(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

Changes like this always make me wonder about Microsoft's motto: "Empower every person to do more…" How am I "doing more" when I spend my time fighting with changes no one asked for and no one needs?

Granted, we probably needed a faster and more convenient method of opening the Snip tool than WIN+SHIFT+S, but what's wrong with WIN+PRINTSCREEN? That's an easy two keys that doesn't require remapping a key function used by people for literal decades which includes gamers – people who really don't have time to fart around with an auto-open app when they're in the middle of fragging this or exploding that.

Fortunately this isn't one of those changes they didn't give us a way to undo. In fact, the option is already there, but correctly disabled by default. Once it goes to "enabled by default… not that anyone asked", here's how you recover from their poor decision-making skills:

1. Press the Windows Key
2. Type "Print Screen". The "User print screen button to open screen snipping" control will show as an option. Click it.
3. The accessibility option allowing you to toggle this hateful feature is shown. Set it to the "OFF" position.
4. Sleep peacefully, but watchfully for the next thing Microsoft decides to screw up.

There's a toggle to turn it off thankfully

I'm sorry to my friends at Microsoft and admit I'm being a jerk on purpose partially for emphasis, but also partially because user-hostile decisions authentically annoy me. If you're on the Windows team, please consider doing more research and communicating with the community before making changes like this.

Golden Ginko Tree - Wikimedia commons cc3.0

Japan's second-largest tourist agency was mystified when it entered English-speaking markets and began receiving requests for unusual sex tours. Upon finding out why, the owners of Kinki Nippon Tourist Company changed its name.

The saga of the Golden Tree travel agency was a memorable lesson in my college marketing class. As was the Chevy "Nova"'s entry into Latin-American markets ("No Va" means "doesn't go in Spanish). And Vicks cough syrup in Germany (Vicks is a dirty word there).

The lesson is simple: listen.

Ugly Sonic. Pic used under Fair Use Doctrine

How is it that companies put all the money and effort into building out a marketing strategy in a country and never think to talk to the people who live there and could easily warn them long before they created confusion (or offense)? It would be like a major movie studio taking a beloved video game character and creating a model of him that looked like a frumpy middle-aged resident of the deepest and most forgotten corner of the "uncanny valley" and then being surprised when there was severe public backlash.

It's honestly absurd and amateur to make these kinds of mistakes and each of them come from the same root cause: lack of a listening culture. You hire people because they're professionals at what they do so why wouldn't you listen to what they have to say? Why wouldn't you seek out their expertise before making a critical mistake that requires damage control from simple embarrassment to millions of dollars of wasted money?

Bottom line, companies are going to keep making these kinds of mistakes and we'll continue to laugh at them when they do, but if your goal is to be an effective and respected leader, not only hearing what your people are saying, but making proactive efforts to get their input is the basics of the basics. After all, how are you a leader if the only voice you hear is your own?

SIIG USB-C 2-Port KVM Switch MST Docking Station with PD 65W
(See online!)

So I put some effort into getting my home office put together. I have dual monitors nicely raised to the right eye height. I have a motorized standing desk, nice keyboard, mouse… the works! But the main issue was switching between my home computing and my work. I had one laptop for each (clean separation between the two), but moving all those cables is a non-starter.

The first thing I tried was a Thinkpad USBC hub. It's pretty straightforward – just plug everything into the hub, then plug the hub into the computer. The only problem is that I have to move the one cable between the computers when I want to switch (technically two because it was too slow to run both monitors so I had one HDMI cable I plugged directly into the computer for speed reasons). But the next thing I tried was the combo Hub/KVM. What an improvement!

So basically, the KVM works just like the hub, but it's faster so I haven't had HDMI problems even when playing games. And because it's plugged into both machines at the same time, all I have to do is click a single button to swap between the two computers. All my devices and monitors swap semi-instantly and it's just such a better process that it makes my workday so much better! If I remember something I need to do on my home computer (or on an account that I don't want to log into on my work laptop), it's a button press, get the work done, button press again to go back to the work machine.

If you have two computers for your home office and want to be able to rapidly switch between them while using the same peripherals for both, this is a pretty sweet way to do that!