Some thoughts about Frutiger Aero, Windows Live, and my own nostalgia

So I keep spending time on Frutiger Aero pages on neocities and coming away sad and nostalgic. I miss that era of computing so much. I *loved* aero when it came out, and I loved that Windows 7 improved it a lot. My first laptop felt like this special, incredible thing. I learned about Linux with it, played in LAN parties, got really good at TF2, learned Java, it was a spectacular time. And I hung out with friends a lot during that time, too.

I feel like the entire atmosphere of my life was just more social back then... and the possibilities felt endless. Maybe I just miss my optimism.

One thing I miss terribly is the ubiquity of Windows Live Messenger. I know there's similar software out there, but it's not where "everyone" is, y'know? But ultimately, what I miss about it is the interface. You had a window for your friends list, and windows for each chat, and that's it. It wasn't the monolith that Discord is, you could have multiple chats and reference them quickly to relay information without removing anything from your screen. In Discord, if you wanna talk to someone about something in another group chat, you have to bring the entire focus to the other group chat, then bring focus back again. It's not a huge deal, but it's just the way I got comfortable using my computer and chatting online.

I had a fistful of friends to chat to, as well. We'd be online pretty much all night. Never really had any meaningful convos, we'd just kinda complain about school and shout family guy lines at each other. But it was camaraderie, it was company. I haven't heard from so many of them in so long, not since Dave got into an MLM... but I digress. These days, most of the people I get in contact with are just... strangers. I don't know them well, I don't feel like we're becoming any kind of close as friends. I've tried to find my home in a few friend groups, but something always ends up coming apart. Melodrama, usually. A bunch of friends rip each other apart and I get lost in the divorce proceedings.

I still have my day-to-day life. I really miss how software used to be, but maybe, underneath it all, I really just miss that era where everything seemed so easy.