Bruce Toback asks:

> Well, _somebody_ has to be the straight man.
>
>  Wirt Atmar slips in a requirement to --
>
>  >get some gasoline for the company lawnmower.
>
>  Wirt, why do you have a company lawn mower?

Because we have a company lawn.

Kidding aside, AICS Research has always worked out of houses (but doing
that's been more or less traditional for small research & development firms.
IBM worked out of rented houses in San Jose in the early 1960s; indeed,
that's where they invented the moving head disc).

A house is intrinsically more comfortable than an office building. If you
have no walk-in customers and have no need of putting up a store-front
facade, buying a house on a 10-year mortgage is not only a far better
investment than paying office rent, it's much quieter, more pleasant to work
in, and allows people to work longer hours, at their leisure. We currently
work out of two adjacent 70-year-old houses in the Alameda Historical
District in Las Cruces, NM (and we are preparing to move into a third, and
possibly a fourth adjacent house this summer). There are no cubicles in this
arrangement. Everyone gets their own room -- and because the houses are 70
years old, they are extremely well constructed.

But you do have to mow the lawn(s).

Wirt Atmar