I can talk to people fine, though I don’t enjoy doing it with strangers at random places. I just hate phone calls. It’s not entirely rational, no doubt, though I still object to the silly stupid remark it’s “mental illness”.

Calling with IT professionals is extremely inefficient when discussing technical details where correct settings (ip’s, ports, paths etc) matter. At best a call here is only useful to indicate the urgency of the mail that was sent.

So, you agree that the statement that it gets easier with exposure is nonsense? Or do you mean to say that every one who disagree has mental health issues? Because you’re talking about a decently large chunk of people here.

Disagree. Part of my job entails calling people (and I even started at a phone helpdesk 20 years ago) and I still despise and loathe calling on the phone with people I don’t know for making appointments or getting quotes. To the point it will probably impact my health since my dentist only takes appointments by phone. (Before my sister in law worked there so I could DM her to ask her directly)

Exposure doesn’t always make it easier.

I know it can be cheaper but I wanted nice Niko sockets that fit the same cover plates I used for my lighting switches and power sockets. It’s a house, not an office, so paying more for things to look like I want them is also worth something, for me.

When you’re renovating that expense is relative imo. And the cable is relatively cheap imo. Nice wall sockets for them are super expensive though. 200 euro or thereabouts for 500m of cat6, but 20 euro per outlet pair adds up. Definitely still worth it, because like expected there’s more stuff to connect.

Spending time on it, stops making it free. I’ve used Linux on off for more than 25 years now, but always switched back to Windows because in all those previous instances something weren’t working well enough on Linux. I’m not blaming Linux for this and will at some point try again as I dislike what Windows does in the background.

But my time is not ‘free’.

And practically I mostly find using Windows extremely easy. Being in IT specifically for my knowledge about Windows obviously helps there. I follow the notices they send out for my job, so know how to turn off or prevent many of the user annoyances quickly.