The Cellar / Technology pissing me off today..

**Posted by glatt** 6/07/2025 10:31 am

Everything changes every 5 years or so, so you would have to keep going back to take the course again.

**Posted by fargon** 6/07/2025 11:03 am

How about a new class every 5 years I got time.

**Posted by Flint** 6/07/2025 8:44 pm

I honestly think you could take a 'computer literacy' course at a community college, if there's one around.

**Posted by Anon** 6/07/2025 9:29 pm

**Posted by fargon** 6/08/2025 11:08 am

Flint wrote:
I honestly think you could take a 'computer literacy' course at a community college, if there's one around.

People have asked for such a class and nothing has happened.

**Posted by fargon** 6/08/2025 11:16 am

They actually teach computer literacy in the twin cities. At several places.
Why can't we get that here.

**Posted by Flint** 6/09/2025 11:53 am

Flint wrote:
My instance of Word was logged into my personal Microsoft account, somehow?? There's no possible scenario where I could have manually done that ...

The plot thickens?

I Googled a tech question, it was (of course) answered in a Reddit thread. I clicked on the link and was reading the thread, then the page refreshed. What's happening, I wondered..?

Oh, no big deal. It was just LOGGING ME IN WITHOUT ASKING. Who/what is doing this??

I HAVE A [HOME COMPUTER USE CASE] AND A [WORK COMPUTER USE CASE]
I DO NOT WANT THEM MIXED. I DO NOT USE THEM FOR THE SAME THINGS

**Posted by Diaphone Jim** 6/09/2025 12:23 pm

It has taken me over a year to realize that this (my current "computer") is effectively the property of HP, Microsoft and Bing and god-knows-who-else.
I should have known when I discovered I had to pay monthly for word processing. And FreeCell was online instead of available when my ISP took one of its regular BM's.

**Posted by Anon** 6/09/2025 5:50 pm

Flint wrote:
…Oh, no big deal. It was just LOGGING ME IN WITHOUT ASKING. Who/what is doing this??

I don’t know what might be enabling crosstalk between your personal and work accounts ((apps could be suspect too).

FWIW, You could try this possible solution on your work account that comes from a related problem with Edge on WIN10. The recommendation is in the last paragraph and would see the fix, at least for your work computer, as being in account settings to ensure there’s only one account listed and that apps can’t sign you in.

That’s all I’ve got: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/714710/edge-automatic-sign-in-to-certain-sites-how-do-i-d

**Posted by fargon** 6/09/2025 6:14 pm

I am signed up for a class tomorrow at 930 AM, at the library. 1 on 1 training on my pixel book. I'm Exited.

**Posted by Flint** 6/10/2025 11:58 am

fargon wrote:
I am signed up for a class tomorrow at 930 AM, at the library. 1 on 1 training on my pixel book. I'm Exited.

Awesome!

Anon wrote:
That’s all I’ve got: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/714710/edge-automatic-sign-in-to-certain-sites-how-do-i-d

This is actually incredibly helpful. I've already fixed the problem with Word, but Settings/Accounts/Email & Accounts was exactly where I had to look to see the problem. My personal account was listed there, so under 'manage accounts' I removed my work device. I also had to manually "sign out" of Word, which is just a stupid concept in its entirety. It's a WORD PROCESSOR used to type words on a blank page. No part of this should need to be "LoGgEd iN" to anything. If I have the license to install it, let me us it, and leave me the ƒuck alone.

The Reddit thing, I have no idea. Probably unrelated, but it just adds to the intrusive feeling of unwanted integration.

**Posted by glatt** 6/11/2025 10:53 am

My wife had an offer to add a free cell phone line to her T Mobile family plan. I'm hoping to retire in the next few months, and while I have a work phone that has my entire life on it, I thought it would be smart to get myself a personal cell phone and start using that one for 2 factor authentication and personal stuff. I had an old iPhone 11 handy, and I did a factory reset on it and got it unlocked from the AT&T network. So I got the new T Mobile SIM and put it in the phone and then I added my Google account and Apple account to it. I was going to really pick and choose what apps I wanted to put on this "new" personal phone to keep it clean. My idea was I would have 2 seperate phones and slowly get all my personal stuff off the work phone before retiring and have only what I needed installed on the personal phone.

I turns out, they don't let you do that. When my personal phone gets a phone call, both phones ring. When my work phone gets a call, both phones ring. All my photos on my work phone wound up on my personal phone (25 thousand of them.) Texts are showing up on both phone simultaneously. I don't know if it's Apple or Google doing this. I genuinely thought that 2 different phones would behave differently. I haven't loaded all the apps onto the personal phone, I didn't do a "restore from iCloud" move. I think it's my Apple ID doing this. I suspect you have to create 2 different Apple IDs or 2 different Google IDs if you want your phones to be not connected.

**Posted by Flint** 6/11/2025 9:25 pm

Super annoying. It's a technological miracle that it works, but unless you ASKED for it...

...

Here's one: Microsoft Teams. Unread messages are sorted to the top, in bold. When I've read all the messages, there's nothing in bold. How, then, is it possible for there to be AcTiViTy I need to know about? The little, useless notification bell slowly accrues a "red number" that I am compelled to pay attention to. When I click on AcTiViTy it's all things I've already seen in messages I've read, like, that someone gave me a "thumbs up" reaction. Nobody needs this. Fire the ƒucking guy who thought this was a good, useful feature. All it does is distract me and take minutes away from my lifespan.

**Posted by fargon** 6/22/2025 3:36 pm

My new cgm I set up thru my phone is interfering with my camera. computers SUCK!!! That's why I left the meeting.

**Posted by Flint** 6/25/2025 11:27 am

fargon wrote:
I am signed up for a class tomorrow at 930 AM, at the library. 1 on 1 training on my pixel book. I'm Exited.

How did this go?

**Posted by fargon** 6/25/2025 12:06 pm

The only thing she taught me was how to upload pictures to the cellar. I was expecting a class. And what I got was an intern to teach me the one thing, and that was it. Kind of a joke really. Just like everything else in this town.

**Posted by monster** 6/25/2025 10:45 pm

If'n'when I get there, fargon ,(in a little over 2 weeks), I'll see what I can help with ... I'm not awesome at this shit, but I do have a few half-decent resources

**Posted by fargon** 6/26/2025 5:55 am

Thank you Monster, but I have a for Dummies that is answering my questions.
Please stop by we'll have BBQ.

**Posted by Flint** 7/24/2025 11:56 am

Windows Smart Defender making perfectly reasonable requests of my system resources:

**Posted by Flint** 8/14/2025 12:38 pm

Microsoft continues to act all anti-trusty. In insidious ways:

Office apps like Word and Excel, when saving a document, it defaults to One Drive. You have to click Browse to open the dialog which allows you to save locally to the PC. It never remembers this-- you have to do it every time. It's inconvenient, so you eventually give up and start keeping your files in One Drive.

So why does this matter? Because they're steering a captive audience towards their cloud storage application, driving them away from using their direct competitors, like Dropbox. Once they have people hooked into One Drive, they're less likely to start using another similar app. Why ever subscribe to Dropbox when MS already strong-armed you into using their product?

This is sneaky and gross.

eta: AND the end result that every Office user has to deal with-- IT TAKES LONGER, AND IS LESS CONVENIENT TO SAVE FILES. A basic ƒucking function of the goddamn thing.

Last edited by Flint (8/14/2025 12:40 pm)