New Computer! 🤸‍♂️ ...at work 🤷‍♀️

Apr 17 2025

Update to Can't Work: shortly after that post, I sent my boss an email explaining the situation and asking if they could get me a new computer (the worst they can say is no) or, barring that, change the scheduled Windows Defender scan to happen in the evenings, when it can't interrupt my work. I didn't think the former would happen, but I figured the latter was a sensible request that would make me much more productive, so if they said no, my conscience would be clear.

To my utter shock, they not only said they would give me a new computer but that someone would be along to install it in a few days. I knew from prior experience with lesser needs that if we had to requisition one from central HQ, it could be weeks or months before it showed up, so that means the computer was sitting around in storage somewhere, waiting to be asked for. My pessimism bites me in the ass yet again.

Someone from IT came to install it yesterday. It's an absolute monster of a machine. It has a 12th gen core i7, 32GB of ram, and a 500GB SSD. It's such ridiculous overkill for the work I'm doing, the only way it could be more the diametric opposite of my old computer is if it was covered in RGB and called the Astratek Flopshredder.

It's got four USB ports, plus a USB-C port for flavor. Incredibly, it has a DVD-RW drive, and it's the most well-camouflaged optical drive I've ever seen. I only knew it existed because I saw the drive show up in "My Computer". I was like "wait, really?" So I right-clicked on it and chose "eject".

Have I ever needed to use physical media at my job for anything? Nope. Will I? Nope. Do I have a DVD burner anyway? I sure do.

It also has Windows 11, so now that's two new operating systems I have to get used to instead of one. So far it only seems as bad as Windows 10 with the occasional UI fuckup. I've been able to revert most of the changes back to Windows 10 behavior. I won't bore you by explaining all of them, but here's a representative example:

A few times a week, I need to print 20 or 30 PDF files at once. I'm sure there's right way to batch print PDFs, but I don't know what it is, so the only sensible way I know is to open Sumatra, drag all the PDF files in from a file browser, and repetitively press ctrl-P (to print), enter (to confirm), and ctrl-W (to close the tab in Sumatra and move on to the next one.) Not a big deal, takes about 30 seconds (or even faster now that I'm on a PC where the UI doesn't lag.)

Windows 11 introduces a new print dialogue that breaks this flow. Pressing enter doesn't confirm, it actives the selector for choosing a printer. I would have to hit tab 3 or 4 times to highlight the confirmation button, or use the mouse. Makes the whole process take minutes instead of seconds.

Luckily I found a way to restore the old print dialogue by editing the registry. Open a command prompt and enter:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Print\UnifiedPrintDialog" /v "PreferLegacyPrintDialog" /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f

For as locked down as our computers are,¹ one would think they'd restrict access to the registry editor, but oddly that's not the case. I assumed this is something I could get in trouble for, but the tech and I were making small talk while she set up the new computer,² and I mentioned that I hadn't yet used Windows 11. She was explaining some of the differences, and said there's a new default right-click menu (like one would use to create a new file or folder) and it sucks, but you can click Show more options to see the old menu, "or you can edit the registry and change it back for good."

I figured this wouldn't apply to me, but since the regeditor isn't disabled, I'm going to take this conversation as implicit permission to use it. If anyone complains, I'll point out that I only used it to stay productive for work-related tasks, and the tech seemed pretty chill, so hopefully she'll vouch for me. I doubt it'll be necessary though. They're recording everything I do on the computer, but there's no way they're paying someone to actually watch what I do at all times. I'm sure as long as I don't do anything that would trigger an alarm like try to disable the recording software, no one is paying attention to what I do. I still dare not use the computer for anything non-work-related because if they ever decide they want to get rid of me, I know they'll go on a fishing expedition for any minor code violation they can use as a pretext for giving me the boot. Ask me how I know.

So yeah, outside of the odd pointless UI change it's been smooth sailing. I can actually get into a flow state at work, which means I can go back to enjoying podcasts and audiobooks again. I've been listening to a few, but with everything slowed to a crawl it's been much easier to just futz around on my phone.

Media Roundup

I've struggled to find anything to listen to lately, for the aforementioned flow reasons, but also because I'm struggling to find audiobooks I'm interested in. The library apps primarily have self-help, business pablum, books by and about celebrities, and entries in long-running sci-fi and fantasy series.³

I checked out Rose/House by Arkady Martine. It's a one-off not-too-distant-future (NTDF) sci-fi mystery novella about a murder in an AI house, and I didn't enjoy it at all. Which is a shame, because I really liked Martine's A Memory Called Empire. I don't have a lot of Thoughtful Critiques, I just thought it was boring and poorly written. It has a lot of plot contrivances that don't pass the smell test. The sci-fi elements are totally detached from our present reality, and the most illustrative example is that the story kept referring to characters talking on their "wrist phones".⁴

This is silly, because 1. wrist phones already exist, 2. the people who have them aren't all that interested in actually using them as phones, and 3. we don't call them wrist phones: we call them smart watches. I don't see why any of this would change in the NTDF. It was like a splash of cold water every time it came up. I find it easier to suspend disbelief in a book set in the spacefaring Aztec Empire, but Rose/House takes place in the Mojave desert and is by and large a grounded, tropey detective story. It made the ham-fisted sci-fi elements all the more unconvincing.

Also, maybe it's just me, but I find it increasingly difficult to get into a story about future AI now that present AI is dumber, faker, and more unpleasant than anything a fiction writer could think up. I struggle to be convinced that this will turn into that, in any possible future. It's lost most of its appeal for me as a sci-fi concept. The bloom, one might say, is off the Rose/House.

Podcasts haven't been much better. Commercial podcasts have become infested with so many ads that I'm getting unreasonably angry just having to skip past them, I can't imagine anyone actually listening to them. There are only a couple hobby podcasts I still listen to and they update semimonthly at best. I've found myself mostly listening to youtube videos I've already seen, and re-listening to one of the hobby podcasts that's been going since 2012, from the beginning. I'm less able to cope with any media about current events and politics. I want to escape into the past. This isn't helpful or good for me, but if I kept up with the collapse I'd still be stuck at work all day; the only difference is that I'd also be wracked with anxiety and despair, and I don't see how that would help me or anyone else. I wish I knew what would help.

Linux Update

Everything still going pretty smoothly with Debian, although I haven't had time to do much off the beaten path, it's been performing my usual tasks very well. I backed up my Suikoden II save and it looks like I should be able to continue it without issue; I just haven't had time to make a dent in it yet. I backed up my Little Samson savestate, and forgot that savestates aren't cross-compatible between different versions of Bizhawk. But it's okay, I don't mind playing the beginning of that game again, it's great. If it keeps up the quality it'll be a 5❤️ game for sure.

I found a great markdown editor called Ghostwriter. It's better than any such program I was able to find on Windows. I'm using it right now! This very sentence was written in Ghostwriter. And this one. Not most of the ones before this section though. Those were written on my phone. But I copied and pasted them into Ghostwriter to continue writing on my computer when I got home from work. It's great!

I learned that the media player Audacious has a mode that makes it look exactly like Winamp. I'm glad I can continue using Winamp. I've never stopped using Winamp as my desktop Mp3 player and this isn't a bit. I've never needed a music player to do anything else. Audacious doesn't have the cool visualizers, which is a bummer. But for listening to Mp3s, it does that.

I somewhat naïvely decided to whip up a quick python script to make it easier to use yt-dlp. I know there are various front-ends, but what I want is so simple I thought I'd take a crack at it myself. It turns out that, even though it outputs to the terminal, it doesn't work like BASIC at all. The OS, shell and programming environment are all very different things. I looked for a simple "clear screen" function and went down a rabbit hole where I tried to install a "clear screen" package from pip, and it failed because I need to set up something called a "virtual environment", and wow I sure don't want to mess with any of this. What a headache. It's no wonder everyone wanted to keep using python2.

I eventually figured out how to call shell commands from the script, so I could use the screen clearing function in bash, but I still haven't figured out how to make it execute a program.

I was hoping it'd be something like shell("yt-dlp --option1 --option2 " + $url) but nope, nothing that simple. I'm not sure if I'll follow this particular thread or if I'll take a crack at learning bash syntax, which is probably more straightforward but looks annoying. This isn't something I need help with, I just haven't had more than 10 minutes to set aside and teach myself.

That's about it! The governor declared a half-day holiday tomorrow, something about killing Jesus idk, and most of my coworkers are taking PTO for the rest of it, so I'm looking forward to a relaxing day on my own. Taking recommendations for something to listen to 🦝

#LinuxSaga #books #mental health #no-ai #politics #tech