Dubya also used to threaten to do terrible things to "tourists".

Another plus of a Teams meeting - we have one person who doesn't articulate well and I generally miss most of what he has to say, not helped by my hearing. In a Teams meeting I can turn on captions and get most of it.

Not sure I agree. If I get up and walk a few metres to another office I am assuming that what I want to talk about is more important than what the other person is doing and and that I am entitled to interrupt. If I send an email I am saying "there is a question here for when you are ready to deal with it".

What is the alternative? We get back into it because its what we were doing and we are creatures of habit.

Great idea, I've just done the same, with a Gigabyte MB and a Ryzen 9 7900. Bought a be Quiet case, so I'm having trouble getting my old 12 TB plus two 8 TB mirrored discs in it. However I am blown away by the boot speed. My caffeine intake will drop, I no longer have time to get a mug while it is booting.

Well, I'm back up and running and have upgraded to Win 11, so all my problems disappeared. That means I am unable to comment on your suggestions, but thanks anyway.

Thank you, I'll let you know. However I suspect that by the time this is untangled it will be a very different computer with another set of problems. I've bought a new case, MB, Power supply, M2 SSD, etc and plan on cloning to that when I've retrieved as much as I can from the present system.

Yes, I have a back up, done with Acronis, to a NAS. The trouble is that I have had to reinstall Acronis and my licence details are in an email in a deleted .pst file..... Without a licence Acronis is being picky about adding the existing backup to its list. If I survive this then I might delete Acronis and simply have a physical copy of my system on the NAS and, nightly, copy over all files changed within the last 25 hours, using robocopy.

Thank you, I wish I'd read that earlier. I fell into the trap of reinstalling Windows using their "keep all your files and apps" option. It erased all my apps and kindly left me an html file listing all 608 applications it deleted. It even deleted Office including my .pst files. I hate MS.

My most meaningful project was carried out before computers on an HP41cv calculator. As a structural engineer an architect asked me to design a tent like structure, each part of the "tent" having four irregular sides. Move one corner while holding two in position and the fourth moves too, which changes the next part of the tent. The architect, needless to say, kept tweaking the dimensions. I managed to write a matrix inversion routine for the HP41cv and could rapidly work around the structure finding new x,y,z coordinates after each change. Not complicated, but very satisfying.

I've been using ChatGPT to help me learn how to write Chrome extensions. Just ask it to do what I want, then take the code and work out what it does. Useful way of learning. This could be used to learn anything, working out where it is wrong is part of the learning.

Thanks, you are probably right, but reinstalling all the apps is a daunting task. As an example, I still use some software which was originally installed using floppies. At the time I had a floppy drive on a spare machine so I was able to create a CD which I managed to get to work as install media. I no longer have anything with a floppy drive, have probably lost the discs anyway and the CD will have vanished.

My PC is getting old and starting to behave strangely - Windows 10 updates don't, can't get stuff from Microsoft Store, preview panel in File Explorer not showing images, and a raft of other issues which make me (after weeks of trying to solve it) think about an upgrade. The hardware isn't up to Windows 11 and I'd like to move to it. Problem - I don't want to reinstall all my apps - probably can't for many of them, old software I still use from time to time but can't remember how I installed it. Besides I have memories of when I built this machine and the many, many months it took before it was just how I like it. Also, my very large HDDs are just fine, I have no reason to change the GPU, and most other components are fine. The plan, which I suspect I will rue, is to buy a case, MB, 32GB RAM, CPU, 2TB M2 SSD and power supply plus a copy of Windows 11. Then clone my Win 10 SSD to the new one and see if I can navigate my way through the hardware changes after boot. Then upgrade to Win 11 using the new licence. Has anyone ever tried this? If it won't work I think I will keep using the machine as it is, I'm in my seventies and probably deteriorating faster than it is. All help appreciated. Update. Thanks for all the feedback. I hear what is being said about a fresh install, and have decided to continue the process of fixing my installation for a bit longer. Next step, try to reinstall Windows using media, it appears I can keep my apps.

I don't do it by computer - except to create and print a table showing the day broken down into hours with space alongside to write down what I am working on. I keep this alongside me. If I miss filling it out during the day (normal) I find it more accurate to fill it in at the end of the day than to guess at the end of the week. This requires, of course, a table of job identifiers - in my case job numbers and names.

It's taken me a long time but I have evolved as a manager to where I understand that the people in the trenches are the ones earning our money, and my only job is to smooth their way so that the income keeps rolling in. That includes seeing them as people with hopes and fears. It also includes "tough love" whenever it is needed. If a client rings and our priorities change the team will rise to the occasion if I am seen as one of them and ask for their help in meeting the new priority. It's all about people. See them, care for them, be honest with them and work can be enjoyable and successful.

Ah, you don't have to trouble co workers. The rubber duck method works - buy a rubber duck and explain to it what you are doing. OK, maybe in private.

Isn't the office paperless?

I'm interested in your comment about teaching critical thinking in some Western countries. I'd like to know more, do you have any references?

I think the question of time management depends on your personality. One thing I love about working from home is that at 1 am when the answer to a problem occurs to me I can get up and try it. So what if I sleep longer in the morning?

I have both and alternate every battery change. Trying to avoid OOS or whatever the acronym is these days.