Windows 11 and Other Joys

I just received a phone message saying that I have an eye appointment scheduled for February 21st at 8:35am.  This completely confused me since, if you happen to know me whatsoever, I would never voluntarily schedule an appointment at that ungodly hour of the morning.  Upon calling the office back, I told the operator that I was fairly certain that I did not schedule this appointment, and the reply was "we do this as a service to you to make sure that you stay on your annual schedule."  So, just to put this in perspective, this means that the burden is on me to a) call and cancel/reschedule the appointment and b) if I don't get the message, I'm fairly certain I'd get charged for a no-show.  Yep, this really sounds like it's for my benefit.  I promptly told them to cancel my appointment and that I'd most likely not be returning to the office...ever.

Yes, this is the world we live in.  I could go on and on, of course, like most everyone else.  It's gotten to an absurd level lately and I'm not quite sure how to get through a day anymore without getting angry and close to livid at least once or twice.  The worst part, of course, is that we all PAY to have this anger occur.  Wow.

For example, my fairly new refrigerator is freezing items in certain areas of the fridge.  No problem - just alter the temperature, right?  Well, in the old days, this would take about 2 seconds because you'd turn the dial and be done.  This new fangled machinery, though, has everything hidden within a digital interface that is completely non-intuitive.  Therefore, I need to take the time to find the manual, then find the right page and info (mind you, the info in the manual is usually either incomplete or incredibly vague), and then maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to accomplish what I set out to do originally.  If I'm lucky, it'll take 10 minutes.  Yep, from what used to be 2 seconds to 10 minutes (again, if I'm lucky).  Good deal, no?  And then, the likelihood of it even correcting the problem considering the lowered standards of all modern day appliances is beyond belief low.

In other news, I just upgraded my fairly new desktop to Windows 11.  This is a computer I purchased last year mainly for doing my Photoshop work and other odds and ends.  I'm usually the very last person to do an upgrade to a new Windows version simply because a) I see no point in doing the upgrade and b) I take no pleasure whatsoever in being the first person on the block to do anything, and why others see this as important is beyond me.  Initially, the download wouldn't take but it was because there were other standard updates that needed to be done first and were therefore blocking the upgrade.  Once I fixed that, though, it went fairly smooth.  The end result?  Well, it's pretty much what you'd expect.  Windows 11 looks out of the box a bit more like Mac OS which I would think is sacrilegious for Microsoft, but apart from that nothing that major has changed or been improved from a user perspective.  This is of course absolutely no shock from me since I personally thought Windows 95 was absolutely fine in every aspect, and every update since then has just been either fluff or completely unnecessary in terms of the user interface portion.  Basically, if you create and refine a product early on, why upgrade or change it?  Well, that's me at least.

Besides these complaints and various whines, I'm afraid I have no other real news to share.  I'm still dragging my feet in the music arena but I just got word that my Boss SY-200 came in today so it should be arriving within a week.  I'm excited to start playing around with it and hope it'll give me some new sounds to create with.  If nothing else, it's another box and gadget to take up space on my floor and closet.  Sigh.