Dance. In a troupe full of girls. Honestly, it was me and 15-20 girls.

Other boys literally called me gay for dancing, while they went and played whatever sports they did and then all went into a locker room and showered together etc.

I honestly never understood how they thought dance was gay. I don’t understand it now.

It’s been over 20 years since I did phones, but I don’t imagine it has changed that much. The “techie” callers fall into two categories: Those who actually know what they’re doing and those who think they know what they’re doing. The latter group are the worst of all callers. I’d rather be on the phone to an 80-year-old who has trouble finding the start menu than with a caller who thinks they know more than they actually do.

If you honestly do know what you are talking about, the way to get this to tech support is to tell them what prompted you to call. An actual competent caller will open the call with something like:

“Hi, this is Cile. I’m calling from ______. My UserID/AccountNo etc is _______. I’m having a problem with ___________. The error message is [EXACT MESSAGE]. I have done a, b, c, but that resolved it.”

For your example where it’s an access matter, adapt the above accordingly. Something like “I need to do ________, but I lack the access to [steps you would take if you did have access]”.

Finally:
Unless you are experiencing something super weird, the tech support people have probably seen this problem before and know how to solve it. Follow their instructions even if it’s something you wouldn’t have done. Even if their way seems less efficient. There will be a reason why they’re doing it that way, and it won’t always be apparent to you.

How you can have an article talking about the history of email and it not be about Ray Tomlinson, I just don’t know. Wait - now I know: This person looked up the Wikipedia article on the smtp protocol and decided Mr. Postal was the pioneer of email.

The conclusion is completely incorrect, also. About the only correct thing was that reputation is important for email transmission.

No: you can’t just set up an smtp outbound server on your home server and expect the world to trust you. For good reason: we’ve had decades of trojans and viruses taking over home PCs and sending spam. Your ISP declares its “home” IP ranges, and those are immediately not trusted.

That doesn’t mean you need to use a big email hosting provider. If you set up on a business IP range, configure your DNS Correctly with declared mx and spf records, the world will trust you (until you demonstrate that it can’t).

Millions of businesses around the world do this.

Oh! I just remembered that I can control my neighbor’s fan! I got tired of the constant notification that I could see it/set it up. So, I connected to it and the notification finally went away. But yeah: I can see when it’s on/off and turn it on/off whenever I wish. I’ve never abused this power, they are old and will probably think their house is haunted or something. I just wanted the stupid notification to go away.

Hahaha great question. It’s funny how I thought it was a silly question when asked the other way. In a way, my response is the same for both phones: ‘The main thing stopping me is that I am not considering switching’.

That said, I carried both for years, so I can probably provide some insight. I switched from Windows Mobile to iOS in 2008. I had one phone until 2012. My “main” phone was iOS from 2008-2017. The biggest factor was (and still is somewhat) who had the best camera. Pixel 1 had a better camera, so I switched to Android as my main in 2017. These days, both have great cameras and it wouldn’t be a reason to switch.

My current job doesn’t need me to have two phones, but I still carry an iPad mini, so I remain in both ecosystems.

I prefer Android on my phone for lots of little reasons, but they all basically boil down to the same thing: Android lets me do what I want with my phone.

It’s difficult to explain if you haven’t been an Android user. If you don’t know what a launcher is, it’s the interface between you and your apps. I’ve never much liked Google’s launcher. I don’t like Google’s keyboard, so I use my own. I like to change the default number of rows/columns of my app icons. I like switching between two bottom-row docks. Then there’s stuff like default apps, and way better widgets, of course. Plus I can arrange my apps how I like.

Now - if you are on iOS and have never had this stuff, you won’t miss it. If you want your phone to “just work” and never think about personalizing it, you have no reason to even value the personalisation that Android offers. But, if you’ve gotten used to your personal phone layout, being forced into the Apple way is restrictive.

The types of people we are talking about don’t actually read books, anyway. This is what has always baffled me about these movements. It isn’t like they’re affected by the contents of a book.

The neat thing about anonymous discussion on the Internet is that it doesn’t matter. What you have to say is all that matters.

I don’t know anything about anyone and that’s great.

So I’ve just bought a PC. I haven’t had a new computer for 12 years. The newest game I’ve played is Subnautica (and Below Zero). I’ve basically missed everything from the last 15 years.

I own a few games that I haven’t been able to play until now (Fallout 4, Star Wars Squadrons, Witcher 3, few others). Thinking I probably have enough games in my backlog to play those and maybe look at new stuff next sale.

That’s going to be a tough one to call. Nokia Communicator had diary (calendar), web browsing and email features in the 90s. You could also tether off it, but it was dialup and most phones could do that.

That was pretty much the definition of a smart phone at the time.

It may depend on your culture, but Blackberry and Windows Mobile phones were both fairly common in business circles years before iPhones.

The iPhone was an incremental advancement, not a major invention out of nowhere. The first iPhone was actually pretty crap compared to some models on the market. It wasn’t until the 3G model that iPhones took off.

The whole start to Graceland by Paul Simon is pretty vivid:

The Mississippi Delta Was shining like a national guitar.
I am following the river down the highway through the cradle of the Civil War.
I’m going to Graceland, Graceland - Memphis, Tennessee
I’m going to Graceland

Poor boys and pilgrims with families and we are going to Graceland
My traveling companion is nine years old he is the child of my first marriage
But I’ve reason to believe we both will be received in Graceland

I have never been to Tennessee. But this intro really conjures up some vivid imagery of driving down a highway through some historic country, along a river in the company of a child - and being among many others going to the same place.

It’s pure poetry.

I think this one was surpassed by X-Wing Alliance.

I kiss my sons and will continue to do so for as long as they let me. I can’t think of any other male friends/family that I kiss.

I don’t think I’d have a problem with being kissed, but it simply isn’t done. Hugs, yes. Kisses, no. I don’t feel a need to kiss any of them, which is pretty hypocritical since I readily kiss most of my female friends/family.

Interesting question. I can’t say I particularly wish that kissing my male friends/family was more socially normalised. But I’d probably embrace the societal change if it came along.

The biggest problem I see with this is the scenario where calls are recorded. They’re recorded in case we hit a “he said, she said” scenario. If some issue were to be escalated as far as a courtroom, the value of the recording to the business is greatly diminished.

Even if the words the call agent gets are 100% verbatim, a lawyer can easily argue that a significant percentage of the message is in tone of voice. If that’s lost and the agent misses a nuance of the customer’s intent, they’ll have a solid case against the business.

I did phones in a different century, so I don’t know whether this would fly today. But, my go-to for someone like this was “ok, I think I see the problem here. Shall we go ahead and fix it or do you need to do more yelling first?”

I can’t remember that line ever not shutting them down instantly. I never took it personally, whatever they had going on they were never angry at me personally.

Then again, I do remember firing a couple of customers (“we don’t want your business any more etc”) after I later became a manager and people were abusive to staff. So you could be right, also.

Accidentally shutting down a Windows server is impressive. They have that “why are you shutting down?” dialogue to prevent this scenario.

Surely opinions on this are going to vary wildly? Lemmy is full of people installing graphene and de-googling, while I’m happy with stock Android on Pixels with a custom launcher. Samsung, Sony and Asus all have serious devotees as well.

There’s also different responses depending on what you want in a phone. Some people want smaller than 6", others must have a 3.5mm jack. Some want SD storage. The camera is vital for me, but most of my colleagues don’t really care about the camera.

How would you sift through all that for a “best” one size fits all phone?

Monty Python.
I can’t believe people have semi serious responses to such an absurd turn of phrase. Spike Milligan would also be a reasonable response.

Oh wow. I can’t imagine going into Endgame completely blind. Had you read the comics at least? Or was it just an ensemble of weird characters with powers fighting each other and travelling through time?

What would have even been the point in the fight?

There is nothing that I want to watch badly enough that I would put up with this behavior.