I filed a schedule C this year. If you’re new to the IRS tax code, this means I’m running a business, a teaching business in my case, a for profit, meaning I have to keep track of losses (expenses), otherwise how do we see if there’s a profit or not. You can take in a big amount, but what if you pass it all through, and then some, to subcontractors or PR folks of whatever variety? Stuff like that.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, electronic banking simplifies matters, as we no longer rely on a lot of hand-kept records, taught as part of check book 101 in the heyday of paper banking. Now you just download the PDFs or, better CSV files from your pay point (some transactions server, like PayPal), meaning whatever account (I just set up Swipe like a few days back) and there you’ve got all your transactions for the year.
At this point, many would import the CSV into a spreadsheet, much the same as what I use: a Python DataFrame from pandas.
Anyway, to “cut to the chase” (I should ask Perplexity where that idiom comes from) I tallied up cloud expenses for keeping data in the cloud, and part of my harvesting that data involved using said cloud, at which point I realized my banking files where only in the cloud and I’d need to mirror them back to the local drive, not an immediate process. I was separated from my own banking files by a time delay and mucho geographic distance. Kinda dumb. How do I make sure I have a local copy?
Well, one thing led to another and I know have a 17.5 gigabyte file downloaded to Old Mac, the youngest of my Macs. I’m awaiting a next beefy box, able to run Blender no problem, a focus of Spring Term. However it’s not super important that I be buff with Blender as I’m surfing the ripple effects of having already done the necessary renderings starting in Visual FoxPro times, before shifting the more long term rails (investments) in Python.
An issue is I don’t have 17.5 gig to spare in Old Mac’s long term storage, so the target device of this download is actually an inserted memory stick (thumb drive) connected to Old Mac through its USB port (not USB-C, the older shape).
Big footprints in the cloud (and yes “big” is relative) can’t be shifted around willy-nilly like potato chips (lightweight matter), kinda like some forms of “money” (investments), which can’t always be liquid either.
The cloud service in question took some days rolling up a zip file with all my stuff in it (the 17.5 gigabyte file I was talking about). Clearly my request went to a queue and needed to wait its turn. I’m not the only one wanting to back up what’s in the cloud with something more local to the scene in question. Cloud services might get cut off for various reasons having to do with internet connectivity.
One may curse and shout about the delay involved (that wasn’t me, I’m just projecting) but in “tree world” (talking about real physical trees) we don’t expect to transplant a particular specimen at the drop of a hat.
Deep excavation and even a crane may be required. The process could take not just days, but a week or two (I’m not the expert — I bet they even use helicopters on occasion).
Laws of physics (they call ‘em laws) have relevance in engineering. It’s not all about “vendor lock in” and making money. It’s about figuring out a business plan that doesn’t require “leaps of faith” of the kind the underlying physics simply won’t allow. One may express cynicism about a human design, but how is one “cynical” about Jupiter (for example) or even Saturn with the stupid hexagon? Calling Saturn’s hexagon “stupid” just sounds stupid, right?
It’s not a human-devised system all the way down, let’s remember. Which isn’t saying anything crazy. We’re just remembering humans are johnny-come-latelies to this picture, and aren’t exempt or miraculously excepted from following (“obeying”) those generalized principles (“laws”).
