Tech keeps stealing my life, and I want tips on how to make it stop doing that

Eric_the_Cerise
Sat, 02 Aug 2025 07:22:31 +0000

** Please do not tell me how to fix my issue below; this is an example, not a tech-support request **

I have a (LibreOffice) spreadsheet, personal tracking data. The other day, I got a new laptop (Framework), put a new OS (Debian trixie RC2) on it.

Now, on the new machine, when I add a comment to a cell, the background color of the new comment is wrong/different from every other comment in the spreadsheet. When I add a comment to the same spreadsheet, opened on a different machine, the new comment still has the "correct"/standard background color, but any comments I added on the new machine continue to have the wrong color.

This happened once or twice in the past couple of days, and I just manually "fixed" the color of each new comment, but this morning, I tried to figure out what the deal was, how to fix it properly/permanently.

And just like that, my 3-minute daily edit of this spreadsheet turned into a 2-hour wild goose chase. I still haven't fixed it, I still don't know whether to blame LibreOffice, Debian, the new laptop, or some other variable I haven't even thought of. All I know is, someone has stolen 2 hours of my life from me, and I really want to know who that is.

Bigger picture ...

This happens all the time. Every day, often 3-4 times a day, it is a regular point of stress, of contention in my life, deciding whether to devote hours (sometimes days) of my life to strong-arming software into working the way it was supposed to work in the first place, or to try my best to accept that we just can't have nice things on our computers, and move on.

This definitely predates the word "enshittification", but I don't think it really predates the concept. Stipulated -- software development is complicated, and software is used in so many different situations -- different hardware, different OSes, different libraries, different supporting/complementary software, versions, etc -- it is extremely hard to make software that "just works" for everyone, all the time.

Nonetheless, I think the entire software development industry just collectively decided that is it okay to release stuff that doesn't work ... dating back to some point in the 20th century, long before Linux, before the Internet, before smartphones ... this issue--this philosophy--goes waaaay back, and there's just no fighting it at this point.

But also, I do not want to live in a world where I have to surrender hours and days and years of my life, fighting with software that doesn't work, because "that's just how software is".

So, that's my gripe. Is there any kind of viable middle ground here, that is less extreme than "cabin in the woods"? 'Cuz I am (yet again) seriously weighing that option this morning.

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~tech/1peq/tech_keeps_stealing_my_life_and_i_want_tips_on_how_to_make_it_stop_doing_that

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