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It's the portfolio. I did a whole bunch of little freelance jobs for remote clients that resulted in getting attention landing longer term contracts ... which led to another contract based on what I learned previously, etc. But all remote.
One goes back to satisfy "IT recruiters"; not customers who just want a good solution.
With "IT shops", when you think it's about a degree, more often it's ageism; which contracting and freelancing doesn't suffer from (in my experience) ... because everyone knows it's temporary.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Gerry Schmitz wrote: because everyone knows it's temporary.
Everything is.
"Even this, shall pass away."
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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About a month ago, I started having problems with my bluetooth mouse...lagging mostly. I've had this mouse for over a year now and it's always had minor hiccups where it might lose it's connection for a few seconds, but mostly worked fine.
One of the first things I did was to swap the bluetooth mouse for my laptop's wireless (rf) mouse. At first it seemed to work, but I quickly noticed that it also was losing connection, mostly when I was working on my secondary monitor. 
The second thing I tried was a brand new Logitech wireless (rf) mouse. Nope, same thing, it seemed to work at first, then the experience got worse, especially when working on my secondary monitor. By worse, I mean selecting text/line with a left-drag was impossible, clicks were randomly 'ignored'...there were many times where I had to just get up and walk away from it. 
At least the Logitech mouse came with software that showed the device connection status. As I was working, I could watch the connection drop and reset depending on mouse actions. I could even cause the connection to drop simply by clicking once a failure occurred and hold the connection closed by keeping a mouse button down. Hmmm, maybe it's the USB port? Swap the rf receiver to another port and it works...for a minute, then starts failing again. 
Finally, Google produced a result that mentioned that for best results, there should be no obstructions between the device and the receiver.  Bingo! Winner!  Watching the connection status in the Logitech software, it became abundantly clear that my desk was interfering with the connection! My mouse sits on the front right of my physical desktop and the cpu sits on the floor just to the right of the desk. It's a mere 28 inches from the corner of my desktop to where the receiver is plugged in. My mistake is that I assumed that rf would bounce/bend given such a short distance.
I remembered having a Linksys USB extender (from when N became a standard) so I dug it out of a cables drawer and hooked it up. The receiver now sits in a nice little stand on the back right corner of my desktop at around 16 inches from the mouse, though it seems to work flawlessly up to at least 36 inches. It's nice to finally stop fighting with the mouse, but annoying to think how much frustration I went through without seeing the real problem!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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I had the opposite issue with Logitech M187s (of which I've had several over the years). I mouse right handed, and if I plug the receiver in a USB port on the right side of the laptop, so the operating range is maybe 6" or 8", it hiccups. Dongle in left side USB port, all is cool.
Big wooden desk on steel frame, lots of 2.4GHz signals flying round the room.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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I have the Logitech M215 and experienced similar behavior. Occasional lag when USB receiver gets blocked by hardware like a USB external drive, just move keyboard and mouse closer or move drive. I use desktop.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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My muscles are relaxed and I feel so good! I've just discovered that Win11 added the option to open Task Manager when you right-click on taskbar. I know there are many other ways of opening the Task Manager but my hands just have muscle memory and every time I wanted to open it, my hands would right click on the task bar just to see that the option is no longer there (by this time brain will kick in and click on Ctrl-Shift-Esc to open said Task Manager).
Imagine my surprise this morning when hands again went to right click and eyes noticed the old/new option. Not sure when this happened but sure was a nice surprise. Soon Win11 will look just like Win10 but with rounded corners.
Mircea
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I think that's a challenge that Microsoft face - they have to usher in the new version, but not too different from the present one.
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That's my problem with all major version Windows upgrades. I'm all for the additional security, support for new devices and device types, etc., but why do they have to mess around with the UI? 
(I don't mean the way things look; I mean the keyboard shortcuts, context menus, placement of options in "Settings", etc.)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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What about if the changes were deliberate - and done to draw attention away from less annoying changes, that were more important to Microsoft's long-term strategy. Changes like gradually moving things more and more into the cloud. Like trying so hard to prevent local accounts on Windows 11.
What about if giving these things back after a few weeks made people feel good about Microsoft again?
Definitely becoming paranoid in my old age.
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Everything you say is possible. MS presumably earns quite a bit from its "cloud" storage, and would like to increase that. I believe, however, that they reversed themselves on local accounts etc. after the outcry from their clients, which just shows good business sense; there is no need to assume benevolence or anything else on MS's part.
As for your paranoia, even paranoiacs have enemies. 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I can understand your frustration. Sometimes the UI changes are 'unnecessary'.
But then: There is a shortage of available resources - not in manpower or CPU cycles, but in input alternatives. I have been arguing with *nix (/x11) people who reject Windows because you cannot simply left click a word (or double click for the line), and then right click to paste it somewhere else: Windows designers decided that we cannot occupy the mouse buttons for one single functions! Sorry, you *nix oldtimers, even though your old cut&paste was very efficient, you will have to abandon it. Mouse buttons must be available for other functions as well.
There are only so many F keys available, so many control keys, Alt-keys, ... Furthermore, we would like functions to be reasonably logically grouped: Win<key> functions make one functional group, Ctrl<key> another one. If we want to keep some order, not even all the theoretically available functions can be used. Keystrokes are in short supply.
You have a similar situation with menus: Which entry should be on top? Which should be in the main menu, rather than the submenu? Different demands can go into a dogfight, and sometimes, the "newcomer" wins, and the old established top menu entry is moved. For several applications, you can allow them to report 'telemetry data' to some statistics center: One essential purpose is to see which functions are rarely if ever used: In the next release, those are moved over to a submenu, or maybe even left out.
One curious example: A generation ago, HP introduced a new 'scientific' calculator - it may have been with HP-41C, but I think the story is even older. Some users complained to HP that the calculator could no longer do factorials (!), which had been available on all earlier scientific models. 'Oh yes, but it can do factorials', HP support replied, 'it is just that we didn't have any key position available for it!' Factorial was provided in a math plugin, which calculated it 'longhand', as if user programmed - several times slower than the old built-in one.
For menus such as right click in the task bar, there is no hard limit on the number of entries. Studies have shown that an average person can overview seven menu entries at a glance. Beyond that, we have to search the menu from top down. My current Win10 context menu has 14 entries. If Win11 really would like to add, say, another six entries that are more requested by users, they could accept a huge 20-entry menu, or shorten it down by removing those entries used by very few. Sure, it doesn't cost lots of resources to keep that one menu entry available to those six users worldwide who still use it, but if it is just clutter to ten million other users, can we sacrifice it anyway?
Sometimes, the explanation is code internal. I have myself been cleaning up old code, doing fundamental refactoring, and adapted dozens of UI level functionality to new kernel code. Then comes a couple user functions that I haven't heard of anyone using for many years, and they require some functions or data structures that no other 'modern' function makes use of. Should I keep significant parts of the old kernel code, and some semi-obsolete user functions that no one uses anymore? Or should I clean up the code to make it smaller and more maintainable?
Sometimes, developers decide to do the cleanup. Sometimes that reveals that the functions wasn't obsolete after all ... In my first job, 40 years ago, the maintainers of the internal system programming language Planc distributed an internal memo "To: Everyone in R&D, Everyone in SW support. Subject: I/O of reals will be removed from Planc." - that was all. It caused the developers to march three abreast to the offices of the Planc maintenance guys, and I/O of real values was not removed from Planc.
Maybe Win11 developers misjudged the users when they decided to remove the shortcut to Task Manager. They wanted to simplify the UI, making it as simple as possible, not simpler. But this was. So they backed up.
For those who enjoy stories of backwards compatibility issues: Raymond Chen has published a book with a large selection of his blog posts at The Old New Thing[^] (which is also the title of the book). Quite a few of the stories included in the book regards backwards compatibility, and several of them have a crazy humor to them. Highly recommended! (That goes for the day-to-day blog as well!)
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What gets me about a lot of changes (especially to UI) with MS is that they never actually seem to research the effects of the changes on actual, real-world, not in the MS eco-system users, so things that make no sense get through, only to be retracted or tweaked later when real users start bitching! Like so many dev firms, its more important to have something new and shiny than to provide something actually useful.
The latest Windows 11 upgrade has, for example, severely impacted my 4K laptop usability:
Until now, if using in laptop mode (ie with keyboard and mouse) all file search menus were like my desktop (also 4K Win 11) with nice compact lists of files, easy to scan and select from with the mouse.
Now, because my laptop CAN be folded into a tablet (which used to switch tablet mode on automatically) it is now in tablet mode permanently, so file search lists are widely spaced for better usability with touch and the option to use 'desktop' mode has been removed. So despite having 4K desktop and 4K laptop, the usability of the laptop has been reduced by the removal of a very useful and long-lived feature for no apparent reason.
This is a minor thing but reflects the whole MS culture around UI. Think back to the win8 debacle, when a whole new UI was introduced but with absolutely, positively no on-screen help or prompts as to how to drive it. Turn on the machine, you are faced with maybe an icon to launch something, no indication or guides as to the touch or mouse gestures needed to interact with the machine and - if you had a keyboard attached - nothing about the UI in the F1 help either - which in any case didn't work at all if you weren't displaying the desktop rather than the (default) front touch menu.
Another major UI failing is the introduction of the 'button' bars across the top of Office applications etc. Just as the world was adopting ever wider ie landscape screens, the apps for working on documents (the vast majority of which are portrait) removed large vertical spaces from the screen for their 'menus' making viewing significant portions of the thing you are working on much harder. Likewise the recent decision by MS to stop you from moving the taskbar to the side of the screen to give you more vertical working area - why? Who's work is made easier by doing that?
Sorry, rant over, but this kind of stupidity really boils my piss!
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I refuse to use any Word later than 2003, the last one before the button bar appeared. As well as taking up screen area, the bar was more difficult to use than menus because you have to scan the whole bar looking for a function.
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I've always used ctrl-alt-del to get to the task manager. Never knew there is a direct shortcut or context menu. And I exist by PC since Win95.
There is only one Vera Farmiga and Salma Hayek is her prophet!
Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
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Sure, one of these johnny-come-lately! Were were you in the times of Win 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 
Mircea
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And where were you in the time of CP/M?
...
And where was I in the time of OS/360?
...
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Considering that my first program ran on an IBM-7040 (in WATFOR, of course), I think I've been around for long enough to qualify for a free ticket to the land where programs have no bugs 
Mircea
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I don't know where you'd find bug-free programs. I can't imagine that there are computers in Heaven, and in Hell the programs wouldn't be bug-free.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: I can't imagine that there are computers in Heaven
They sure must be! And they all answer to "Hello, Computer"
Mircea
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IBM 1620 here, built two years before the 7040 in 1959.
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CP/M That was the OS I used at home while working on by BSCS it allowed me to program at home vs classmates going to the LAB to do homework. In those days you needed to program in ASM just to get peripherals to work.
Good memories 
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Those were some of the most fun days of my computer building. I built a number of interesting and useful peripheral boards for my home build CP/M based system (S100 bus). A 4K RAM board, a control board for an IBM selectric typewriter mechanism (no dot matrix printouts for me!), a Votrax based speech synthesizer board and a cassette tape backup board. I just loved the low level design and programming.
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Oh Wow, I forgot about that I bought the Vortrax chip (I think it was about $65 a lot for the mid 80's) wire wrapped a S100 Board with an ADC and an RTC and had a talking Clock as well as a talking voltmeter The system also greeted me on Powerup.
You can Thank the movie 2001 and the HAL 9000 for some of the that went into that system.
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It was a fun project. I wrote a text to speech program so I could make it say whatever I wanted. It really brought home how funky english language spelling can be!
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The direct shortcut is CTRL+Shift+ESC, and this is what I am using.
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