First world problems

[Arantor]

Of all the moaning that's going on about the royals, there's a suspicious lack of discussion about Prince Andrew.

 

[Retro]

Indeed, you'd think that the black sheep of the family would get more attention.

I suspect, that like the "royals" are allowed to change the law in their favour, the media have been instructed to keep quiet about him. I don't have any evidence of this, but it seems plausible to me.

 

[Tiffany]

The Harry and Meghan saga is all over our news too. I don't waste my time, not interested. Whatever their problem is, I don't think it's a good thing to do to disrupt the monarchy. From what I remember "royalty" was from my childhood and appears now, the dynamics of royalty is totally different. I miss Princess Diana, from an American point of view.

 

[Arantor]

If Harry's wife had been a) British, b) white-skinned and c) willing to be cowed by the media as a dutiful wife, you wouldn't hear about any of this.

But we'll not talk about the fact that we're discussing a war veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan, as well as being legitimately traumatised with having to walk behind his mother's coffin in front of millions of people, while aged... what, 9?

I think fair play to them for raising the awfulness that is the establishment.

 

[Retro]

Racism is definitely playing its part here and there and I don't condone it no matter how rich and privileged the target is.

And the rest, yeah, agreed. I still don't wanna hear about them all the time though. They've got money and privileges like we can only dream of, so any sympathy must always be seen with that in mind. People on the whole routinely forget this, but it's incredibly important.

I think we'd be in competition for who likes the monarchy least... and my opinion is pretty low, I tell you. This would be a conversation to have in private.

 

[Retro]

Why are takeaway pizzas so expensive? Much more so than a burger and chips, for example.

 

[Arantor]

Takeaway burgers can be prepared from frozen real quick in a way pizzas generally aren't. You'd know a pizza from frozen - and it takes longer and more space to cook than your average burger.

But most places that do takeaway will make pizza from relative scratch rather than burgers, which costs more in time, skill and ingredients.

 

[Retro]

Yup, it boils down to labour and time, sigh.

 

[Tiffany]

My first world problem this week is I have to spend too much time shopping on line to find the best price for paper products. I've already lowered my expectations on paper towel quality because I refuse to pay the excessive mark up price. It took me nearly two hours the other day to compare apples to apples on a certain paper products. Do you know how confusing that can be when vendors are purposely being deceptive?

 

[FF]

My chair has a hole in it.

 

[Tiffany]

Hope you can get your chair fixed @FF

 

[FF]

Hope you can get your chair fixed @FF

Just got a new one. Pretty nice.

 

[Tiffany]

Awesome @FF !! Now you are ready for the New Year weekend with your new chair!

 

[Tiffany]

My first world problem is Dell just repaired my laptop and now I have to go through the process of bitlocker recovery. I'm glad I backed up my laptop because no one told me that once my pc was fixed I'd have to get a recovery key. Can you imagine the poor soul that is going through this like me, that neglected to back up their pc and/or maybe not computer savvy enough to go through this recovery process? Then I'm wondering where is everything on my pc if I have to unlock it? Does Dell have access to it? Not that I care, it's mostly graphic work, but how does this work??

 

[Retro]

My first world problem is Dell just repaired my laptop and now I have to go through the process of bitlocker recovery.

That's really shoddy support from them as your laptop was working ok with an external keyboard, so you could have obtained the recovery key from it before they took it apart, just from the normal user interface of Windows, which they should have done first. Did they replace the motherboard? This would cause the recovery key to be required.

Note that Dell won't have access to your recovery key, or any access to your HDD / SSD. The only exception to this would be if it was a domain-joined computer that was centrally managed by an organisation. However, that's never the case for personal laptops. Good thing you have your work backed up, since without it you've just lost everything on that drive and have to reinstall Windows from scratch, drivers and all, or an image.

This is BitLocker doing its job, as it's preventing unauthorised people from getting access to your computer, or putting your drive in theirs and reading the data off it. A Windows password for your login would complete the security.

You're within your rights to call them back and tell them that you can't get back into your computer and expect them to help you with this. They should have an image that you can install on it off a bootable USB stick, or download off their website using another PC and create that bootable USB stick.

 

[Tiffany]

That's really shoddy support from them as your laptop was working ok with an external keyboard, so you could have obtained the recovery key from it before they took it apart, just from the normal user interface of Windows, which they should have done first. Did they replace the motherboard? This would cause the recovery key to be required.

Note that Dell won't have access to your recovery key, or any access to your HDD / SSD. The only exception to this would be if it was a domain-joined computer that was centrally managed by an organisation. However, that's never the case for personal laptops. Good thing you have your work backed up, since without it you've just lost everything on that drive and have to reinstall Windows from scratch, drivers and all, or an image.

This is BitLocker doing its job, as it's preventing unauthorised people from getting access to your computer, or putting your drive in theirs and reading the data off it. A Windows password for your login would complete the security.

You're within your rights to call them back and tell them that you can't get back into your computer and expect them to help you with this. They should have an image that you can install on it off a bootable USB stick, or download off their website using another PC and create that bootable USB stick.

Thank you so much for all of that clarity @Retro. I did have to have the motherboard replaced. I'm now in my computer having successfully navigated the weird experience of bitlocker. I just winged it. It was a bit weird, because the first time I entered the code, it looked like it was working, then I got the blue screen again with different directions that appeared as if my code didn't work. So I clicked on another way to get access, entered the code again, which now was populating in italics text, which bothered me, but then after my laptop did it's sitting and thinking, my desktop popped up and opened.

So far, all of my documents and files seem to be in place. I do have another issue that I hoped would have been resolved with the repair, but it's not.....In the back of my dell alienware, there's an RGB lighting system. Only half the lights are working and the half of the lights that are on, are staying in the stationary blue, not waving other colors. I know, I feel really bad even complaining about it, at least I have a keyboard, but seriously? I've already sent my second email to Dell today. The first was a question about the bitlocker access, to which I didn't get the real answer I was looking for...which was.... I was concerned that if I put in the code wrong, would that be it, or would I have another chance to reenter. The other scary part is you really have to know how your Microsoft email is set up for your laptop and your dell account. I have a password document, but I wasn't really clear to myself on what's what etc. Now I've updated that password document, but that was also a little dicey getting through the quagmire of what bitlocker wanted. The email I used to get my bitlocker access key was different from the microsoft email needed to get into my computer. Funny, I was going to delete this email that had my bitlocker access key on it....glad I didn't months ago, or I would be writing a totally different message here.

 

[Retro]

Man that was a close call with BitLocker. Glad it ended well. And yes, do chase them up about the lights as it should be 100% working.

 

[Tiffany]

I know right?? Even though I had a back up, the whole process still freaked me out.

Here's what my RGB lights are doing .....which is nothing....just half of the back is illuminated with the blue light. I did go into my Alienware FX section and I think there's something wrong there too. The drop down menu's are blank to customize. I sent pics to Dell on that too.....sigh....

 

[Retro]

Yeah, that's pretty annoying. Hope they fix it without too much hassle.

 

[Tiffany]

Me too. So far the hassle is their support email won't accept my attachments. I've been resizing and trying to get them sent for the past 45 minutes. This last effort I sent one picture at a time.....jeez! I'd rather be doing something else productive rather then fighting "stoopid" technology.

 

[Retro]

What about uploading the pictures to cloud storage and sharing them out from there?

It's also possible that the file sizes of the pictures are too large for email and the resolution needs to be dropped down.

 

[Tiffany]

Thank you @Retro .......I will try that next if these latest emails get sent back.

 

[Retro]

This may not actually be considered a "problem", but I miss flat earth! No, I'm not a rabid flat earther, but a roundy*.

I used to be a member of several flat earth Fackebook groups some time back and would sometimes participate with lots of mockery of their ridiculous posts, together with plenty of facepalms which would often get them frothing at the mouth, or disdain me from on high with an overly superior attitude** of "you wouldn't understand", both of which were equally hilarious. However, I eventually got a bit bored with it and unsubbed most of those groups. Now, Fakebook*** have gone all spoilsport and banned a lot of them for spreading - gasp - misinformation, so most of the ones left are actually roundy groups masquerading as flatty groups. The problems of today, sigh.



* Technically a spherey, but that doesn't trip off the tongue quite as well.
** Only cats can be superior, bless.
*** @Tiffany approved spelling.

 

[Tiffany]

ROTFL You really do have a way with words @Retro ....and OMG, you must have totally triggered those flat earthers.

Fakebook may yet get theirs yet; if anything, playing with this graph in this link below was fun!

https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/META

 

[Arantor]

First world problem: having so many ideas through your brain about so many things that you open up the usual tools you'd use for expression and... nothing. Doesn't matter if it's Sublime or Word or Aseprite, just... blankness hits.