6 ms·

Sammons, the fourth generation of his family to run the 100-plus-year-old S&L and its only full-time employee, confides that he’s a bit tech-averse. “Computers

Sammons, the fourth generation of his family to run the 100-plus-year-old S&L and its only full-time employee, confides that he’s a bit tech-averse. “Computers are great when they work,” says the 55-year-old, laughing. “I don’t have the patience for them.” Most days I bet most of us would agree with that statement!

latchkey 4y ago
Half the time when my computer doesn’t “work” it is because I am using it to deal with outdated banks and credit cards. Today, I was trying to pay 2 parking tickets. First one went through just fine. Second one failed with invalid zip code, even though I was using the same one. Turns out that since I have different mailing and billing addresses, it was randomly picking the one to use.
SoftTalker 4y ago
Yep. I was just trying to fill out a PDF form for my taxes. A complete nightmare. Tried three different PDF viewers that had different bugs or incompatibilities with the form. Finally had to start a Windows VM to run Acrobat, that was the only way to get it done, other than print the blank form and fill it out by hand which in retrospect would have saved me about 40 minutes. I have been in software and IT for my whole career and I absolutely hate computers now. I want nothing to do with them when I retire, and I'm going to deliberately structure my life accordingly.
- dangerlibrary 4y ago
  I've had decent luck with Xournal's "Annotate PDF" feature. It's not really interacting with the PDF form at all, so if the form is at all complicated it'd be a waste of your time. But, if you just need to "sign" something by dropping a transparent PNG on a line at the bottom and typing in a date, it's perfect.
- silisili 4y ago
  Same. Sometimes my wife asks why I don't play on the computer or social media, and I tell her it's because I hate computers. She expectedly says...but you're a programmer. I think doing anything all day every day sucks the joy out of it.
  - freshocean 4y ago
    > I think doing anything all day every day sucks the joy out of it. totally relatable. same might hold true with driving, cooking, gardening, etc also. :)
- nebula8804 4y ago
  Sounds like you are purposely making your life worse by using something like Linux. Don't blame the machine when it is running poorly tested software that likely did not consider UX. Have you tried using a Mac full time? It lacks the ad-bloatware of Windows 11 while still retaining some POSIX compatibility.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    I've used Mac, Windows 10, and Linux (KDE and Cinnamon). Linux has been an infinitely more pleasant experience.
    - BirAdam 4y ago
      I’ve used em all. I hate Windows. MacOS is “fine”, and Linux can be great. The issues with Linux are on edge cases, just like macOS. They’re just in different places, imho.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    I did try my wife’s MacBook, it failed.
- rendx 4y ago
  Master PDF Editor is the only proprietary software I use on my machine, and it's well worth the license fee. https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor/ https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor/ (free trial)
  - scrollaway 4y ago
    Same! This is a hell of a piece of software. It's fast and very easy to use, and it single-handedly makes you think PDFs are obvious and super simple. Which, knowing the truth, just blows my mind. Using Master PDF editor is like watching a 60 second youtube physics video that's so good, you just understand quantum physics perfectly by the end of it.
- sefrost 4y ago
  I have been going through the Canadian immigration process recently and I’ve had so many struggles with editing PDFs. A former employer sent me a copy of my work reference encrypted with a password that I had to remove. I had to install third party PDF software to fill out a Canadian government form. The native Mac Preview app couldn’t edit it. A form for a police certificate seemed to be entirely uneditable with any third party software on my Mac. I have no idea how ‘normal’ (for want of a better word) people are able to get anything done with PDF documents.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  You're the victim of Adobe's poison pill to make PDF only usable by their tooling with the inclusion of JS and ensuring that the traditional PDF form authoring isn't readily generated by Acrobat anymore.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    Form creation is a front and center feature in Acrobat DC. Like there's a form detector and a form editor and all that. You have to manually add javascript to those elements if you want it (well, there's an API, but you have to explicitly add the javascript).
- grogenaut 4y ago
  I have about 50% luck with the js based pdf viewers just letting me edit pdfs now... I think it comes down to did the pdf creator actually put type areas in the form or did they expect you to have acrobat and just create new text boxes in the form areas. Oddly the IRS forms were really good with that this year. I agree the dark patterns around PDFs and everyone putting a shareware version of a ope source program out is the worst. Also a large % of the time open office works but hey that takes like 20 minutes to install. The only thing I use acrobat for is it actually is quite solid for printing and doesn't seem to charge you for that.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  Chrome handles forms relatively well. (no idea if it would have handled your form or not)
- euroderf 4y ago
  > I have been in software and IT for my whole career and I absolutely hate computers now. I want nothing to do with them when I retire, and I'm going to deliberately structure my life accordingly. Same here, whole career, tho retired now. I found that there was a "natural level" of computer time. In periods of my life when I was not tied to a computer at the office, I enjoyed computer time at home for games and projects. But when I was working at a computer all day, I avoided computer games and hobbyist hacking like the plague.
Arrath 4y ago
Change that to "Computers/Printers" and you'll probably have universal appeal
- BirAdam 4y ago
  Printers are directly descended from Satan himself. Edit: and printing is the one part of the tech world that really is worse than it used to be. Most of the time, it’s just rose colored glasses that make us think things are worse. Computers used to be awful. Constant crashing and rebooting, and stuff randomly failing to work. Slow, bad UX, etc. printers, however, worked fairly reliably. Then… inkjet, laser jet and fuck this jet. Printers haven’t worked since inkjet became a thing. Dye sublimation printers, thermal printers, and impact printers seem to work forever without issue. The common inkjet printer is just a pile of plastic and bullshit.
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    What's hilarious is how much better my 3d printer is for usability than a paper printer.. That said get a B&W laser from brother or other and shit generally jsut works
  - euroderf 4y ago
    That being said, the advent of USB made "Life with Printers" a lot more survivable. Parallel and (especially!) serial ports were straight from hell.

latchkey 4y ago

Half the time when my computer doesn’t “work” it is because I am using it to deal with outdated banks and credit cards. Today, I was trying to pay 2 parking tickets. First one went through just fine. Second one failed with invalid zip code, even though I was using the same one. Turns out that since I have different mailing and billing addresses, it was randomly picking the one to use.

SoftTalker 4y ago

Yep. I was just trying to fill out a PDF form for my taxes. A complete nightmare. Tried three different PDF viewers that had different bugs or incompatibilities with the form. Finally had to start a Windows VM to run Acrobat, that was the only way to get it done, other than print the blank form and fill it out by hand which in retrospect would have saved me about 40 minutes. I have been in software and IT for my whole career and I absolutely hate computers now. I want nothing to do with them when I retire, and I'm going to deliberately structure my life accordingly.

dangerlibrary 4y ago
I've had decent luck with Xournal's "Annotate PDF" feature. It's not really interacting with the PDF form at all, so if the form is at all complicated it'd be a waste of your time. But, if you just need to "sign" something by dropping a transparent PNG on a line at the bottom and typing in a date, it's perfect.
silisili 4y ago
Same. Sometimes my wife asks why I don't play on the computer or social media, and I tell her it's because I hate computers. She expectedly says...but you're a programmer. I think doing anything all day every day sucks the joy out of it.
- freshocean 4y ago
  > I think doing anything all day every day sucks the joy out of it. totally relatable. same might hold true with driving, cooking, gardening, etc also. :)
nebula8804 4y ago
Sounds like you are purposely making your life worse by using something like Linux. Don't blame the machine when it is running poorly tested software that likely did not consider UX. Have you tried using a Mac full time? It lacks the ad-bloatware of Windows 11 while still retaining some POSIX compatibility.
- andrepd 4y ago
  I've used Mac, Windows 10, and Linux (KDE and Cinnamon). Linux has been an infinitely more pleasant experience.
  - BirAdam 4y ago
    I’ve used em all. I hate Windows. MacOS is “fine”, and Linux can be great. The issues with Linux are on edge cases, just like macOS. They’re just in different places, imho.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  I did try my wife’s MacBook, it failed.
rendx 4y ago
Master PDF Editor is the only proprietary software I use on my machine, and it's well worth the license fee. https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor/ https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor/ (free trial)
- scrollaway 4y ago
  Same! This is a hell of a piece of software. It's fast and very easy to use, and it single-handedly makes you think PDFs are obvious and super simple. Which, knowing the truth, just blows my mind. Using Master PDF editor is like watching a 60 second youtube physics video that's so good, you just understand quantum physics perfectly by the end of it.
sefrost 4y ago
I have been going through the Canadian immigration process recently and I’ve had so many struggles with editing PDFs. A former employer sent me a copy of my work reference encrypted with a password that I had to remove. I had to install third party PDF software to fill out a Canadian government form. The native Mac Preview app couldn’t edit it. A form for a police certificate seemed to be entirely uneditable with any third party software on my Mac. I have no idea how ‘normal’ (for want of a better word) people are able to get anything done with PDF documents.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
You're the victim of Adobe's poison pill to make PDF only usable by their tooling with the inclusion of JS and ensuring that the traditional PDF form authoring isn't readily generated by Acrobat anymore.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  Form creation is a front and center feature in Acrobat DC. Like there's a form detector and a form editor and all that. You have to manually add javascript to those elements if you want it (well, there's an API, but you have to explicitly add the javascript).
grogenaut 4y ago
I have about 50% luck with the js based pdf viewers just letting me edit pdfs now... I think it comes down to did the pdf creator actually put type areas in the form or did they expect you to have acrobat and just create new text boxes in the form areas. Oddly the IRS forms were really good with that this year. I agree the dark patterns around PDFs and everyone putting a shareware version of a ope source program out is the worst. Also a large % of the time open office works but hey that takes like 20 minutes to install. The only thing I use acrobat for is it actually is quite solid for printing and doesn't seem to charge you for that.
maxerickson 4y ago
Chrome handles forms relatively well. (no idea if it would have handled your form or not)
euroderf 4y ago
> I have been in software and IT for my whole career and I absolutely hate computers now. I want nothing to do with them when I retire, and I'm going to deliberately structure my life accordingly. Same here, whole career, tho retired now. I found that there was a "natural level" of computer time. In periods of my life when I was not tied to a computer at the office, I enjoyed computer time at home for games and projects. But when I was working at a computer all day, I avoided computer games and hobbyist hacking like the plague.

Arrath 4y ago

Change that to "Computers/Printers" and you'll probably have universal appeal

BirAdam 4y ago
Printers are directly descended from Satan himself. Edit: and printing is the one part of the tech world that really is worse than it used to be. Most of the time, it’s just rose colored glasses that make us think things are worse. Computers used to be awful. Constant crashing and rebooting, and stuff randomly failing to work. Slow, bad UX, etc. printers, however, worked fairly reliably. Then… inkjet, laser jet and fuck this jet. Printers haven’t worked since inkjet became a thing. Dye sublimation printers, thermal printers, and impact printers seem to work forever without issue. The common inkjet printer is just a pile of plastic and bullshit.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  What's hilarious is how much better my 3d printer is for usability than a paper printer.. That said get a B&W laser from brother or other and shit generally jsut works
- euroderf 4y ago
  That being said, the advent of USB made "Life with Printers" a lot more survivable. Parallel and (especially!) serial ports were straight from hell.