Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/04/hunting-for-work/
It is so hard to motivate myself to do anything. I have no faith in anything. Fortunately, the money situation is getting extremely terrible, and this helps push me forward.
I made up a resume for waiting tables. Today I trekked over to San Francisco to apply at a few places, and when I got to the first place I realized I’d left the printed resumes at home. Dang! I filled out a lengthy resume at a Chinese Noodle Shop that is opening in two weeks. I have no great hope for that position. Next I parked in front of a copy shop and printed a few copies of the resume which I was able to download from the Internet. Nearby, on Geary, was a Jewish Deli that had apparently survived from at least the 1950s, filled with old folks. The woman at the cash register kindly handed me a half-sheet of paper to fill out, and stapled my resume to it. A young man and a young woman were also filling out applications. The Chinese place was absolutely bustling with activity, much of it various laborers applying for work.
Back at the ranch, I went on Craigslist. I found one half-time desktop support position, which would pay enough to support my materially modest lifestyle requirements and leave me with time enough to pursue my own interests. I explained this much on my cover-letter, along with the usual spiel about my love of customer service. Then, a handful of barista positions, and two more restaurants to visit tomorrow, THIS time with resumes.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/02/oakland/
Well, I live in Oakland now. My first night at Michael’s was Thursday, when I drove across the bay to meet up with him after he got off work. It is a pretty nice place up in the hills above Oakland, not far from Berkeley. I get to house-sit until April rolls around, when Duncan comes back from Europe with Michael, to follow in my footsteps in living at Michael’s and looking for restaurant work.
Hopefully, I’ll find a job really soon. Or, maybe at least I’ll actually receive some mail and be able to complete my appeal for unemployment compensation. Until then … the whole idea of buying gas tends to irk me. Up winding twisty road with no sidewalks, driving is the supreme choice of transportation at the new place. Though it turns out that during the day it ought to be safe enough for me to descend on foot and catch a bus. Sounds to me like good exercise.
Friday I drove back to Mountain View to get almost the last of my stuff, and have lunch with some Tellme colleagues. We passed up the free In-N-Out and had burritos at Los Charros. Angel keeps telling me I should write for the free bi-weekly Wave Magazine, to which I always respond that I have yet to think of a good article to pitch them.
Today I dropped in on a vegetarian restaurant that is taking applications because they’re closing for six weeks to remodel. That’s not great news for me, but that will be a great lead for Duncan, who wants to work in a vegetarian restaurant, when he gets here in April. I’m going to see if I can sweet talk my way in to serving pizza at Zachary’s, which is the source of Chicago-style deep-dish pizza in the Bay Area. Not only did I grow up on this food, but I even worked at the Bay Area’s other Chicago-themed Pizza Place.
After the vegetarian place, I dropped in at The Crucible‘s open house / re-opening party. I got to see neon glass working, blacksmithing, TIG welding, and oxy-acetylene torch welding demonstrations. Had I money and an assurance that I’d still be in Oakland for a few months, I’d have quite possibly signed up for a course. The classes look to start ’round 10 April though, so I still have time.
To top it all off, The Crucible also supplied me with free bananas, apples, popcorn, and … barbecue!!! Dang! Free ribs? Yah!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/26/insane-zipper-pants/
I and some other friends I met once before, though none of us remember each other, helped Linn move today. I got to back the 25′ truck up to the parking garage, THAT was fun. It all went pretty well, and though we were pressed for time and kept hitting little snags like missing padlocks, and Linn was too cheap to get us a dolly, things went pretty smooth and we met the deadlines to drop her stuff off in public storage.
She paid for dinner. My tummy is filled with pollo parmagiana, and I had a glass of wine. The one waitress looked really really nice. But what I really dug was this skinny young FoB gal who came in with her boyfriend, wearing the most insane pair of pants. You know how girls used to have zippers down by the ankles to help them get the tight pants on? That always struck me as inexplicably wonderful, probably because the fashion came out at just the right week in my puberty. Anyway, this gal had zippers up the back of each leg that went clear up to her the bottom of her butt pockets.
Now, I have no idea how practical that is, or why she really chose it, but her jeans struck me as insanely witty. Just plain too extreme! Wonderful! And it was all the nicer that while she was a skinny immigrant-lookin’ type, she still had a little chubby booty so at least the zippers were leading the eye to something worthwhile.
The glass of wine, which, as it was the house wine, cost a mere $4, made me miss France, where a good evening could be had hanging out at the hostel with a $2 bottle of wine. On the way home I dropped by Safeway and grabbed some bread, some hummus and pita bread, and a $3 bottle of “private reserve” from San Jose. The wine comes with a twist-off cap, and looks like peach apple juice, and tastes like a port with tequila in it. Fantastically ill! I dig it!
Pita and hummus and an abominable bottle of wine, a good night cap consistent with that girl’s insane zipper pants, and the struggle to move Linn’s stuff, in which we came together and triumphed!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/25/the-art-of-the-deal/
So, I was reading the paper, and a comic made me chuckle. “Let’s share this with my friends,” I decided, and hopped on the Internet to find the electronic version. Alas, out of fear that the ability to read comics on the Internet would destroy their business model, the syndicator has rigged it up so that you can only view comics between two weeks and four weeks in age.
So, anyway, if you read this two weeks from now, you’ll be able to find the comic that made me giggle here.
Otherwise, I’ll tell you that the Devil is standing in the bookstore reviewing a copy of _Chicken Soup for the Soul_, and he confesses to an employee that, “It’s not exactly what I was expecting. I thought it was about the art of the deal.”
Business books are big here in the Silicon Valley. Maybe a few of us can contribute to web syndication. Speaking of which, I have an RSS feed up.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/25/moving-along/
I got an e-mail from Linn the other day. She was layed off a month ago. She bought me a bowl of pho for lunch. Bless her! Well, fair enough, I suppose, as I’d already offered to help her move on Tuesday. She’s ditching her apartment to live at a friend’s place for a while. Fair enough.
The other day, Brian asked about my “exit strategy” – not that he wanted to throw me out or anything, but he felt uncomfortable not paying the landlady extra rent if I stayed for long. I told him my plan of moving from place to place, a month at a time, so as not to wear out my welcome. I figured I should be out by March.
March is a week away.
Michael had offered me his guest bedroom in Oakland. I contacted him about that, and it turns out that he’s taking March off to travel, and could use a house sitter. What’s more, he’s meeting Duncan, who put me up in London, and then Duncan will be coming back to stay in the guest room in April. So, there’s a very clean month in a room with a pre-determined exit strategy.
I can, if need be, go on a couple more months in this vein, but as the weather gets warm, if things remain desperate, a midwestern spring may call to me.
Speaking of desperate, I’ve taken to calling the EDD to discover the status of my appeal. Ordinarily I’d be content to wait for the mail, but the mail has been notably flakey lately. I’ve tried twice today, but both times the system told me that there were too many folks on hold and I had to call back later.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/25/culture-yes-technology-no/
I had an interview this morning. It was for a Perl development job, which is different, but related to, my usual work as a Systems Administrator. The coders sit together in an open space, their desks built of doors, in Tellme fashion. That and the right combination of Dilbert strips taped on a cubicle support column gave me a good feel. I was introduced to a pair of easy-going would-be colleagues, who told me about their somewhat unconventional development methodology, and prepared to give me a technical challenge and a whiteboard to solve it on.
I was a little nervous, to be sure, and I usually write code sitting at a terminal, with access to reference doumentation. I conjured a passable, though not impressive, solution to the problem. The “elegant” answer was indeed quite pretty. They asked what I knew of database programming, and I had to admit that, while I once got really freaky with Bugzilla, I’m hardly an expert on database programming.
I know the hiring manager from school, which is a plus. He came back and said that the guys liked me, and ordinarily, at this point, this is where he said he’d say he’d give me a call; Unfortunately, I just didn’t have the technical prowess that they wanted. He asked how I felt about doing QA, which was the only other position he saw coming along. I offered that I didn’t know much about QA, I’d be most concerned with whether I was qualified to do that work.
I appreciated his straightforward refusal.
Back in the car, I started arguing with myself over the verdict, but my rationalizations could not overcome the simple fact that in this economy, they are better off holding out for someone who is not only a good culture fit, but is also better up-to-speed on the work that needs to be done. It is not enough that we both know that I could do the work, the fact stands that someone else out there can do it better, and she also needs a job.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/23/coffee-kills/
Meanwhile, this article from Reuters reports that:
Pregnant women who drink eight or more cups of coffee a day may triple their risk for having a stillborn child, scientists in Denmark announced Friday.
Holy crap! That’s a lot of coffee!! I tend to down a large coffee every day or so myself, and that seems like an awful lot, but eight cups!? That must take powerful, pregnant-woman cravings that are beyond my understanding.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/20/new-space-moose-strip/
http://www.spacemoose.com/strips/decades.gif
I think he's an omnisexual predatorial nightmare beast
which is why he rules
As you see, the above URL is definately not work-safe.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/20/21st-century/
Among the things that’s been frustrating me lately, is that, not only am I broke, but I don’t know exactly how broke. When I got back, two bank statements were missing. Quicken can’t handle the simple concept of reconciling things out of order. Actually, Quicken is very Microsofty, even more than Windows, in that if you don’t do it the way they have set for you, you’ll be forever haunted by it. I still have a huge batch of statements from “1902” that I tried to “import” from my last finance manager, that show up every time I load Quicken, because there’s no way to get rid of them, short of clicking on each in turn and clicking several times to confirm that I want it gone.
Bastards.
Anyway, I went to WaMu.com to look up my old statements online. Nope, they only show the last and the current statement. Why? Because if you want to see anything older, they already have a racket where you pay $4 for them to mail one to you. I ordered the two missing statements online.
A few days ago my latest statement arrived, which Quicken can’t reconcile, because I’m missing two of the earlier statements. This statement has charges for the two statements I ordered, even though I never received those. Today I called Washington Mutual to ask what’s up? They said they sent those to my California address, and I should harass the Post Office.
Ah, yes, the Post Office. When I moved back to Mountain View I got all 21st Century and went to their web site to set mail to forward to Mountain View. It costs $1 to do it on the web, though I figured this is better and faster that going down to the Post Office to wait in line, except after you fill it out, it then tells you that it will take a week to process. Say what? It is as if the “web enabled” feature takes the information you fill out, gives it to someone with a typewriter, who fills out the form, and mails it in to the Post Office, which hands it to someone who takes that data and feeds it into a computer.
So, mom says that she received a letter telling her that mail was forwarding. I’m not sure why she received this in Chicago, because they’ve only ever mailed such notices to my new address. A few days later, I received another in Mountain View, and I figured everything was right. Well, except, only about half of the mail that has been addressed to Mountain View actually shows up here. The other half seems to disappear into the void.
I’d been trying to work this out with the Post Office. I wrote them on their web site, they said I had to call the Post Office in Chicago. I asked them what telephone number should I dial, and they said that I could find out on the web site. I called Chicago, and the woman seemed very shocked at my problem, put me on hold, and then told me that I had to call before 9AM to speak with a letter carrier. The only correct answer to any problem is that someone else knows the correct answer to the problem.
I wrote another complaint on a different part of the Post Office web site, explaining how crappy this service was. They said that my problem had been referred to the local office, and someone would get back to me about this. That was five days ago.
Today I called the Mountain View Post Office, to find out what’s up. “Oh, you have to cancel the old forwarding,” meaning, the forward order I’d put in to shunt my mail to Chicago before I left on my trip. She said I could fill out the form at the Post Office.
So, I went down to the Post Office and stood in line to cancel the forwarding so that my mail could forward to Mountain View, and not come up missing every other day. When I got up to the lady, she had to go to the next counter over to find the form, which was a “request to forward mail” that had space to cancel an old forwarding request, and set up a new one. This seemed extremely straightforward, and hopefully my mail will start to turn up.
Maybe … I suspect the problems still aren’t over. Meanwhile, I need my bank statements, and I also need my phone bill from T-Mobile so I can send in for my rebates on my Danger Sidekick before the rebates expire. I called T-Mobile, who were very slick about it, informing me that the bill had been sent out, for such and such amount, to Chicago, which they had somehow magically determined to be my address even though they had sent my Sidekick to Mountain View. Okay, could you send me a fresh copy of the bill to Mountain View? No problem! After all, they make money only after I receive their bill, not by charging me to see my account history, like Washington Mutual’s “no-fee” checking account.
One piece of mail I did sucessfully receive was from Progressive explaining to me that they’d pulled my driving record, and discovered that the at-fault comprehensive claim I made in September, 2001, was due to an unsafe turn, therefor my premium for the year was up by $281, due immediately. I called Progressive, to make sure that they had the exact right explanation of the incident, to make sure that I wasn’t being charged for my own confusion from trying to guess which box on the web was correct when I signed up for the policy. Nope, everything is correct. Okay, I don’t have $281 right now, can I switch to periodic billing for this one-year coverage? No … but since you’ve already paid the bulk of the premium, they won’t actually threaten to cancel anything until I run out of pre-paid premium … so, I could get away with ignoring their warning letters for a while. They might get pissy and charge me a $5 late fee, which would be consistent with the slightly-higher cost of going in installments anyway. Gee whiz, okay.
What I mean to express in all this rambling, of course, is to never ever ever do your business through the USPS web site because not only is it slower that going down to the Post Office and standing in line for twenty minutes in the 18th Century way, but they also wont fill the form out properly to get your mail forwarded along to the correct address. After this, the only mail you receive will be mail you never really had to receive in the first place, and all the really important mail that you paid $4 apiece for will disappear into the void.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/18/indian-numerals-and-latin-numbers/
In case you didn’t know, our system of “Arabic Numerals” actually comes from India. We call them Arabic numerals because we got them from the Arabs, who got them from the Indians.
In modern Arabia, they frequently employ the Latin alphabet, which they call “Western Numbers”, for counting purposes. I suppose that this is akin to us learning “Roman Numerals” except that instead of learning a thoroughly worthless counting system, they just learn how to write the numbers that are understood by everyone else in the world.
In Japan they use four different alphabets. Three of these are phonetic, and one of these is based on Latin, which is damned handy for me. They also have an ideographic alphabet that is based on Chinese characters, though the meanings and the way the characters are written have mostly changed from Chinese.
In English, we have only one alphabet, but we have two different ways of writing, and each letter has two cases. While we teach ourselves that our language is phonetic, many words are not pronounced as they are written, because not only did the language once undergo a “vowel shift” which changed everyone’s pronciation, but we’ve also adapted many words from other languages, many of which use the same alphabet with even more varied phonetic rules.
On top of that, Americans once started an effort to clean up the language to make it more consistent, which means another set of different ways to spell the same words.
The French have a “Language Academy” to regulate the French Language. Mostly, they come up with complicated, inconvenient ways to express concepts in French instead of English. I wonder if it might not do a service to the world to establish an English “Language Academy” which is charged with proposing simplified rules which makes our language more consistent, and therefor more useful.
i lik to lern new inglesh, espeshuli wen it is izear to spell.
Of course, we all pronounce words differently anyway, so phonetic English systems look pretty craptastic, because not only do they change existing English spellings, but they depend on a standardized dialect.
Hooray for Hollywood. Since North American English is fairly standard, and highly desired among those adopting English as an International Language, I suppose a “Phonetic English” spelling system could be adopted, for writing purposes, assuming it was sufficiently standardized such that unique words could be translated back and forth electronically. In this way it could actually evolve from an awkward, makeshift pidgin language, into a useable creole.
Except it’s nearly 3AM, and I need a paying job.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/17/kamikaze/
Our position consisted of a network of trenches and bunkers dug out of the muddy earth. It reminded me of all the old World War I footage I’d seen. Now I was right smack in the middle of no-man’s-land. One of the guys called my name, snapping me out of the trancelike state I’d lapsed into. “Come here, Abu, the others want to meet you,” he said. After three cold days on the front, the last thing the other shift had expected was an American volunteer, and they were all staring at me with a kind of amused expression. Following the warm greetings and the usual questions about where I was from and why I’d come there, I asked a question of my own.
“So,” I said as casually as I could in Russian, “what is the purpose of this position–just out of curiosity, do you know?”
Everyone, and I mean everyone, looked at me at the same time, paused for a moment, then in unison yelled enthusiatically, “Kamikaze!” When they saw the surprise on my face they all started to laugh.
“Just look over there, Abu,” one of them said. “Those Russians are going to come over that hill and down through that valley any time now. We only hope to slow them down long enough to give the other groups enough time to get here and avenge our deaths!”
“My Jihad”
Aukai Collins
One of the fun things about travelling, I found, is the different expectations and assumptions that people seem to have in different parts of the world. Collins is a Scottish-American Muslim convert, retelling his experience fighting to defend Chechen Muslims against the Russians. In the passage above, he has returned to Chechnya to fight a second time, and has been diverted to Grozny and has at this point joined a group of 23 men who hold the line at northwest Grozny from the 5,000 Russians waiting to advance. Even for a combat veteran who has lost a leg in battle, there are still intimidating experiences to be had.
I haven’t finished the book, but the fact that he managed to write it seems to imply that he survived this ordeal.
I’m also a fan of little details like an American Muslim with an Arabic nickname, thinking of European trench warfare, phrasing a question in Russian to his Chechen comrades, and receiving an enthusiatic answer in Japanese. Even in central Asia, it is still a pretty small world.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/15/virtual-work/
Actually, I do have a job, it is just that the guy ran out of money and can’t pay me yet, but as soon as things go into production, he’d be happy to hire me on full-time, no-questions-asked.
I don’t expect anything, but I have nothing to lose, and the work provides a nice distraction from unemployment.
All the same, it was kind of neat to hear the pitch, and visit a data center thyis afternoon. I felt so happy about the weirdly comfortable situation, that I treated myself to a night out at Los Charros, in downtown Mountain View, followed by a cup of coffee and some live jazz at the cafe.
My stomach shrank along with my waste during my travels. I feel like less of the gigantic, all-consumming American I used to be.
Oh, and Amazon.com is now giving T-Mobile Sidekicks away. Can’t argue with the price.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/15/checking-account-balance/
$424.94.
And even though they charged me $8 to view my missing bank statements, I still haven’t received them. So, get a job, and bitch at the bank, are both on my todo list.
The threat that I could simply pull the rest of my money out of the account would not be an idle one. Heh. Though I’m otherwise quite pleased with Washington Mutual.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/12/truckin/
A half dozen more resumes submitted through Yahoo! Careers. This “jobs portal” is significantly less sucktastic than Monster and Dice. That doesn’t mean it is very good, but I find it at least slightly useful.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/12/workin-it/
Filed an appeal with the EDD today.
Submitted applications at two restaurants. The first had a handful of other people also working on their applications. Not an encouraging sign.
Yesterday I got my hair cut. First, I had to walk over to the bank to get some precious money. On Castro Street I counted five hybrid cars, with a RAV4 EV in front of the barber shop off Castro Street. I figured that was a positive economic indicator.
I got my stuff back from Oakland yesterday. Erik fed me pasta, I left him cookies.
Also submitted a resume for a consulting and support position at a company that provides back-end software to restaurants.
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