Because WFH has shown that large parts of middle management are useless, and those MM people are pushing upper management for RTO before it becomes evident. It’s what MM has always done, suck up to UM and kick down on the workers, without real benefit to the company.
It’s completely wild to me that the default for buying a car comes up to a monthly payment, why not pay cash? Save those 800 for three months, buy a beater for 2400. While driving this into the ground, continue saving the 800, even if that beater craps out after six months, you can upgrade to a 4800 not-so-crappy beater, rinse and repeat, and at some point you saved up the 48000 to get that new car. Financing something that depreciates in value quickly and exponentially at anything above the inflation rate is, financially speaking, complete and utter nonsense to me.
That switch flipped a few years ago. Unfortunately it only did so after my mother passed away, but I suddenly realised that I don’t need my dad’s approval in my life. And that he’s a toxic narcissist which I don’t have to like or have in my life. Understanding that, I could unravel a lot of crap from my childhood, which helps understanding some things that are wrong with me today. I guess the switch that flips when you understand that your parents don’t necessarily need to be good for you is a really important one.
Not just the internet, consumer computing as a whole became a shitshow. You need accounts for everything, Microsoft pushes you hard to use their online service, the default becoming that you to log onto your own computer you need to go through their online Microsoft account, which is terribly unsafe (if your ms account gets hacked, the hacker had access to you system). After “software as a service” more or less has been normalised, I’m just waiting for hardware going down that path, too. I’d say it begins already that I had to create a NVIDIA account to actually update drivers. Soon, this account may not be free anymore.
To most issues like this there are workarounds, but sometimes you have to dig deep. So it’s either you need to spend time to make things work like you want, or accept all this crap. For me, this is fine, because I like the tinkering. But I am also *administrating" most of my elder family members’ computers, which is a nightmare because of that. “So I saved the document, where is it on my computer,?” - “If you used the default OneDrive crap, it just is not on your computer…”
Theranos sounded like a superhero villain. I guess it kind of was?
I never asked for this. Wrong game, I know :)
The one we got was really expensive, but it was the only brand available in Germany that actually has those things in the market for 10+ years (so it’s a well tested product). It’s one of the premium brands for bathroom “furniture” anyway, and the bidet ones are their top of the line bowls, so I guess in the end we’re not just paying premium for the bidet. Including installation and all the other parts, I think it was something like 3 or 3.5k EUR. I don’t really have any comparison (the cheaper brand would be around 1k less), but the thing is well thought through, has tons of options, easy to clean, easy maintenance, and has some really long warranty. I still feel I splurged on it, but in the grand scheme of things when remodeling a house (roughly 150k in total), I did not really register. Don’t know if that helps in any way…
Remodeled the house including bathrooms, went for japanese style bidet (i.e. included in the toilet). Would not want to live without it.
Brother it is! I have a laser combo scanner printer MFC thingy, I guess from around 2010 or so, still works like a charm as a network device. I buy a third party toner every three years and that’s it.
Homeowners insurance: “Since you don’t have some certificate or whatever, your proper solution is something we won’t cover. If you want it covered, get someone with a certificate to do a hackjob.”
At least in Germany, you’re not allowed to touch anything “important” like water, electric, plumbing, or gas. Even if you would do a much better job, quicker, and cheaper, than any contractor who’d be allowed to do that work. Every single contractor I hired remodeling our house did something which was clearly not up to code (DIN or EN), and almost every time they put up a fight explaining it away, even when I read them the exact wording of the norm. “Well, if I’d do it that way, I would never finish work!” “This would be too much work, nobody does it that way” “I am always doing it this way and never had any complaints”
Discussion was always over when I asked whether I should get an inspector to settle it. They begrudgingly fixed the issue, and without fail tried to bill me for it (additionally).
I am so done with contractors, those are the original gatekeepers.