Exactly. I gave an old laptop to a female friend who had lost her PC and was using her phone for all this stuff. The phone was able to do it, but it was a total PITA of course. She just does the basic stuff: web browsing, watching videos, listening to music, photo management, etc., but with a laptop (running Mint KDE) it's SO much easier.
Phones are fine for making phone calls, listening to voicemail, writing short texts, and swiping left and right on Tinder, but if you want to see a lot of stuff at once, or be able to input text quickly, you just can't beat a normal-size screen and keyboard.
Except for Outlook, email clients in general have really gone down the tubes in the last 5 years or so because of lack of attention, due to everyone switching to webmail (esp. GMail). Email clients are simply dying out; it's too convenient to be able to read your email on any computer, and also on your mobile phone. You simply can't do that with an old-fashioned PC-based email client.
Outlook is the sole exception. But as you've complained, Outlook just plain sucks to use. It always has, and always will. It's like the modern version of Lotus Notes; big, clunky, crappy "enterprise" software that no one in their right mind likes using, but remains in use because of corporate inertia and because it ticks off all the corporate-acquisition checkboxes.
Skype has released a new Linux client that's supposed to work pretty well; you might want to try that.
Also, some businesses that are tied to Outlook have OWA (Outlook Web Access) which lets you access your Outlook email with a web browser.
Exactly. I gave an old laptop to a female friend a couple months ago, loaded with Linux Mint KDE edition. I sat down with her, showed her how to do all that stuff on there: web browsing, photo viewing, file management with Dolphin, watching videos with VLC, etc. There was something she wanted to do (I forget now, maybe photo editing) and I showed her how to do it with some free software, and she was surprised as she thought she'd have to buy some software. She hadn't quite wrapped her head around the idea that all this stuff is free on Linux and you don't need to buy some software package to do every little thing like you do on Windows.
Yep, it's somewhat similar to the PDF situation on Windows: if you want to be able to view PDFs in Windows, that generally means installing Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, which is a horribly bloated and slow piece of software. You can't just click on a PDF in your file browser and have it instantly pop up, you have to wait around for ages for Adobe to load up. On Linux, there's several lightweight PDF viewers that load up instantly. On my KDE desktop, using Okular is fast and easy.
Zip files are another place that's a big pain in the ass on Windows. They're generally ultra-fast and transparent on Linux, or I can manipulate them on the command line easily. I can easily just type "zip filename.zip file file2 path/file3" and it's done. With Windows, you generally have to use WinZip, so then to create a zipfile you use Explorer, then right-click, find the WinZip menu entry, then the selection to add files, and then you have to sit and wait for a while for it to "load WinZip extensions".
Honestly, everything on Windows is so damn bloated and slow, it's extremely frustrating to use. Don't get me started on McAfee software, another Windows necessity.
Yeah, but for the same reasons I explained earlier, it IS really weak: a sublight spaceship compared to a warp-capable spaceship is basically like a wheelchair compared to an Indy car. If they're worried about some hostile party, that saucer section isn't going to be able to evade the warp-capable hostile party in any way. At the very best, they could try to hide the saucer in some other star system (maybe land it on a planet), and then warp away to the fight, but that assumes they know well in advance that they're likely to be in a big fight in a specific location, which is one hell of an assumption.
You're missing a lot of the TNG story I think, and in particular two people. McFadden left the show because she didn't get along with Maurice Hurley, the lead writer, and Gene's drinking buddy (probably because of the sexist stuff you cited, but probably many other things too). Hurley wasn't all bad (he invented the Borg), but mostly his writing was crap, and you can tell because season 1 was so bad. Hurley left after season 2.
The other person you're missing is Rick Berman. He took over running the show in season 3. He begged McFadden to come back, and is the reason she did. Also notice that season 3 was probably the best of the lot, along with 4 and 5, where he was running things. All the "classic" TNG episodes were made under Berman's supervision. Berman's gotten a lot of flak for stuff (he also went on to work on DS9, VOY, etc.), but he really deserves full credit for turning TNG around and keeping it from sinking, and making it a real gem.
Roddenberry's problem is that he was just like George Lucas: an ideas man, but terrible at execution. He came up with some great high-level ideas for stuff, but when he was too involved in the low-level details, the results were bad. He also apparently sucked at picking good lieutenants. Berman is probably the opposite.
WTF? The re-imagined BSG was utterly fantastic... well, at least for the mini-series and the first couple seasons.
Unfortunately, it jumped the shark in season 3 I think, and the whole "final 5" thing was just ridiculous and kinda ruined it.
But yeah, if they could give us something like Moore's BSG first 2 seasons, then count me in.
The main problem with BSG anyway was that it had to have some kind of ending which explained things, since the humans there were obviously related to us somehow, but it wasn't apparent how, so they ended coming up with a horrible supernatural explanation at the end. Star Trek shouldn't have that problem, especially if they could avoid the urge to have a big "story arc", and stick to self-contained episodes (though with some reasonable character development along the way that assumes some knowledge of past episodes, but not too much). It's not about explaining humanity's origins, it's about a glimpse into life in the future.
The Romulans were confined to a single star system in early ToS and didn't get warp drive until later. The neutral zone was just a bit of interstellar space around their system.
I must have missed that bit, I certainly don't remember it (not saying you're wrong, I just don't remember whatever dialog said that, and I did re-watch the 1st season episode about them fighting the Romulans about a year ago).
Anyway, there was a lot of bad stuff like that in TOS, and even in TNG too, apparently written by people who don't understand basic astrophysics. A war with a race without warp drive makes no sense at all; either the combatants will be completely mismatched (any race without warp drive will be no match at all for one with it), or it'll be impossible to have the war in the first place (if both combatants are confined to sublight speeds, unless perhaps they're in neighboring star systems but even then you're looking at decades to send your Navy to fight the enemy).
Remember also, in the 1st season of TOS, there was no Federation of Planets! They kept calling themselves "United Earth Ship Enterprise". They didn't invent the UFP until later, probably sometime in the 2nd season. They just completely glossed over that.
Even TNG wasn't immune to science problems. The whole idea of the "star drive" section and saucer separating was idiotic, because apparently the saucer section didn't have warp drive. Without warp drive, you're not going to get very far; it's basically like having a canoe in the middle of the Atlantic. I still remember the episode "Arsenal of Freedom" where they do a saucer separation for some dumb reason (I think it was something related to convenience, not any kind of emergency). Without warp drive, the saucer section isn't going to even get out of the star system, much less to some other star system dozens of light-years away. If it takes 4 *years* for light to get from here to Alpha Centaur, that means the fastest the saucer can go that distance is some fraction of that, probably at least a decade (plus they'll have relativistic distortion, depending on how close to c they manage to go).
The bottom line is: you really have to take some Star Trek stuff with a big grain of salt, and this especially goes for anything involving TOS and worst of all the 1st season of TOS. Their understanding of astrophysics on that show back then really wasn't that much better than "Lost in Space".
Enterprise could have and should have been the ultimate Star Trek prequel, and other than the stupid temporal cold war and Xindi things, I quite enjoyed the show. It was quite fascinating to see how new technologies and discoveries were dealt with by the crew.
Yep, this is exactly what I thought of that show too. The other thing that really sucked about it was the horrible, horrible, opening theme song. Luckily when viewing it on Netflix, it's not hard to skip past: make sure to memorize the exact length of it.
Seasons 1, 2, and 4 were mostly good. The whole Xindi thing was not, nor the "temporal cold war". Also, those 2 episodes in the last season about the mirror universe were fantastic, as was the opening theme for those episodes. It was there that I realized why the Star Trek future seems so unrealistic to us: we're living in the mirror universe.
Huh? You're completely forgetting Enterprise, which came before JJ's lens-flare crap. Enterprise was surprisingly good; I turned up my nose at it, but got around to watching it a few years ago, and wished I had given it a chance when it was new. It had its problems of course, but overall it was fun to watch.
The biggest problem with Enterprise, however, was the horrifically bad opening theme song. Just awful. Luckily, I watched it on Netflix, so I got really good at skipping past it.
Also, the whole Xindi arc in season 3 was disappointing, but it was in direct response to 9/11 so it was somewhat understandable.
Star Trek TOS came out when color TV was still very new, and a lot of people still had B&W TVs. There were 2 issues: 1) the color TVs didn't have the greatest color rendition or resolution or clarity, and 2) they wanted to "wow" viewers who did have color TVs. As a result, everything in the show had crazy, vivid colors.
And what happens if you're on vacation in a national park away from cellular signals? Or you're in a theater and your phone is off? If the business can't survive that, and can't pay for someone to be available at these times, then they have no business operating.
Since it sounds like you're already interviewing for other jobs, the solution is pretty simple: ignore the on-call stuff and do whatever you'd normally do. If they're able to reach you and you can help, fine (you apparently get extra pay for this). Otherwise, oh well... "sorry!". What are they going to do, fire you for a mistake? (Or rather, a "mistake".)
Remember, it's always works better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission.
You would think Seattle, WA (home of Microsoft, etc) would have a virtual cornucopia (sp) of broadband options??
Microsoft isn't in Seattle, it's in Redmond. Seattle might as well be Forks as far as MS is concerned.
From what I've read about the situation, it's only Seattle that has such horrible internet service. All the other cities there are fine: Redmond, Tacoma, etc.
Most people bitch about their cell phone battery life but that hasn't led to Apple doing anything but making their phones thinner and their batteries smaller.
Well WTF do they expect? If they bitch and complain, and then run out and pay top dollar anyway for a device they bitch and complain about, why would the vendor bother listening to their complaints?
Not exactly. Taxes are involuntary: you're required to pay them whether you want to or not. No one is forcing anyone to buy an Apple. People do this entirely willingly, just like they happily and willingly buy or pay for things like cable TV (including premium sports channels), church tithes, horrifically expensive handbags or designer clothes like from Coach or Gucci, Jeeps, or Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
I don't know about where you live, but where I live (a more rural area about an hour from DC), Verizon is king, as it is in most rural areas I know of. Verizon has, hands-down, the best cellular coverage in rural areas. Of course, they also have the very worst service, and the most astronomical prices. But people in rural areas happily pay it because they're unwilling to put up with less-than-stellar coverage from the other telcos.
Personally, I have a Sprint phone with Ting and it works well enough. I'm not willing to pay $150/month more just for better coverage. Sprint's service is "good enough", and doesn't cause me any problems.
While I mostly agree with you, your points about not having any cache among millennials and being a vaguely recognizable name from the past can also be said about Cadillac, which everyone has long been predicting demise for because it's an "old person's car". They were saying this 2 decades ago about Cadillac and Lincoln. Yet those brands are still there, somehow. Cadillac even survived the whole GM collapse, while Pontiac and Saturn did not. Now, how Cadillac manages to stay afloat, I have no idea, but they do. It's just like AOL and Yahoo; I have no idea how they survive, but they do. There must be someone out there still giving them money. And if Yahoo is anything like Cadillac, they could still be hanging around 20 years from now, though people will still be wondering how.
Advertisers want young people with disposable income for the most part.
They do?
Young people tend to either be flat broke, or rather savvy to attempts to rip them off, especially internet advertising. Young people are far more likely to use ad-blockers. Old people are not; they're more trusting and easily taken advantage of. That's why they even have laws designed to protect against "elder abuse". Advertisers would do much better targeting the old folks who use Yahoo Mail.
That's why it's better to live alone. My cats don't expect too much, though they can be a little bit distracting when they insist on jumping in my lap. Much better than having a live-in partner who's always whining about having too much housework to do and never has any free time and wants me to do all kinds of house-related stuff and chores, yet somehow when I'm on my own I don't have much trouble keeping up with the laundry and dishes and it takes me a tiny fraction of the time it seemed to take her.
I'd like to add to this that one good solution to this (for office workers who spend all their time on a computer) is to allow more tele-working. Encourage or allow employees to spend X days a week working from home. Then sick workers can get work done from home while not spreading their sickness, and healthy workers who never get sick can also work from home some and not feel like the sickly people are getting to do less work (leaving the healthy people to do it) as a reward for not being as healthy, and enjoy being able to work from home and stay out of the noisy open office too.
The problem with sick days (separate from vacation days) is that if you're the kind of person who never or rarely gets sick, then you're effectively penalized compared to someone who does, or compared to someone who lies. So places with sick days frequently have employees who lie about being sick so they can use up those days.
Otherwise, how is it fair that you should have to come to work every day because you're healthy, while Sick Sue gets to stay home a lot, and then you have to cover for Sue while she relaxes at home?
I've worked in all three too (plus labs). Cubicles are only "amazing" when compared to open offices. Really, they're tolerable, and not bad at all if you're in a group that's quiet AND you're allowed to have "do not disturb" signs to prevent interruptions AND your group isn't next to some noisy group. I had that setup once (plus my cube was next to a window) and looking back, now I think of it as luxurious, even though at the time it was merely OK (but a big step up from my previous cube at the same company where I was seated next to some loudmouth asshole who was on the phone all the time, plus I had a big pole in the middle of my cubicle there).
Offices are the best setup. People who advocate for open offices should, IMO, be lined up and shot for the good of society. I'm not kidding about this; the amount of sheer misery caused by these people is incalculable.
This is obviously bullshit. That's 1.4 square feet per person. Even the Tokyo subway isn't that dense. That wouldn't even leave you room to have a computer, much less sit down.
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Exactly. I gave an old laptop to a female friend who had lost her PC and was using her phone for all this stuff. The phone was able to do it, but it was a total PITA of course. She just does the basic stuff: web browsing, watching videos, listening to music, photo management, etc., but with a laptop (running Mint KDE) it's SO much easier.
Phones are fine for making phone calls, listening to voicemail, writing short texts, and swiping left and right on Tinder, but if you want to see a lot of stuff at once, or be able to input text quickly, you just can't beat a normal-size screen and keyboard.
Except for Outlook, email clients in general have really gone down the tubes in the last 5 years or so because of lack of attention, due to everyone switching to webmail (esp. GMail). Email clients are simply dying out; it's too convenient to be able to read your email on any computer, and also on your mobile phone. You simply can't do that with an old-fashioned PC-based email client.
Outlook is the sole exception. But as you've complained, Outlook just plain sucks to use. It always has, and always will. It's like the modern version of Lotus Notes; big, clunky, crappy "enterprise" software that no one in their right mind likes using, but remains in use because of corporate inertia and because it ticks off all the corporate-acquisition checkboxes.
Skype has released a new Linux client that's supposed to work pretty well; you might want to try that.
Also, some businesses that are tied to Outlook have OWA (Outlook Web Access) which lets you access your Outlook email with a web browser.
Exactly. I gave an old laptop to a female friend a couple months ago, loaded with Linux Mint KDE edition. I sat down with her, showed her how to do all that stuff on there: web browsing, photo viewing, file management with Dolphin, watching videos with VLC, etc. There was something she wanted to do (I forget now, maybe photo editing) and I showed her how to do it with some free software, and she was surprised as she thought she'd have to buy some software. She hadn't quite wrapped her head around the idea that all this stuff is free on Linux and you don't need to buy some software package to do every little thing like you do on Windows.
Yep, it's somewhat similar to the PDF situation on Windows: if you want to be able to view PDFs in Windows, that generally means installing Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, which is a horribly bloated and slow piece of software. You can't just click on a PDF in your file browser and have it instantly pop up, you have to wait around for ages for Adobe to load up. On Linux, there's several lightweight PDF viewers that load up instantly. On my KDE desktop, using Okular is fast and easy.
Zip files are another place that's a big pain in the ass on Windows. They're generally ultra-fast and transparent on Linux, or I can manipulate them on the command line easily. I can easily just type "zip filename.zip file file2 path/file3" and it's done. With Windows, you generally have to use WinZip, so then to create a zipfile you use Explorer, then right-click, find the WinZip menu entry, then the selection to add files, and then you have to sit and wait for a while for it to "load WinZip extensions".
Honestly, everything on Windows is so damn bloated and slow, it's extremely frustrating to use. Don't get me started on McAfee software, another Windows necessity.
Yeah, but for the same reasons I explained earlier, it IS really weak: a sublight spaceship compared to a warp-capable spaceship is basically like a wheelchair compared to an Indy car. If they're worried about some hostile party, that saucer section isn't going to be able to evade the warp-capable hostile party in any way. At the very best, they could try to hide the saucer in some other star system (maybe land it on a planet), and then warp away to the fight, but that assumes they know well in advance that they're likely to be in a big fight in a specific location, which is one hell of an assumption.
You're missing a lot of the TNG story I think, and in particular two people. McFadden left the show because she didn't get along with Maurice Hurley, the lead writer, and Gene's drinking buddy (probably because of the sexist stuff you cited, but probably many other things too). Hurley wasn't all bad (he invented the Borg), but mostly his writing was crap, and you can tell because season 1 was so bad. Hurley left after season 2.
The other person you're missing is Rick Berman. He took over running the show in season 3. He begged McFadden to come back, and is the reason she did. Also notice that season 3 was probably the best of the lot, along with 4 and 5, where he was running things. All the "classic" TNG episodes were made under Berman's supervision. Berman's gotten a lot of flak for stuff (he also went on to work on DS9, VOY, etc.), but he really deserves full credit for turning TNG around and keeping it from sinking, and making it a real gem.
Roddenberry's problem is that he was just like George Lucas: an ideas man, but terrible at execution. He came up with some great high-level ideas for stuff, but when he was too involved in the low-level details, the results were bad. He also apparently sucked at picking good lieutenants. Berman is probably the opposite.
WTF? The re-imagined BSG was utterly fantastic... well, at least for the mini-series and the first couple seasons.
Unfortunately, it jumped the shark in season 3 I think, and the whole "final 5" thing was just ridiculous and kinda ruined it.
But yeah, if they could give us something like Moore's BSG first 2 seasons, then count me in.
The main problem with BSG anyway was that it had to have some kind of ending which explained things, since the humans there were obviously related to us somehow, but it wasn't apparent how, so they ended coming up with a horrible supernatural explanation at the end. Star Trek shouldn't have that problem, especially if they could avoid the urge to have a big "story arc", and stick to self-contained episodes (though with some reasonable character development along the way that assumes some knowledge of past episodes, but not too much). It's not about explaining humanity's origins, it's about a glimpse into life in the future.
The Romulans were confined to a single star system in early ToS and didn't get warp drive until later. The neutral zone was just a bit of interstellar space around their system.
I must have missed that bit, I certainly don't remember it (not saying you're wrong, I just don't remember whatever dialog said that, and I did re-watch the 1st season episode about them fighting the Romulans about a year ago).
Anyway, there was a lot of bad stuff like that in TOS, and even in TNG too, apparently written by people who don't understand basic astrophysics. A war with a race without warp drive makes no sense at all; either the combatants will be completely mismatched (any race without warp drive will be no match at all for one with it), or it'll be impossible to have the war in the first place (if both combatants are confined to sublight speeds, unless perhaps they're in neighboring star systems but even then you're looking at decades to send your Navy to fight the enemy).
Remember also, in the 1st season of TOS, there was no Federation of Planets! They kept calling themselves "United Earth Ship Enterprise". They didn't invent the UFP until later, probably sometime in the 2nd season. They just completely glossed over that.
Even TNG wasn't immune to science problems. The whole idea of the "star drive" section and saucer separating was idiotic, because apparently the saucer section didn't have warp drive. Without warp drive, you're not going to get very far; it's basically like having a canoe in the middle of the Atlantic. I still remember the episode "Arsenal of Freedom" where they do a saucer separation for some dumb reason (I think it was something related to convenience, not any kind of emergency). Without warp drive, the saucer section isn't going to even get out of the star system, much less to some other star system dozens of light-years away. If it takes 4 *years* for light to get from here to Alpha Centaur, that means the fastest the saucer can go that distance is some fraction of that, probably at least a decade (plus they'll have relativistic distortion, depending on how close to c they manage to go).
The bottom line is: you really have to take some Star Trek stuff with a big grain of salt, and this especially goes for anything involving TOS and worst of all the 1st season of TOS. Their understanding of astrophysics on that show back then really wasn't that much better than "Lost in Space".
Enterprise could have and should have been the ultimate Star Trek prequel, and other than the stupid temporal cold war and Xindi things, I quite enjoyed the show. It was quite fascinating to see how new technologies and discoveries were dealt with by the crew.
Yep, this is exactly what I thought of that show too. The other thing that really sucked about it was the horrible, horrible, opening theme song. Luckily when viewing it on Netflix, it's not hard to skip past: make sure to memorize the exact length of it.
Seasons 1, 2, and 4 were mostly good. The whole Xindi thing was not, nor the "temporal cold war". Also, those 2 episodes in the last season about the mirror universe were fantastic, as was the opening theme for those episodes. It was there that I realized why the Star Trek future seems so unrealistic to us: we're living in the mirror universe.
Huh? You're completely forgetting Enterprise, which came before JJ's lens-flare crap. Enterprise was surprisingly good; I turned up my nose at it, but got around to watching it a few years ago, and wished I had given it a chance when it was new. It had its problems of course, but overall it was fun to watch.
The biggest problem with Enterprise, however, was the horrifically bad opening theme song. Just awful. Luckily, I watched it on Netflix, so I got really good at skipping past it.
Also, the whole Xindi arc in season 3 was disappointing, but it was in direct response to 9/11 so it was somewhat understandable.
Star Trek TOS came out when color TV was still very new, and a lot of people still had B&W TVs. There were 2 issues: 1) the color TVs didn't have the greatest color rendition or resolution or clarity, and 2) they wanted to "wow" viewers who did have color TVs. As a result, everything in the show had crazy, vivid colors.
And what happens if you're on vacation in a national park away from cellular signals? Or you're in a theater and your phone is off? If the business can't survive that, and can't pay for someone to be available at these times, then they have no business operating.
Since it sounds like you're already interviewing for other jobs, the solution is pretty simple: ignore the on-call stuff and do whatever you'd normally do. If they're able to reach you and you can help, fine (you apparently get extra pay for this). Otherwise, oh well... "sorry!". What are they going to do, fire you for a mistake? (Or rather, a "mistake".)
Remember, it's always works better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission.
You would think Seattle, WA (home of Microsoft, etc) would have a virtual cornucopia (sp) of broadband options??
Microsoft isn't in Seattle, it's in Redmond. Seattle might as well be Forks as far as MS is concerned.
From what I've read about the situation, it's only Seattle that has such horrible internet service. All the other cities there are fine: Redmond, Tacoma, etc.
Most people bitch about their cell phone battery life but that hasn't led to Apple doing anything but making their phones thinner and their batteries smaller.
Well WTF do they expect? If they bitch and complain, and then run out and pay top dollar anyway for a device they bitch and complain about, why would the vendor bother listening to their complaints?
I swear to god Apple is like a "stupid" tax.
Not exactly. Taxes are involuntary: you're required to pay them whether you want to or not. No one is forcing anyone to buy an Apple. People do this entirely willingly, just like they happily and willingly buy or pay for things like cable TV (including premium sports channels), church tithes, horrifically expensive handbags or designer clothes like from Coach or Gucci, Jeeps, or Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
I don't know about where you live, but where I live (a more rural area about an hour from DC), Verizon is king, as it is in most rural areas I know of. Verizon has, hands-down, the best cellular coverage in rural areas. Of course, they also have the very worst service, and the most astronomical prices. But people in rural areas happily pay it because they're unwilling to put up with less-than-stellar coverage from the other telcos.
Personally, I have a Sprint phone with Ting and it works well enough. I'm not willing to pay $150/month more just for better coverage. Sprint's service is "good enough", and doesn't cause me any problems.
While I mostly agree with you, your points about not having any cache among millennials and being a vaguely recognizable name from the past can also be said about Cadillac, which everyone has long been predicting demise for because it's an "old person's car". They were saying this 2 decades ago about Cadillac and Lincoln. Yet those brands are still there, somehow. Cadillac even survived the whole GM collapse, while Pontiac and Saturn did not. Now, how Cadillac manages to stay afloat, I have no idea, but they do. It's just like AOL and Yahoo; I have no idea how they survive, but they do. There must be someone out there still giving them money. And if Yahoo is anything like Cadillac, they could still be hanging around 20 years from now, though people will still be wondering how.
Advertisers want young people with disposable income for the most part.
They do?
Young people tend to either be flat broke, or rather savvy to attempts to rip them off, especially internet advertising. Young people are far more likely to use ad-blockers. Old people are not; they're more trusting and easily taken advantage of. That's why they even have laws designed to protect against "elder abuse". Advertisers would do much better targeting the old folks who use Yahoo Mail.
That's why it's better to live alone. My cats don't expect too much, though they can be a little bit distracting when they insist on jumping in my lap. Much better than having a live-in partner who's always whining about having too much housework to do and never has any free time and wants me to do all kinds of house-related stuff and chores, yet somehow when I'm on my own I don't have much trouble keeping up with the laundry and dishes and it takes me a tiny fraction of the time it seemed to take her.
I'd like to add to this that one good solution to this (for office workers who spend all their time on a computer) is to allow more tele-working. Encourage or allow employees to spend X days a week working from home. Then sick workers can get work done from home while not spreading their sickness, and healthy workers who never get sick can also work from home some and not feel like the sickly people are getting to do less work (leaving the healthy people to do it) as a reward for not being as healthy, and enjoy being able to work from home and stay out of the noisy open office too.
The problem with sick days (separate from vacation days) is that if you're the kind of person who never or rarely gets sick, then you're effectively penalized compared to someone who does, or compared to someone who lies. So places with sick days frequently have employees who lie about being sick so they can use up those days.
Otherwise, how is it fair that you should have to come to work every day because you're healthy, while Sick Sue gets to stay home a lot, and then you have to cover for Sue while she relaxes at home?
It won't be fixed any time soon. The Democrats, including Hillary, absolutely love ObamaCare which does absolutely nothing to fix the problem.
I've worked in all three too (plus labs). Cubicles are only "amazing" when compared to open offices. Really, they're tolerable, and not bad at all if you're in a group that's quiet AND you're allowed to have "do not disturb" signs to prevent interruptions AND your group isn't next to some noisy group. I had that setup once (plus my cube was next to a window) and looking back, now I think of it as luxurious, even though at the time it was merely OK (but a big step up from my previous cube at the same company where I was seated next to some loudmouth asshole who was on the phone all the time, plus I had a big pole in the middle of my cubicle there).
Offices are the best setup. People who advocate for open offices should, IMO, be lined up and shot for the good of society. I'm not kidding about this; the amount of sheer misery caused by these people is incalculable.
This is obviously bullshit. That's 1.4 square feet per person. Even the Tokyo subway isn't that dense. That wouldn't even leave you room to have a computer, much less sit down.