@scottalanmiller I was looking at getting that mic as it gets very good reviews. My only concern was some criticism that it is too sensitive and picks up too much background noise. My house is normally very quiet though, the only thing I worry about is that it might pick up the sound of me typing which would annoy people?

But if it gets the SAM seal of approval it's good enough for me.

I run a lot of online workshops with clients, as well as the usual meetings, normally in Teams, but sometimes in Zoom, mostly from my home office.

Previously I've just used my laptop camera together with a Plantronics headset. I've just bought a cheapish Logitech C922 webcam - partly to improve the image quality (although it doesn't seem to make any difference in Teams which isn't HD) and partly to be more flexible about where I put the camera.

I was hoping the microphone on the webcam would be decent, but it's not. I really want to ditch the headset and use a microphone so I feel less constricted and uncomfortable, but I'm not sure how good cheap microphones are (circa $50).

What do use? Any experiences good or bad?

Yeah, time is a big problem with dealing with change. I work in the Microsoft SaaS ERP space and Microsoft release a new version every month and they're constantly changing things and sometimes it feels like a full time job just to keep up with it all. I can lose 15 minutes just trying to find something after they've moved the menus around.

Sometimes I just think "slow down, I can't keep up".

I'm old enough to have started with Lotus 123 and I wasn't too happy to change to Excel.

After using Excel for years and years, I've only recently decided to actually learn how to use it properly. It's a steep learning curve, but I'm getting there. It still drives me to frustration on a regular basis.

I'd be gutted to be forced to change to Sheets.

I don't know what it's like in the US, but in the UK renting sucks. Landlords and letting agents are generally awful people. Trying to get a landlord to fix anything is often a nightmare. Standard contracts mean you can get evicted at any time with just six months notice, which is particularly awful if you have kids and are forced to move away, maybe twice a year. And then they will try and steal your deposit on spurious grounds. You generally can't have pets, decorate, or even put up pictures on the wall. Mostly, you're treated as second class citizens.

At best, renting is ok if you're young and don't have kids, which is just as well since it's pretty much impossible to afford a house here if you're under 30.

I believe it's a lot better in the rest of Europe.

Oh, and "water cooler" time is good for generating trust and forming bonds within teams, which is essential. Raj Choudhury has some good things to say on this subject here https://hbr.org/2020/11/our-work-from-anywhere-future

@scottalanmiller said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

Actually, that's not quite how it works. Historic data is actually incredibly telling and ALL evidence tells us that we absolutely can predict the future, within a known cone of uncertainty.

It is how it works. Or if you like, let's just say the "cone of uncertainty" is a really, really big cone

@scottalanmiller said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

Anyone in financial circles or with financial knowledge. Or real estate experience.
Anyone with the common sense that a market cannot simply go up and up based on no underlying value.

You got any links because I've heard no-one predict any kind of "staggering crash" and I have some financial knowledge. There's a massive difference between not going up and a staggering crash.

@scottalanmiller said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

But we all expect London to undergo a staggering crash

Whose we?

@scottalanmiller said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

What makes sense today might not make sense tomorrow.

This is very true, which is why drawing conclusions from historical data is always flawed. So "is real estate actually a good investment on average"? Who knows, you can't predict the future.

In as much as there is a correlation between house prices and interest rates, we look to be moving in to a period of higher interest rates, so would expect prices to fall, but who knows.

Nice graph. Although it's worth pointing out that average wages isn't necessarily the best indicator. A lot of people prefer to use median wages. This is because inequality has increased dramatically in the US - the rich have got richer, much richer. Which pushes up average wages but most people don't benefit from that, median wages are pretty stagnant.

The best explanation I've heard of that is a bar full of people earning $50k. Bill Gates walks in to the room and suddendly everyone in the room becomes a multi-millionaire on average.

@scottalanmiller said in Is Real Estate Actually a Good Investment on Average?:

Ergo, he's saying he doesn't know anything about business.

That's quite the hot take on Warren Buffet

I'm not talking about HA. Just plain old non-HA environments.

However, with the ability to run some, or all, environments on a single host if another host fails. But you don't need to double the resources, as it is generally acceptable to run a slower environment for a few days.

@scottalanmiller said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:

Going down to a single host will lower cost and, we assume, increase reliability too!

I've never really understood the desire for a single over double host. Whatever contract I've had with HP has never prevented them saying "Sorry, your critical part is stuck at the port in Holland and there is nothing we can do".

And I'm not sure the costs of two hosts are significantly higher - you're still looking at the same amount of processing power, memory and storage, which are the main costs. Plus licensing, but that is variable depending on what you're running.

OK, I don't work in the enterprise space. Or in the US. Maybe the US is simpler with less statutory requirements.

Although having just implemented US Sales Tax for a client, I really wouldn't fancy developing that from scratch.

Unless you're talking a massive team and millions in development. But even then...

@scottalanmiller I don't believe that's possible. Standalone systems to handle, say, stock control, maybe. But full ERP with finance for a $51bn company - no way.

@jclambert I've developed ERP systems, also many moons ago, working for an ERP vendor. But the world has moved on, and gotten more complex.

I would never consider developing a bespoke finance system now. Not least because of modern statutory requirements. For example, in the UK, the government will only accept tax returns directly from an ERP system. Apart from the complexity that developing that requires, the rules are constantly changing. It is so good being on SaaS knowing that as the government changes the rules, Microsoft will quickly roll-out a solution, and next month the software will be automatically updated in the middle of the night and just work.

No-one is writing an ERP system from scratch and no-one wants a completely inflexible system. Microsoft has met the challenge of making a SaaS solution that allows for customisation and third-party add-ons whilst still being seamlessly upgraded to a new version every month. I'm not sure if other ERP vendors have managed this.

Dynamics is just the brand name Microsoft gives to a number of different ERP/CRM products - none of them related.

Dynamics F&O (formally AX) is their enterprise product, competing with the likes of Oracle and SAP.

Dynamics Business Central (formally NAV) is their SMB product.

I work with Business Central and think it's great. They've done a ton of work in recent years to separate out the standard code from custom code which makes upgrades very easy. If you're on the SaaS version (which is the same as the on-premise version), Microsoft will automatically upgrade to the latest version every month, even with a loads of customisations.

The product is great, if you have problems it's likely to be because of a poor partner, of which there are many. Microsoft made it too easy to be become a partner.

I've tried a few. I'm good at starting a timer but then always forget to stop it and end up getting a notification that I've been working on a 15 minute task for 22 hours non-stop.