My previous job was tech support for multiple companies. One of our clients was using Salesforce. Another client used Jira.

A handful of clients were using their own Teams to which I had to connect or run using Citrix and Pulse Secure/Ivanti. Sometimes I had to juggle between three or four Teams.

I'm so glad I quit. I can only hope my next employer won't use Teams, but I won't hold my breath.

Nothing surprising to the people in this community. It's crazy to see how people are very much sold to the idea of cars, even if they don't like to drive one.

Recently I was in the comments of an autonomous vehicles community about how some car manufacturer chose Waymo's "self driving" tech over Tesla's, and one popular and revealing comment went like "I can't wait for self driving cars, I'm so tired of driving!"

To me this is pretty sad, but apparently it's better to invest billions in a technology to have multi-tons vehicles wasting energy driving one person around, rather than invest in public transit. Some people hate driving but still can't see anything wrong with this excessive car culture.

When I started a new job in IT around 2009, I learned that AS400 / iSeries / IBM i was a thing, and it's still doing pretty well with big retail and the insurance business.

In the same vein, the system used by the aviation industry to book flights is also quite ancient but still very much used to this day.

I'm always a bit amazed of how things have progressed and on what Linux can still run.

This is an extreme example, but it's also possible to run a modern Linux OS on SBCs like a Raspberry Pi Zero, and still have something somewhat usable depending on your needs.

To have a computer half the size of a credit card with more RAM than my full tower rig from 2001 is amazing. And it can even run software from that era with dosbox or wine.

My 15 years old laptop is still supported and can still read 1080p on YouTube, using Linux.

Linux devs just recently decided to drop support for 486 CPUs and some early Pentiums.

There's just no competition.

Ironically, saying thank you to machines is wasting energy and costing millions.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/04/22/please-thank-you-chatgpt-openai-energy-costs/83207447007/

In a way it's a good thing that other countries are boycotting US products, they'll avoid getting sick by eating American food.

Apparently I need to invest in democracy to read more.

But yeah. When I was a young adult I thought the U.S. couldn't do worse than W. Bush. Then the first Trump presidency, then another.

It's becoming pretty clear that the U.S. is not reliable and could turn on its supposed allies at any moment.

We're gonna have to put as much distance between the U.S., and us, as possible. Apparently that's what some U.S. voters want amyway.

Maybe if we have cheaper gas, burn more oil, buy even more stuff, and concentrate on having a strong economy, things will get better?

Hey, that's me. More or less.

I have been living paycheck to paycheck for about two decades but things changed during the pandemic. I got a substantial raise, stopped smoking, and kept the same micro apartment in a high rise for years. I also live alone, refuse to pay for a car, and don't have any children.

So I was able to put some money aside in the last years and now, I take extended vacations (I took 8 weeks this year), I travel, and treat myself with what I want.

My sister wonders how I can afford to take that much time off work to go to different countries and think that I just recently found interest in traveling but really, it's just because I can afford it now.

Back in the middle of the 90ies, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were a big thing and my mother thought it would be a good idea to gift my sister and I, a pair of red-eared sliders. I kept mine for years and eventually my sister gave hers to me. So I kept two turtles for decades. I have been known as "the guy with turtles" since I'm a teenager now.

One of them just passed away this spring, after more than 27 years, and she was not that old for her species, in captivity. The other one is still alive behind me, basking under the UV light, and it could be alive for another decade. And I like Mittens (his name) but he's taking a lot of space in my apartment. It's obvious both of them would have had a better life outside, in nature, rather than in my sometimes depressive care.

Don't gift animals.

I work in IT and I have coworkers that use caps lock to capitalize single letters, like the beginning of a sentence. It hurts a bit every time I see it.

Alternatively,