SteveGerencser

I'm also a guide and have submitted multiple road closed reports. One specific route takes people down a single lane dirt road to a creek that had a bridge over it a decade or more ago, but that is long gone. The people that live on that road average one or 2 people backing back out of the spot every single day. And no matter how many reports they get, they refuse to update their maps. Even with pictures showing the lack of a bridge.

I'm the same. I've been in IT in one form or another 30+ years and have actually scanned a QR code maybe as many times as you have, probably less. I watched my usually brilliant wife spend 10 minutes trying to figure out how to scan a QR code with her Android before she gave up and just typed in the URL.

The number 1 reason I don't bother is that, in my experience, they rarely work.

As a true 'jack of all trades' I feel that it's my duty to share these quotes, or the full version of widely used quotes.

There is a better, older, phrase that would be great to promote over that tired saying:

“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” — Aristotle

But you are still billing by the hour. 8 hours in a day. Do work for 4 clients or work for 8 clients and get the same amount of money?

There are a few law firms that are heavily automated. But they are mostly larger, class action, pay per result, type law firms vs your standard law firm.

I would agree with you except I'm still paying $90/mo for 3Mb (yes, meg) DSL from the only copper provider in the area and have been hearing from them for nearly a decade that 'fiber is coming' soon. Every time someone makes progress on providing an alternative (the local electric company has tried most recently) they have been fought HARD by the local phone company. I've even looked at renting an office in the next town over to set up my own point to point wireless solution after the local phone company quoted me $5000 per MONTH for a 10Mb service.

The way I understood the story back then was that they wanted a license deal with MSFT just like MSFT had with the hardware companies. MSFT wanted to just buy them out. Lawsuits, court, and so on finally forced the sale of the company to MSFT for the amount in the settlement.

Agreed. Top CEOs at "top" companies tend to be outliers anyway, so basing how you grow your business on those few unicorns is never a great idea to begin with. A solid mastermind group can to wonders for nearly everyone else. They can take beginning business owners and make them better business owners and offer support for struggling, or even not struggling, business owners.

This strikes me as another one of the many, I didn't do this thing so you don't need to do it either articles.

When I went to high school in the early 80s our in school security / dare officer was known to just take half of whatever he "found" and everyone just walked away with no problems. Unless he didn't like you, then you got tossed under the bus. And I know that mine wasn't the only high school with this issue in the area.

Because the barrier to entry in programming is zero. Or near enough to it. Code on your free time, learn php on your free time. Suddenly you are WordPress developer.

Learning a trade can require very expensive tools, often time as an apprentice or journeyman, and learning at the very first stage of your career that your labor has value and you need to charge for that.

I can hire a programmer from anywhere in the world and often incredibly cheaply. I can't do that with a tradesman, they actually have to be local, often have more work than they can ever get done, and know that I can't outsource the construction project to someone 1,000 miles away.

And over the top of every aqueduct, storm channel, and man made 'river' designed to deliver water to large urban areas. Generates power and helps reduce that annoying evaporation.

Indiana University a Midwest US state school has a 3+ Billion Dollar endowment behind it and ranks 16th right now. University of Texas is #1 at $42B and Berkeley is 20th at $2.6B. These are just state schools. Stanford is at $38B and Yale is at $42B. There is plenty of money out there in the university endowments. They just need to spend it on things like research and professors rather than Golf Courses and sports stadiums.

Ethanol is hard on all the soft bits in an engine. Rubber seals, diaphrams and so on. This is most dramatically seen in small engines that still use carburetors vs fuel injection.

My dad's factory went to 4 day work weeks in the 90s and never looked back. Everyone was happier, and the various suppliers and customers learned pretty quickly not to call on Friday because it was rare that anyone was there.

And now I rarely schedule work for Friday's If something important comes up I have an extra day to deal with it, otherwise I get my 3 day weekends and family life is good.

Matt Damon has a great explanation of why the movie industry has shifted the way it has. It has a lot to do with the loss of DVD sales covering much of the cost of movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF6K2IxC9O8

A few local theaters here will let you rent out a whole Theater for about $150 and let you bring your own Blue Ray movie to play. Friend of mine did it to propose to his now wife. Took her to a great dinner, rented the entire theater, showed her favorite movie and proposed. they were the only 2 people in the room.

It was actually suggested by someone at the BGP support team. We had a different employee there create the new listing while sitting in the store. It went live with 24 hours, only none of the old reviews, pictures, or reviews were there. So they are starting over on that front.

this makes me think that they felt like some other aspect of that GBP was why they deleted it. But since they won't tell us why, we have no idea. I could guess, but any guess is just that, a guess.

What baffles me is how these networks flourish so easily yet Google can't tell a real business from a fake. The number of people calling me lately (I'm in the same business) about the Business Profile being removed by Google. Even active retail shops that have had their account for many years, with a clearly visibly business on Google maps. Their GBP simply vanishes and in a few cases, the only solution was to simply start over with a new profile.

I was about to say the same thing. I get decent albums in somewhat not great condition at flea markets in the $5 range, but most record stores aren't selling anything that cheap these days. Everyone has discogs and can see what things are selling for and set their prices accordingly. And I'm okay with that. Everyone needs to make a buck.

It's only an ads thing. Facebook, Google, etc., all require to those pages be on a website to run ads. They say nothing about Personal websites, but the EU probably does once you start using GA.

The whole site speed thing is purely a cost reduction on Google's part IMO. By convincing site owners that being fast is a ranking factor they can save millions in bandwidth costs as more and more people lighten their page load.

I have watched many web developers absolutely lost their mind trying to squeeze fractions of a second from their load time when there are far better ways to be using their time.

I live on about 100 acres. I can see 80% of the land from my deck. The drone comes in handy for looking into the tree areas where the cows like to spend most of their without me having to go look for them. Besides, I figure if they won't do anything about the meth cook 3/4 mile away, they aren't going to care about me flying a small drone over my own land.

Cattle Trace is great for people with 10s of thousands of acres to manage. But that's not all that many cattle operations in the grand scheme of things. Most of us are small operations that don't interact with major processing plants and so on. We all know when someone has a sick cow and we all talk to each other.

I was part of a pilot program using drones and RFIDs in Brazil some 10 or 15 years ago. It was cool, but the ranchers still ended up having to go out and put eyes on cows when some went missing or died so it didn't really solve a problem, just narrowed down the area a bit.

I have a small drone here that I use so I can sit on the deck and still check water tanks and cows, or look for babies so I don't have to go out in the mud. But I don't know anyone else in 20 miles of me that does that.

My primary tractor is 4 years old and it has been in the shop more often than my 35 year old tractor. Most of us, especially the smaller guys, run equipment until it is quite literally gone.

The biggest issue that bringing new equipment to market is incredibly expensive and you are competing with all of the green, red and blue (and now orange) guys that have been building equipment for generations. The new issue is looking for a revenue stream for the manufacturers. My Case while not on a service contract, has very few owner servicable parts to it. My '94 Kubota still does the job but Kubota makes about $200/ year on me at most since I can fix everything on it myself.

It is by no means a market failure, the market is working exactly as it's supposed to. It's just that people think that the market is there for the farmers when it's really there for the equipment and inputs manufacturers.

Farms and farmers have been doing A/B testing for generations with seeds, fertilizers, weed/pest control, feed, medicines, and on and on. And it's a PITA. Running 2 different, smaller, operations takes a lot more time and money than just one larger operation.

My wife is 100% engineer and it took me 6 years to even try something different on our (her) farm.

As someone with a foot in both worlds, I have been in tech for 30+ years and we also own a small cattle farm (can't even call it a ranch), there is a staggering amount of distrust in technology of any kind in the ag world. Every new piece of tech comes saddled with some license, or dealer only issue, or the old tractor/equipment could break down and I could fix it in the field on my own in a few hours, vs my new equipment broke down and now I have to wait for some service tech (there are never enough when you need them) to come out and reset some computer or replace a piece of software/tech at a ridiculous cost. And I can't work on it on my own.

Add to that, many farmers have been farming the same piece of ground for generations and they know everything they need to know about their land to at least break even most years and no piece of tech or software will improve those numbers enough for them to justify the cost/risk or the developers to justify the minimal profit growth.

I gave up on Spotify a long time ago. Pandora more recently. I find myself just listening to a handful of channels on SiriusXM since the desktop streaming app came with my truck subscription.

Anything that I find myself liking a lot I head out to one of the very few record stores out here and buy it on vinyl. But then, I'm old and like having things in my hands and not just streamed. I buy paper books too.

I agree with you on this. It is not only task based but individual based. When I am at my desk doing tech type work I max out 'productively' at about 30 hours +/- depending on what I'm doing. But when I'm out doing farm stuff I can run 60 or 70 hours without much trouble when on the tractor etc., or a bit less when stacking hay bales.

Mentally tired, for me, is much harder to recover from than physically tired. I'm not saying I want to work 70 or 80 hours a week lifting heavy things, but this type of hourly rating system can be very subjective by the individual.

I use headphones exclusively outside on our farm. All of the equipment makes a lot of noise and decent headphones help with the noise. And because my wife gets the 'new tractor' with a cab, radio, and AC, I get the 'old tractor' and get to sit out in the sun from sun up to sun down during hay cutting 3 or 4 times a year. I've yet to have a pair of headphone last a full day. This could be cool and keep me from having to keep 3 pairs on hand.

I freely admit that I am an outlier, but I'm used to people not understanding that a large segment of the popular leads totally different lives with totally different needs than most people.

Apply to be a federally protected wildlife habitat. My daughter did that in a city in Indiana. Ripped out her 'lawn' and replanted with native grasses and things to promote butterfly and bee habitats. The city hates that they can't fine her anymore.

https://www.nwf.org/garden-for-wildlife/certify