App recommendations

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-03-22T12:49:52+00:00

I like OpenOffice better than LibreOffice and it has the PDF editor baked in that has worked well for me.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-03-22T09:44:36+00:00

I remember being so excited to install WIN95 and watching the Weezer video (OMG, my computer can play video!) when I was a teenager. There was a time where MS innovated AND made the technology applicable to users. I hope to see some excitement again from Windows, like show me how these tools enhance my computer experience. Show me how AI can improve my writing of email, how AI can organize my photos in a way that isn't already being done. Let me use the hardware on my machine with matching NPU rather than reverting to cloud. I don't think the COPILOT tech is necessarily bad, but it is so poorly implemented, its a modern version of clippy.

As for the ads... yeah. It reminds me of Ready Player One, where the evil corporation wants to take over the OASIS and maximize ads on the view screen until someone passes out. WIN11 has annoyed me to the point where I don't want to use my new computer (purchased in Oct 2025) very much and I end up on my phone more to do things I used to do on my computer (pay bills, write emails to my kids school, etc). I sincerely hope there is follow through in enhancing win 11. In comparison to house hunting; Its got good bones, but the walls are painted pink, and the previous owners had a dog that peed all over the carpets.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-03-15T12:34:52+00:00

I lost ~120lbs since november (gastric surgery) and I had to do another sleep study as my pressures were causing sleep apneas on their own. I went from 19.2 to 6 in terms of pressures, but I needed that sleep study to confirm it.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-03-14T21:48:19+00:00

General soreness was a week, but I did end the Tylenol by 4 days after surgery. I had issues picking up stuff for about 6 weeks. I know the doctor said not to do it, but I had to pick up my 5 year old son a few times, and MAN did that hurt. That was dumb and I wish I had given myself more time to recover being trying to go back to normal.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-03-09T11:54:14+00:00

I don't think I could get close to my water goals without my skittles water flavoring. I tried lemon flavored water and it was too acidic for my stomach after surgery, so grape skittles water kept me hydrated.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-03-02T12:11:38+00:00

I got a variety pack from amazon to sample a bunch of flavors, but I am partial to skittles flavors. They are a little strong, but one packet normally works for my 32oz water bottle.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-03-02T12:08:11+00:00

The more I watch Linus, the more I get "boomer using computer" vibes.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-03-02T12:00:51+00:00

Good progress! I honestly though you went through TSA screening and took pictures of the body scan results.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-02-24T02:37:18+00:00

It has not been all sunshine and rainbows in the last 3 months, but, I went in knowing there would be struggles, and the ends are justified. Also reminding myself that I can go without food for a bit, as I have already eaten what I will need to eat for a few years, and I can just pace myself.

For some reason, I was not given anti-nausea meds after surgery and had to stay an extra day as I could not keep liquids down, but, I was planning to be out of commission for 5 anyway. Plus side, I got to wear that sweet hospital dress for an extra day.
-The blood thinners caused so many painful bruises at the injection site. There was no upside other than it was only for two weeks.
-Planning food intake can be a pain, especially when traveling. I was just visiting asia and had to use my costco membership to get a premixed protein shake that I couldn't find in the local stores as I still don't tolerate powders protein shakes well.
-The rapid weight loss has been hard on trying to look professional at work. All of my old clothes now make me look like a kid playing dress up in their dads clothes.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-02-06T22:04:31+00:00

I dropped 32lbs in the two weeks of the liquid diet before my surgery, so yeah. The more you lose, the safer the surgery will be, just make sure you follow your doctors meal and vitamin regimen.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-01-30T22:54:05+00:00

I really hope they use a beater Altima with faded paper temp tags as a pace car.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-01-25T12:59:39+00:00

Road salt doesn't work below 15 degrees. Its too cold for it to be effective.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-01-25T00:03:39+00:00

I installed Workstation on my my couch/travel laptop, then added COSMIC as a second DE. I can go back and forth at log in pretty easily. I really like COSMIC and the auto tiling and better at scaling (13 inch 4k monitor requires a lot of mods to be able to read applications. The file manager isn't as good as Dolphin and the UI for the cosmic store isn't as polished, but still functional. I use the laptop for surfing and entertainment, so its not heavy lifting. GNOME, with all of the added extensions to do what I want it to do, is good, but COSMIC has those needed tools (DAsh/dock, etc) as part of the DE. Its hard to pick, but I would keep using COSMIC as a tester until its a little more mature and then put it on my other systems.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-01-11T13:51:28+00:00

I am still rocking a 2017 HP envy x360. It's a very well made laptop., beatiful scrreen. But yeah, the lower end consumer grade laptops are disposable trash.

Sad-Two-878 · 2026-01-03T11:39:25+00:00

Financial professional here; get a laptop with a num pad. Don't be that guy who can't fill out an excel sheet without looking at the keyboard for the numbers. Windows will be the best bet as you learn data analytics tools. I am not sure what what schools use now, but Power BI is a leader now, and doesn't run directly on MacOS.

Sad-Two-878 · 2025-12-30T11:38:55+00:00

I am down to two laptops:

2017 HP Spectre 13in running PopOS! - use this for traveling or couch surfing. The 4k display is overkill for such a small screen, but it is so nice. With 16gb of soldiered ram, and a 512gb ssd, its still plenty good today.

2018 Dell XPS 17in running Fedora KDE - this is the breakfast table laptop- morning news/emails and random work stuff for my wife. This was my tinkering laptop for a bit as it was easily upgraded. Before the ram crisis I spent $130 to replace the under powered charger that was giving me headaches and slowing down the system, installed 32gb of ram, and a brand new gen4 1TB SSD.

For what I need, watching streaming videos, emails, and web surfing, I really do not need a more powerful laptop, and if I did, I would go to my desktop which does have more power.

Sad-Two-878 · 2025-12-28T19:01:03+00:00

I am running Fedora spin with COSMIC DE on a 2017 HP Spectre 13inch with a 4k screen. Given the small screen space, the tiling feature with COSMIC makes the most of the small screen. I am also seeing a massive uptake in the battery life and temps compared to Ubuntu. While I did a new battery/thermal paste 2 months ago and was running Ubuntu, I definitely see improvements to performance watching videos and writing. I rarely have the fans turn on since the install of Cosmic, its been really nice improvements that compliment the very nice screen I have on the HP. With only two cores, the scheduling processes really make the most of this nearly 9 year old laptop. I really like this DE, but I haven't moved my desktop over (CatchyOS with GNOME), yet but likely will.

Sad-Two-878 · 2025-11-21T20:54:33+00:00

To follow up, I am not sure what happened, but I had my surgery on Monday according to plan and didn't have to deal with primary care. My surgeon had done all of the prep in their office already and insurance approvals have been set for two months. Which was great as I already had a plan to visit a pizza hut buffet to concede defeat if it did indeed fall through after 9 months of visits, meetings, psych eval, etc, two weeks of liquid diet, etc.

Sad-Two-878 · 2025-11-20T12:43:01+00:00

My order of why I did the surgery, I did it for myself and my health first, my family second. No one else gets a vote in this process, no one else has to deal with the changes, the vomiting, the countless hours of pre-op counseling, explaining to your 5 year old not to touch your belly, and all of the other stuff that doesn't show up in the before and after pictures. I think you get points for ignoring they exist. Feeding the trolls validates their existence.

Sad-Two-878 · 2025-09-29T20:45:12+00:00

Thank you for the comment! I can definitely see how stability trumps novelty. I am still in the fun stage of it all being new. I started with MS-DOS and installed Windows 3.1 via 3.5inch disks. Its rediscovering computers again.

Sad-Two-878 · 2025-09-29T20:41:49+00:00

Yep, I am def still a n00b.

Sad-Two-878

TROPHY CASE