regular intervals. It lets me know "how I am doing" for the two week period before I get paid again. As I have and use a Mastercard, Visa, American Express and Discover card, I would not want to hold the aggregate total in my head when I can just pay them off each day or days. Sometimes they don't let you pay it off every day, I have found.