MystikIncarnate

I appreciate that. I don't think my users would tolerate Linux. Maybe MacOS, but I would quit if that happened.

Windows has some very terrible traits, but it's something I've worked with and on for the last ~20 years. I see all the warts. I have no delusions about it, but it's something I know extremely well as a result.

I work with Windows as a requirement of my job, I'm in IT and I'm constantly in and out of the bowels of the operating system. I have a lot of thoughts on this stuff.

My first thought is, stop moving everything around. Even in Windows 10, if you're using an older version, say 1804, and you switch to a newer version, say 22H2, stuff is moved all over the place. It makes it super hard to direct someone blindly to the control they need to click to get something done. You're making my job much harder than it needs to be. Stop it. There's no reason to move this crap around.

To bring out my grumpy old man routine: back in my day, if you wanted to do anything, you went to the control panel. Everything you needed was there. Now it's in settings, no wait, clicking on this settings option for that thing now launches an appx thing that, surprisingly (/s) is broken.

Too many damn times have I tried to open their damned settings app or the new defender security appx dialog simply crashes. The solution is almost always dkim online repair. Well, if it needs repair so damn much, how about you just repair it for me as part of system maintenance? The fuck.

Windows 11 is a special form of suffering. Right clicking on a file and.... What the fuck is this? I basically click on "more settings" every time I right click. And the changes to the settings application.... Don't get me started.

Also, why in the fuck do we have copilot installed by default now? You're an operating system, stay in your goddamned lane.

The only good thing I can say about Windows 11 is that it has really good security. So good that I frequently have trouble doing routine things. Today, I was trying to run a PowerShell script and it told me some bullshit error, which is pretty common for PowerShell. After googling the error, the recommendation was to change the execution policy. I went to do that at an administrative PowerShell prompt and it told me that I didn't have access to change it. While running as the administrator. Yay. Shit is broken again. Fuck me I guess. I'm off to unfuck my less than five month old new work system because Microsoft can't get their shit straight.

Customization options do not and cannot help me. 90% of the time I'm working on someone else's computer, so I have to fucking deal with the default behavior because I'm not going to change it for 500+ users whom I support. I'm pretty sure I'd get more than a few complaints. So I have to fucking deal with whatever hairbrained decision Microsoft made about what should be default.

Windows 10 had its own share of bullshit. One of my most common annoyances was the way the OS decided to install fucking candy crush, every fucking time a new user logged into the goddamned computer. It's like playing whack-a-mole, but not fun and filled with uninstalls. I hope Microsoft made some good money on that brand deal, because I sure paid for it with my frustration.

After all of this, I keep finding myself in the fucking registry, and thank God that's one thing that hasn't been fucked over by their new UI team. I keep having to fix dumb issues by injecting registry keys so I can not deal with the stupid UI all the goddamned time. It's hacky, and I'm happier for it.

I could keep going. Pretty much every decision they've made in the past 5 years has been some measure of bad. The only thing I've agreed with them doing is finally ending internet explorer. Begrudgingly, edge is better, but not by a lot, IMO.

The last thing I'll say is that the tpm bullshit is going to give me an aneurysm. Having a TPM at Windows install usually prompts the system to activate bitlocker. Bitlocker itself isn't bad, but it's fucking terrible when windows does this shit and doesn't really inform the user about it. Nobody knows that they need to back up their goddamned bitlocker recovery keys, so inevitably, when something goes wrong (we're talking about Windows here, something will go wrong) and the system stops booting, you need the fucking bitlocker recovery key to do anything. Your option, if you can call it that, if you can't get the recovery key, is to format all of your shit, and reinstall from scratch. I know several people who have lost a lot of work and irreplaceable files, like pictures, because bitlocker fucked them over and they had no idea it was even running.

Sorry about your loss, but all those family photos you saved that don't exist anywhere else are locked behind basically uncrackable encryption, get fucked, I guess.

I'm going to cut this rant off. Needless to say I'm pretty tired of Microsoft's bullshit. Make an operating system. That's what people want. That's it. We shouldn't need "debloat" scripts to fix your nonsense. Gah.

During my interview for my current role, I engaged in conversation with the company owner. Being in an interview, I was fairly non-confrontational about the whole thing.

I let him talk and what he said kind of bothered me. His prediction was that in the future (he didn't give a timeline), people would not own things any longer, they would rent/lease them at most. And he meant everything. From the car you drive to the house you live in... Everything would be delivered as a service.

It bothered me because I'm pretty sure I already know people who live that way. They don't own their home, they rent. They lease their car, use ISP provided routers, finance or otherwise obtain their phone through their mobile provider, use streaming services almost exclusively (no purchased video/audio content)... I could go on.

His statements were not what bothered me, the fact that he's probably right, is what bothered me.

On the flip side, I financed my car and it's since been paid off, I still buy music and movies and whatnot, I house my data on servers that I own, for easy access (I "stream" it from my own stuff, to my own stuff), I've long used BYOD plans for my mobile phone, buying my device directly from the manufacturer, I recently bought a house and I'm paying off that mortgage.

I own just about everything I have/use. I am the outlier. The services I subscribe to are things you cannot buy, stuff like telephone and mobile data, internet access, etc.

So apparently I'm weird; and when the people like me, from my generation and I die, there's going to be fewer and fewer people that want to own things, generation over generation.

Look, it's not a bad thing, since operational expenses are usually easier to handle and calculate than capital expenses. Owning things comes with costs that renters don't have to deal with. If my furnace dies tomorrow, I can't just call up a landlord and make it their problem. I have to fix it, pay for someone else to fix it, or replace it, out of my own pocket. If my car breaks down, I don't just get handed another and continue on while they fix and resell the broken one. I need to get it to a shop and pay them to correct the problem. Ownership comes with responsibility and liability that renters generally don't deal with.

Ownership also has its upsides. If something isn't broken, I don't have to fix it, nor do I have to pay to get it fixed, in that way, as long as everything keeps working, once it's paid off, I don't have to spend any money for it to keep working. I don't have to pay to maintain access to my car, whether I use it or not. I still have to buy gas, and pay for oil changes and whatnot, but everyone has to do that. If my car sits in my driveway for months, the costs associated with keeping it are basically the cost of storing it on my own property. Which is negligible. Meanwhile renters/lessors still have to pay to keep the vehicle even if it's not doing anything. It can be quite economical, but it entirely relies on keeping things well past the date that you pay off the capital expense. My car is 12 years old now. Still runs great, probably needs a new battery though... some of the recent starts have been questionable. Still, that's maybe $100 for the new battery and an hour or so of my time, far less than even one month of paying for a lease on a vehicle.

I will get long term benefit from owning stuff. My servers were picked up for around $2000 about 10 years ago and I'm just upgrading them now. They're around as old as my car. Over 10+ years, that works out to $200/yr, or $16/month. Most of you more than that on streaming services alone. Granted that my upgrade will be much more than $2k, probably double, but still, even $30/mo is something most probably spend on streaming. I've also had many hours of education and entertainment from doing things other than just streaming from my servers. I've gotten way more than $50/month of value from having them.

The bottom line is that people like me, who own their stuff, can extract far more value from it than what they pay. People who rent everything pay continually just to maintain access to what they want to keep using, regardless of whether they get that amount back in value from having the item. The catch is, I can't really shed cost if I need to. If I'm paying to finance a thing, like a car, I must keep paying for that until it's paid off. A lease can be terminated, and you stop paying for that thing. If you need it again in the future, you get a new lease for something that is similar or the same. Unless you get locked in, or need it regardless of other factors like income. You can't really stop paying rent and still have a place to live.

There's merit on both sides, I'm just not a fan of burning money on things I will always need, which I can buy instead of renting/leasing. Everyone is different.

Usually the propellant and other combustion materials will include an oxidizer, so an atmosphere really isn't required.

No, that's a sailboat.

My problem is when they kill services that are default installations on Android, then never remove them from the OS image.

I'm looking at you Allo.

So I can be more or less immune to stuff based on my genetics. Neat.

This is amazing to me. We're immune to so many things that are dangerous/toxic/deadly to other biological life on the planet. We've evolved to an amazing extent, and yet, pick the wrong variety of berry and you'll die writhing in agony.

They're all trying to kill you, it's just that some of them, still can.

I use IEMs they're not noise cancelling, but more noise isolating. When I have them in they act like earplugs, silencing the outside world.

The big thing, for me, with my IEMs is that they're wired, but there are solutions to that depending on how you want to proceed.

The IEMs themselves are pretty cheap, especially compared to airpods, so trying them to see if they isolate enough noise should be a very inexpensive proposition. So getting some decent IEMs and testing them using a wired connection for fit and isolation and sound quality should be the first task, if this becomes a serious consideration.

I don't presume to know what it is you're looking for in terms of design, style, sound profile, etc. Even if those things are simply preferences, and not hard requirements. I wouldn't want to recommend bright pink headphones because their specs are great and in line with what you're looking for, if you happen to hate the color pink (as a crude example).

What I can say is what I would think to recommend, which, off the top, I'd be considering the blon bl-05 IEMs paired with either a wired connection to a Bluetooth receiver, such as the Fiio BTR3 or similar, alternatively, the Fiio UTWS3 or similar for the "true wireless" type experience. The last piece that's absolutely essential for sound isolation is better eartips, I've been using these for a while and they're excellent: https://www.linsoul.com/products/tripowin-spiral-groove-memory-foam-eartips

The foam tips make it so I can't hear anything when I have my IEMs inserted.

The catch to all this is that putting them in or taking them out can be a little bit of a pain point, since the foam tips can be a bit finicky to get properly seated in your ear (at least for me).

But, like I said, I don't know enough about your preferences to really make a proper recommendation.

Of course, when you get into this level of earphones, you end up in a market where the sky is the limit on cost. I've seen some IEMs go for thousands of dollars. You can spend nearly as much on cables and add-ons. I'm not into that sort of thing. I've been on the hunt for cheap-but-good IEMs for years and have a small number of pairs that are very good and didn't break the bank.

The nice thing about this kind of approach is that it's very modular, so if you don't like the BT receiver, replace it. If the fit of the eartips isn't good, buy new eartips. If the sound of the IEM isn't what you prefer, you can get a new IEM, and use that instead. It's entirely up to you how you want to customize them and how you use them. Lots of options.

Personally I have a Fiio BTR5, a balanced headphone cable to my IEMs using the foam eartips. For IEMs I have a set of moondrop starfield, a set of blon bl-05's and a set of Tin T2, which I regularly switch between. All of them sound great, but they all sound slightly different, so sometimes I'm in the mood for one over the other. I clip the btr5 to my belt, connected to my phone by Bluetooth, and usually run the cable under my shirt so it doesn't catch on anything.

But that's what I like. You're different, so you'll buy different things if you choose to go this route. No pressure, obviously, I just want to make you aware of the options you have in this regard. If you do choose to go this route, I'll point you at linsoul (linsoul.com), which regularly runs sales on a lot of this, and otherwise has pretty good pricing. Some items may not be available there, like the Fiio bt receivers, but they're generally going to be available on Amazon, so you should be fine there too.

My entire focus here, is to make you aware of the option. Not to tell you what to pick. Using IEMs has been rewarding for me since there's nothing to throw away. Even if one set of IEMs died tomorrow, I would only have to toss the IEMs themselves. The eartips, cable, etc, would all be able to be reused with another set. With something like the airpods, you basically have to throw out the entire unit with the charging case and all accessories, since Apple usually doesn't bother making any of that compatible with their future versions of the same. It's wasteful. I don't like it.

Whatever you decide, I hope you have a good day, and the best of luck finding a good replacement when you decide to do so. Cheers.

What key feature has you going back to the airpods? There's very likely a good alternative, but it depends on what is keeping you using them.

In other news, the sky is blue, water is wet, and the earth is round.

If you need a cheap 40% ethanol solution for some reason, this is a decent bargain.

I don't recommend drinking it.