{"id":4718,"date":"2025-09-14T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=4718"},"modified":"2025-10-01T21:50:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T04:50:14","slug":"two-weeks-in-the-life-september-14-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=4718","title":{"rendered":"Two Weeks in the Life: September 14, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Screenshot<\/a>
Volunteer of the month at LLACE!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Hello, friends and enemies. Things are cuckoo bananas here, but let’s start with something fun. I mentioned last month<\/a> that I had been working on documenting processes for the Lavender Library’s<\/a> collections committee. I guess everyone likes what I’m doing because I am the volunteer of the month! Technically, this just means I get a little shout out in the email newsletter but I am still proud. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the cuckoo bananas of it all: We are currently taking care of my father-in-law’s dogs (my dogs in law?) because my father in law is dealing with some medical stuff. These two dogs are kind of nutty and are a breed known for being insane (they’re schipperkes<\/a>) but I think they mostly just want attention (as with all of us). The main things I do not appreciate about them are that they have terrible bathroom etiquette and have peed and pooped on my floor at various times. We have to take them outside nearly on the hour to prevent incidents, and even that isn’t always enough. On top of this, Fritz is scared of the dogs. He’s been camping out in the bedroom and we have a gate set up in the hallway to prevent the dogs from bothering him. I’ve been trying to spend as much time with him as I can, but I also needed to be on dog duty while Kirk was helping his dad and now because Kirk has covid. I’ve been joking that I’m suddenly a single mom who works two jobs<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, you might be wondering if I have covid too. No(t yet?). We are trying hard to keep me from getting it. Kirk and I are mostly staying on opposite sides of the house, he’s masking all the time and I’m masking when we’re on the same side of the house. We’re also running our air filter nonstop and Kirk is sleeping in the guest bedroom. As of Saturday, I’m testing negative and not having symptoms so we will see. If I escape covid again, I may become convinced that I simply cannot get it, which is probably not good since I already have unreasonable levels of confidence about many things, but still that is better than getting it and breaking my five-year streak of no covid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fuck it. Linux.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I have been getting really tired of Microsoft’s shit and, last weekend, finally did the damn thing and switched my PC to Linux. Microsoft is deprecating Windows 10 and pushing users to migrate to Windows 11 and, it sounds like, trying to con everyone into paying for OneDrive<\/a> in the process. Windows 11 is also stuffing unnecessary and unwanted AI <\/a>into everything and has a a feature that will take a screenshot<\/a> of whatever the user is doing every few seconds, which is intrusive as fuck (yes, it can be disabled, but why the hell is that even a feature, let alone a default?). On top of that, I have Microsoft Word 2016, and Microsoft is going to stop supporting that too. They want me to “upgrade” to Office 365, which is a subscription and costs at least $100 per year. For the last time: none of this should be a subscription! I should be able to pay for the software and own it. I yearn for the early days of personal computing. <\/p>\n\n\n

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\"An<\/a>
doing it live<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

There are a lot of versions of Linux because people can do whatever they want with the code and make their own versions. I installed Linux Mint<\/a>, which is designed to resemble Windows and make the transition from Windows to Linux a little easier. The website has detailed installation instructions<\/a>, which was good because I sure as hell did not know what I was doing. The process itself was actually fairly straightforward and the main problem I had was one of my own making. I have two hard drives in my computer and I thought I would be able to install Linux on one drive then simply access the other drive with all my data and files. However, I learned the hard way that Linux and Windows use different file systems, and you can’t “mount” a drive without formatting it first (that is, deleting everything on the drive). I had to perform computer surgery to liberate my data. Kirk recently got a new computer so I took my second drive out and connected it to Kirk’s old machine, then transferred the files onto an external hard drive so I could reformat the drive for linux. This worked but I am not great <\/em>at hardware and couldn’t get my hard drive out of the tray so I removed the whole cage and plugged it into Kirk’s computer, leaving the case open. I do not recommend this method, especially since this issue is easily avoided by backing everything up first<\/em>. Hubris. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"linux<\/a>
Linux desktop!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I have not been able to use the newly linuxed computer a whole lot because it’s on the side of the house where Kirk is and we are avoiding each other for plague reasons. Still, I like it so far. I have a lot of exploring ahead of me, but I’m able to do all my regular computer stuff without any trouble. Something I really like about Linux so far is that you download software through a program that’s a bit like an app store. All the software is free and open source and works on Linux. This makes it easy and fun to just try stuff! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are answers to a few things I had to look up both so I remember and in case anyone else is looking for them, and then some programs that I like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n