Coronavirus

[油井緋色]

What impact is coronavirus having on the world’s climate?

Many expect environment to benefit from the decrease in economic and industrial activity as the pandemic spreads.

www.aljazeera.com

Who wants to bet that as soon as this lockdown is over we go right back up to ******* up the planet for Gen Z/Zommers?

It's kinda sad but I have near absolute faith that society will legit go right back to polluting the ever living **** out of Earth all in the name of "muh profits."

 

[Brian P]

May try to, but it will be years before the economy recovers. Airplanes and cruise ships will be tough sells for a long time. The devastation on people's retirement savings will put a damper on many things. On the positive side, a lot of people are working from home, and companies have been pushed into finding ways for people to work from home, and it may stay that way.

 

[crankcall]

We will give up a huge section of commercial real estate when this is over, as will thousands. My staff have proven they can be trusted to work from home, the job is getting done. I can see me having most work from home 2-3 days a week and 'hotel' the desks on other days, meet once or twice a week. Cutting 10k a month back to 5 or 6k in rent has a definite appeal. We will be one of thousands cutting required space.

Then there will be all that empty space from companies that just didnt make it...... I would not want to be a commercial landlord going forward, specially if you have historically been a dick landlord because tenents will have options.....

 

[Trials]

Clean up your act! Says the guy who goes by the username Oil Well

 

[LePhillou]

If possible play the variable rate mortgage, fixed rate pricing game, your principal will plummet. Ie fixed rate payment was 2000 and you were making that work, keep paying the 2000 and you are knocking 250 to 500 a month in additional principal off every month. I pick that number as a nice round number to make math easy. Eg if your fixed payment was 1987.42, I just make it 2000.

Now there is a decent argument for not paying your mortgage faster than required. Especially when looking at a huge upside to equities. I just hate seeing how much money is evaporating as mortgage interest.

Basically what i'm doing with the consolidation. Taking all those other payments and adding them on the mortgage one since we can double up payments if we want with our lender.
So same payments but at a lower rate (over a bit longer)

 

[油井緋色]

May try to, but it will be years before the economy recovers. Airplanes and cruise ships will be tough sells for a long time. The devastation on people's retirement savings will put a damper on many things. On the positive side, a lot of people are working from home, and companies have been pushed into finding ways for people to work from home, and it may stay that way.

I honestly hope for this but am purposely slamming my own hopes down because I've butt heads too many times with older managers not realizing the benefits of WFH.

@Trials it's Heero Yuy lol; need to say it out loud though before it makes sense.

 

[Trials]

I honestly hope for this but am purposely slamming my own hopes down because I've butt heads too many times with older managers not realizing the benefits of WFH.

@Trials it's Heero Yuy lol; need to say it out loud though before it makes sense.

Ok from now on you are Yuy the Hero
and you confirm you are young because you had to go and abbreviate Work from Home

 

[mimico_polak]

Our company stated in a recent teleconference that we went from X physical offices, to approximately 8,000 home offices and the results on efficiency are negligible. Apparently clients have indicated they do not see any less work being performed, and from reading between the lines if work continues at this pace, and the efficiency continues they will start getting rid of offices and move to a more WFH environment, with satellite/hotel desks and meetings as required on a rare occasion. Not sure how long that will last but we will see.

 

[Mad Mike]

We will give up a huge section of commercial real estate when this is over, as will thousands. My staff have proven they can be trusted to work from home, the job is getting done. I can see me having most work from home 2-3 days a week and 'hotel' the desks on other days, meet once or twice a week. Cutting 10k a month back to 5 or 6k in rent has a definite appeal. We will be one of thousands cutting required space.

Then there will be all that empty space from companies that just didnt make it...... I would not want to be a commercial landlord going forward, specially if you have historically been a dick landlord because tenents will have options.....

Don't cut the space too early.

I've been part of several large scale WFH experiments. They work great in the beginning, but after a while the loss in productivity becomes greater than the savings in real estate. The situation right now is 'novel' in a few ways and I don't think it's reflecting the reality of WFH for most workers.

• First, it's new so most employees are home keeping a continuum on what they were doing at the office. That wanes -- over time distractions kick in.
• Next, we are somewhat sequestered and in a blah time of year with respect to outdoors. People can't go anywhere or do anything, some work longer hours just because they are bored or crave some kind of connection. Once things get back to normal they will be driving kids to school, watching daytime soaps while working, running errands during the day or just kicking back on the deck enjoying the sun.
• Finally, no matter what work you do, keeping employed is on your mind at the moment. WFH workers want to show their best behaviours and resilience right now so when or if a reduction in force comes along, they stay on the good list.

I don't mean to say all employees will drop off, but unless you have a team of laser focused superstars I'll bet you'll want them coming to the office 8 weeks after things get back to normal.

 

[GreyGhost]

Our company stated in a recent teleconference that we went from X physical offices, to approximately 8,000 home offices and the results on efficiency are negligible. Apparently clients have indicated they do not see any less work being performed, and from reading between the lines if work continues at this pace, and the efficiency continues they will start getting rid of offices and move to a more WFH environment, with satellite/hotel desks and meetings as required on a rare occasion. Not sure how long that will last but we will see.

My efficiency went to **** but that is primarily the result of having to look after two needy monsters, it has nothing to do with working from home. The first video conference with the teachers was this morning. It went amazing /s. A 30 minute scheduled video turned into 60 minutes where we got through hello, count to 24, good bye. Hopefully soon they will figure out that trying to include the entire class of 4 and 5 years olds in a single video conference is a bad idea.

On a slight rant, all of these stupid video conferences being account locked is a nightmare. Tablet is logged into son's google account, apparently teachers granted permission to my account for some reason and he was being denied access. I can't add an adult account to a tablet setup for a child. For frogs snacks, if somebody has a username and password, just let them in. Did a zoom call with the inlaws last week (their choice for some unknown reason) and they sent link but not password (email appeared to be auto generated by zoom). Again, email account that link was sent to was not on device being used for the call. Typing in the link didn't work (they didn't limit their character set so it was probably an issue with 0/O or I/l in the hashed password). How hard would it be to qr code these stupid things? If someone can get a pic of code, they can get in.

 

[ChrisCBR]

We will give up a huge section of commercial real estate when this is over, as will thousands. My staff have proven they can be trusted to work from home, the job is getting done. I can see me having most work from home 2-3 days a week and 'hotel' the desks on other days, meet once or twice a week. Cutting 10k a month back to 5 or 6k in rent has a definite appeal. We will be one of thousands cutting required space.

Then there will be all that empty space from companies that just didnt make it...... I would not want to be a commercial landlord going forward, specially if you have historically been a dick landlord because tenents will have options.....

I shall shed zero tears for them, especially the foreign "investors" in our commercial real estate market.

 

[Trials]

My efficiency went to **** but that is primarily the result of having to look after two needy monsters, it has nothing to do with working from home. The first video conference with the teachers was this morning. It went amazing /s. A 30 minute scheduled video turned into 60 minutes where we got through hello, count to 24, good bye. Hopefully soon they will figure out that trying to include the entire class of 4 and 5 years olds in a single video conference is a bad idea.

On a slight rant, all of these stupid video conferences being account locked is a nightmare. Tablet is logged into son's google account, apparently teachers granted permission to my account for some reason and he was being denied access. I can't add an adult account to a tablet setup for a child. For frogs snacks, if somebody has a username and password, just let them in. Did a zoom call with the inlaws last week (their choice for some unknown reason) and they sent link but not password (email appeared to be auto generated by zoom). Again, email account that link was sent to was not on device being used for the call. Typing in the link didn't work (they didn't limit their character set so it was probably an issue with 0/O or I/l in the hashed password). How hard would it be to qr code these stupid things? If someone can get a pic of code, they can get in.

Sounds like a fail for initial online training, videoconference is not the way to do training, seen that fail in practice.
You are totally correct the user interface needs to be accessed from Any computer so really it needs to all run server side with a web interface, prepared multi-media lessons will keep the kids interest and the testing component will confirm they are watching and learning. What a cool challenge for teachers, they get to re-design their entire teaching process all it needs now is expensive high speed internet everywhere.

 

[GreyGhost]

Sounds like a fail for initial online training, videoconference is not the way to do training, seen that fail in practice.
You are totally correct the user interface needs to be accessed from Any computer so really it needs to all run server side with a web interface, prepared multi-media lessons will keep the kids interest and the testing component will confirm they are watching and learning. What a cool challenge for teachers, they get to re-design their entire teaching process all it needs now is expensive high speed internet everywhere.

Thankfully, one of the requirements when we were looking for a house was reasonably priced, reasonable speed internet. My parents are locked in the dark ages (satellite or very unstable wireless or 4g are their only choices) and I knew it wouldnt work for us.

 

[Trials]

Thankfully, one of the requirements when we were looking for a house was reasonably priced, reasonable speed internet. My parents are locked in the dark ages (satellite or very unstable wireless or 4g are their only choices) and I knew it wouldnt work for us.

But reality is some kids that still need to be schooled live in dirt shack poverty or broken homes and that's a huge challenge for the public education system. Would help if they combine it with television broadcast lessons, TV is almost everywhere. almost

 

[GreyGhost]

But reality is some kids that still need to be schooled live in dirt shack poverty or broken homes and that's a huge challenge for the public education system. Would help if they combine it with television broadcast lessons, TV is almost everywhere. almost

I know. I think the biggest education fallout will be an even larger gap between the haves and the have nots. Some kids will be getting almost full time one on one teaching and are rapidly improving. Others will have months of boob tube. When they eventually go back, teachers will have a colossal gap in abilities (and likely most behind socially as they have had minimal peer interaction). I dont know how you effectively teach kids that can easily be a grade or two apart in ability. Segregating them by ability could work but also has clear issues. Fun times.

 

[油井緋色]

Ok from now on you are Yuy the Hero
and you confirm you are young because you had to go and abbreviate Work from Home

And I'm already more cynical/pessimistic than people 2x my age lol

I wonder what'll happen when I become older, maybe I'll have a rocking chair with 4 shotguns.

 

[GreyGhost]

And I'm already more cynical/pessimistic than people 2x my age lol

I wonder what'll happen when I become older, maybe I'll have a rocking chair with 4 shotguns.

Even funnier on the balcony of a condo.

 

[Trials]

And I'm already more cynical/pessimistic than people 2x my age lol

I wonder what'll happen when I become older, maybe I'll have a rocking chair with 4 shotguns.

Are you that bad of a shot or do you plan to retire to a skeet range :|

 

[Brian P]

I wonder what'll happen when I become older, maybe I'll have a rocking chair with 4 shotguns.

Get off my lawn.

 

[nobbie48]

Even more politically incorrect:
2. You get it and die - because of your life-style choices: smoking/vaping, poor dietary choices - obesity, T2 diabetes, auto-immune conditions.

I've seen 2 local cases here of non-LTC deaths, middle-aged folks with 'no underlying medical conditions' but looking at their photos - the spare tire and ample chins tell the truth for all of us with our eyes open.

There was a blurb recently about there being 100 million Americans with diabetes relates issues. I'm not sure if that is 100 million diabetics or 100 million that have a family member with the disease. We're not all poster boys up here either.