Hopefully you encounter as few as possible in the future.

It’s worth noting that much of that time was during a lockdown and subsequent years involved working from home. Also in the intervening time I bought my wife an EV, which provides most of my transportation.

The gas vehicle is used about once a week to pick up heavy or large things or to take large boxes to the recycling area; plus there are occasions where my wife is out in her EV and I have to go somewhere. During these occasions I am grateful to have my own transportation.

It’s true that I don’t get much use out of the car, but I live in a fairly rural area. The closest non residential building that I know of is 2-3 miles away and I have limited mobility due to an injury. There’s no presence whatsoever of any Uber type services; I don’t even know of a taxi industry, though there likely is one. If I didn’t have reliable transportation I would be pretty screwed. Even during the week or two between when my Flex broke down and I replaced it, I had to cancel two doctor appointments and miss other things I wanted to do.

I probably would survive if all we had was my wife’s car, but I would lose to a lot of convenience and my schedule would definitely get more complicated.

I, too, choose this guy’s bidet.

That’s not true. Many snakes are over twelve inches long! Hope this helps.

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science infotainment development?

Presumably, for such a complaint, the cops wouldn’t even bother to come to laugh at you unless they were very very bored. This is probably true in both circumstances you described. Also, I can’t speak for others, but unless detained I wouldn’t stick around most public locations long enough for someone to complain about a notification from my phone. Even if a call is received and must be answered, it seems appropriate to accept the call and leave the immediate shared area if possible. Obviously, in such circumstances as a moving bus, quickly leaving isn’t really feasible.

However, I partially agree with the person to whom you responded. Your phone shouldn’t make any media based sound (videos, music) in public. I also mostly agree with what I think you’re saying: in most circumstances, notification sounds are inoffensive. Movies are not the only exception to this but definitely are one. Laughing in the face of someone who requests quiet in a public shared area seems rude, though, and might escalate the situation.

To elaborate, recently I went to see a dental surgeon. As I approached the waiting area, my immediate thought was to set my phone to vibrate. Once I entered, however, I realized that not only was there a TV in the space; also there was an elderly couple watching TV on their phones. Not only were they doing so, not only were they watching something different from what was on the TV, not only were they watching their media at BLARING volume, but they were also watching vastly different content. In this circumstance, notifications could be - reluctantly - forgiven, but their blasting and conflicting media made it very difficult to concentrate on filling out my paperwork.

I’m too much of a wimp to have approached them, but in that circumstance I think it would have been appropriate to ask them to silence their media and would have only required a vague awareness of the existence of others for them to have done so without prompting.

Though the cops, if they came, would likely still have just laughed.

An aside: as soon as the presumed wife left the waiting area, the likely husband shut off his media. I don’t know what that means, but wanted to mention it.

This is useful information and the depth of your knowledge is impressive. Not that I expect operating system expertise from a car salesperson who has no reason to have any, but my salesperson told me it was still Microsoft. Thank you.

Suddenly I miss the Flex just a tiny, tiny bit less.

Honestly, it was a car, a thing; I can’t claim legitimate pain. It makes me a little sad on occasion, but overall in my life it won’t matter. My mom, who loved aphorisms, would have said “by the time you’ve been married twice, you’ll forget all about it.” I plan to maintain my first and current marriage, but the sentiment fits.

I am very sorry for the loss of your Element! I was only in one once, but I loved the way the dials worked. Perhaps this humorous lyric from the song “Swagless” by Spose might provide some comfort:

I could sign and drive a boxy Honda SUV and not be in my element

219,000 is pretty solid for any car. I think I bought my Flex at 83,000 miles and sold it at under 100,000. Maybe the starting mileage was 73,000, but somewhere in that vicinity. That included using it as my primary transport vehicle when moving across several hundred miles (which, TBH, is probably what killed it - but I appreciated that I was able to use it and its vast cargo capacity.)

With reference to the toast at the end of the comment, I’ve always loved boxy vehicles. As a kid, my favorite vehicle was my dad’s 1984 Toyota Celica (though his was maroon, unlike the picture). It’s also the car in which I learned to drive a manual.

They don’t make many boxy cars anymore. The first time I saw a Flex was on the highway and I said to my passengers “what was that?! I want one” then several years later I had referenced it so much my wife said to me some form of “FINE, shut up about it and go buy one.” Several hours later I drove home my favorite vehicle so far.

Thanks for the response!

Sure, and for the eight years I owned it before it broke down beyond being worth repairing, I had no problem with those. The infotainment system did kinda suck, but it was a 2014 so I think it would get some leeway for that even if it weren’t Microsoft powered.

The emblem just offended my sensibilities. I never pulled it off, though, because the friends who rode with me all knew how passionately I feel about Linux (they mostly also work with it - I try not to proselytize to the disinterested) and found it funny.

According to KBB, the car was worth $8k when it broke down. I put almost double that into repairing the same part of the engine at three different mechanics before giving up. Sadly, for some silly reason, Ford no longer makes the Flex. I think the Explorer is pretty close, but I couldn’t find one close enough to test drive. I would have loved to convert my car to an EV, but I wouldn’t trust my own work on that front and didn’t want to pay as much as would cost to have a professional do it.

Every time I get into my new vehicle - a 2024 Ford Edge - I think to myself how much I miss the Flex. That said, I did get a great deal on the Edge.

Until recently, I had a Ford Flex.

The only thing I didn’t like about it was the proud “powered by Microsoft” emblem (and its implications).

I’m old enough to have been a fan of Buffy, but didn’t watch TV back then. I also enjoy some modern pop music but, in the vast majority of cases, have never seen the artists. I’m also terminally bad at faces even if I have seen them (I’ve had to ask my wife whether a picture of her was her; she took it well).

I did actually recognize Alyson Hanigan, since she has a few distinctive expressions and features, but had no idea of the rest.

All that said to say: thanks for the explanation; me not getting the joke or reference doesn’t mean it was a bad one.

While grateful for the explanation, I find myself no less confused.

To be fair, I think there is a “shopping” tab when you perform a search through them.

If you haven’t, you should watch and/or read Altered Carbon.

If you choose to watch, it is my opinion that it’s primarily the first season that’s worth watching.

Unacceptable.

My wife also has ADHD and says that watching stuff at 1.5x or 2x helps.

You are correct! My client screwed me up. Thanks for helping to explain my mistake.

I was actually wondering, when the previous commenter referenced the setup menu, if the shift+F10 thing still worked. I know it brings up the command prompt in the install interface, but in case you didn’t know, it also brings up the command prompt in general use Windows. (Or it used to. Again, I’m very out of date on the subject.)

I think “not hard, just annoying” means that anything tech related is out of reach for most people, unfortunately. Plus, to be honest, most people probably won’t care about or see a problem with Microsoft forcing an online account on them. I’m happy they’re happy, but their privacy ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

Ah, fair enough.

I haven’t used, or especially installed, Windows in years. Wasn’t sure if what I described was still the case. Good to know there’s still a way, though, in case I get desperate!

This may not still be true, but previously if you disconnected or removed the NIC during installation, after some haranguing you could setup a local account. (Note that this is still obviously bad, but if you need a solution, it might provide one.)