As a dev: for all their flaws, web apps are easier to distribute, portable, and have a lot of support in frameworks. They also require little infrastructure in most cases.
As a user: web apps run without installing anything, are mostly portable between my browsers of choice, and run in a sandbox to protect my computer.
Probably 90% of my needs can be served by a web app if it is well designed. If I can't have a web app, I will look for a flatpak version and failing that I will look for it in my distro.
This. Especially if you're a naturalized citizen. The certificate of naturalization is expensive and hard to replace. It should not be your only id. Keep it in a safe place.
If you are a permanent resident, you should already know that you must carry your card on you at all times. That is more important now then ever.
Note that you will need to mail the original certificate to the authorities to get your passport. You will get it back after a couple of weeks, but in the meantime you will have nothing, unless you paid to get a certified copy. It is a large piece of paper that cannot be folded, so it's not practical to carry around.
While you're at it, get your driver's license updated with the federal id. Make sure the BMV records reflect your status. Register to vote. In other words, document your citizenship in as many ways as possible.
During my recent travels I carried a photocopy of my naturalization document plus my passport. I was not asked for it, but my reasoning was that if they took my passport I at least had something. I also had a physical notebook with important info in it, i.e., not just in my phone.
My main one is to learn shortcuts on your most used programs. Using the mouse for everything is a waste of time, but that has been said multiple times.
My second is to create scripts to do a bunch of repetitive tasks. For example, I have a script I run on my work PC after I log on to the VPN that starts my "always on" programs (like notepad++), unlocks the hosts file, etc. I have some sendto scripts for converting files with pandoc, fetching multiple git repos in one go, etc. It just speeds up things and avoids errors versus me doing them manually.
On Windows I use PowerShell and on Linux I use bash, meaning they work without additional software installed.
Yeah, I get it. I've had many libraries fail me in as many ways, which is why I consider it lucky to not have to implement my own. I work in .net these days, but there have been times where I had to just dig into the xml inside the xlsx and use xml tools. Those were mostly one-offs, thankfully.
Back when I did Java I had a frustrating experience with IBM's libxml causing our app to crash after several days due to a memory leak. I didn't have access to the production environment so it took me probably 3 weeks to find the cause and only after digging through a crash dump provided by the sysadmin. Not related, but you triggered my traumatic memory :)
I don't know what you're trying to do with Excel, but based on your posts, I can only wish you good luck. I'm happy to say that I have been able to outsource low level parsing to third party libraries for my needs so far. Well, except the interpreting semantic formatting part. That was on me.
I think ma may be the closest thing to Norwegian «modern» in the sense that it is more of a dialect/region difference than an adult/child thing. In my experience, ma is used more in the South and in rural dialects in the US. I've heard modern used more in Eastern dialects in Norway. Maybe more curiously, I've mostly heard modern used only in the sense of "my mom" (third person) but rarely to address them. Maybe others can chime in on their usage of it. Norwegian has a lot of regional variation.
I have not been able to find the case again since. It was a local shop that built it from parts, so it was not a big brand. I didn't pick the parts either, since I knew nothing about PCs at the time, and it showed lol.
Edit: it was a white/beige mini tower. If I recall correctly, it was similar to a lot of cases at the time, with a black band across and a circular button on the right. The turbo and reset buttons were pink and teal in the shape of triangles. I purchased it in 1992 when I needed a PC for college.
I had the exact same configuration. 4MB RAM upgraded to 8MB. 40MB HDD upgraded to 200MB later. And the fugliest case with triangular pastel buttons you ever saw. Ran Windows 3.11 then Slackware Linux on that for many years.
Consider going to a walk in clinic. If it's nothing serious, you pay 100-200 and you're on your way. If you go to the ER and it's nothing serious, your insurance may deduct you hundreds more (my ER copay is $500 and I have great insurance).
If it is serious, the walk in will tell you to go to the ER. In that case, the insurance may waive the ER copay. While it is true they can't deny you care, this system of expensive ER copay was presumably put in place to stop people using the ER to provide free care. Check your insurance policy (preferably before you get sick). I believe some places also have free clinics, but I would expect them to be pretty crowded.
Good luck OP. This sounds serious and you need to take care of your health. Try to find a way you can at least get some real qualified medical advice, even if you seemingly recovered this time.
I have had weird issues ever since upgrading in place from Fedora 41 to 42 also, but I have an AMD card. For example digikam suddenly stopped working unless I run it as flatpak or I force it to use the igpu. Smb4k stopped auto mounting and I sometimes have to try it a couple of times before it works. Random UI stuff would glitch and then be fixed in an update. Just odd stuff like that. I should reinstall fresh, but I don't want the hassle right now. My games and other apps work fine.
My only suggestion is to try forcing it to use the main GPU with an environment variable like DRI_PRIME. I don't know what it is for Nvidia though.
First: you've done good, raising a kid that asks for your permission first.
Second: realize that this comes from peer pressure, them wanting a space away from parental supervision. If you truly want to make your kids savvy about the Internet, you need to assume they will eventually encounter seedy places, run into assholes, and be exposed to things like bullying.
Have a conversation: you will encounter these things. Your friends may be into them. But they can have bad effects and here is how you avoid it and how to deal if it happens to you. Talk about keeping private information private.
Be open and non-judgemental. You want them to feel safe coming to you for advice.
Be truthful and stay credible. Keep up with what's out there, but don't just buy into the latest Tiktok scare.
Talk to your kids about stuff they found that was cool or scary.
Embarrass them by using memes incorrectly.
Setting up a mastodon instance may be cool at first, but their friends are going to think it's lame with the supervision. You could still do it for a number of other reasons, but it won't prepare them for the ugly Internet.
As a dev: for all their flaws, web apps are easier to distribute, portable, and have a lot of support in frameworks. They also require little infrastructure in most cases.
As a user: web apps run without installing anything, are mostly portable between my browsers of choice, and run in a sandbox to protect my computer.
Probably 90% of my needs can be served by a web app if it is well designed. If I can't have a web app, I will look for a flatpak version and failing that I will look for it in my distro.