25 september 2020
I'm feeling depressed by the stupidity of others.
Case #1: I'm watching the 8-Bit Guy on Youtube. Not one of my favorite retrocomputing folks, but he at least has some amount of production value to his videos. He finds this incredibly rare computer at Computer Reset, and he takes it home. When he plugs it in, it gives two beeps on post and then it refuses to display anything (it's an IBM Model that nobody has ever heard of that has an integrated monitor). The power switch for the system is inside of the integrated monitor. He takes the machine apart, finds where the power supply connects to the monitor, tests continuity on the monitor side with the switch open, and the proceeds to short the power supply side with a paper clip. He then turns on mains power to hear a sharp snap noise.
I'm irritated because this is a well-followed Youtube personality doing something EXTREMELY STUPID AND DANGEROUS and then just proceeding to Dremel the power supply open because he can't be arsed to find a security bit to open the thing up. He then gets to tinker with the remaining rare computers from Computer Reset because he's, guess what, a famous Youtuber. Ugh.
Case #2: Been having yelly fits with our kiddo over Zoom and School
So, our kiddo has online school right now, and yesterday the school district sent out an email on how to approach entering Zoom calls. The problem now is that somehow Zoom is losing authentication when it closes, and something about the order of operations of when you sign into Zoom is causing a problem. The Zoom desktop client has been a piece of junk for as long as I've been using it on Linux, and it's not much better on kiddo's Chromebook. This escalated this morning into kiddo and I yelling at each other about what the right thing to do was in order to get into class. I am so tired of online school right now, and I know it's totally the right thing to do, but I don't have time or energy to be doing my own work AND playing household IT person all day long.
On a brigher note, it's raining today here in Beaverton, and I'm quite happy with that. This is the kind of "gloomy" fall weather that I really enjoy, and I hope that it keeps up for a bit.