Interviewsssss......UgggghhhhH!!!!!!

Yesterday I finished my sixth interview in three weeks. I have another one tomorrow. Things have been progressing more quickly in the job search now, which is good. But the waiting is horrible. I've been trying to find work for almost six months now. Plenty of places want me for contracting work; I am a computer programmer. I guess they figure that if they don't like me, its easier to just not renew a contract. But getting a full-time permanent job with someone is murder!

Just got to keep plugging away.

Making a school video with my son

My son and I worked last night to make a video report on the Dust Bowl. We figured out where to sit and when to zoom in and out, when to cut away to a different place, and when to try again when we really messed up a scene.

The best part though, was the commercial. He needed 4 to 5 minutes for his report, but he could include a commercial in it somewhere. So he put on my old Indiana Jones hat and my Charlie Chaplin mustache (I was CC for Halloween a long time ago), and he, very animatedly, like a car salesman really, read the following:

“Do you have too much money? Have you been looking for something useless to spend your vast wealth on? Are you wanting to impress your friends? Well, we have a bridge we’d like to sell you.

“Ring’s Pre-Owned Bridges specializes in catering to the tastes of the rich who don’t mind becoming a little less rich by buying a really huge bridge so that we can become a little more rich.

“If you’re looking for a bridge that goes across a river, we’ve got them. If you’re looking for a fancy old English bridge, we’ve got them. If you’re looking for a bridge that hasn’t been built yet, we’ve got them. Or we will. Really!

“Right now, we’ve got this fantastic little number (show picture of Golden Gate bridge), hardly ever been used, sitting out in a quiet little bay in California. The locals call it the Golden Gate bridge. New, this baby went for 75 million dollars, but here at Ring’s Pre-Owned Bridges, we’re gonna sell it to you for less than 40 million. That’s almost half off, folks! We must be crazy!

“Want a bridge you can charge an outrageous toll to cross? Buy our famous Brooklyn bridge in New York, where for a quick eighty million dollars, you can make a whole bunch of New Yorkers miserable.

“So come on out to Ring’s Pre-Owned Bridges, bring a truckload of money, and we’ll fix you up with your very own, multi-million dollar bridge. Really! We’re not lying! Not at all!”


He was absolutely hilarious doing it. We then went back to the Dust Bowl reporting and finished with four and a half minutes. I spent the next three hours trying to get it from the camcorder onto a DVD, and an easy thing that wasn't!

I was the writer, co-director, cinematographer, and DVD engineer.

But he was the star.

Bush needs to get Outsourced so he'd really understand what it feels like

I read on CNN's web site today where Bush said that losing jobs to other countries was good for us. But I've never heard a convincing argument why.

I lost my job to India. I even trained them how to do it. When I do get another job, if I do, it will almost definitely be for less money. So the difference is a gain for India, or at least its a gain for my former company. Its a loss for me and my family.

The most frequent argument I've heard for outsourcing is that, with the additional profits companies make, they will be able to hire more people. But that didn't happen with my company. Oh sure, the CEO got more money and the execs all got raises too, but our department, our whole building, just kept on laying off more and more and more people. In fact the company as a whole shrank and apparently continues to shrink to this day. Fewer people are expected to do more and more work, unless their job gets outsourced, in which case the outsourced company can put more people on the job because they pay them one-tenth what we're paid.

And there is the main fallacy to the outsourcing argument. We Americans are told that we're just not being competitive enough to win out over the foreign employees. But think about this:

If a foreign employee is paid one-tenth what I am paid, then the foreign companies could set five people to do what I did, still collectively paying them half what I was paid. I would have to do the work of five people just to match their effort, and I would still be paid twice what those five got. No, what would instead happen is that my company could pay the five people to do my job, lay me off, and use half my salary to buy the CEO's grandkids nice gold-encrusted bicycles. How nice.

There is no human way possible for an American to compete with foreign workers until either their cost of living rises, causing their salaries to rise, or our cost of living drops, meaning we all become poor. Only then would we accept salaries that low. Because there was no other choice.

So Bush intends for all of us in the middle-class to be poor.

Or should I say, all the corporate CEOs, who do Bush's thinking for him, intend for us to be poor.


What a great thing it is to be an American worker now.

Daily Dread of Death on the roads

Why don't people use their turn signals?

Why don't people at least slow down for stop signs?

Why do people whip back and forth from one lane to the other in heavy traffic?

Why do people drive 55 in a 30 mph neighborhood where there are lots of kids?

Why do people drive 10 in a 30 mph neighborhood where there are NO kids?


Why are there so many idiots willing to risk death just so they can gain an inch on the idiot in the lane next to them?


Just wondered if someone out there might know.