I know I am going to make many economists cry big (good!), but in most ways that matter, real estate wealth is fake wealth. Especially with how the differences between geographically-disparate markets have compressed, if you sell your home, well, you still have to live somewhere and you’ll be paying about the same for that too. There will not be any appreciable net gain.

The wealth equation is obviously different for companies that own and then rent out a lot of real estate (which should not be allowed), but for an individual? These days real estate wealth is almost-entirely artificial. How we do housing and treat it as an investment is a drag on GDP, productivity and living better lives. We need to break the back of the idea of real estate as an investment, because it’s a terrible and risky one even apart from its other huge disadvantages.

And it creates fake wealth where we all become like dragons purposelessly sitting on our real estate hoards.

Are there some people who eat pizza with a knife and a fork?

Yes. And they are monsters. And usually like pineapple on their pizza too. There’s just no understanding some people.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

Oh, I love this quote.

“I love movies so much that I’m even happy the bad ones get made.”

Me too. Making any film is really hard. It requires — at minimum — coordinating the work of dozens of people who all have to perform well for the film to get completed at all. Many films require bringing together and syncretizing hundreds of people. And some, thousands. It’s amazing they get done at all with some form of coherent product at the end.

Even the bad works of cinema are incredible acts of creation that people put a lot of love and time into. The good ones are magic in a bottle. And if the bad ones did not exist, we’d never get those good ones.

What’s the most annoying phrase you often hear from clients?

“Can I call you?”

I mean, at least they ask. But most often it’s after they receive some very clear, simple, meticulously-written instructions on exactly how to do something. And then they expect me to walk them through it on the phone like they are seven years old.

I used to just assent, but these days I push back with: “Please try following the attached instructions first and then if you are not able to complete the process, I will schedule a call where we can work on this together.” Over 90% of the time the client or user is able to do what they need to do without any help at all. I hate tying up people’s time and I only want someone babysitting me on the phone if I absolutely cannot do something after 5-10 times of trying it, so I cannot understand why so many people want to take up mine.

I know, I know, it’s because IT people are seen as “computer janitors,” even when you’re at my level — but I just do not play along with that bullshit anymore.

So, no, you can’t call me. At least not as the first thing you do.

Chick fil a price increases over the years.

From $6.55 to $9.75 in a bit under 4.5 years. That’s a 67% higher price in that time, averaging out to 15% inflation per year. That more closely resembles the inflation rate as most people experience it rather than the nearly-fictional numbers economists tell us are true. They’re not, but rather a convenient and semi-plausible lie (if you don’t look to closely) created and propagandized to shore up the ruling class’s dominance.

Why do employers go out of their way to make your job more irritating?

Some people really get off on exercising power over others. They enjoy it greatly. It is (I’d argue) even erotically charged for them. That alone explains at least 70% of the RTO push. A lot of office sociopaths lost their ability to have others grovel to them and they want it back at any cost.

All it is.

IT is a good job, but it’s difficult and here’s why: You basically have to learn a bachelor’s degree worth of new shit every 2-3 years to stay relevant. A lot of people can’t hang with that and I understand why. It’s really a huge lift and it never stops.

No one talks about that till you’re already in the field, though. It’s about the only job the above is true of and it’s pretty insane when you think about it.

December 25th 2023 SW Wisconsin and the grass is still green. These are the things that bother me.

Climate change hitting hard. In North Florida as well, the phenology is completely different now than when I was a kid. Butterflies are now found all year and the flowers bloom through winter. That never happened when I was young.

Fun times ahead.

CCNA for Systems Admins?

Yes, absolutely. Some people will tell you differently, but they are wrong: networking is a core skill for sysadmins. If you aren’t really strong at networking, you absolutely cannot be a good sysadmin (or system engineer, or DevOps engineer, or whatever nom du jour they are rebranding it with today).

More than once I have been unable to promote one of my own team because they have refused to learn or get better at networking. That meant I cannot include these folks in many projects where networking is a core skill because they won’t be able to complete the necessary tasks without tons of outside help. I know networking ain’t easy. But I don’t (and they won’t) get paid 5x the median salary for doing shit that’s easy. If it were easy any mook off the street would be earning that much green.

Learn networking. It’s one of the few skills that’s quite future-proof and has a really great ROI.

Because she’s the best, my partner got this for me for Christmas.

If you need KVM over IP but don’t want to pay the absurd prices charged for any standard solutions (because they are considered enterprise-class gear) the BliKVM works great. It’s about $800 cheaper than the commercial ones with actually decent quality. And it is faster than all those I’ve used too.

It only supports one machine of course, but one virtualization box (with about a dozen VMs on it) is all I’ve got at home anyway that really needs KVM over IP.

The BliKVM is a bit fiddly to get going but once you do it works a treat. Recommended.

The Era of American Computer Magazines Has Drawn to a Close.

Certainly sad. I loved reading those mags during the 80s and 90s. Though I would not want to go back, in many important ways it was a better world — though I do like the quick access to information now. RIP to Byte, Antic, Compute!, PC World, PC Computing, PC Magazine and all the others I used to read during the 1980s and 1990s.

In real ways, they taught me the foundations of what I know now. It was a very different time. Again, as I’ve written about many times before, optimism for the future and the possibilities of human flourishing were still in the air then, and believable. But we allowed corporate greed to destroy what computing was for a while and could have still been now.

Check out this article from the June 1982 issue of Antic. I remember reading this one from back then because it blew my mind that such a thing as getting a newspaper on a computer was possible. That felt so different. Now I dread when something new is released as it’ll be like Firefox or worse (usually worse).

Then, everything got noticeably better all the time. Now it’s just the opposite. I miss the feeling of the era even if I do not miss the relatively-primitive tech.

This Xenophanes quote is one of my favorite of all time. Says so much with so little, and is as true today as it was when written thousands of years ago.

I’m always curious about what absurdly smart people from ancient times would be like to talk with. And I want to show them what we’ve discovered since they were alive.

Working in retail or on helpdesk, you see the absolute worst of humanity. It really makes you jaded because you realize just how many comically stupid but insanely entitled people often are.

Not that everyone who calls or uses the helpdesk is stupid (for what I have direct experience with), but even though many have tried I just don’t think it’s possible to defend someone who has used a computer for 15+ years and doesn’t know the first thing about it. No, for the millionth fucking time, you don’t have to be technical to know how to find your Start menu or to know the name of the application you use to do your daily work. This lack of knowledge and comprehension is more akin to someone who has driven since they were sixteen having to be told every time they get behind the wheel of a car what the brake pedal does and how to use the steering wheel.

Retail and helpdesk just expose you to the absolute worst of humanity. No one should have to do more than a year or two in either as both just make you hate everyone.