Then everything starting falling apart once I started setting up all of the applications I normally use that I transferred from the old computer. Most of everything went just fine. I had to reinstall a few but I was expecting that. Then it came time to set up my Microsoft Office 2019 applications that I have a valid, paid for license.

It seems that the license becomes embedded into the operating systems of the computer you first install it on and it's an absolute nightmare to transfer, if you can. I have two licenses, bought and paid for through a third party vendor back in 2021, and even though Microsoft recognises the license number, they are still blocking it from being used on my new computer. I fought for hours last Monday, way into the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday before finally giving up. My license is granting me a thirty day grace period to activate it, or I lose the functionality of all of my Office 2019 programs.

Of course, Microsoft wants me to purchase their annual subscription to their cloud based upgraded Office applications but I decline. That's the main reason I bought the licenses in the first place, to have the applications loaded into my hard drives so only I can see what I use them for. That's the same reason I refuse to use Google applications. I don't want to use anyone's cloud servers unless I have to. I mean, there's no getting away from them one hundred percent unless you want to live with no internet but I try to keep my usage to a bare minimum. I value my privacy greatly.

Which brings me to the other reason I spent some long nights last week. With my Office 2019, came the Outlook email client. I'm sure most people know what it is and a lot of people are using it, whether it's the easy to set up and use, web based (cloud) application, or, like myself, the installed version I have been using all these years. But when my license failed me last Monday evening, I had to scramble to find a replacement. By the time I had given up running command line scripts to try and attach my license to Office, I realised that I couldn't use Outlook anymore either.

So, I had to research a good alternative. It turns out, that a tried and true stand alone email client tool that's been around for as long as I can remember would work great as a replacement for Outlook. Mozilla Thunderbird. But, I also decided to take my friend Mitch's advice from a few months ago and migrate everything over to Proton as well. It's one of the most secure email systems around the world, and it's based in the EU, which works great for me since I'm already outsourcing my other internet services to the EU. As long as the undersea fibre optic cables hold up, I'm good, for the most part.

So, I spent the rest of the week setting up Proton and Thunderbird on the new computer, then another couple of days logging into every company website I've ever used my outlook email account on. I worked for hours, until bedtime, for two days to change everything away from Outlook to Proton. I'm sure there will still be some web sites that I will have to change as time goes along but I'm confident that I changed the majority of them. It pays to keep good records of everything.

I spent a half a day setting all that up on this laptop as well. The Office license for this laptop is still good, until I swap it out for a new one within the next year or so, depending on Trump's tariff and chip war with China. That's what prompted me to make the change with my desktop PC now, that and the hardware wasn't keeping up with all of the new networking protocols out there these days. If it weren't for the price of memory chips going through the roof these days because of Trump, I would have waited a little longer.

I don't know if I will ever get that license for Office 2019 to attach to my new desktop PC but I'm prepared either way. My next project is to convert all of my word documents and excel spreadsheets over to another file format. The word docs I'll probably convert to .pdf's or add them to LibreOffice, which is a good, open source, replacement for Microsoft Word. I'm still thinking about what I want to do.

Because I live in the U.S., I can't just dump my Windows operating systems and replace them with Linux operating systems, like the Europeans are doing. There are too many applications I use that won't work on Linux platforms. I have enough trouble just using a Google Pixel, Linux based mobile phone as it is.

But I am slowly working to minimise my usage of Microsoft and Google as much as I can. I know how to do that, with my IT skills, but I don't recommend it unless you do have the skills to do so. You could easily wreck something and end up paying someone like me a lot of money to fix it.

I am willing to help those I know with hardening up their systems as much as can be, depending on their hardware resources. I plan to work with my kids to that end over time. Starting with my oldest son. I talked to him last week when he called me to wish me a happy father's day and he is going to be the inheritor of my older desktop PC. I need to do a couple of things to it before I give it to him, which may require a trip down there to help him install it. I don't know yet. That's a long drive and my wife really dislikes my daughter in-law so there's that.

In other news, while dealing with all of the computer stuff all week, our dog got sick. As in puking on the bed in the middle of the night sick, which kept us up most of one night, and dealing with cleaning up after him during the days, most of which my wife handled (thank the gods).

But, we finally ended up needing to take him to the vet clinic on Friday that we have been using since we brought him home as a little puppy. Like before, when we showed up without an appointment needing urgent care, they turned us away because they couldn't spare the time. They gave us a paper with some alternatives, that, when I called from the truck, where all closed.

Then I happened to remember a pet hospital on the main street in my town that I had driven by for all the time we've live here and never checked out. We were desperate so I suggested we try them to see if they could help us.

As it turns out, they were super nice, and cheaper than our previous provider, so I signed up our dog to start going there for all of his future appointments. Then, while calling the old one to stop this, so called, pet plan we had signed up for a few years ago, that we thought was a pet health insurance plan, we  found out, with anger (my wife actually cussed them out), that this plan was not a health insurance plan but a installment payment plan. The young man on the phone explained to us (I had him on speaker) that we owed his company money for our dog's last visit to get some of his annual shots and his physical exam. To the tune of nearly five hundred dollars. So, I let him know we weren't happy to learn this, and hung up. That's when my normally, very Christian, mild mannered wife, told me that she really wanted to tell that young man "Fuck You", but she restrained herself. I chuckled and agreed with her.

I told my wife that as soon as I could save up enough money through the summer, I would pay off the balance due and be done with these corporate thieves. She was so much happier with this new vet hospital and the friendly staff there, that I knew she's also ready to be done with Banfield. The sooner the better.

We talked some more later last evening and she asked me if I had ever had pet health insurance with any of the pets I'd had before and I replied that I hadn't. I always just paid cash when I needed vet services. Which we will be doing from now on with this new place, maybe. My wife wants me to research some other pet health insurance options from a couple of brochure we brought home but I'm in no hurry.

The only other thing that happened this week, actually has something to do with web site. About mid-week, when I was elbow deep into swapping out email systems, I received a email written through the contact page in this web site threatening me and my family with great harm if I didn't remove my book from Amazon and stop advertising on Goodreads. The message was so graphic, that I notified my local police and filed a complaint just to have an official record just in case someone decided to get stupid and carry out those threats. That took a couple of hours out of my already full work day. The email address came from somewhere in Europe so I'm not too worried but it goes to show just how crazy the internet world is these days. You can be assured I will be watching this closely in the future. I don't have any way to  block messages like this so if I get anymore, I may have to make some changes to this web site to protect myself and visitors.

I normally have a pretty uneventful week but this one was an exception to anything I've gone through in a very long time, so I thought I would share the highlights with you to see if any decent readers without a political agenda might relate to what we went through. I don't want to discourage anyone from reaching out to me, whether it's by just leaving a small comment at the bottom of this blog page, or an actual email comment on the contact page, because of one individual with a hatred for whatever. I hope I never experience anything like that again. A one-off I can handle. Any more and I may have to take more drastic measures. I hope it doesn't come to that.

I hope everyone enjoys their week ahead. I still have a lot of work to do yet but at least I'm no longer under a deadline to get things up and running as quickly as I can. I can relax and work normal hours from here on out, at least until the next big crisis. Sláinte