Mostly corporations.

Struggling population: Gets financially stomped by actions of the money class, low/negative savings returns vs. inflation, 418% inflated food prices, 1000% increase on housing, a 30% pay cut, and a 200% increase on basic goods.

The money class: “Why aren’t they giving all their extra money to our banks for us to earn interest revenue in exchange for nothing? Why are they buying food and things for themselves to survive instead of giving it all to us?! What do you mean I only earned $19,000 while golfing yesterday?! I earned $20,005 the day before!! Fucking millennials!!! We handed you guys 3 small checks 4 years ago, what do you mean you need more money to survive?!”

You mean the pot of coffee with a few gnats in it that Pedro left out overnight?

They squirted some Torani Pumpkin in it and put some Sonic ice on top. It’s now 12$.

Vitriol towards office environments and their overlords aside for a minute, here are a few of the positives the company gets from this:

There is wicked amounts of prestige in having a complex with your name on the marquee of the building. Client confidence skyrockets if you “Have a building” in a major metro.

Less ability for overemployment - you can guarantee the guy unable to get this one job finished at the office isn’t selling his spare time to the competition down the road.

More control over employee’s personal lives and psyche - if you can DEMAND that Mr. Jones be in the office instead of at his kid’s parent day lunch, and you have the building to DEMAND he report to, you’ve driven home the point to Mr. Jones that you own his life, and he is an accessory of your money making venture first, then a family man second. This can sometimes lead to the creation of unhealthy work-lifers who are extremely profitable to the firm. This is almost impossible to do when they’re at home and the oppression is harder to enforce.

It can actually be more cost effective, if you’re a large enough firm. Once you pass about 40-50 members, there are instances where you can save on things like data connectivity, equipment costs, and travel to trainings/client meetings. These costs vary wildly by industry, so the fiscal math follows suit. In many cases, it’s a cost-saving measure.

There are other factors - tax breaks, stipends from cities to occupy certain districts, nepotism, and social optics, but those are adjunct to the main purpose of getting employees back into a high-rise.

My commute is 0 seconds in the morning. I wake up, get rolling on my morning routine, open up my Surface, and log in to the morning meeting. I am productive instantly, and start on my workload within 30 minutes of being awake. I often finish everything needed of my department within 2.5-5 hours, with extra time to improve or fuss over details to enhance the client’s deliverable or improve UI or something.

Meanwhile, my in-office peers at other firms are just getting settled into their desks after their 2nd mandatory in-person attendance huddle meeting, sometime around 10:30 in the morning. Of course, this is followed by waiting 45 minutes in queue to pay 10$ for burnt old coffee at the cafeteria, and shuffling around a maze of corridors and 2 different elevators for 15 minutes just to get to their assigned desk for the day. Oh, and that’s after their key card for elevator 2 desync’d, so there’s been an hour of waiting around for Jan from Facilities to approve Todd from IT’s request for an authorization on a new key card, and a 40$ pay deduction from the employee for missing a key card in the first place. Of course, that’s in addition to the demerit for missing their 3rd in-person attendance huddle of the morning. By the time lunch hour hits, they’re finally logged in to their machine with just enough give-a-fuck left to sneak in Facebook memes when their manager isn’t over them looming; all while giving enough shits to ignore their actual workload because they hate it there.

Gotta put meat in the seats or the megaconglomerate who owns the 17 office buildings downtown might have to rethink a portion of one of their income models. Less demand for high end commercial real estate when the companies they lease to realize/ follow through on the fact 90% of them do not need the 28,000 Sq ft bullying zone they use to oppress and keep motivation and salaries low in order to function.

Plus, the cruelty and waste is the point. Also, there’s the miserable middle manager rung of humanity that only lives to make their office coworkers lick their boot by prisoner compliance who are rabid to establish the facade of purpose in their career. They don’t care if the planet, all their coworker’s families, and their company’s bottom line have to suffer for that - if they can’t loom over their underlings and slow progress with tons of detrimental comments and stupid suggestions, how will the world know they’re ‘involved’?

I’m overly grateful my firm is 100% remote. Damn.

Not who you asked, but I’m pretty new to jazz as a serious listener and my few recent finds, for whatever they’re worth:

Alex Isley and Terrace Martin’s I Left My Heart in Ladera has been on loop for a few days for me. Good album. If you’re into the vocals, I’d recommend Salt Cathedral as well, though their sound has trended more Latin in recent years. It’s still awesome.

Most anything Lee Ritenour is involved in, if you’re into smooth, more traditional easy listening with great guitar.

But the biggest thing I’ve found is Japan has such a cool tradition of Jazz. Alter Ego, fox capture plan, LITE, Still Caravan, POLYPLUS, and Primitive Art Orchestra are a few new adds on my playlist.

Happy listening!

But if you end up falling in love with whatever it is you’re good at… You’d better hire an accountant.

Ah, to be young and -6 years old again

There are about a dozen “proof of concept” models out in the wild, mostly owned by Tesla execs and buddies of Elmo. There’s one cruising around in Austin, apparently.

Better yet, can’t someone get a terroristic threat filed against him/this church for this?

Or at least notify the IRS this is a GOP promotion agency cosplaying as a religious group in order to evade taxes?

Barring either, can we at least get a few Covid-positive carriers to swing by and sing a few hymns and kiss a few babies, maybe sneeze in the offering plate a few times?

That’s what this was, actually. TyTX - > DFW - > TyTX. Daily. You feel me.

Boss should find a good podcast and learn to meditate. Driving is my zen, especially on long highway stretches. I guess it also depends largely on if there’s a love of driving and what vehicle you’re in.

Thankfully it was just for 1 artist and we were done in about 3 weeks.

I worked on a session in the nearest big metro to my small Texas town of 200,000 - daily commute of 2 hours and 25 minutes to get there in the morning, then 2 hours 25 minutes home (closer to 4 hours to get home on traffic heavy days). Not really unheard of.

Then, a few months ago - took a vacation on the beach island of South Padre, Texas then had to rush to a client in north Texas that next day. 12 hours of driving, all without leaving the state.

UK drivers know nothing of the true road trip life.

I’m still waiting for the opportunity to strike where I can get a Grandmother. Especially in light of the buyout. Get the good stuff while it’s possible to. Cherish it and build a good relationship with a repair shop.

The owners of the debts fear their hegemonic nepotism empire of do-nothings will have to golf 3 times a week instead of 6, and this year’s fleet upgrade may only include avionics, and not in-flight entertainment on all 3 of the Embraers.

There’s a very grassroots Windows 10 ARM hack for the SD1, actually. It’s quirky, and lacks a LOAD of the driver blob that comes in a normal x64 install of Windows on AMD or Intel, but it can make outbound calls and run simple WinonARM apps.

I’ve been considering the GFold5 if my SD2 bites the dust, at least over a Pixel Fold. But I’m making this thing run until it completely dies.

I just worry about those plastic feeling screens, such as on my wife’s GFlex4- I’m always worried I’d scratch the interior with a fingernail and a stylus for editing a spreadsheet is just a no go, from what I understand. Have they improved in that regard?

Pocketable, foldable tablet with split displays, a pen with haptic feedback and rigid glass screens for stylus use without damage. Modern Android and a great camera don’t hurt and those make the SD2 better than the SD1; otherwise they’re fairly similar besides the accessory compatibility and some halo functions like wirelessly charging my Slim Pen with the magnet case.

I travel a ton, edit spreadsheets at clients site visits and trade shows while I have Teams open on the other screen, and use the stylus to mark up PDFs for architects and subcontractors. I enjoy being almost required to multi-task when I have my phone open, and the Duo 2 is the best phone for multitasking, bar-none.

They stuck to their word, technically. 3 years, with monthly patches for security, on a device that sold abysmally. There are rumors they sold (most of) the first run of SD2 in the first 4 months, and didn’t bother to produce any more. I know they’ve been out of the consumer SD2 since July/August of 2022- as of January this year, not even my Fortune 50 Corpo clients can get MSFT to pony up a SD2 replacement under warranty or otherwise. They just write a cheque to your account if you request as much.

Microsoft’s mobile team Icarus flew too close to the poorly advertised sun, in this case. Expensive ass phone to build, expensive ass phone to buy, but damn it’s a great device.