Ubuntu 9.04, because of WUBI (anyone remember that?). Unstable as hell, but allowed you to run a near bare metal Linux install without the hassle of setting up dual-booting and a separate partition. Liked Ubuntu it so much that I soon replaced Windows completely. Currently running Debian, so I haven’t strayed far from the family.

For the record, the problem in Norway was that government programs to encourage electric vehicle ownership were too successful and incentivized people to drive instead of use transit. Also, the financial incentives for purchasing electric cars mostly went to people who were already wealthy.

I have this one. It’s hurricane force when turned up all the way. never had a problem pushing anything with it.

I also recently bought an electric hedge trimmer, which I love. Should have bought one years ago, it saves so much time compared to hand clippers.

46 at present. Furry porn sites that weren’t tagged NSFW, memes, shitposting, a number of communities from the h… server (you know the one), tankie communities.

I’m subscribed to a lot of communities, too, but I still use the all feed for discovery.

It’s not that bad, the macros are just front end apps. Our data is housed in a real, enterprise class database.

We do have developers on our team. They write Excel macros :). I work in data integration, so it isn’t as simple as building a more robust tool. We still need infrastructure support or our tool doesn’t do anything.

Another confirmation here. At my previous job, I was they guy who built Access databases and wrote VBA code. While not ideal, it was a very small business (less than 10 employees) and it was fit for purpose.

When I got a new job at a company with almost 3,000 employees, I was like, “Finally, I’ll be working somewhere that has proper IT resources.” Ha! I soon find out that my department runs critical business infrastructure with Excel macros. And we have a proper IT department.

As everyone has already said, if IT resources are in short supply (or the wait is too long, or building projects with IT support is a PITA), then people will build systems with the tools they have at hand. And that’s often MS Office.

I would say Mastodon already has. I’ve been spending a lot of time there over last few weeks and there’s more content than I can consume. Breaking news stories are covered well, including live blogging, although a lot of that content is cross-posed from Xitter. Plenty of people to follow, including authors, photographers, journalists and scientists. An increasing number of media outlets have a presence there, as well.

Xitter still has an order of magnitude more users, but Mastodon is mostly Nazi-free (which is nice).

I have Mount Char on my to read list, but Time War was a dnf for me. Just could not get into it.

I just finished the book and thought it was better than the movie (although very different). I liked the cinematography and atmosphere of the movie, but it just moved too slowly for me.

Doing my bit to support the open web. Plus, while it’s probably just familiarity, I’ve always felt that Firefox works with me while Chrome works against me.

It will always be Xitter to me, with the X pronounced like an “sh”.

The full letter is available here (PDF File). It’s worth a read; Ms. Willis isn’t taking any shit from Gym.

Most of my “reading” is via audiobooks so I’m a fan. I’m busy and don’t have a lot of time to sit and read, but I spend hours every day on activities that don’t require my full focus. Audiobooks are a great way to make the time go by faster.

Listening to an audiobook feels different than reading, but a good narrator can create an engaging and immersive experience.

See, this is the beauty of running Debian stable as your daily driver. I’ll be on Gnome 43 for two more years, so by the time I upgrade to Gnome 45+ extensions should be compatible. Only half-joking, I really do avoid a lot of early adopter regressions and breakage.

I knew someone was going to ask that and I’m going to give you the lame answer that I don’t remember for sure. It’s been a while since I used my Chromebook, but it was a fairly mainstream application that wasn’t compiled for ARM. I ended up using the Flatpak version, which worked fine but was a resource hog on an ARM Chromebook with only 4GB of RAM.

The S330 has an ARM processor, so definitely avoid that one (and any other Chromebook with an ARM processor). To be honest, I would buy a cheap Windows laptop and install Linux on that rather than fiddling with trying to get it to run on a Chromebook.

Or, as others have said, leave ChromeOS on the machine and run Linux in Crostini. If you have a reasonably speced machine it runs pretty well. Although again, I would avoid ARM as some Debian applications aren’t available for ARM Chromebooks.

Sometimes I play rain/storm sounds I’ve downloaded from YouTube. Other times I use the iPhone white noise generator. I’ve set up 2 Siri shortcuts (one for sound on and one for sound off), but tapping the back sounds like a good way to do it, too.

That’s too bad. I have 189,000 miles on mine (304,000 km) and it’s never let me down. I haven’t had to do anything but regular maintenance on it. I wanted to replace it with something a bit newer and nicer, but had to replace the car my wife and daughter share, instead. Fortuately, I don’t drive very much so it will probably hold out for a few more years.

I commuted 2 1/2 hours a day, mostly highway driving. In a Yaris, with a passenger. For 8 years. I was driving, not stretching out to take a nap.

TBH, I would have preferred a car that was quieter and had a bit more comfortable ride. But a Corolla, Civic, Mazda 3 or Elantra would have been just fine.