Absolutely nothing wrong with taking advantage of improved grooming, hygiene, physical fitness, and clothing. These are easy things that anyone can do to gain advantages in most areas of life.
Yeah no. I have WiFi in my home in a grudging concession to others in the family. I hate all wireless tech. It's flakey and annoying. I've never had a wireless keyboard, mouse, or headphones that were reliable either. If they weren't dropping the connection, the battery was dying.
I like how these old control panels often lay out the switches and gauges on a schematic representation of the physical system. Makes it easier to visualize the electrical or fluid flows that are being controlled and monitored, and helps the operators think about which valves or switches need to be opened or closed to change the state of the system.
Exactly what the crafty older person wanted. Get you to do the work. "It doesn't work on my computer" or some other claim of trouble or ignorance is an easy way to trick a smart energetic young person to do something for you.
Young smart people don't like to say "I don't know how" or "I can't get it to work." An older person will say that without hesitation if it will prompt someone else to do something that he doesn't want to do himself.
I can hardly imagine earning $350k a year. I've never earned a third of that anually. What I can imagine is a job that places such a demand on my time and attention that I don't have time for a life outside of it.
This is part of the risk of being a contractor/freelancer.
If you want the maximum legal protections around getting paid for your work, you need to be an employee.
Beyond that, ultimately it boils down to Robin has not paid for the work performed. The freelancer needs to demand payment from Robin directly, and if he won't pay, file a lawsuit against him if Upwork is not going to help. Will be difficult with Robin apparently being in a different country, and probably not worth it for only $12k, the legal fees and time spent will certainly exceed that amount.
Charge it off as a lesson learned, and a 12k business loss on your taxes.
Over my career I've used Sybase, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, even a bit of DB2 way back in the day. I wouldn't use MySQL if I had another option, but that said I've managed some web sites (Drupal and other CMSs) that used MySQL and it was ... fine. It worked, and never needed any attention.
MySQL is a simple database that's easy to set up and run. Don't make the mistake of thinking there's nothing better, but for certain use cases, it gets the job done.
You could buy a cheaper car, or a cheaper house, or cheaper clothes, and put the difference into an IRA.
Yes some people must spend all their income on food and shelter. And government assistance stupidly penalizes people who try to save. But many people, even lower income people, could save a little. I think they have never been shown what the power of compounding can do over time. It is not intuitive, because the gains in early years are small.
Maybe we should address that problem -- it's one of the best long term ways for anyone to build wealth. Why aren't we educating people about this in school?
This is very much my experience. I have a friend at the office, we had lunch together almost every day, but since WFH started in March 2020 I have barely spoken to him, just a very occasional email. I have physically seen him once. I have also never kept in touch with anyone I worked with at a former employer.