Windows 7 v. Windows 10 v. Windows 11 v. Chromebook

I had a chance to compare four operating systems side by side.  The result was unexpected.

A friend of  mine was gifted a new HP laptop and asked me to "set it up" and transfer all of his data from his old Window 10 laptop (also HP) to the new machine.  I was reluctant to do this, because, like working on someone else's car, if you screw it all up, you are the villain, but if you do it right, you are no hero ("Oh, anyone could have done that!").  Needless to say, my declining mental faculties make the whole project more dreadful - as in making me full of dread.

Nevertheless, he insisted, and I set up four computers - my trusty but slow Windows 7 Ultimate Toshiba laptop (one of four or so I own, now), my Chromebook, his old HP laptop running Windows 10, and the new-in-the-box HP laptop running Windows 11.  I put these on our dining room table, all plugged into a plug strip.  The table is a very old thing, taken from the library in a mansion in Westchester County that Mark's parents briefly owned and ran as a retirement home, shortly after the war, when such white elephants could be bought on the cheap.  It is over 12 feet long and apparently was four feet longer, but was cut down by Mark's Dad when they sold the estate.  It is over 200 years old and sturdy as a tank - the kind of furniture I favor - if it can't support the weight of a car, I'm not interested.

But I digress.

The initial frustration was trying to translate actions from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and 11.  Microsoft changes things for the sake of changing things, or for nefarious reasons.  The general trend over the years is to insulate the user from the workings of the machine.  So instead of showing you the architecture of the computer - the drives, the peripherals, etc. - it merely steers you to do things that make Microsoft money.

For example, it was frustrating enough that Windows 7 has "public" and "private" libraries, so you never know where a particular file is stored (chances are, it is in "downloads" anyway).   Windows 11 defaults to the "cloud" which is Microsoft's "Onedrive"  feature.  It has just enough storage space to be somewhat useful, but once you start using the computer, it quickly fills up.  Conveniently (for Microsoft) they offer to "upgrade" your storage for a monthly fee (the first of many as we shall see) and I suspect most users just agree to this as they have no idea the data is even going to the cloud.

Onedrive was useful in that I could copy files to it from the old Windows 10 machine, wait for them to upload (slow on our phone-based network) and then download them to the new Windows 11 machine.  Most networks are asymmetrical in that the upload speed is 1/10th of the download speed, as most users are downloading far more than uploading.  Your typical "upload" is a click on a YouTube video and the download is firehose of video data.   So even with a "fast" network, it would take a long time to upload the data to Onedrive.

What sort of data?  He had few documents, but lots of photos, starting in the 2000's and ending suddenly in 2017 - the year he got his first iPhone.  Back in the day, we had digital cameras and took pictures and videos and then uploaded them to our computers. The smart phone put an end to all that - all our photos are on the phone now.  Funny how that happened.

Anyway, while that data was uploading, I got out an old stack of 100 CD-ROMs (R and RW) that I bought at a garage sale for ten cents a few years back and transferred the photos in blocks to a total of 22 CDs, so he would have an archive of sorts.  I suspect he will never look at any of it, but if I erased even one file, by accident, no doubt it would be the one file he wanted.  You can't win at this game.

Yes, I tried the backup and restore function and indeed, Windows 11 even prompted me for this - but then said the backup was corrupted.  I also tried to "network" the computers together, and while the Windows 10 machine seemed eager to talk to my Windows 7, the Windows 11 machine copped some sort of attitude toward its lesser brethren and refused to connect, noting pointedly that Windows 10 and earlier are "no longer supported."

Microsoft networking has always been clunky - or at least modern versions of it.  I remember I was able to network my PCs in my office with ease back in the 1990s.   We could create "network drives" and share data on the Z:\ drive across every PC in the office.  Newer versions of Microsoft networking were almost paranoid in the level of security and it seemed if you even breathed on the computer it would disconnect from the network and never connect again. The arcane system of addresses and passwords worked - sometimes.  Other times, you could "see" another computer on the network, but never connect to that machine, no matter how many times you enabled sharing on that machine and entered password or whatever.  In the end, I just gave up - life is too short to troubleshoot Microsoft crap.

While the files were being transferred, I checked out his e-mail setup.  There were over 3,000 e-mails in his inbox, most unread.  And while I was in Outlook (Outhouse?) several dozen more popped up, including outright ads.   No wonder he never responds to my e-mails!  Now I understand the meaning of the transmission, "We have two copies of Outlook and neither are working" from Artemis II.  It scares me that NASA uses Microsoft products for man-rated mission-critical software.  Imagine a Windows 11 forced update in the middle of the landing sequence, or a pitch for "Outlook Pro" or whatever at a critical moment - forcing astronauts to fumble for credit cards in zero-G in order to avoid catastrophe.

The Outlook thing was jarring, as I use Chrome and g-mail with adblock plus, and I pay no monthly fee and see no ads and get little SPAM.  I keep only a dozen or so e-mails in my inbox at a time, deleting those that are unnecessary, marking SPAM (on rare occasion) or filing important things away in folders.  Outlook, on the other hand, was so SPAMmed and commercial that it was unusable - it reminded me of how "newsgroups" in the old days of ASCII-text internet were SPAMmed into oblivion almost overnight.

I was going to suggest he go a similar route, but having to change e-mail addresses and all - and learn a new program - isn't easy for the older set.  Instead, I loaded Chrome onto his new laptop, added adblock plus, and then ran Outlook as a website (rather than an "app" - more on that later) and like magic, the ads disappeared.

I also checked his subscriptions and found nearly 200 subscriptions to e-mails, mostly for retailers and such.  Some were quite sketchy.  I unsubscribed from all of them, and I don't think he'll miss the daily sales pitches from Joseph Banks (they are still in business?) or from mortgage refinancing places (he has no mortgage).  The mass data flow of 2-3 e-mails every few minutes dropped off.  A few of the sketchy ones peeked through, but I went through and reported them as SPAM and blocked them (and later showed him how to do this).  In two days, not a single e-mail (that was not legit) came through.

But again, the smart phone.  Like I said, he stopped answering e-mails because of this debacle, but switched to texting instead - as did a lot of folks.  Just as we put away out digital cameras and went to the phone, the laptop and the "personal computer" seems doomed for extinction, other than for people who need it for their jobs or maybe gaming.  I suspect a lot of folks are going to go computer-free in the next few years (or go to a netbook, more on that later).

Anyway, I also set up Apache Open Office, which he had on his old machine.  Yes, Windows 11 comes with Microsoft WORD, but you have to subscribe to it, in order to use it outside of the ten-minute trial period.  As retirees, we don't write letters much anymore (does anyone?) and WORD is such a powerful program with so many features that unless you use it regularly, well, you will forget how to use it.

I still know how to use WORD 2000, which I bought 26 years ago and still runs perfectly (thank you very much) on my old Windows 7 machines.  But I use it less and less.  The last time was to edit a document for Mr. See for the Arts Association.  And yes, most people use the ".docx" format (a scam, as I noted before, to force WORD users to migrate to subscription model) but it is east to import a .doc file to Apache Open Office and save it as a .docx file, without even having to learn the details of Open Office.

It is like how Chrome lets you open .pdf files and even enter data fields, save the file and print it - all most users really want to do - without having to buy or use a copy of Adobe Acrobat (a bloated piece of software that no one loves anymore).  CutePDF allows you to create a PDF file from any program that allows you to print - it "prints" to a PDF file.  Free, too.

I digress, yet again.

Everything, it seems, is a pitch for money on Windows 11 - monthly fees.  Even HP gets in on the game, offering to extend the warranty for a "modest" fee.  Subscribe to WORD!  Subscribe to Outlook Plus!  Subscribe to Windows itself!  You will own nothing and be happy the silicon valley bros tell us.  I think the end result is many of us would rather just own nothing.

Which brings us to the Chromebook.  I was ambivalent about the Chromebook - I bought one a few years back on the advice of a reader and I used it to stream Netflix to my "dumb" television at the time.  But for the most part, it sat unused.  Recently, I dusted it off and gave it a second look.  As a retiree, I don't create and store documents on my computer much anymore.  Indeed, even working people store their stuff in the cloud or on a company server (and of course, you can always download your cloud data to a removable hard drive if you need backup).  Maybe the Chromebook needs a second look.

As much as we all hate Google - the "Don't be Evil" mantra was dropped a long time ago - my dive into the world of Microsoft made me realize why Google initially adopted that slogan.  Comparing the two ecosystems is interesting.  While Google has drifted toward the dark side, Microsoft has become Satan personified - making so many cash-grabs as to make their software non-functional or at least pointless for the average user.

What's more, since the world is morphing to a smart phone environment, the Chromebook makes more and more sense.  When I power up the Chromebook, all my tabs, my passwords, my files, and even my add-ons (including Adblock plus!) are automatically on there.  I have one-stop shopping, one interface, one way of doing things.  I don't have to "switch gears" from one ecosystem to another, it is seamless.  For the average user, a Chromebook might be all they need.  Well, at least for me, in retirement, it seems to be all I need.

Of course, Microsoft has noticed this and they have tried to make Windows 11 look netbook-like.  They call the programs "apps" so you think it is like a smart phone.  But like the ill-fated Windows phone, the Microsoft Zune, and a host of other failed "me too!' products, it is a half-hearted attempt.  Even its few successes, such as Xbox have been troubled as of late.  Microsoft historically has always been shitty software, copied from others, bloated and slow, and never as good as the original.  They have always relied on monopoly practice to maintain market share and their market share to maintain monopoly practice.  Capitalism doesn't always anoint the  best and brightest.

MS-DOS was a shitty copy of CP/M.  Windows was a shitty copy of Xerox PARC's GUI (including its invention - the mouse).  Internet Explorer was a shittier copy of Netscspe Navigator and WORD was a crappy version of WordPerfect - both succeeded because they were given away for free with every copy of Windows, which every new computer came with, by default.  I could go on, but you get the idea - Microsoft blows chunks, always has, always will. It reminds me of my time at GM in the late 1970s or indeed even up to today - bloated management, mediocre products, and reliance of market share and consumer inertia to keep selling products.

But for how long?  Just as expensive gas killed SUV sales in 2008 and bankrupted GM, something may have to give at Microsoft in the end.  Subscription fees are seen as a cash-grab by most consumers. Sure, companies might consider this the cost of doing business.  It would be smart for Microsoft to go back to the model of getting consumers to sign on for free and then relying on corporate accounts to pay the freight.  If you have an installed base of employees using Windows, well, it makes sense for your company to use it as well.

Today, the largest installed base for software is Android - on smart phones.  Schools are going to inexpensive netbooks running Android, as they can afford to buy them cheap and not worry when the kids trash them.  A whole new generation is being raised on Chromebooks, much as an earlier generation was raised on Apple II machines (but that is going back a ways!), or more recently, Windows.   Just food for thought.

Of course, many have issues with Google and our European friends are trying to "de-Google" themselves from that ecosystem as well.  There is a lot to dislike about Google, but it is a system that is so ridiculously easy to use and FREE as well, on the consumer level.  Google is taking a page from the early Microsoft playbook, while Microsoft seems to be acting like a failing company, making that last desperate cash-grab so they can boost the bottom line and the C-suite can cash in a few more stock options before it all goes bust.

And bust it seemes to be going. Microsoft finally announced some changes to Windows 11 - to make it less intrusive, fewer ads, fewer forced updates, etc.  The hue and cry against Windows 11 has been loud and long.  Forced upgrades and early sunsetting of earlier versions are not sitting well with a lot of folks.  Thankfully, our European friends are passing regulations against such things and as a result, improving products worldwide.  The next time you hear a friend bash the EU, remind them that those "onerous regulations" from Brussels gave us the universal charging plug that works on ALL phones, tablets, laptops, netbooks, etc.  No more drawer-full of incompatible plugs!  And soon, we may go back to removable batteries as well.  While we wallow in unfettered capitalism, Europeans are deciding what is best for themselves, not for a few shareholders.

But I digress.

One final thought: Many argue that LINUX is the wave of the future and also of the distant past.  LINUX is everywhere and nowhere all at once.  The UNIX kernal forms a key part of Android, oddly enough, so maybe LINUX sort of is, already the default operating system.  Of course, it is in a lot of hardware consumers never see, such as servers and industrial applications  Like I said, it is everywhere and nowhere all at once.  One place that seems to resist it is the PC - unless you are a dedicated hobbiest with a lot of time on your hands, converting an existing computer to LINUX is a frustrating task - at best maybe you can hope for a LINUX partition and then switch between that and Windows.  But what is the point of that?

Maybe the Chromebook is the LINUX laptop of the future - if Google plays its cards right.

UPDATE:  I suppose I should comment on HP as well - once a storied company and the very original (or at least one of the earliest) "Garage Startups" (whose garage is now a museum) of Silicon Valley.  I cut my teeth, as an instrumentation technician, on HP hardware - oscilloscopes, frequency counters, and the like.  Later, its "Laserjet" printers became an industry standard.  The company was kind of run into the ground by a new CEO who would rent out stadiums and force employees to attend worship services anointing her as some sort of false God.  They did the usual cash-grab subscription thing with proprietary cartridges - abusing copyright law to insure no 3rd party ink was used in their machines.  It all went horribly wrong when people decided that printing things was no longer so important.  The consumer always has the ultimate weapon in their back pocket - the choice not to consume at all.

Today, the company still sells laptops and printers - made in China, of course.  But I suspect it is more of a Trademark management company than anything close to the Engineering firm of yore.

Like a Netbook, it had few plugs.  Two USB-C ports, either used for charging the battery, one USB port (for your mouse?) and oddly enough, a 1/8" micro audio jack, even though it has Bluetooth.  Go Figure.  I don't recall it having an HDMI, either, but I could be wrong about that.

Like the Windows 10 machine (and the Chromebook) it has a touchscreen - like your phone!  I have mixed feelings about this.  Screens get greasy and nasty as a result, much as keyboards do (I had to remove food from the Windows 10 laptop keyboard and may end up disassembling it and cleaning it - something that any laptop needs periodically as the vents clog up with lint, dust, dead skin, pet hair, and God-knows-what).  It is convenient, but then again, the icons you are supposed to click on are tiny, and my meaty shithooks are too large to select dainty tabs on the display.  I end up going back to the touchpad or mouse.

Like most new laptops, it is very thin, because, reasons.  You need thin!  Thin is in!  You don't want to be mocked on your next red-eye flight by pulling a thick computer out of you briefcase, right?  Thin also means no DVD-drive, so I had to plug in my DELL external DVD drive I bought on eBay for ten bucks a few years back.

The ancient traditions still survive,.In Japan, they have just now abandoned the floppy disc and upgraded to... CD-ROMs.  Yes, the Japanese love physical media, and maybe they are on to something (they love cash, too, and credit cards are - or were - rare over there).  The sudden switch to optical storage has meant a spike in the demand for external optical drives.

My $10 DVD drive is now worth a fortune!

Doing the Math - Does the present generation have it harder than before? (UPDATED)

 

Tropes like this are repeated often online.  But do they make sense?

In my lifetime, the population of the United States has gone from 170 million people, to nearly 350 million, an increase of over 100%.   Meanwhile, the amount of real estate and resources have remained largely finite.  Waterfront property, for example, once common for the working man, is now a carefully rationed commodity for only the very wealthy.  Our condos in Pompano Beach, were originally built for the middle-class retired auto worker.  Today, middle class people end up moving to the landlocked western edge of the County, where they can have pretend mansions, but no water access.  Meanwhile, on the Intracoastal, real mansions spring up for the very lucky few.

But is the deck stacked against the newer generations?  Given the population boom, it is no wonder that things are more costly, scarce, and crowded.  It is not your imagination - driving was a lot easier back in the heyday of the Interstates, when brand-new pot-hole free roads were largely vacant, and you could rev up your Turnpike Cruiser to 110 MPH with little or no traffic to contend with.  Today, we fight for a lane change or a parking space.  We are a more crowded nation.

However....

The above trope has appeared like clockwork on Reddit every few days for the last few months.  Is it really true or not?  Are people really paying $7 a dozen for eggs?  According to some sites, Americans are paying $3.59 on average and maybe $5 or more for "organic" eggs at Walmart.  Sure, during the egg shortage, prices shot up - which tells me two things.  First, this is an old "meme" recycled from a few years ago.  Second, the people posting this are likely overseas, trying to stir up discontent (or generate rage bait and engagement) and have no idea how much eggs cost in the USA.

In 1987, the year I moved to Washington at age 27, eggs cost less than a dollar a dozen - about 78 cents, according to some sources.  That would be worth about $2.25 today, so yes, eggs are more expensive than before, in real terms, but not $7 a dozen expensive, rather half that.

Rent is another issue.  I noted in an earlier posting that I paid $900 a month for a two-bedroom apartment in Hunting Towers, back in 1987.  The apartment building is still there and today, now called the Bridgeyard Apartments.  The apartment, on their site listed as "The Duke" rents for $2100 a month. Such an outrage!  But $900 in 1987 is worth $2612 today, so if anything, rents have gone down in the last 39 years.

But what about crippling student loan debt?  Surely the earlier generations didn't have to deal with that!  Well, I graduated from law school in 1992 after 14 years of part-time, full-time, and night school, with tuition reimbursement from my employers (partial!) and some help from my parents, as well as money I paid with my salary.  Even then, I graduated with $38,000 in student loan debt - and much of it was unnecessary, if only I learned to live on less.  We lived large on student loans - and kids still do today.  Luxury student housing is (or was) one of the largest growth areas in rental construction.

$38,000 in 1992 is worth about $89,500 today - far more than the fifty grand postulated in the meme above.  Yet, I was able to pay it all back, mostly because I refused the kind offers to refinance over 30 years at astronomical interest rates.  Yea, it was a pain in the ass, but I paid it off.  And in retrospect, it wasn't a lot of money, given that after a decade or two, I spent more than that on cars or boats or whatever.

And yea, cars are more expensive today - in real terms - than in the past. My Mother's 1973 Vega was advertised at a starting price of $1999 - about $15,000 today.  Today, the cheapest car you can buy brand new, is a Nissan Versa for about twenty grand.  But unlike eggs, a lot has changed in cars over the years.  Things like airbags, disc brakes, air conditioning, four-speaker stereos, etc, were either just not available or expensive options that few could afford.  Today, they are standard equipment.  And cars today last far longer than the 65,000 miles we got out of that Vega before the engine seized and the fenders rusted through.

A good used car today costs less, in real terms, than that Vega ever did, and is a far better value as well - lasting longer and providing more standard equipment.  Comparing technology and prices today with the past is always problematic.  Yes, Internet service sucked back in the 1960's.  Yes, I am being sarcastic.

But the point is valid.  We paid $35 for a "land line" back in the day.  Today, I pay $65 a month for a smart phone with 75GB of streaming data.  It actually costs less than the landline phone of yesteryear and does so much more.  The world hasn't entirely gone to pot..

But prices are only half the equation, right?  Wages haven't kept up with inflation!  And this may be a salient point, particularly in the last few years, as low-wage jobs in particular, fall behind.  In 1987, I started out as as GS-7-1225 Patent Examiner for the princely sum of $22,500.  While a boost from the $17,000 I was making as a lab tech at Carrier, it was a struggle to get by in the big city.  Sharing a place with my life mate was a big start.

Today, starting salary for a Patent Examiner can range from $57,000 to $65,000, which is on par with what today's value of my 1987 salary would be (about $65K).  So wages have kept up, at least in some fields.

This is not to say things are Even-Steven, or that Gen-Z is coming out ahead.  Far from it - they have inherited a far more crowded world than the one I lived in.  I recounted before how,  when my boomer elders graduated from college, they migrated to the "Sun Belt" which was largely unpopulated until the popularizing of air conditioning.  When I was born, most of America was crowded into the Northeast, and also on the West Coast.  Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and Florida were just not nearly as populated as they are today.  Heck, Florida was mostly part-time snowbirds - many houses simply didn't have air conditioning as no one lived in them during the summer months.  A lot has changed over time.

Of course, there isn't much left in the way of "undiscovered country" in the USA, except perhaps Detroit - or maybe the rust belt will have a revival (it seems to be happening, believe it or not!).  No, things are not the same as before.  But neither are they as dire as the meme above implies.

Then again, I guess some guy running a Pakistani bot farm wouldn't know that.

UPDATE:  Another meme posted online is the plea, "I have a Master's degree and can't find a good paying job!  They promised me that if I went to college, I would end up with a high-paying job!"

First of all, who is "They" - your parents, your teachers, your guidance counselor?  Nowhere in this decision matrix did you offer your own opinion on the matter?  It is convenient to blame unseen others for one's own problems - as I noted before.  But it is a cop-out, as it is a convenient way to avoid taking responsibility for one's own actions.

Second, the "Masters Degree" (in what? from where?) is also telling.  When you can't be bothered to type a few words explaining your supposed credentials, something is up.  Either the whole posting is from an overseas bot farm, or the poster (if real) knows that he will be shouted down with gales of laughter when he says, "Masters Degree in Philosophy."

Not all college degrees are the same value.  In fact, as I noted before, some are worthless or even have a negative value in the job market.   You go to Cornell in Ithaca, New York and major in Agitation Studies - and spend all your time protesting this or that - and have a "C" average, then not only will it not lead to a good job, but will actually drive away prospective employers.  Ithaca is like a roach motel - people go there for college and never leave, working the rest of their lives in the service sector.

The sad thing is, this "student loan debacle" has been going on for decades, not mere days.  Anyone graduating in the last ten years can't claim ignorance of the predatory nature of student loans, or the worthless degrees awarded by online "for-profit" Universities - that flood the airwaves even today, with their inspirational ads.

18-year-olds make dumb decisions to be sure.  I know a young woman who turned down a full scholarship at my law school Alma Mater, to study "International Law" (which is not really a thing anymore, if it ever was) at a "name brand" law school, paying full tuition and taking out six-figure loans.  Now she is working as a public defender, hoping her "service" will wipe the loan balance clean.

It is sad, but you tell a young person they can get away from their families and party for four years (and maybe get laid) and they will do just that.  When I graduated from High School in 1978, everyone with a pulse got an "acceptance letter" from an infamous Florida University.  The joke was, you could go there and party and major in "underwater basket weaving" or snorkeling or some such.  Party schools and party majors have always been around.

But maybe not for long.  Small liberal arts colleges are folding right and left, and even "big" schools like Syracuse University are closing down many liberal arts majors and laying off staff as a result (tip 'o the hat to a reader for alerting me to this).  SU thrived on foreign students paying full-boat bloated tuition, and now Trump has scared them off.  Meanwhile, student-consumers are looking critically at schools and majors and maybe walking away, saying, "Nah!" to crippling student loan debt.

College is a way to park young people out of the job market for a few years.  In many cases - of people I personally know - college was an expensive party and something of a detour in life.  Often, they end up learning a skill or trade on the job, in order to find reasonable employment.

Staggering student loan debt it not a mandate!

Deducting Medical Expenses

When I was younger, I never thought about deducting medical expenses, as I didn't have any.  But now...

NOTE:  Consult your tax advisor for current tax law in your jurisdiction.  Your mileage may vary.

Mr.See has always had problems with teeth.  Mine are strong, but not particularly attractive.  But as I asked my Dentist, "Will they last another 20 years or so?" and he replied, "Yes, of course!"  I said, "Good, that's all I will need them for!"

Mark on the other hand, has had to go through several painful root canals, and when our old Dentist's newly minted Dentist son - fresh from dental school - offered to do them yet again, Mark said, "Let's GTFO!"

We found a new Dentist who referred us to a specialist (Endodontist) who in turn referred Mark to an oral surgeon.  Turns out, it is far easier to simply replace a tooth than to go through three root canals.  And the overall cost is competitive.  Three root canals > One tooth replacement.

Still,  you are looking at $5000 and up, per tooth, and Mark has three bad ones.  Medical expenses, including dental, are deductible to the extent they exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income.  For 2025, our income was high, because of the condo sale.  But for 2026, it will go down again.

That being said, our total medical expenses for 2025 do exceed 7.5% of AGI, when you factor in all the expenses.

We had to go to the Mayo clinic several times for early morning appointments, necessitating an overnight stay.  At 87 miles one-way, auto expenses are reimbursed at a special medical rate of 21 cents per mile.  It adds up, and once you are over that 7,5% hurdle, you might want to think about all the things you spend money on that fall under "medical" including insurance premiums.  Co-pays, prescription costs - it all adds up!

I calculated our total medical expenses for 2025 included:

MAS Expenses:  $7552.14

RPB Expenses:  $3936.92

Lodging:            $ 584.09

Mileage:             $  301.14

Premiums:          $4214.50

TOTAL:          $16,588.79

Ouch.  Didn't see that coming!  So many Seniors claim they "never get a bill!" with Medicare, but they pay monthly for a supplemental plan plus a drug plan, plus co-pays on drugs and doctor's visits and treatments (in some cases).  And getting dental covered is problematic - you can pay a LOT in premiums, and end up with only 50% coverage - at a dentist not of your choice.  And no doubt, the insurance company would say, "do another root canal!"  Bastards!

American medical billing!  Swell ain't it?  At least we don't have socialism! I can buy a go-fast boat with the money I save by letting others die in the street!  Survival of the fittest, baby!  Yee-Haw!  /s

This exercise illustrates why logging your expenses is important for tax purposes.  Quickbooks made generating these reports easy.   ClearCheckbook can log purchases and generate reports, but only if you pay $5 a month (discount for yearly payment) for the deluxe web package.  As I use the program more, I start to like it more.   The only sticking point is online storage.  We'll see.

CAVEAT:  Medical expenses are apparently only deductible if you itemize!  Again, consult your tax specialist for more details.  So the whole exercise may be for naught.  Schedule 1-A this year has some interesting gimmies - interest deduction for new car loans (through 2028), deduction for overtime pay, no tax on tips, and a special deduction for seniors (The Big Bad Bill).  How will Trump pay for his war?  Oh, right, by cutting medicare!  Oh shit.  Goodbye Mayo!

By the way, this year we are filing a 1040-SR - the tax return for Senior Citizens!

Gummies

Gummies are the next big thing, but are they really a good thing?

As you get older, you take a lot more pills, some prescription and some are supplements. Vitamins and such, for example.

The prices aren't cheap, at least at the retail store. Oftentimes, a small bottle of vitamins or supplements can cost $20 or more. If you shop online, you can find the cost a lot less, particularly if you buy in bulk.

Prices are all over the board, however. Some retailers are selling a small bottle of 100 vitamins for more than another retailer is selling a bottle of 500, with the same dosage and chemical content. You really have to look at the cost per pill when comparing these things. In most cases, Amazon shows this value, in other cases you have to get out your calculator.

But one thing is clear, vitamins and supplements presented as gummies are usually 5 to 10 times as expensive as pills. I'm not sure why we want our vitamins and other pills to be treated like candy. Not only is it far more costly, it seems to me to be rather dangerous.

For example, I acquired from a friend of mine a large bottle of vitamin C gummies. I also got a large bottle of vitamin C pills which has a lot more servings for a lot less money. But what concerns me is that the vitamin C gummies taste like and look like candy, down to the sugar crystals dotting the outsides.  A child could easily confuse these with actual candy and would be tempted to eat the entire bottle. I'm not sure what the results would be other than a lifelong immunization from scurvy.

It just strikes me as odd that we put child-proof caps on everything these days, even things that you don't think a child would want to consume. I have a child-proof cap on my mouthwash, but nobody at their right mind wants to drink  mouthwash. I'm sure a child trying to drink it would spit it out shortly.

But pills? We make them intentionally enticing by making them look like and taste like candy. It makes no sense to me.

Marijuana gummies - which is what most people think of, when you say, "Gummies" in the first place - merely compounds the problem.  Little Suzie goes to visit Hippie Grandma and ends up passed out on the floor after eating a whole box full.  Since it takes nearly an hour for the effects to be felt, it isn't hard for a child to wolf down a handful without feeling initial effects.  As an adult, even a whole one of these makes me fall asleep, or more precisely, pass out.  I can't imagine what a handful would do to a kid.  Why aren't these provided as pills?  Why are they not in childproof packages? (Many times they are not!).

I recently ordered some multivitamins for "Men over 50," and the cost per bill was about 4 cents each. The same multivitamin in gummy form was 15 cents each, and some places wanted as much as 29 cents apiece. I'm not sure paying several times the cost of something in order to have it as candy is really a cost-effective thing.

Of course, many question the efficacy of many of these vitamins and supplements. Many nutritionists point out that if you have a balanced diet you probably don't need a multivitamin. And in some cases vitamins and supplements can actually be harmful to you. The vitamin supplement industry is a little shady to say the least.

Making these things look like candy it's just icing on the cake, so to speak.

Non Compos Mentis

I had to cheat on my cognitive test!

Another trip to Mayo, and I am not sure any of it is useful.  To recap, after spending over $100,000 of your taxpayer money, they found my organs are all in remarkably healthy condition - except my brain.  And there is nothing they can do about that, other than to prescribe medication.  So here we are.

They wanted to do cognitive testing, which took three hours to complete.  It is far more difficult than the "Montreal Protocol" shown above (which I sent to Mr. See during a break, as a joke).  They give you a string of numbers - like seven of them - and you have to read them back, in reverse.  I didn't think I would do well at that, but the trick for me was to read back the numbers first in original order, quickly (like it was one word) and then reverse the order.

I did well with arranging the bi-colored blocks into patterns, which sounds like child's play (and it was at first) but when they keep adding blocks and putting the pattern on the diagonal, it does get tricky.  I can see some "normal" people struggling with this.

But the interesting part was word listing.  "Give me all the words you can think of starting with the letter F, you have one minute!"  My mind went blank - possibly because it reminded me of the scene from Sense and Sensibility where they try to guess the name of Elinor's new boyfriend:

"His name begins with F. F? A promising letter. Foster? Forrest? Fotheringay? Featherty? - Fortescue? - Fondant?"

I sort of stalled after that.

The point of the test is to establish a starting point to measure my mental decline.  They can re-test a year or two from now and chart where I am falling behind.  Again, the purpose of this is somewhat ambiguous to me - I already know how far I have fallen.  What's the point of drawing a graph?

All that being said, I have no doubt I did better on the test than Trump did!