dumping digital clutter
I wasn't intending on deleting a bunch of internet accounts to be my New Year's Resolution, but that's just how things ended up happening.
While going through the account list in my password manager, I found some seriously old and crusty stuff there, and it was long overdue to do some jettisoning.
True, I could have just left those old crusty accounts as-is and nothing bad would have happened... probably. But that lingering doubt is something I couldn't shake, so I started deleting the old stuff.
I can best define the doubt as questions.
What if the site the account belongs to is bought by some corporation, and then all the personal data in every account is sold?
What if the site is run by idiots and everybody's account info is "leaked" later?
Then there is the most important question:
Why do I even have an account for insert-whatever-site-here in the first place?
There has to be an answer to that question, even if it's not a good one. If I can't come up with any answer at all, then that account has to go.
Of the deletions I made, some of them were:
- "Free" email accounts I had and didn't use.
- A "musicians wanted" account on a site that I probably hadn't used in over a decade.
- Three link shortening accounts.
- An email newsletter service account (for sending, not receiving) that I never used.
- A formerly free comment system account that turned freemium.
- An online cloud storage service account.
- Some blog host thing account I tried out forever ago and then never used.
- A social media management service account I stopped using years ago.
- Four social media accounts. Or maybe five. I'll talk about that fifth one in a minute.
It takes time to go through all this crap, but it's worth it
No two sites have the same process for deleting an account, so I was not able to get all my deletions done in a single sitting. It took days, especially for sites that "require" you to email them just to get an account deleted.
A few of them do that 30-day wait thing. Yes, you can delete, but the account isn't 100% gone until 30 days later, which is annoying, but whatever.
A few things learned
Some accounts I deleted had some images and/or videos I posted years ago that I completely forgot about. One of them was an imgur account, and this is that fifth social media account I mentioned a minute ago. Does imgur count as social media? I'm not sure, but I'll say it does. Before deleting that account, I downloaded an archive of everything in there (which imgur thankfully makes easy to do), and there was stuff dating all the way back to 2014. Just dopey things for the most part. I had no local backup of any of it, so I was happy to get that archive.
Thing I learned: When you have too many accounts, you completely forget what you have out there.
Some accounts I kept around solely for the reason of, "I might need this someday". The cloud storage account I mentioned was one of those. I don't use cloud storage and doubt I ever will. And if I had to transfer files online that were too big for email, I'd just use a file sharing service since no account is required.
Thing I learned: Just-in-case is weak justification to keep an account active, more often than not.
And there were some accounts I had belonging to sites that were basically dog slow versions of desktop programs, such as online image editors. Better to just use GIMP, because every online image editor sucks.
Thing I learned: Don't use a site that "requires" an account to do something a free desktop program with no account required can do 100x faster and better.
Happy new year.
plain text zen
It's funny how things work out.
Something about Linux I totally didn't expect is how much better it feels using text now.
Years ago, I would read about certain editors for Mac that bragged about distraction-free writing as a selling point. I was using Windows at the time, and it made no sense to me that the editor itself could somehow be distracting. My thought was why not just get Notepad++ and call it a day?
Yeah, I was wrong there.
Now that I'm 2.5 years into Linux and have tried several text editors both terminal and GUI-based, I understand the need for distraction-free editors. For example, ghostwriter definitely counts as one of them. But I'd argue the same "clean slate" text editing environment can be had with any terminal based editor.
The best text editors have five things. Lightning fast operation, automatic spell checking, tabs, macros, and syntax highlighting. In Linux, Kate, micro and vi can do all that and a whole lot more. Per the syntax highlighting, I appreciate that the most when editing markdown documents and bash scripts. That highlighting comes in handy more than just a little bit.
And then there's the whole email thing. I switched that over to 100% text with NeoMutt and am still using it.
And then there's the universal document converter Pandoc. Convert markdown to DOCX, ODT, RTF, PDF, whatever. The big deal for me there was being able to convert markdown to EPUB for e-books. I am in the process of writing more books, and oh yeah, having an easy way to output EPUB is nice. I still use LibreOffice Writer for when I need to generate things for print books like a table of contents and page numbers, but when actually writing the book, that's all markdown. I used to write everything in Writer first and then did the e-book conversion. Now it's markdown first, a conversion to EPUB for the e-book, then a conversion to ODT for print book stuff in Writer, then output that to PDF out of Writer. It sounds complicated, but it's actually easier having markdown as the source format.
The most impressive thing about all this is that with the exception of some print-specific stuff I need Writer for, everything is done with plain text.
Plain text was my home all along
When I think of all the document and text editors I've used over the years, it's been quite a list.
The three earliest I used was Write, Notepad and EDIT in MS-DOS/Win 3.1. After that it was Microsoft Works 2.0. Then it was Microsoft Word 6.0 that came with Microsoft Office 4.3. After that, Microsoft Word 97 (my favorite one), then Word 2000, and that was the last Word I used.
When I found OpenOffice Writer (which to this day still offers a 32-bit version that will work with Windows XP and possibly older Windows), I jumped ship over to that because I was sick of "borrowing" product keys just to make Word work. It was also around this time I found Notepad++ and stopped using Windows Notepad. I used both of these for a very long time.
I only stopped using OpenOffice and Notepad++ when I switched to Linux. LibreOffice is much better integrated into the Linux desktop environment compared to OO. It doesn't matter if it's GNOME, KDE Plasma, MATE, or whatever. LO simply looks and works better. For a GUI document editor, LO Writer is my go-to. Notepad++ doesn't have a Linux version, so I switched to Kate and micro.
It was this year 2025 specifically where I really started getting into markdown.
Before I get more into that, learning MD gave me a better understanding of why there are still a handful of writers out there that continue to use software such as WordStar 7.0d for DOS from 1992 (especially since Robert J. Sawyer released it for free with full documentation).
This is the understanding I came to know: Editing a document in a fast editor with syntax highlighting, a courier style font in use, and optionally showing bold/italic/underline is the better writing environment compared to WYSIWYG.
The reason? Crap is eliminated in two ways. Nothing in the interface to distract you from writing, and far less chance of choke.
Less distraction is easy to understand, but choke takes a little explanation.
Anybody that has ever edited a long document, such as a book, has experienced Big Pig Document Editor Choke.
You're in the middle of typing, Big Pig decides to pause (most likely due to auto-save), then after the pause your text slams into view. That's choke.
You're in the middle of typing, a pause happens (again, most likely due to auto-save), then Big Pig straight up crashes. Choke.
You're typing away, stop, then scroll up a few pages for whatever reason you need to. Big Pig doesn't redraw correctly, everything looks messed up, you have to save, exit, and restart Big Pig just to get everything looking correct again. Choke.
You stop typing because you need to edit something a few pages back. Scroll up, make your edit, and uh-oh, now the formatting for the ENTIRE DOCUMENT is all jacked up. Choke. Now you're in a panic situation. Do you save and restart Big Pig? Or do you not save, copy the edit you wanted to make to the clipboard, restart Big Pig and hope everything comes back the way you left it, and make your edits then? The answer is the latter, because if you save, the jacked-up document is what you might get back. Copy your edit, don't save, close and restart Big Pig, HOPE everything turns out okay, then redo your edits.
Every single GUI document editor has choke problems like this, even if your document has no images in it. The longer you go, the more paranoid you get, so much to the point where you turn off auto-save and mash CTRL+S every few minutes just to play it safe. Very stressful.
TUI editors don't have choke problems. Redraw is a nonissue since the editor doesn't mess around with multiple fonts and font sizes. Auto-save actually does work and doesn't cause any pausing or stuttering. Both ghostwriter and Kate have auto-save, and both work. Even vim has it.
Plain Text Just Works™
analog is real
Something I started last week is wearing an analog watch, but not just any analog. It's the sole 100% mechanical watch I own, an Orient Crystal (a.k.a. "3 Star" or "Tristar") that was gifted to me close to ten years ago. It still works. More on that in a bit.
I've said before that I hate analog watches because sometimes it's difficult for me to tell the time depending on where the hands are. Even so, I needed to get over that and get used to it.
I have both legitimate and kooky reasons for why I'm wearing it, so let's get into that.
Due to the fact I have skinny bony wrists, very few mechanical watches fit me properly. Generally speaking, only two types fit the bill.
The first type is what I'm wearing now. The Orient I have is an old school traditional 37mm case size Japanese automatic movement watch, which works very well for smaller wrists. Fortunately, Seiko still makes these. If you are of the skinny wrist persuasion like I am, that's the watch to get.
For traditional case shapes, it is only the Japanese 37mm that has a design with short lugs. Go anywhere smaller or larger, like 35mm-36mm or 38mm-39mm, and the lugs go way too long. On a 37mm, the lug-to-lug will be somewhere between 43 to 45mm, which for smaller wrists is fine. Go even 1mm outside that, and the lug-to-lug increases to 46 to 48mm.
Why I am not saying to go Orient Tristar? At the time I got mine almost ten years ago, the watch was 50 to 60 bucks, and now it's $250 to $300+. Worth it? NO. It's the same watch it was a decade ago and is absolutely not worth the price it sells for new today. I could see it selling for $85 or even $90 now, but over $250? Totally not worth it. A Seiko 37mm is the better option now.
The second type that's big but actually fits skinny wrists very well is what's known as the "tuna" diver, and is called as such because it resembles the shape of a can of tuna. If you look up tuna divers, they are all 44mm or greater in size. But you'll notice something else. Very short stubby lugs, spotted easily in the listings. From a top view, the watch almost looks lug-less, but they're there. This means a 45mm tuna diver has a very short 45mm or 45.5mm lug-to-lug. And that means yes, it will fit a small wrist with no overhang. Nice.
If I do go all-in with 100% mechanical watches, I will buy another. If it's the traditional 37mm Japanese automatic, I would very specifically seek out a Seiko. For a tuna diver, brand doesn't matter so much, especially considering a whole bunch of them already use Seiko movements anyway.
With sizing out of the way, these are the reasons for going with a mechanical analog:
316L stainless steel
As far as I know, nearly all automatic watches use 316L for case material, a.k.a. surgical stainless steel. This is decidedly better than the cheap stamped stainless steel Casio uses on their low-end digitals.
The deal with the cheap stamped stainless steel is how much nickel is released when sweat gets on it. Sweat on stainless steel can act as a corrosive. With cheaper steels, more nickel is released. With the better 316L, less nickel is released and considered to be much safer when in contact with human skin. The official numbers state that 316L ordinarily does not release more than 0.03 mcg of nickel per square centimeter when sweat upon. Safe territory is 0.05 mcg or less for things like earrings and other jewelry, so 316L passes that test easily.
I do not have a nickel allergy as far as I'm aware. However, what I don't know is if nickel released on my skin slowly over time is causing harm or not.
There is the bund strap option where the watch sits on top of leather, and the metal has no direct contact with my skin. But since I already had a watch with a 316L material case on hand, that's what I'm using.
PUR strap avoidance
With cheap Casios, the watch comes with a strap or bracelet. If a bracelet, it's obviously not made of 316L. If it's a strap, it will either be a low grade fabric that wears out quick, or polyurethane resin a.k.a. PUR.
Any PUR strap I wear always leaves a mark behind whether I've been sweating or not, so it's probably better to just avoid all of them.
I don't like steel bracelets because of the weight, and I've never found a leather strap I truly liked. My go-to is the nylon strap, and I have one for my Orient. It's okay, but I'll be replacing it. The good stuff is the sailcloth strap, which is ordinarily a combination of woven nylon and other materials. Some are a leather-nylon hybrid, some use neoprene padding, some have rubber, and so on. Generally speaking, these are tough straps that last and are absolutely better than 100% PUR. They wear like fabric should, breathe properly, and don't wear out fast like most NATO straps do.
On my wrist, nylon is a-okay. Skin irritation doesn't happen, and marks are never left behind. Sailcloth should work for me.
EMF avoidance
A poor man's method of checking a watch for EMF is using a portable AM/FM radio on the AM band tuned to a frequency with no radio station present. You turn the volume up, then place the watch directly over the tuning dial. Any time you hear a pulse or some other oddball frequency noise, that's EMF. The pulses or noises will be very obvious.
The worst offender for EMF is a quartz analog watch. Every time that second hand ticks, you will hear TICK... TICK... TICK... TICK... when using the AM radio test.
With LCD digital, the most EMF is generated whenever the watch beeps. With the watch over the tuning dial on the radio, you'll hear that BEEP blare right through to the radio speaker.
On the low end, some LCD digital watches sputter out some frequency crap that the AM band can pick up, but I don't think it's anything to get in a twist over since the EMF present there is so low.
It is easy enough to acquire a cheap Casio where you can shut up the beeps via "mute" feature, such as the WS1600H or AE1000W.
Alternatively, any Casio digital can be made to never beep again by removing the case back and removing one tiny spring from the quartz movement. Remove the case back, and a spring will be seen sticking straight up that touches the case back when screwed down. The spring's connection to that case back plate is what allows it to beep. Remove the spring, and the watch can't beep at all, but will still work fine otherwise. This means for something like a W218H that doesn't have a mute feature, taking out the spring will stop it from beeping.
What I wanted to do was remove electricity entirely with my watch, and the only way to do that was to go 100% mechanical.
Better for the eyes(?)
Some say that reading the time from a small LCD panel on a digital watch is bad for the eyes. I don't know if I buy that claim since the panel is almost always read in an unlighted state, meaning without the night light in use. If the panel were lighted all the time, then the claim would have some validity to it, but the LCD is unlighted the vast majority of the time.
What I can say is that there is less eye strain reading an analog dial, but only if the dial is legible. And by that I mean a dial with proper contrast. The dial on mine is a "clean" (as in "not busy") black with thin fence post style gold hands, so it works. In the past, I did own an analog with white dial and wide arrow-ish silver hands, and it was basically illegible. The reflection that came off those hands turned them almost the same color as the dial, so it was awful.
If proper legibility is there, then yes, analog is easier to read, if for no other reason it can be read at any angle.
Getting over my annoyance with reading time on an analog dial
I've said before I don't like analog dials, and I still don't.
A countdown timer on my wrist I can live without, but I don't like using one on my phone since authenticating myself past a lock screen just to run that is ridiculous. Fortunately, I have a cheap kitchen timer, so that works. Also, if I decide later to get a tuna diver, I would use the dive timer as that is quite handy.
I can also live without having an alarm on my wrist. If I absolutely need an alarm, I'd still use the Casio, just not on wrist. I also have the option of using one of my old phones that I can run without a lock screen.
Reading the time from an analog dial is the biggest challenge, but only because I'm not used to it. I am up to the challenge. Right now I don't like analog dials, but I'm hoping I get used to it.
Less accurate, but no battery crapola
Typical to most automatic mechanical watches, mine goes off by 15 to 40 seconds in a 24-hour period. Does this bother me? No, because all I do each day is adjust it once, if necessary, and I'm good.
I do have a small pile of quartz analog watches, and every single one of them has a dead battery. Briefly, I considered replacing the batteries. Nope, not doing it. I'm not going to wear them anyway. With a mechanical, a battery is a nonissue since it doesn't use one.
I'm starting to adopt a 1-minute rule
For a while, I felt I had to have a watch that was accurate TO THE SECOND, hence the reason I own a WV58 that has atomic timekeeping. I also could have went with a Bulova Precisionist, because that "262kHz" on the dial isn't just lip service. Not only does a Precisionist have a buttery smooth second sweep, it's ridiculously accurate without the need for atomic sync. But, like so many other watches, the Precisionist doesn't fit my small wrist. Same goes for the WV58 as it doesn't agree with my wrist either, so that's been relegated to being a bathroom clock. I have that watch sitting in its box (it makes for a good watch stand) at the bathroom window, and it successfully syncs the time every night. Good enough. At least I'm getting some actual use out of it.
My Orient automatic doesn't have hacking seconds, so it isn't even possible to have TO THE SECOND accuracy on it.
However, setting the time, day and date (it is a day-date watch) is a bit of a process.
Setting the Orient from a dead stop with no charge:
Shake the watch first to give it charge so the seconds hand starts sweeping.
Pull crown, spin the hands around until the date changes, keep spinning until the day changes at 4am (which is normal), continue spinning the hands all the way to 2pm. Having the watch at 2pm is the safest place to set day and date as it puts the least stress on the movement.
Set the day and date to yesterday.
Spin the hands until the date clicks over to today, set the time, push crown in, done.
After that, the watch holds charge with daily wear and only minor time adjustments are needed.
The minor time adjustments is where I started adopting the 1-minute rule. Again, I can't hack the seconds, so I just set to whatever the current minute is, and that's it. As long as I'm within 1 minute of the actual time, I'm good.
I'm coming to find I actually like the non-hacking seconds, because it's one less thing to worry about.
In the end, it is worrying about less that's the biggest draw to seeing if I get along with mechanical automatic. No bargain bin cheap steel, no PUR strap, no batteries. The setting of the day-date and time is the only complicated part, and I can live with that.
rewatching charlotte's web 40+ years later
The Charlotte's Web I'm referring to is the animated movie from 1973. And even before I start, I noticed something weird right at the beginning of the flick. The copyright date states 1972, but it's always listed everywhere as '73, so I looked up why that is. It's because the release date was 1973-March-1.
Only because I didn't know otherwise, I always thought this was a Disney movie. No. It's Hanna-Barbera. I could forgive anybody for mistaking this as from Disney, as it an animated feature film, a musical, G-rated, has talking animals in it, dancing numbers, and so on.
As for how I feel about the movie, I'll get the negatives out of the way first.
I know this movie is made for kids, but even so, it plays it way too safe. Tension is what makes for a good story. The simplest way to explain that tension is seeing something happen in the movie and feeling anticipation for what's coming next. Something happens, curiosity is sparked, and an emotional connection is made because you wonder what's coming. At this point it's up to the movie to determine how much anticipation to build before delivering the result. Good timing is necessary, and the result has to be satisfying.
For example, in Fantasia during The Sorcerer's Apprentice part of the movie, all of that is a masterful example of what proper tension is, even though not a word of dialogue is spoken. Right from the start, you see examples of tension, first with Mickey looking to the sorcerer standing in the darkness with a glow below him, where he's conjuring a mysterious mist. That's where the curiosity happens. Mickey wants to know what that is, but more importantly, you want to know what that is. Something bad? Something good? You don't know, and want to find out. The question is answered. The mist turns into a beautiful butterfly. The timing is just right, executed perfectly. And so much is said in just those few moments. The sorcerer is powerful, mysterious, mystical, and benevolent as he brought beauty out of the darkness.
Charlotte's Web, unfortunately, squanders tension at every given opportunity by deflating it much too fast. As I was re-watching it all these years later, from scene to scene I could tell there was an ever-present "don't scare the kids; don't make them cry" thing going on.
A simple example of that is the part when Wilbur thinks he can spin a web like a spider. He gets a string tied to his tail, Templeton loops the other side of the string on a nail sticking out of a rafter in the barn, Wilbur gets on a hay bail, tells everybody to watch him, leaps, he hangs in the air by the string, the string lets go, he falls on his ass, everybody laughs at him. And right after that when he says, "I'm gonna try that again!", Charlotte immediately replies back with, "I advise you to put the idea out of your mind", and that's it, move on.
The problem here is what happens after he falls. Or rather, what didn't happen.
Wilbur did not get hurt after he fell. Opportunity for tension lost. Nobody rushed to him to ask if he was okay. Another opportunity lost. He wanted to try a second time but didn't. Yet another opportunity lost.
The entire movie is like this. Every single time any buildup for tension happens with anything, nope, stop, don't scare the kids, don't make them cry, make everything happy-go-lucky again, move on.
This is, incidentally, why some people think this movie is boring and uninteresting. With every opportunity for story tension cut off quickly, the overall presentation suffers as a result.
What Charlotte's Web gets right is the showing the bigness of the country. Several scenes are far-back that show rolling hillsides, scenic views, long winding roads, and farmhouses. The paintings showing these things were made with care, and it shows.
The "Charlotte's Web" song scene, which comes right after "Deep in the Dark" song, is this movie's Fantasia tribute, which is why I mentioned that flick above. Not a bad thing, as it looks fantastic and was tastefully done.
It's the second half of the movie where the real money was spent, particularly in scenes when Charlotte is shown very up close. And this is where I can talk about seeing this now more than 40 years later.
As a kid, I only ever saw this movie on television and never in the theater, so my view of it was on a CRT television that both fuzzed out details and blocked seeing the full frame because of the 4:3 aspect ratio.
Before re-watching this, I never knew Charlotte had eyelashes, nor did I know she was animated with teeth that you can see very briefly in up-close shots when she spoke. I also didn't know she had antennae either. All of that stuff was fuzzed out from watching this on a tube television. Bear in mind what was shown on TV then was well before the days of remastered movies with cleaned up film. All the film jitter, washy colors and bad audio is what made it to broadcast.
I'm also certain seeing the movie originally as cropped 4:3 on CRT wrecked how certain scenes were supposed to look more than a little bit.
Still good?
Yes, still good.
Great?
No, but above-average.
I am glad I got to see all the visual details I never knew were there. As for story, the constant tension deflating knocks it down a few pegs.
I've never seen any of the other movies and don't intend to. I am aware of Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure from 2003 and 2006 live-action remake.
The '73 version is what I wanted to see again. I was glad to re-watch it.
i deleted thunderbird
While I did switch over to a TUI mail client, I did keep Thunderbird on my computer just in case I wanted to switch back to it.
After using NeoMutt for a couple of weeks, I did the deed and deleted Thunderbird. A backup was made first, then I deleted both the program and user data folders Thunderbird used.
Before the deleting, I thought about switching back to it. Twice.
Both times, I launched the program and got annoyed with it almost immediately.
In the first instance, there were JavaScript crash errors. This wasn't Thunderbird's fault, but rather from a buggy regex plugin because I need regex searching. More on that in a minute.
In the second instance, I got annoyed from all the hoops I had to jump through just to adjust things, since Thunderbird doesn't know how to get out of its own way.
A few NeoMutt limit view examples to explain what I mean
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days"
l
~d<3d
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days from bob@example.com"
l
~d<3d ~f bob@example.com
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days from bob@example.com and joyce@example.com"
l
~d<3d ~f "(bob|joyce)@example.com"
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days from bob@example.com and joyce@example.com with the word report in the subject line"
l
~d<3d ~f "(bob|joyce)@example.com" ~s report
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days from bob@example.com and joyce@example.com with the word report in the subject line and office party in the message body"
l
~d<3d ~f "(bob|joyce)@example.com" ~s report ~b "office party"
"I'm using an IMAP folder, don't download all the messages first to search, and search by string instead"
l
~d<3d ~f "(bob|joyce)@example.com" ~s report =b "office party"
"Show me emails in the inbox that have arrived in the past 3 days from bob@example.com and joyce@example.com with the word report in the subject line and office party in the message body, but NOT the words balloons or clown in the message body"
l
~d<3d ~f "(bob|joyce)@example.com" ~s report =b "office party" !=b balloons !=b clown
"Okay, I'm done. Show me all the messages again"
l
all
Another example
"Show me emails from Big Ass Bank"
l
~f "Big Ass Bank"
"Show me emails from Big Ass Bank received only in March 2025"
l
~f "Big Ass Bank" ~d 1/3/2025-1/4/2025
(Mutt/NeoMutt requires dates in day/month/year format when filtering like this. The date range shown is 2025-Mar-1 to 2025-Apr-1. I could have used 2025-Mar-31 as the date range end but it's just easier to do first-of-month from one to the next; doing this means I don't have to remember if the month ends in 30 or 31.)
"Show me emails from Big Ass Bank received only in March 2025 that has the phrase 'account balance' in the message body"
l
~f "Big Ass Bank" ~d 1/3/2025-1/4/2025 =b "account balance"
"Okay, I'm done. Show me all the messages again"
l
all
And if I want to set that up as a macro so it runs whenever I hit F6 on my keyboard, that's doable in muttrc with this:
macro index <F6> "<limit>~f 'Big Ass Bank' ~d 1/3/2025-1/4/2025 =b 'account balance'<enter>" "View Big Ass Bank account balances for 2025-Mar"
Okay.
To do everything I just said in stock Thunderbird is technically doable using a Saved Search, except no regex.
The way Thunderbird does search is that everything is a drop-down menu. Using AND or OR is not an option. If you want to find messages containing or not containing certain things, multiple fields have to be configured. If for example I want to find messages not containing red, green or blue in the message body, that means I have to set up three separate "body doesn't contain" fields. One for red, one for green, one for blue.
With regex, if I want to find messages not containing red, green or blue, that's just a NOT with (red|green|blue). Easy. The pipe acts as the OR.
Regex is a godsend for searching through emails because it's written short and operates fast.
Now about that buggy regex plugin I formerly used in Thunderbird...
One regex search plugin exists for Thunderbird, and it sucks. The only saving grace of it is that you can use it with filters and Saved Search, sort of. Since it's a buggy mess, if it encounters even one email it can't parse through for whatever reason, a JavaScript pop-up happens with a crash error. Thunderbird itself doesn't crash, but you have to click off that pop-up or wait until it goes away. Until it does, search is effectively locked until the plugin "resets" or do whatever it does to recover.
I had to use that stupid plugin because there was no other option. For those Bob and Joyce examples above, the longest one would take SEVEN fields configured using a stock Thunderbird search. With the buggy regex plugin, it's technically doable with one line, if it decides not to crash and burn on the attempt.
You either have to deal with the arduous, tedious process of stock Thunderbird internal search, or use a plugin where it's a dice toss whether it will work or crash every time you use it.
If you're wondering why Thunderbird doesn't have regex, join the club. Thunderbird users have been screaming at the devs to put in regex for years. Possibly well over a decade by now if not longer. They absolutely won't do it. No matter how many users have said HEY, PUT IN REGEX FOR SEARCH AND FILTERS, nope, not happening. Enjoy the Thunderbird search that hasn't changed in 20 years. Thanks for playing.
Then there's stock Mutt and NeoMutt. You never have to touch the mouse, and there are no fields to configure. Type your oneliner, and it will work on the first try. And you can macro it.
NeoMutt really is an upgrade
The oneliner search/filter capability in NeoMutt is something I took to very quickly. Going back to Thunderbird, losing that and having to click-click-click with the mouse all over the place to do simple stuff... no.
It wasn't just the oneliner stuff that convinced me to delete Thunderbird, but it was one of the major reasons.
Another major reason is I don't want graphics in my email anymore, which includes the interface itself. I didn't realize how much a GUI mail client annoyed me until I used NeoMutt for a bit and then did two short stops into Thunderbird later. I saw the window panes, the folder icons, menus sprawled all over the place, etc.. All of that left me with a feeling of blah, and wanted nothing to do with it.
The only GUI thing about my email now is that one small titlebar change whenever a new message arrives that I talked about before, and that's it. Everything else is 100% text.
Again, I don't want to go TUI-everything, but graphics have no place in email, and arguably never did.
Think of TUI as the black PC steel case of email, i.e. everything you need, nothing you don't, and the best thing to use to get the job done.