dr-robot

I prefer Gog. I don’t need cloud sync, I just want to download the installer and start playing. I hate the idea of needing a really heavy launcher like steam to play my games. I play via Lutris on Linux. DRM-free is important to me as a principle. I also happen to prefer Gog’s UI when shopping around. I keep steam around for games I bought before I made the full switch to Linux and the occasional game that is not available on Gog.

If you never pay for music, artists won’t be able to make new music. Where possible buy as directly as possible from the artist, e.g., through bandcamp.

I use logcheck which should be available with your distro. It’s simple but pretty dumb though. It works by scanning your system logs, excludes any pre-configured regexps (it already comes with defaults for many of the most common logs), and sends you an email if there are any unexpected logs. I did have to add a bunch of custom regexps to exclude additional logs specific to my setup. But I just did this by adding new regexps whenever I got a logcheck email that I deemed irrelevant so not terribly difficult.

The end result is that I get an email with logs whenever anything unexpected happens. For example, I get emails whenever any SSH session is established (including my own) which gives me the confidence that if something starts going down, I should be able to see it.

Actually I do have a suggestion. When I’m asked to do something that I think is pointless I go full nice, but rational mode. Keep asking questions as if you’re trying to understand their request. And as you keep asking why this way and not that way they may end up realising how ridiculous they sound and drop it or accept an easier alternative. It may be important to avoid gloating and to propose your preferred solution (available by phone) as a suggestion to help them save face. The way to work with crappy managers is to keep them feeling good about themselves. You can use that to your advantage. It sucks and it may not work but there’s only so much you can do.

Thanks for explaining! That sounds very different than what I had in mind (just sharing an outlook calendar of meetings) and I understand your frustration as I’d hate that too. That must really suck. Wish I could help.

Could you please explain what is naive in my reasoning?

I don’t really follow your reasoning unless your bosses have already shown they’re malicious people. At work, my work calendar is shared with the entire company to see. I like it as it lets people easily schedule meetings with me, know at which of the two locations (or at home) I am. I have a personal calendar which I don’t link to my work calendar at all. I do think that accountability is an important part of healthy work relationships with managers because (with good managers) it comes with autonomy. Why do you think your bosses will use it maliciously?