Microsoft shouldn’t revoke license keys unless it’s a leaked VL key being spread around for piracy or the like. The semi-annual major updates seem to count as “versions” like Windows 11 22H2 (now end of service) vs Windows 11 24H2 (current). That said, it’s a poorly worded error message and it doesn’t help that Windows 11 will cry wolf at every opportunity.

Debian Stable. Predictable, low-maintenance, and well-supported. From time to time, I think about switching over to Alpine or even BSD, but the software selection and abundance of Q&A posts for Debian and its derivatives keeps me coming back. Having been a holdout on older Windows versions in the past, I’m quite used to waiting for new features and still amazed at how much easier life is with a proper package manager.

Graphing and familiar commands and syntax for those who grew up using TI calculators

Nothing worked for me until I designed my own planner. I like to take things one week at a time so every Friday afternoon, I print out enough sheets for the next week on semi-A4 paper, folded and stapled to a semi-A5 booklet.

One full page for each day with:

• Compact visual schedule of the day with a time grid (hours on the y-axis, 10s of minutes on the x-axis) and recurring events pre-printed
• “Today” box to write down reminders and tasks that don’t go on a time grid
• Section to jot down miscellaneous thoughts and ideas
• Right half of the page entirely for a journal entry

Front cover has the weekly overview and back cover has upcoming and assorted tasks.

No monthly calendar, any entry that needs to persist for longer than a week or so goes in a separate hardcover A5 journal that is usually in my bag.

Mouse cord getting caught on things. Makes me want to yank it forcefully.

XFCE4. It’s intuitive and predictable without sacrificing the ability to customize it exactly the way I want (with Chicago95 ofc). The built-in panel widgets are nothing short of amazing: battery, CPU, RAM, network, and disk monitors with labels toggled off to save space and a clock with only what I need on one line: MM/DD HH:mm:ss

Enough features so that it “just works” (no nitpicking through config files), especially on laptops, without being bloated in any way. Bonus of its lightweight nature is that I can keep my Debian/XFCE setup consistent across all of my machines, both old and new.

Can’t wait for the finished xfwm4 port to wayland so I don’t have to sacrifice some security running X11 and so I can do fractional scaling on hidpi machines.

QR code reader and generator on both phone and laptop

• Phone: SecScanQR
• Laptop: ZBarCam and Zint

But I’m glad to have learned about LocalSend here so I’m no longer limited to short text snippets