That was back in the late 70’s. I wasn’t a big fan of my bed being a couch too, but at least I had a bit more room than the other 2 beds squeezed behind portable closets. I live in Michigan now and we’ve had a beautiful fall so far. We’re supposed to get rain for Halloween but it may be done by the time the kids get out. It supposed to be 78 degrees today which is really nice for late October

It looks like my room in college when I was in Florida. My bed was the couch in the main room.

XP was kind of a F up for MS, they gave us a really decent OS that raised our expectations. People ran that for almost 2 decades because no one wanted the new OS’s MS was putting out like ME and Vista. Win 8 was out when XP support fully ended and many people chose to go with the older Win 7 because it was less intrusive and more like a PC OS instead of trying to become like a Apple/phone/tablet interface. XP>Win 7>Win 10>Win 11 imo and all the unmentioned weren’t worth upgrading for, but I don’t use my phone for the internet and I’ve been using a PC for over 40 years. We like what’s familiar and we can use without having to think too much about the tool used to achieve what we’re doing. I have Win 11 on a laptop and I have to jump through a lot more hoops to control my desktop, who can pull my info, what can install, what can run in the background. And every update I have to do it again because they add shit back in again along with new stuff I don’t want or need. Win 10 professional at least minimized how often they’d add new stuff or change my existing settings. Win 11 Pro doesn’t seem nearly as friendly.

Those traits gave me two things in my IT contracting career, the ability to roll into a new position at the same contractor so I didn’t have to job hunt, and the contractor wanting nothing to do with bringing me in as a full time employee. I saw it as a win/win

I remember reading about a Pa Kua Chang master who could walk through a crowd with a full teacup and not spill any. For whatever reason I started to practice walking with a full to the brim teacup (with or without a handle) and now I can go up and down stairs with one or two and not spill anything. Usually

What’s the sound of one hand clapping? ;-p

I recently added a printer to my PC. Having to launch that antique spooler window from like Windows 3.1 to print is a bit hilarious

The Dr said my foot was squished like stepping on a grape and you can’t put the grape back together again. But I’m so thankful to have a foot and leg at all after that so I appreciate what I have not what I don’t have, even though it does get burdensome when pain or lack of movement is high

I don’t post a lot but I have a lot of free time due to being T-boned on my motorcycle from someone running a red light. My mobility has been seriously restricted since. When I was working full time and posting a lot on Reddit I was training corporate engineering sw. When I wasn’t training I had a lot of time on my hands at work so I’d scroll reddit. I was also traveling a lot so I was away from home and reddit was sort of my travel family

I love India and the people from India. I worked in IT for Ford for over 30 years and had a lot of Indian coworkers and traveled to India a few times for work. Like others have said, all of them came over through technology jobs. Unfortunately many companies in the US play the green card game to keep your wages low. Finding a company that will help get your card is very tough. If you can handle the learning for controls engineering, a 2 year degree will get you a good paying job in a lot of the western world helping companies with their automation of production lines. One of my friends who had all the needed skills wanted to come to the US so much but his pronunciation of words was really bad and it was very hard to understand him so he could never get past an initial interview.
But I agree about the current state of India but nationalist leaders are gaining more power and Modi is an example of that. His playing the Hindu and nationalist card over and over again is an example of that. When I’d walk around it was always amazing to see stone and bronze workers doing work that’s been done for hundreds of years along side shops with ISO certification making advanced tooling and micro parts. India is where the Bronze age meets the digital age. I’ve never seen that anywhere else. China is probably the closest but I didn’t see as much technical incongruity on one street like I would in India.
As a worker and many agreed with this view, Indians and many Asians are great at following orders which is what they grew up with, but thinking out of the box was usually a challenge. I believe the freedoms of the west allow people more ability to see things differently and we feel like our view/idea/opinion has value and should be heard because of the differences in the individual. Because of that we’re more willing to contemplate other methods in our own heads about possibilities instead of just doing what rote learning taught and not go against the grain with teachers, bosses, etc. Like you’re finding, seeing what others choose not to see is a challenge. The young are the future and need to stand up for the view of the world they want. It has to start at the local level with enough force to be a regional power. Unfortunately the nationalist have a lot of thugs to do their work and wrack havoc on people trying to bring about change that would challenge those in power and bring more power to the individuals.

I had a triple major of Psych/Soc/Phil with the intent of teaching. My focus in Philosophy was mostly logic and analytical reasoning. I ended up marrying my GF and had to quit college in my junior year and go to work where I ended up doing a lot of computer work on the IBM XT. One late night working on electronic bids for parts we sold I realized computers are not going anywhere and focusing on that would get me out of this sales job. I went to Control Data for a year which got me in the door of a company. Programming was nothing but logic which was my focus in college so it came pretty easy to me. That was 1989. I contracted to Ford for the next 30+ years doing everything from data analysis at the start to SQL and DB’s for a while, and then I ended up on teams delivering software to the plants. I always wanted a job that would allow me to see the world and for over 20 years I traveled on the corporate dime, including an around the world trip for work in Asia and Europe on the same trip. I traveled almost 300k miles on planes during that time and had a chance to see how people live and work all over the world.