I remember way back in the late 90s or early 2000s, when Opera was commercial, I bought a lifetime license. I don’t remember the specifics but it was basically a way to support them and it was good for all future versions, forever and ever.

I lost the key long ago and the browser is free now anyway. Still wouldn’t use it.

I’m rocking an ancient i7 Elitebook from 2011 or so that I maxed out to 32 GB of RAM. I bought it from a business surplus place on eBay for like $100 7-8 years ago. The screen resolution sucks and it has no biometric features but I slapped an SSD in there, removed the battery, and now it’s my Linux staging desktop.

This is yet another reason why I would not buy or recommend HP printers anymore. My ancient laserjet from 10 years ago is still going strong, but if it ever kicks the bucket, I’m getting a Brother. They seem to just work without any hassle.

I know people are passionate about their love / hated of Brave, but it along with LibreWolf (and Firefox) all offer strong fingerprinting protection out of the box. With Firefox, just make sure you add uBlock Origin.

Browser fingerprinting is nasty and easy. There are ways to push back but it’s still awful.

In related news, AT&T has decided to rebrand their 5G network as 25G.

(they’ve done this before)

That sucks, but it’s not surprising. 4K Bluray looks great but it’s not as mind-blowing as the jump from VHS to DVD was, or DVD to Bluray. It’s technically superior to all streaming services (if anyone knows of a legal, legit, high-bandwidth streaming service, let me know) but for 99.99% of the consumer market, streaming is good enough.

Best Buy did some mind-blowing sales late last year or early this year. You could pick up a bunch of 4K Blurays for $5 - $10. Lots of good stuff, too.

…wait what

Haha whoops, my bad. I always get that confused with Eraserhead.

The Stuff

Saturday the 14th

Terrorvision

Sssssss (note: not Ssssss, fuck that cheap knockoff)

Lawnmower Man (read the book first, then watch the movie, then go WTF did I just watch)

Nothing but Trouble (although this is more of a comedy. It is very clearly poking fun at Centralia and Pennsylvania)

Look Who’s Talking Now

I had a really old Twitter account going back to 2009, maybe 2008. I don’t even remember. Back then it was great for connecting with friends, making plans, meeting new people, etc. I hadn’t done anything meaningful with it in years so I logged in to see if it was really as bad as everyone was claiming.

Narrator: It was.

Within a month I was simultaneously a fascist, an anarchist, a bootlicker, a socialist, and a troll. I think I had posted a picture of a cup of coffee and maybe my cat.

Deleted, moved on with life.

Good luck! The best advice I can give for IT these days is to not be afraid of learning and certifications. Far too many people get complacent in their skillset. I started at an ISP help desk back in 2006 and today I’m senior management. 99.9% of the people I passed on the way here had a mentality like “well I used to install stage 1 Gentoo back in 2003 so therefore I am a master Linux admin” and just refused to take on new projects / new areas.

You’ve got this!

I concur. A tie in an interview is almost always overkill, especially for help desk work. OP is perfectly dressed for what I’d expect for front-line IT. Hopefully their help desk has a more relaxed dress code, but it’s always good to go in looking professional.

Kagis?

Honestly OneDrive is actually very good as far as cloud storage platforms go. It just works. I paid for a subscription for a few years.

But starting around the 1000th time Microsoft tried to install even more bloatware I started looking for alternatives. For the low low price of “spend a few minutes learning about Tailscale” and buying a few extra hard drives, I’ve got 24TB of storage. My most important stuff gets encrypted locally and backed up to B2. I use Immich to manage my photos, so now I dropped my Google Drive subscription as well. Still on the fence about Nextcloud’s office suites but LibreOffice works great.

The only reason I still use Win11 is because gaming on Linux still has some issues with the games I play.

Microsoft: “Windows 12 is free but all our great built-in apps like Candy Crush, Linkedin, and MegaStomp are unavailable without a subscription.”

Me: “Yup.”

Microsoft: “But if you don’t subscribe, you’ll miss out on hot celebrity gossip and the latest fashion news! And you won’t be able to use Bing AI to find great deals on amazing products from our trusted corporate partners!”

Me: “Sounds good, thanks.”