You're not wrong. That said, Honorary degrees are a thing. For example, Jeremy Clarkson, a television personality, columnist, and car reviewer, has two or three different honorary degrees.
2000s and early 2010s Musk was funding cool things that were very science based. He was still a bit of a nutjob back then, but he wasn't anywhere close to the lunatic we all know today.
This probably isn't a popular option, but a lot of the recent hate on Microsoft have been standard practice for Apple for a long time.
Windows 10 free update length? 10 years. Mac? 5-7 years.
Baked in cloud backup? Yeah, Apple has been doing that for a while and a lot of things go to the cloud by default. If you have an iPhone or iPad, things you download go to iCloud by default.
It seems like Microsoft is trying to follow Apple's model.
I do get not wanting to support windows 10 anymore. The CPU limitations on Win 11 are very dumb, but it's something Apple has been doing for decades. I will be installing mint on my old desktop.
I give them less grace with OneDrive. That rollout has been very naggy and shitty.
As a recent modern Mac user, this experience is so bizarre and is always a little different.
I grew up on macs (thanks mom) and built a PC as soon as I had my first real job in highschool. I recently bought a MacBook for the promise of battery life and cool running. If only it was easier to get my arm windows laptop to boot Linux...
Regardless of what you purchase, you can absolutely power/charge a barrel jack laptop via DC. Find a spare jack that fits, or sacrifice the stock unit, and wire it into a dcdc converter.
My advice: Get a fireproof box for the important stuff. Social security cards, birth certificates, etc.
This is a good idea. I will have to pick one up. It doesn't have to be that big.
And this may sound stupid, but write down the serial number of literally everything you own because the insurance company will absolutely try to fuck you and you will have to make an itemized list of pretty everything you ever owned.
A video walk-around showing everything in a good amount of detail also helps a lot.
If you don't need anything powerful, consider grabbing an old toughbook or the like. They're reasonably rugged and are fairly water resistant. They've also been around for a while, so you can grab an older used copy pretty cheap. I can't speak to Linux compatibility, but they are x86 computers at their core.
Boss: let's pretend like this decision wasn't made back in October before any of the formal end of year review process even started or you provided any feedback on your goal.
Is this be unique to the company I work for or am I falling victim to the grass being greener on the other side.
Haha, TIL that SQL is 51 years old. IBM mainframes were still all the rage in the 70s. My assumption is that government would have not been an early adopter, but I could obviously be wrong.
I think many assume there's more of a plan, or at least more structure, than there actually is. When you pick at it, or pull the single link keeping it all together, it tumbles down.
My printer and filament live in my basement. We have a dehumidifier down there set to 55%. Some filament spools take a year plus for me to go through and I've never dried any of them. I have not noticed a meaningful change in print quality, but I also rarely go from an old to a new spool of the same material back to back.
I printed mostly PETG and ASA with some PLA thrown in.
In December I finally bought a phone to replace my 3a. I did it mostly for the battery life, although I did actually buy a replacement battery for the 3a and have all the necessary tools to install it. It wouldn't be my first time replacing a cellphone battery.
I was window shopping and the Oneplus 12 became fairly discounted at the end of last year.
Honestly, the overall experience really isn't that different than my old 3a. It's not like newer versions of Android are adding revolutionary features these days and if you're running a custom ROM, odds are you're on a newer version of Android anyway.
Nice things:
Two days worth of battery life with my usage patterns. Even with a fresh battery, my 3a wouldn't last this long
Something like 4x more RAM means that apps are usually in the state I left them in when I come back to them, whereas on the 3a they had usually been forced to free up resources and not all apps deal with that well
The telephoto lens is nice to have, but none of the built in cameras are a substitute for my dedicated camera for things that are moving and/or things are far away
The screen mounted fingerprint sensor is very convenient, but that's a placement thing. Some people liked the 3a location, but I didn't personally
Unless you are taxing your processor, an upgrade will be incremental. At least that was my experience.
I somewhat regret the larger phone in that it's a bit harder to handle one handed, but most on screen keyboards have a one handed mode to deal with this. I had a pop/ring type holder on my 3a, so gripping one handed isn't that big of a deal.
I think you've probably got the correct replies already (see an audiologist a few times), but I wanted to share two quick anecdote that might explain your Grandfather's reaction.
I recently bought a pair of swim goggles with blue tint to wear when I go swimming with my kids. I leave them on for about 45 minutes before taking them off. When I take them off it's almost overwhelming how vibrant some colors become. It's almost like someone took the saturation slider and dialed it to 300. The white walls around the pool, the orange rash guard my youngest was wearing, etc. They all become almost extreme.
I have a pair of TWS earbuds that you can 'calibrate' to your ears based on what seems to be a crude test (detect a beep at a frequency over a background noise). The profile it generates is very bright. It's very possible I've lost that much hearing, especially since we lose high frequency first, but it's a bit jarring. I find myself not wanting to accept that reality. I'm approaching 40 and haven't been around that many sustained loud things without hearing protection. I do kind of like the sparkle, but it seems a bit over the top so I tend to turn it off. Perhaps your Grandpa is experiencing something similar?
You're not going to find any of those in stores in the US either. Of all the brands i rattled off, the only one you can reliably find here is Birkenstock. However, you're not going to find their shoes or boots. I had to order those from the web.
Xero shoes are a US brand, but I've never seen them in a store here. Groundies are German. Barebaics and Belanka are both from Slovakia.
The internet is a beautiful thing. Yeah, shipping from all over can be a bit slow but with standard measurements it's not hard to order shoes that will fit correctly out of the gate.
I could see that. We have a pretty old TV, so we don't have a need for things like HDR.