I am of the opinion that most “supply” issues are due to investors. Except in certain geographic areas we do not have a shortage of actual physical housing. What we have is a shortage of available housing at a mixed pricepoints for purchase.

All housing that investors purchase for rentals removes it from the supply.

Traditionally investors have sought out entry level housing for rent. They invest in building rental complexes. They make all cash purchases and then rent it out to people who otherwise would have been first-time homebuyers. Investors used to be the low end offer. Blatant price fixing has increased rent outrageously. Now investors are the high end offer and removing supply constantly.

With AirB&B, the middle and even upper range market that traditionally has had less investor competition is now a major target. This has led to price wars for investment purposes on previously safe segments.

The first solution to the housing supply is simple: taxing income from rent so that selling the property is financially more lucrative. It will have to include a prohibition against rental increases to cover the taxes as well.

The second is to mandate zoning and new construction to match the market needs not the needs of the investors.

Last would be to create a program where builders who focus on entry level housing receive incentives from governments (also include hefty penalty for substandard construction).

Jobs was his own worst enemy for a while on the compatibility issue.

New OS launches- all your old programs don’t work on it.

Want to use a floppy to transfer files between a Dos/Win and a Mac? Nope, not compatible. When USB drives started coming out they dropped all support for floppy drives, even in machines with them installed.

Constant driver issues with all sorts of things. Many never got resolved. To be fair the market share for Mac’s was so tiny, offering support for them didn’t make business sense.

Want to play a game? Good luck. The majority of games didn’t work on Mac. Same reason as the drivers.

As for stability issues, for a while I ran a computer lab for a college 50:50 win/Mac machines. They both crashed about equally as often.

For lesser known subjects, a literature review in a dissertation works. It at least gives you a list of papers to review.

High value crop consultants - good ones can make a surprising amount of money (200k+) This isn’t your dumbfuck row crops like corn and soy. Think fruit trees, nut trees, viticulture, vegetables, organic production etc.

Many college graduates have a job offers their junior year. Anymore you’ll want to have a double major of biology/Ag.

Weed guys can’t pay me enough. 😉

I am an expert in crops. I have traveled the globe to learn about them. I have created new varieties to plant. Landowners around the globe seek me out for knowledge and seeds.

That’s a good one to hang up in my office.

I tend to pace when my brain is working on a problem. When I do some heavy analysis, I often look at data for 20-30 minutes and then pace for 15-20 minutes as I process.

Good thing my office is empty most of the time, so I don’t bother others.

Of course after 4-5 hours my brain is done so I often find and excuse to leave the office after lunch. Gotta go walk a field/visit a customer etc…

College e-mail password was a 6 digit non-changeable pin number on windows 95.

Guess what my phone lock screen pin is today.

I share a name with and average skilled hockey player who played for long time on mediocre teams. We are also the same age.

Although my name is uncommon it is not rare. So many other lawyers, insurance sales, etc who have a larger online presence mask me very effectively.

It’s enough that googling my name is a waste of time.

It also helps that I have a small footprint online with no social media accounts linked back to my real name.

My wife would pretend she doesn’t know me go the other direction.

This varies depending on the cultural norms of the country.

Japanese: I have been in high level meetings with a Japanese company. As soon as I walked into the room they all switched to English. Some of their English was weak but they still made the effort. When I commented on how much I appreciated it, surprised Pikachu faces all around. They responded course they would swap, to do otherwise is rude.

In France I have had business meetings with with 8 people around a table all of who all spoke english. 4 of them were native French speakers, 1 polish, 2 Arabic, and me the sole native English speaker. The native French speakers spoke French the entire time. They would swap to English to interrupt the English language conversation then swap back to French amongst themselve. If two or more native French speakers are together, they speak French and don’t give a fuck if they include you or not. They then act all surprised that you didn’t follow their in French conversation.

I wouldn’t carve out an exception for apartment complexes.

Transition apartment complexes to a condo model with HOA fees to cover all the shared upkeep and expenses. Limit HOA fees to real upkeep costs and expenses (no massive profits for a HOA management company).

My sister-in-laws first place was an apartment complex converted to condos. Her mortgage plus HOA fees where the same as the rent on a comparable apartment in he area.

When she got married, had kid, and purchased a larger place 5 years later, she got her down payment plus all of her mortgage payments back (sold it for 10% more than she bought it for).

Call your insurance company and ask them for options with telehealth.

They are the ones who make most of the significant medical decisions anyways in the U.S.

What Dr do you want to see? Better ask your insurance first who they cover.

What medication are you taking? Better check with the insurance first. If it’s an expensive one, it will take approximately 6 weeks or more while you suffer to approve it via one vendor.

What treatment do you receive? Better check the insurance first to see if it’s covered.

Only in the ER do they treat first. You get to pay whatever they charge. Oh and it might come from 4 different places that you’ve never heard of as every Dr has a different billing service.

As for what to do, well I live in a city of 250K. There’s a specialist clinic 3 miles from my house but they suck really bad. So we drive 3 hours one way to see a specialist that has my wife’s chronic condition under control.

Unless the program you need is not in the store, which, for some reason is still normal for the programs I want to use. Then it’s back to the stupid tar.bz bullshit and typing in random shit I found on the internet into the command line hoping it works.

Every 2-3 years, I get fed up with the bullshit Windows is doing and test out a few distros in a vain hope it’s finally usable. Then for some random thing I have to hit the command line and inevitable failure to accomplish what I want to do. So I unistall the OS and wait a few more years.

I have messed around with Linux for 20 years. In all that time it’s always been completely unsuable for most users. The use of the command line for anything routine is complete bullshit.

All I want to do is download a program and click on it to install. How fucking hard is that. I am not a programmer and have zero desire to be one.

I do not want to go to the command line and try to fucking remember the sudo bullshit and fail because I missed one letter in the sintax.

Just let me use the fucking computer for the tasks I need to do, not fuck around with the OS.

I have a older Eureka and a Dyson (broken one I fixed from my sister-in-law).

The Eureka is all around better. It’s 15 years old now and I have replaced a ton of stuff on it but the motor and suction still top notch.

Where RiF resided for me

One of my most used sites has a banner that says “Sign up for a small fee to remove the ads.”

I was a confused for a second, because I had never seen one.

Tried the site with another browser with my default protection off and holy shit, so many ads. The webpage is mostly unusable because of the shear number.

I hate serpentine belts. Even with the right tool (rented from the auto parts store), the tight clearances always make it a royal pain in the ass.

It greatly depends on the age.

For under 10’s. I highly recommend the small tablets with educational games and videos. I had the homepage on the webbrowser set to PBS kids. Any other website was locked by parental controls. I also had Netflix with a kids account back when they had everything. For the games they wanted to play, I had to preview before they were installed.

The hardest age is 9-12. This is when they act all grown up but absolutely should not be online unsupervised. This is when they need room to explore what they are interested in. I open up the restrictions and allow them more of the world but routinely check to see what they are up too (an make sure they see what I am doing).

After 13, it’s all about education, not control. There is no fucking way to stop a determined teenager from accessing places they shouldn’t. The totally “locked down” school chromebooks are a great example. I am constantly impressed with the ingenuity to circumvent the controls. At this point, open discussions on all the issues online are key. They need to know about what criminals and perverts are up too. It’s no longer blocking them, it’s learning how to identify, avoid, and report them.

I also spend a few hours hanging out while they are gaming with my teenagers. It’s let’s me know what they are playing and showcase my incredible skill to their mocking.