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My wife got a new notebook (her old one is physically falling apart after four years), and although she's been using Ubuntu for more than a decade by now (on three HP notebooks so far), we decided to keep the original Windows installation if there's ever a need for running Windows software (ugh), and as disk space is becoming less of a concern. So, this was the first Windows initialization I've monitored in a long time.

Not much has changed — it still is slow and requires several reboots 😬. But I was surprised so see obvious quality issues in the installer (which is not brand new): Both wrong German grammar (Es könnte eine Weile dauertn) and wrong HTML escaping (&).

·T· PSA: Beware of Telekom fiber-optic Internet contracts!

This is nothing new, but don't trust the salespeople, verify everything, get it in writing, and don't sign anything on the spot. They try to scam you on the phone (it happened to me 15 years ago: offered to upgrade my DSL connection at no additional cost, but the actual price on the first bill was €5 more per month. (Since then I've always asked them what I'm currently paying; they don't know.) I think because the people they employ are not Telekom employees, but subcontractors that get a commission for each contract they sign, they're incentivized to cajole, tell half-truths, and fearmonger. They don't care about your long-term relationship with the company they represent, or its public image. I don't blame them (they're just doing their job); it's the (in fact, all) companies that have decided to outsource this part of their business that are at fault.

I had ordered a fibre-optic connection in Apr-2022 (almost three years ago now; that's the speed of digitalization in Germany 🥲). A couple of months ago, someone already tried to make me also sign a contract (I just want the cables to be laid, so that I have the option to sign up, as I'm currently satisfied with my broadband cable, and it's the cheapest option). That person already made it very easy to misunderstand him that I had to sign in order to get fiber-optic. After insisting and pointing out my contract, he tried to sell me on the benefits of their service, but I knew my current price and he couldn't offer a better deal. (A Vodafone marketer had once at least tried to match my current price for the first year, using all sorts of shady bonuses and discounts.)

Today two young gentlemen stood in front of my door and outright urged me to sign a contract.

1. Telekom is the exclusive network operator of my area (and according to them this includes Vodafone), and therefore the only way to obtain fiber-optic.
2. The existing copper cables (and they confirmed that this includes my broadband connection) will be decommissioned in the future.
3. The fiber termination point will be installed free of charge only now, if I sign up later this incurs hundreds of Euros. (My contract includes the termination point.)
4. When I pointed that out, they spread fear and doubt by asking who I'd signed this with. It might have been an apprentice colleague who didn't know all the facts and details.
5. Their best offer is €5 more than what I currently pay, but hey, you own this house, so you can surely afford it. (When I mentioned that in fact I'm currently unemployed, they instead offered me a job peddling these contracts, just like them. LOL)
6. The upgrade in my area only starts once a sufficient number of contracts has been reached, so your stinginess prevents your neighbors from getting faster Internet.

It's easy for me with my background in IT to counter their outrageous claims and cajoling, but I can see how they can easily scare and pressure many people into signing. At least they remained friendly throughout the conversation. When they realized that I wouldn't budge, they tried to exploit me being price-conscious and asked about my power and gas utilities, and that they have a combined offer that would save me 100€ per month. They're salesmen, through and through.

Fun fact: I only switched to Unitymedia (now Vodafone) because when I built the house, Telekom wouldn't simply migrate my existing contract to the new address, and insisted on a new contract with a higher price. They also almost missed the date to connect their plain old copper phone line before the hole in the street was closed.

PS: Unitymedia aggressively tried to upsell me to their small-business contract for many years, both via cold calls and paper mail advertisements, even though I clearly expressed no interest. This fortunately stopped after the Vodafone takeover.

Last year, I've cycled 4176 km, jogged 195 thousand steps, and walked (recording only started in December) 31 thousand steps. I'm proud of myself!😊

Every year, I submit my dentist's invoice for the dental cleaning to my health insurance, who covers a part of that. The invoicing has been outsourced, and I get a snail mail a few weeks later. At least that letter includes a login and password for their online portal, where a digital copy of the invoice can be downloaded, so I don't have to scan the original. (I communicate with the health insurance through unencrypted email. (Even signing the email confuses them, and they don't see the attached PDF. They offer encrypted messaging via their app, but the registration only was for my old mobile phone, and I didn't bother getting new credentials for the new one.)

The login (a 14-digit ID) changes each time, but the app wants me to change the password nonetheless. I don't know why it's changing all the time — dentist check-ups happen regularly every six months. (And each new calendar year I have to sign the delegation agreement again. Sigh. Bureaucracy.) It feels wrong, but maybe it's due to their integration, or for additional "privacy". Anyway, I have a password in my password manager, but the app doesn't allow me to paste this.

Well, fortunately, I just need to hit F12 to open the browser's web page inspector, locate the password box, and then remove the onpaste="return false" that suppresses the paste event. That's actually faster than typing my rather complex password twice.

They likely disallow copy-and-paste not because they hate password managers (what's to hate there? use one!), but to avoid support calls due to someone (mis-)entering a password and then copying it into the repeat field. (They offer to submit an email address for account recovery, but that's optional.) I wonder how effective that is, though — there are so many more ways to lose a password (and not being able to copy it out of the password field into (worst case) Notepad and not recognizing that the clipboard hasn't been updated is one sure way to lose the password).

The requirements on the password itself are benign: 10 characters, lower, upper, and digit, and shouldn't prevent the use of a password manager. So please, don't make it harder to use!

This year, I've cycled 4000 kilometers! It started in early February, when I extended the escorting of my daughter to her internship for my first tour, and greatly overestimated my physical capabilities on a trip of 48 km, the last 12 of which with cramps and exhaustion. I'd fallen behind with my training due to the pandemic and home office, but was intent on improving that. Through regular trips, I've rebuilt my stamina, discovered many beautiful new bike paths, and became really fond of cycling through the Schönbuch forest. My bike got an upgrade of its drive train during our vacation (but I eventually broke the gears in the hubs due to over-exertion; my poor old bike couldn't keep up with my strength).

I've tracked my mileage via the MapMyRide app, and entered the kilometers into my calendar, enabling my to leverage my scripting developed for time tracking at work to obtain a tally of the total distance:

$ khal ytd tally cyc
4029 km
--
Total effort: 36ed (213h) over 9.1 months (from 2024-02-05 until 2024-11-05)

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