Even before I was laid off I had to keep track of my expenses for work. At that time it meant extra bonus “expense” checks for mileage driven or reimbursement for my food. Now that I am working for myself and not taking a salary, it is of the utmost importance that I do this, because its one of the only ways i can get cash inflow. Since getting my iPhone I was convinced that there had to be a good tracking program. The problem was that many of the apps on the market were unitaskers, they EITHER calculated vehicular expenses (and some only mileage) or they were submittable receipts. Eventually I found XpenseTracker. This app lets me log all of this information in one place, plus i can divide things up in job specific logs. There are custom notes fields as well as fields for merchants and clients. It also allows me to keep track of my non-profit miles for the work I do with Dominion Stage. In addition to tracking and keeping my records it also allows me to use the camera to take photos of my receipts at the time of purchase. I no longer need to [...]
This image really speaks to me. I think it illustrates the greatest problem in architecture practice. The hierarchy of offices are set up mostly as managers and “managees”. There really is no place for collaboration or any challenging of the status quo. Sure offices say they value the opinions of the interns and non-managers, but the whole hierarchy leads itself so that their ideas have to be greatly filtered before they reach anyone who can make any decisions. Now this is partly good, many interns don’t know their proverbial ass from their elbow when they first join an office, but I fear that a lot of stale architecture is made because the firms designing the buildings are top-down. The principals work with a lead designer who has a vision and then everyone else works to craft that vision. Studio Managers take direction from the designer, and in turn direct project architects, who craft red lines and cartoon sets so that the interns can generate drawings. All those layers are like the children’s game of telephone, in every step the designer’s ideas get diluted by management, and in the end even if the design was steller the final product is usually mediocre at best.