The kids picked up something nasty at pre-school and it took the whole family down this weekend. So, only a short update for this week, but a long and interesting articles list below.
Google Flights is my tool of choice for finding paid airplane tickets. It’s quick, flexible, and links off to other sites to complete the booking (I greatly prefer booking directly with airlines rather than third parties like Booking.com, Dreamz, etc., which can be a huge pain to deal with if something goes wrong.) Google flights now offers a limited guarantee where they will reimburse the difference if the fare drops after you book. There are limitations, of course:
You need to be signed in your Google account and use U.S. details when you make your booking (currency, phone, address).
The booking needs to be no more than 60 days in the future
It’s only offered for some itineraries (denoted by a badge).
$500 maximum reimbursement, max 3 times a year.
Apparently an unofficial slide that an associate at Paul Hastings prepared has been making the rounds:
While Paul Hastings was quick to disclaim this as the firm’s official position, about 70% of this is accurate, I think. Even for someone who routinely spends these dollars on outside counsel, #3 is not a reasonable expectation (except, perhaps, during crunch time of a major transaction) and firms should be able to manage staffing to give their staff time off and appropriate coverage. #4 I don’t expect everything to be done yesterday. It’s not always possible, I try to give reasonable timeframes and don’t like to put outside counsel through needless fire drills. #7 “No poor connections” — we’re all at the mercy of Comcast. #9 is totally an acceptable answer for an associate, as long as you follow it up with, “but I’ll find out”. #5 is an important point. If you pay $1,000+ per hour to anyone for anything in life, you’re going to expect gold-plated service.
One of the most famous memos in all of Microsoft history was a first memo about cost-cutting which came about in 1993 (see early 90s recession). Mike Murray, leading HR, wrote the memo "Shrimp and Weenies"—before MS, Mike was at Apple, having led OG Mac marketing. 1/ (third try)
PEOPLE OF THE EARTH. Figured out how to ask natural language questions of current financial data and get back a natural language response…with correct/relevant numbers! 🤯💰✨
So. Freaking. Cool.
1. Send database schema along with the question and relevant scope/parameters… pic.twitter.com/AE49RBTIrH
10:00pm 
