v1.0: Originally written 2022-12-07.
I consider myself a fairly tech-literate person, which is why when my recently refurbished work computer couldn’t log me in, it was an especially trying time.
There were two problems: one, the computer couldn’t connect to the internet, wired or wireless; two, because it couldn’t connect to the internet, my PIN to log into my local profile was no longer good enough, yet there were no sign-in methods that didn’t use the internet, so I effectively couldn’t get in. It was like coming home to find my front door missing and just a wall where it used to be. I had actual work to do, I couldn’t spend three hours trying to guess what Windows wanted from me - yet that’s exactly what I did, Linux laptop on-hand with several forum posts and dubious third-party help articles all asking “did you try signing in?” It wasn’t the mental effort involved that got to me, it was the emotional impact: the anger at being denied use of my computer because it couldn’t tell Daddy Microsoft about it, and the fear that I was losing my “computer guy” status a little at a time. There was also the knowledge that the solution to break into my own computer could be replicated on anyone else’s computer for nefarious purposes; locking a Windows PC is a moot point if you leave it unsupervised for twenty minutes, apparently.
The eventual solution was to uninstall my VPN, as its network kill switch engaged before the program could properly initialize and allow a connection to its own servers. To do that, I had to activate the secret administrator account that exists in every Windows installation via the command line so I could get in and uninstall it. I spent a good couple hours swearing at the network adapter before the simpler solution made itself clear.
In my defense, this hadn’t happened to my other computers, not even my gaming PC. I don’t know why this particular installation didn’t agree with the machine. The VPN-shooting-itself-in-the-foot problem might happen on a Linux machine - it hasn’t yet, but I know just little enough to believe it's not impossible. What wouldn’t happen is the subsequent inability to log into a local account on the computer because a phone-home operation couldn’t run. This is because no one using Ubuntu wants to lock their locally stored data behind a cloud account, and those who do probably know enough to make sure this interaction doesn’t happen. I can’t imagine Windows users are real cheesed about it, either, though they don’t have a choice in that OS. You will get a Microsoft account, and you will be happy.
I hesitated to write this as an article because it’s not really a timeless thing, it’s a rant about something that happened “recently,” doesn’t have a larger point than “gee, Windows 10 sucks1,” and I’ll probably forget about it in a couple weeks. It’d be perfect for a blog-like object, a more time-oriented format that can handle smaller things. Dreamwidth can hook into Neocities sites, as this coyote demonstrates on his front page, and the process to do so seems easy enough to manage. Plus, it’s another solid network outside of the big ones, and their policies on data ownership are way more user-friendly than your typical big corporate site.
My self-justification for making this an article is it’s why a real blog feed would ever show up on my website. I held off at first because it wasn’t my main goal for a site and I didn’t want to apply subconscious pressure on myself to be “active.” Nothing about me in 2022 is active. I can barely keep up with art site feeds, let alone create c o n t e n t at an acceptable clip. Now that the site’s more or less together, though, I can give it a shot if I feel like it.
1 And it does, but not as badly as Win8 and for different reasons I could get into, but won't. It's not something I would rant in longform about, either; diatribes against Microsoft don't help people find alternatives, they just pump more negativity into the internet like waste into the ocean.