Alternatives to Gig Work, Now that the Federal Extension Unemployment Benefits are Ending.

 Although it may seem like a bleak outlook on the newsfeed, lately, I'm not going to freak out. There are plenty of ways in which I can assert my enterprising self and my entrepreneurial spirit, even as of yet;

Hopefully you'd also managed to procure and safeguard some capital investments, using unemployment benefits from the Employment Development Department, etc. - for me, it was perfume and fragrance | aroma ingredients that stuck things out, beyond the stock market and the cryptocurrency craze that hit many newcomers, from the wayside, with attractive and compelling distractions from what few opportunities many of us were afforded, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and subsequent social strata fallout that was the Black Lives Matter movement and associated civic center occupations and unrest. 

In any case, you might be wondering what else there is to do, now that much of the attention is on the presidential administration, the weather, etc., while here, in Southern California, the weather is relatively balmy and cool - at least for a few days, now; we',ve got raindrops notifications coming through on Dark Sky, and it's only the height of mid-day that's unbearably hot and overly bright. Things could be worse; they « had been » worse, previously... 

Then, from out of what seems like nowhere, Google manages to pull through in some new releases; there's the Pixel 6 coming out soon, and with it (preceding it's release), there's plenty of self-starter enterprising frontier, development and production space that's rich as all of the major topics of Big Tech, as of late: AI, ML, Call Center stuff, IoT, online retail, ad marketing, domaining... that sort of thing. 

For me, Google Workspace reignited the development aspirations fire within me, and I was drawn in by Gmail's chat space, which, for me, is constantly dead space, or non-existent, as I work primarily on mobile; finger-flipping up and down, checking on this and that, waiting for my benefits to come in, ... although that was bound to come to an end, at some point in time. Now that those things had come to fruition, during their time, it's obvious that we'd expect to have something to show, as for ourselves, and for our adult life and professional careers, to come. That's how I see it, in any case. 

There's Dialogflow, which is the linguistic version of what was, and is - the visual foray of Machine Learning platform, which is TensorFlow; we've all been familiarized with the notion of what TensorFlow does for us, in having to go through Captchas, as the intelligence barrier, between us, and some fated necessary task of scripting, that comes about, as a result of browsing the web, sometimes. 

There's the Tovusound Organ Pipe Music Boxes, which I'm a huge fan of, as a DTLA pigeon carnival enthusiast and proponent (lately, I've been getting shipped around, various parts of town, for the sake of tending to the other pigeon flocks and small establishments of them, in numbers, whether they were known gatherings of birds, or unbeknownst to me), given that the birds are likely to flourish, here and there, regardless of whether or not it's the civic center, or not. In these many various locales that I traverse, I encounter signs of that the pigeons and the people are getting along well, and that the birds are treated well in various parts of town.

Miniaturizing the Mobile Pro Audio Setup: Offload the Hardware Signal Processing Chain to Accessory Devices. (iOS, iPadOS, Android).

 Pro audio buffs, of generations past, had gone through various golden ages of outboard gear in |post| production studios and on-site recording and performance settings.

With the advent of multi-core computer processing, which saw a boom in multimedia production studios in the popular consumer electronics setting in the early 2000's with Apple's PowerPC dual and quad-core processors in their G5 PowerMac line, made by IBM. I had one of their quad core G5 systems near the time that they were first released, and at that time, it was a significant workhorse. I was in school, at UC Riverside, for Music, as my bachelor's of arts degree, for course work, and I did some hip hop production and mixing on the side, with my tower as my significant main device; I had an AKG large diaphragm condenser microphone hooked up through a MOTU audio interface, and I ran many sessions, and composed many tracks, through that set up.

With the advent of multi-core processing, software companies began virtualizing the former generation's hardware platform offerings, by creating virtual instruments and software plugins that ported the analog or digital rack mount units, synthesizers, and outboard processing gear of former ages of audio production and post-production. Back then, the challenge was wiring everything efficiently and the significant costs involved in procuring pro audio gear. Studio owners and music producers were an iconic role model for many of us, who aspired to work in audio. Studio time commanded significant professional rates, and many of the older music professionals etched out a living for themselves out in the Hills, and the Valley, as old lore of their lifestyles was discovered, while I worked as a craigslist software installation specialist, from around 2006-2012.

Consequentially, with the advent of the consumer-level multimedia | pro audio workstations, many of us, as youths, bought in to the lifestyle, as startup CEOs of small means post-production, live recording, artist management, and marketing | publicity business operations during that time, and a significant push to establish software tools that emulated the hardware options of the big studios on prosumer devices, such as the MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, and iMac devices became the heralding legacy that was established during the late 2000's decade. 

Towards the end of that decade, and in to the 2010's, the economy went bust, and people began to rely upon available software options that had already been produced and manufactured, while eschewing purchasing new hardware, or they began to buy in to the new mobile smartphone device ecology, as the iPhone had picked up speed and reputation as the hot new thing to own. Back in the early 2000's, electronic music and hip hop were gaining ground as the significant cultural movement in young adult popular culture. Come 2012, people had become burnt out on life, and the surveillance state had taken it's authoritative role over many people's minds, as this was the fates time, in the psychiatric profession's DSM-IV | V, for the onset of schizophrenia in certain subtypes of people, having hit age 30. 

Many people were scrambling for answers about the Illuminati, while suspicious of the wealthy, whereas, I suppose, many other young professionals had made out in life with suitable live-work circumstances, while the former decades' "living it up" demographic faded in to a downward spiral set of circumstances. Hardware marketplaces for consumer laptop and desktop systems, such as craigslist, became a cut-throat grounds in competitiveness, whereas craigslist had been a solid and dependable niche market to fulfill, for some, such as myself. People expected to procure their device needs, whether it was software or hardware, at significantly competitive rates, and news stories of shocking violence and shady encounters marred the craigslist brand for many people. Keep in mind that I worked in Los Angeles, which had the legacies of the entertainment industry and Hollywood as the bread and butter economy, for many various sorts of young and established professionals, alike. 

Around that time (2012) I somewhat fell out of the whole online and local marketplace scene, as schizophrenia took hold of me, and I went through several years of couch-surfing, shacking up with some of my former good craigslist relations, and subsequently, as all options for commerce became slimmer and slimmer, I ended up losing my Audi A4, and I was incarcerated for Grand Theft Auto for keeping a rental car for too long. It was a gradual, but sure descent, in to detriments and misfortunes, as I knew of no other options which would sustain me through financial hardships. 

Here and there, after being released from jail and hospitals, several times over, I procured some new devices on store credit, as lease options, with phone and data plans. I wasn't much in to the hacking scene, as I had gotten much of that spirit and impetus out of me during my years at University, so I didn't get in to jailbreaking my devices, much, at all. It turned out to be a fortunate timing, for me, as I came to discover the App Store, with its many offerings of third party software apps, for my |temporary| enjoyment of my time with my iPhone 7 Plus and my iPad Pro (2017). Unfortunately, I became a victim of homelessness and a target of stalking, while homeless, and I lost my devices, due to casual mishaps and foolish slight decisions made while nearing exhaustion, for the sake of producing intelligence on the topic of coming to understand my mental health circumstances, and in resurging my interests in pro audio and multimedia app mastery, while I had battery charges on my devices. 

Come 2020, and I had still yet had become a victim of homelessness and stalker-targeting, as a newly device-imbued homeless person. Yet, the COVID-19 Pandemic had struck, and over time, during the summer, I had finally procured another stable home environment to live in, thanks to my social services and mental health care providers. The Employment Development Department's offerings of unemployment insurance, for those affected by the pandemic, became a topic of notice and of pursuit, for me, as I eventually entered my claimant status as unemployed, and I came to receive unemployment insurance, in the midsummer of 2020. It was a significant boon, for me, as I was capable of receiving back pay, from the beginning of the onset of the pandemic, in March, whereas Pandemic Unemployment Award benefits, of an additional $600 per week, were being offered to constituent beneficiaries of unemployment insurance. Many people shun the president, for perceived slights and blunders, but all in all, I see President Trump as a capable leader, quite obviously, who lead the nation, as best as could be capably done, through what has ended up being a significant debacle, of a global scale, while maintaining a significant presence in our daily lives and collective mind, in America, as a regularly "social" leader, on the Twitter platform (which I prefer, as well, as my standard public relations outlet). He was the one who lead us in to receiving these benefits, which, at this point in time (January 2021), have amounted to over $17,000 for me, which I'd detailed, richly, as far as spendings and procurements, over the months, here, on iPigeon.institute Blog, Facebook, and Twitter. 

All things being said and continuing forth, as far as unemployment benefits are concerned, it was a significant boon for me, given that I had limited expenses, as my food and rent were largely taken care of for me, while I was receiving unemployment benefits. It was a significant time of plenty and good fortune, which seems to be coming to a head, as I'm somewhat faced with a fork in the road, as far as that I'm currently seeking to become employed, as an exit strategy and best-practices risk aversion from being the last one being handled benefits, with no foreseeable alternatives, as unemployment insurance claim money and time span allotments of claim status may run out on us. 

That being said, I've come to richly re-discover the establishments and gains in tech, both in terms of software and hardware, given my new devices: a MacBook Air 2020, an iPad Pro 11 inch (2020), and a Google Pixel 4a 5G, as my smartphone device. Having discovered Amazon, as a consumer electronics purchaser for a Google Blogger Content Publisher on Google Marketing Platform, as my enterprise establishment basis for iPigeon.institute, and my various other alternate concept blogs that I'd come up with, since I started out on Blogger, $17,000+ had come a long way for me, as well as that I'd significantly paid in to California state payroll taxes, and polished out my business establishment formalities, in becoming "official." 

I'd come to consider that the miniaturization of our devices, within the realm of multimedia and third party app offerings, is somewhat akin to being a development echelon, of sorts, in that we had put up our big tech corporate iconic establishments on a pedestal, whereas miniaturization of devices comes at a cost - on one hand, a device antenna is somewhat implicated, in a smartphone, or a tablet, (even in a computer, many times), as a chipset, with a coupling cable that connects it to the main board, whereas it's powered by the electronics current supply of voltage necessary to power it. On one hand, it works, largely. On the other hand, it's a tiny device, with scarcely a common notion of an actual "antenna" about it. 

In researching and purchasing through my current pro audio (miniature, yet third party devices) set up, I'd |re-|discovered some things, leaning towards an appreciation of "bigger is better," which I'd happened upon, in the facet aspect of having purchased some bluetooth and wired lavalier microphones, of varying quality, whereas the larger and more costly device features ostensibly larger onboard components, given the comparison product of our earphones' small, rectangular volume and command inline microphone attachment, which most of us can relate to, as a much-miniaturized set of a few hardware devices and features, of our signal chains, in audio and communications. Not that we're upset with the quality of things; it's just that pro audio aspirations seek higher and better status, in quality of the audio representative form. 

Take Apple's eGPU product offerings, on the Apple official online store, for example (since we're still largely locked out of freely browsing Apple retail stores, at leisure). In these products, Apple offers a comparatively large plug-in hardware device, which offloads the main device's graphics computational processes to a larger scale and form external device. On one hand, the GPU components of our laptop computers skirt upon comparable specifications, yet not so, just quite, in the lower-end devices. In pro multimedia gear, such as in high end microphones, the echelons of greater performance become a bell curve, of product capabilities in finery, at the higher end of cost, come a certain point in the cost of devices. That is, once a device peaks past the couple or several-hundred dollar range, the performance gains are slighter, yet these things are unattainable at the lower and mid-grade of consumer electronics. Nowadays, with competitive third party manufacturing in producing outboard gear for our mobile devices, it's a global competition, and price points are pushed ever lower, for establishing consumer empathy and affections for the product offerings being more towards the mid-upper $50-$100 range, some things could peak over $100, for specialty purposes, while keeping most people happy, whereas people place value in their devices in a distributed manner, for having many hardware outboard options, in that people like the visual complexity of having achieved some notion of mastery over their toolset, for that there are many tools implemented, at hand. Just as the pro audio studios of former years would have an impressive deck, and outboard gear, on racks, networked servers, storage, monitors, speakers, etc.  

With the onset and coming of the age of IoT devices, in popularity, development Systems on Chips (and Modules) [SoCs, SoMs] becoming more diversely available, given industry specifications and specializations, and hardware telephony, broadcast, and receipt becoming more within reach, and within tolerance of the consumer, given latency and bandwidth | throughput considerations in WiFi and Bluetooth | broadband signals, such as 5G, as well as that 3D printers are signaling a Golden Age for design, in manufacturing, there is a significant push for consumer devices to depend upon outboard gear, with consumer affections for expanding upon personal and professional interests becoming commonplace, and novel, for that many compelling and attractive developments and devices come from third party manufacturers. Economic circumstances call for bootstrap startup ecology in becoming the defining purpose of many people's professional aspirations, amidst a time of job offering uncertainty and lackluster performance, and professional options being scarce, for the common person. Even gig jobs are difficult to procure, whereas craigslist had once been (yet, on one hand, still is, a standard stalwart of local gig job and one-off economy); Reverb, though, as I'd discovered, is a new craigslist (music gear and tech section), of sorts, for musicians and music retailers, for example. It'll be interesting to discover what outlets and offerings become popular in the multimedia outboard and web | app offerings in the various areas of specialization in e-commerce and in the manufacture of devices in the IoT establishment, in coming months and years.

A Google Coral Dev Board, puttied on to the wall, and somewhat as an aesthetic and passive piece, since I'm not able to figure out the programming on it, just yet 

My miniature vacuum tube headphone amplifier, as my centerpiece to a miniaturized pro audio mobile live audio setup. It works wonders for the sounds, and for the music. 

A chaotic array of wires, and some devices of "Things." Wires are messy, yet they're the surest way to make something work, at the moment. I always make sure to keep milk on hand, to keep healthy. 

A peek at some of my creative, development and research process products, ingredients (packaging and inspiration), and my hardware investments. My workspace, of one side of the room.

California EDD (Employment Development Department) Suspended Claims Update: New Streamlined Claim Reopening Process Unveiled, for some Users.

Some claimants in California's Employment Development Department's Unemployment Insurance program are shown a new glimmer of hope in reopening their claim.

As an unemployment insurance claimant myself, whom was affected by the EDD Fraud taskforce suspension sweeps implemented just prior to the new year (2021), I can relate to the disappointment and distress that many other claimants in California faced, in the passing of the new year, from 2020, in to 2021. 

With the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Disaster of late winter 2019 and spring in 2020 having wrought widespread civic and economic consequences, many individuals eventually found greatly needed and much-appreciated solace from challenging conditions imposed upon us by the Coronavirus outbreak, subsequent civic decrees of social distancing, shutdowns, curfews, etc., in addition to yet more difficulties and challenges that we experienced, localized in several hotspots throughout the nation, as well as here, in Los Angeles, which saw particular challenges to an already-burdened public health department, social services, housing, law enforcement, and mental health services array of local government departments and organizations.

Following the coming of the new year, the notice of the suspension of many people's claims in Unemployment Insurance was delivered in our online UI inboxes, with Fraud and Identity Verification processes being necessarily verified, due to several flagging parameters of a user's account, such as multiple claims from within the same household address, questions about the legitimacy of certain claims, as well as the willingness of workers who had filed for unemployment to seek out employment, as they receive UI benefits being one of the determining factors in continuing benefits distribution to individuals; of the common procedure in how benefits are usually distributed. The COVID-19 crisis saw the EDD offer more lenient circumstances to unemployed beneficiaries, as far as seeking new work, as one of the circumstances that was stricken from the requirements, for the time being, for the sake of the difficulties imposed by the disaster. 

Apparently, some UI claimants will see a glimmer of hope, in reopening their cases. (I had particular difficulties in the former identity verification process that the EDD had deployed, as a solution for suspended claims, since I had recently lost my wallet and ID card, which was part of the process in reopening a suspended claim). This morning, I discovered a new message in UI Online, the Employment Development Department's Unemployment insurance online portal for certifying for claims, on a bi-weekly basis, as well as for managing communications, tax forms, payment information, and account history. 

The new, more streamlined process is less challenging (given my particular circumstances of having lost my ID card), and takes just a few minutes to complete. Some of the questions included in the claim reopening form ask about the claimant's most recent work history, information about their former employer, and any information about the claimant seeking job opportunities, job training, or education paths that would lead to employment, in the future. 

With claim reopening wait times having been projected as taking about a month, or more, I'm sure that the news of having our claims suspended was a quite challenging and disappointing occurrence to discover in our UI Online message inboxes. I'm not sure how widely implemented this new claim reopening process was distributed, amongst the user accounts who were included in the temporary claim suspension and ID verification process, but hopefully, this bump in the road, for some, will see things through to a timely and quicker resolution for their claim accounts. 

In lieu of receiving news of the claims being reopened, however, I would suggest that individuals still proceed with, and follow through on the identity verification process, through the provider website at ID.me. Individuals whose claims were suspended were given 10 days to verify their identity, or mail a letter requesting an extension for completing the identity verification process. 

Product Review - Elevation Terpenes - via Amazon.com

 I procured a hefty load of chemical raw source materials for cosmetics manufacturing, as well as some ionic minerals, which I’ll cover separately, in a recent Amazon shop-jaunt online. I had been gifted a $100 Amazon.com e-gift card from a recent schizophrenia phone interview, during which I was being stalked, as it was earlier on in the COVID-19 and civil unrest rallying (slight) era of DTLA. 

A full spectrum set of Terpenes from Elevation Terpenes.

Terpenes  are common, richly aromatic compounds derived from plants. They are also known as essential oils, in some cases, such as the oil from the peel of the Valencia orange, although essential oils and Terpenes are not mutually interchangeable notions of chemistry reductions, extractions, and distillations, throughout.