Hey to all my holmslices. I've been away from my Cubase and SF way too long! Looks like I have tons of good music to catch up on! I can't believe Jan won a fight, shweet. Good song too.
Question of the Day:How do you feel about the economy right now? Are you feeling the stimulus program rebuilding the confidence in America? Have you noticed people making larger purchases on things that may have been risky 6 months ago?
I don't know about the rest of the country or the world, but I have noticed that the people that have money and locked it down, are now opening the bomb shelter and letting it come back out to frolic, and some is landing in my pocket. Woo Hoo!
Hope all is well with everyone! *group hug*
...fluffy, get your hand off my ass!
hey BLT! seriously, i was wondering WTF happened to you, even as recently as the last couple days since you posted EVERY 10 MINUTES and then you just disappeared. glad to know you're still alive and haven't seem to have lost your touch for posting.
i've got the monster wildfire in my backyard i'm currently dealing with (4000 acres and climbing and only 5% contained). i'm mostly dealing with alot of smoke. the sky is dirt brown and outside it smells like a campfire. but the fire is still a good 10 miles north of me in bonny doon.
but it sucks because you pretty much want to stay inside and you can't open your windows. oh well. i guess my house could be on fire. that would be worse.
And the only "stimulus package" I know anything about is the one tucked away in my trousers (...hello ladies )
Wow, I finally get a remembrance thread and I get 6 f**king posts? That's it? What if I really was dead? I better make it my lifes goal to touch more lives. And by touch, I mean physically....with my penis.
But thanks for thinking of me Paco and you other crazy bastards.
...and CR, I'm more like the king of poop.
@ Jack, so you're by that fire? We don't have any by me yet, but yesterday the air just felt like pyro weather. If I was a pyro, I'd of had an overwhelming urge to see acres burn.
QotD: Complicated question, right? I'm on the lower end of things, so I can't really observe whether people around me are more willing to make certain investments; my only gauge is employment.
I could write you an essay on the things that were wrong with my old job, but it paid pretty well. Still, I couldn't take it anymore, so I looked around online for another job. Thought I found one, though in hindsight it should have been pretty obvious I was being scammed. I was desperate, so I took the "other job" and quit my real gig. This led to me being effectively unemployed for about two months, all because I couldn't take working for an immoral company.
I just started a new job this past Monday, and the pay is a little lower, but the opportunity for advancement seems more real and immediate, the the moral standing of my employer(s) seems to be in check.
I'm lucky, though. All around me are friends who continue to search for jobs. One of my friends just ended a search that lasted about nine months. Another one has been fighting with the unemployment office for the last two months. Another friend of mine has been unemployed for almost a year, and watched me go through three jobs in the meantime (I bet she hates me).
Two others of my friends, both of whom are quite a bit older than me, have capitulated at their current jobs and are looking for new work, but can't seem to find any. They've both got some pretty good stuff on their resumes, but neither of them can find work.
Are there other factors? Probably. I don't know how hard my friends looking, what their resumes look like, or whether they've failed background checks, or what. But among my social circle, I seem to be the most adept at finding work. And considering the amount of time I've spent unemployed in the last year and a half, that doesn't bode well. Plus, I didn't really want this job, but had to take it. That's the case with everyone in my training class, and it's also the case with everyone at my old job. Only a very select few actually wanted to be there; most of them hung around from a sense that they didn't have any choice.
I hear the rate of job losses has recently declined, and that unemployment is unlikely to continue accelerating - in fact, that it's likely to reverse itself in the near future. I've also heard that the unemployment rate isn't the best guage of economic performance, because it lags behind just about everything else. That doesn't make too much sense to me; I buy more stuff when I have a job, and when I buy more stuff, the businesses I buy said stuff from do better. But apparently, that's not how it works.
Chris, I'm wondering whether your clientele fall into the category of people who suffered a lot of losses on paper, but never really enough that it actually hit them hard the way the economy has hit all of my friends. They always had the money, they were just reluctant to spend it until the economy showed signs of improvement. When the stock market started to rally, the unemployment rate started to slow its descent, and the general mood of the nation seemed to improve, they started making more investments and large purchases with the money that they never really lost, and in turn, those investments and large purchases have made/are making the economy improve, which is making someone else with money they've been waiting to invest....
These things work in cycles. I know we're on our way out the woods, rather than on our way further in, but it frustrates me to no end that I simply cannot wrap my head around the logistics of it. A more (politically) conservative economist can look at the same set of data and draw the exact opposite conclusion: That the economy is on a one-way ticket to Hooverville. There's really no way to fact-check them; it's all so subjective.
And we haven't even started talking about foreclosures!!!
So, to answer your question: Scrambled eggs.
"Warren Zevon would be proud." -Reve Mosquito
Stages, an album of about dealing with loss, anxiety, and grieving a difficult year, now available on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms! https://jonporobil.bandcamp.com/album/stages
Generic wrote:
Chris, I'm wondering whether your clientele fall into the category of people who suffered a lot of losses on paper, but never really enough that it actually hit them hard the way the economy has hit all of my friends. They always had the money, they were just reluctant to spend it until the economy showed signs of improvement. When the stock market started to rally, the unemployment rate started to slow its descent, and the general mood of the nation seemed to improve, they started making more investments and large purchases with the money that they never really lost, and in turn, those investments and large purchases have made/are making the economy improve, which is making someone else with money they've been waiting to invest....
Being that my primary clientele base is middle class up, I don't really see anything but that. But I don't even know what middle class is anymore. I used to consider myself middle class, but I feel like the middle class are people doing much better than I am at the moment. Either that, or the above middle class has dropped down a notch and pushed me down a notch, lol.
But either way, we still have a ways to go before the majority is comfortable again. Even though the people with money that were sitting on it, which was smart it turns out, they are now taking advantage of the deals around them. The old saying, "the rich get richer" is really showing to be true right now in my eyes. BUT, for the first time in over a year, they aren't playing hardball with my prices. I've seen this trend for several months now. To me, that's a good sign.
All of my friends that are also in one form of construction or another are saying the same thing. Everyone is grumbling about it because it's still pretty rough and a lot have incurred a lot of debt to keep their homes and businesses afloat. I fortunately also have a pool service and repair company, and that didn't get hit hard at all. We showed a very modest 2% decline, which is nothing in the service business. Construction took an 80% decline, which is devastating, especially to those that work only in construction. In fact, one of my repairmen I hired last year is a swimming pool contractor with over 20 years under his belt. Of course as a repairman, I can give him more work than he can handle.
So anyway, that's what I'm seeing right now, and I may be an optimist, but the numbers don't lie.
Billy's Little Trip wrote:
I don't even know what middle class is anymore. I used to consider myself middle class, but I feel like the middle class are people doing much better than I am at the moment. Either that, or the above middle class has dropped down a notch and pushed me down a notch, lol.
Well, Republicans still seem to think that anyone making $250,000 a year is "middle-class."
They also seem to think that "most Americans are happy with their health insurance options."
"Warren Zevon would be proud." -Reve Mosquito
Stages, an album of about dealing with loss, anxiety, and grieving a difficult year, now available on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms! https://jonporobil.bandcamp.com/album/stages
Billy's Little Trip wrote:
Question of the Day:How do you feel about the economy right now? Are you feeling the stimulus program rebuilding the confidence in America? Have you noticed people making larger purchases on things that may have been risky 6 months ago?
I don't know about the rest of the country or the world, but I have noticed that the people that have money and locked it down, are now opening the bomb shelter and letting it come back out to frolic, and some is landing in my pocket. Woo Hoo!
I don't think it's so great. We have just finished laying off a bunch of people and there is really no big uptick on the horizon. Likely will have to lay off some more early next year.
"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" -Unknown
"Seems to me this is the point of Songfight" - Max The Cat
Einstein was unemployed for four years after graduating from a Swiss Polytech university, bottom of his class, and the only one in his class that couldn't get an assistant's position. Then he wrote that relativity paper. I guess unemployment can be productive as well.
roymond.com | songfights | covers
"Any more chromaticism and you'll have to change your last name to Wagner!" - Frankie Big Face
I quit my job last week!!!! Gave 3 months notice. I will be unemplyed in October! Hooray!!!!!
I might discover relativity too!!!
...or maybe I won't even need another job. I just received my master CD from the local recording studio today, and sent it off to the CD making dudes. This time next week I will be in the music bidness.
In the meantime, why not kick back and chill out here:
Being unemployed enabled me to finally start participating in Song Fight! instead of just listening. I'm seriously considering being unemployed again soon. The economic situation has got me a bit spooked, though, about going without income.
Stages, an album of about dealing with loss, anxiety, and grieving a difficult year, now available on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms! https://jonporobil.bandcamp.com/album/stages
Caravan Ray wrote:I quit my job last week!!!! Gave 3 months notice. I will be unemplyed in October! Hooray!!!!!
I might discover relativity too!!!
...or maybe I won't even need another job. I just received my master CD from the local recording studio today, and sent it off to the CD making dudes. This time next week I will be in the music bidness.
In the meantime, why not kick back and chill out here:
The 3rd most pissweak website on the entire interweb!!!!!
I signed your guest book and joined your *mailing list.
*note, don't really send a CD to the address I left, or your mums knickers will be receiving your cd.
)
Wow, I finally get a remembrance thread and I get 6 f**king posts? That's it? What if I really was dead? I better make it my lifes goal to touch more lives. And by touch, I mean physically....with my penis.
