Hi, I'm Thad. I build websites.
This blog's been up in one form or another since 1999. In that time I've written about topics ranging from comic books to video games to copyright law to creators' rights to Frank Zappa.
I also write eBooks and narrate audiobooks. Here's where you can find them:
It's interesting -- Zappa talks about Mozart the man (or, more accurately, Mozart the boy) and doesn't say much about him as a composer -- obviously everybody else has that one covered.
The plight of fetishizing dead creators to the detriment of live ones is something I've often thought about -- remember the story a year or two back where people in Tucson freaked the fuck out because the local paper was going to pull Peanuts?
I reapplied for unemployment on Friday afternoon, right after completing my last day of work.
On Sunday I logged in to see if I was in the system yet and if they'd let me start filing claims. Sure enough, I logged in successfully and it let me fill out information for the week -- even though it was last week, when I was still working. (Before I go any farther, let me make it perfectly clear that I reported all my income for last week and will not be receiving any money from unemployment for a week I was still working. All I did was go through the motions to make sure everything was working for next week.)
Everything worked much the same as a year and a half ago when I last did this, except that I was already in the system after two days (rather than having to wait a week like last time) and -- and here's the part this post is really about -- they've added a section where you have to log the contacts you've made over the past week in your job search.
Now, that in and of itself isn't a bad thing. I've been keeping every contact in a spreadsheet anyway. And I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask my to copy-paste that information into a text field and submit it every week -- hell, if I do get audited, that's going to save on paperwork.
The problem is that, thanks to a new federal requirement which I assume was a condition of the latest extension of unemployment benefits, they now require that you contact people at least four days in each week. To prove you're seriously looking for work.
This is one of those things that sounds like a good idea to government bureaucrats but is just fucking stupid out here in real life.
Yes, by all means there should be a standard for determining that someone is seriously looking for work and not just cashing unemployment checks and sitting around playing Xbox (provided he hasn't pawned it yet because he's unemployed). And "looking for work four days a week" is a pretty modest standard for that.
But when you actually make it a requirement? A quota? Now you're giving people a bare minimum. And when you give people a bare minimum, you're going to find that a whole lot of people only meet that bare minimum. Think "pieces of flair" in Office Space.
This sends the message that a person who looks for one job Monday, one job Tuesday, one job Wednesday, and one job Thursday is more serious in his job search than a person who looks for ten jobs Monday, ten jobs Tuesday, and ten jobs Wednesday but then spends Thursday and Friday doing other Responsible Adult Things like paying bills, going to the doctor, applying for warranty repair on his laptop, getting his tires rotated, and studying up for certifications that might help him in his job search.
Obviously this is designed to encourage people to Seriously Look for Work instead of just collecting unemployment while doing nothing. That's a laudable goal. But in practice, people who are out just to collect unemployment while doing nothing aren't going to expend any more effort than before this regulation passed -- in fact, they might actually expend less now that they know they only have to apply for four jobs a week.
Meanwhile, it's an inconvenience for people who are seriously looking for work, because now they actually have to game their way through and make sure they don't just apply for multiple jobs, they do it across four days.
I got a call from the agency this morning, and they scheduled an interview for Friday. Boom -- that's two different days; I was halfway done with my required job search for the week by 10:30 Monday morning.
If I was the kind of guy who was only interested in doing the bare minimum to collect unemployment, instead of actually getting a job, I would call it a day and then look for two more jobs later in the week.
But of course I'm not. I'm going to spit-shine the ol' resume, update my profile on a few different job sites, and go hunting for other positions that are available.
But I'll make sure I don't actually click the "Submit" button on any of them until tomorrow. And then save some for Wednesday, too.
I sure hope CareerBuilder's fixed that damn memory leak in its JavaScript since the last time I had to do this. Because I'd very much like to be able to leave a few of its pages up in a browser window without worrying about my entire system locking up.
Took me weeks, and multiple browsers, to figure out what was happening last year.
So the current tally stands at:
I'll get back to you on Astra in about a week.
The irritating thing (currently mentally irritating, and soon to be skin irritating) is knowing that I still have all those mostly-full containers of Shark, Gillette, and Feather razors, and I'm not the sort of guy to let them go to waste over a few nicks. But when I run out of this sampler pack, I'm going to have to find a nice cheap box of razors I like. I think Bic is my current favorite and it sure shouldn't be hard to find.
This time I mean "cover" as in "cover tune". Disco Boy as performed by a group called Boetlek, 2002.
That's "cover" as in "album cover", not "cover tune". This is a feature on the cover of Over-Nite Sensation, with Dave McMacken, the artist who painted it.
(And so we're clear: even though it's just two dudes discussing an album cover -- still NSFW here.)
I told the story of when my dad bought his first three Zappa CD's and let me have two of them. He never did get much into CD's as a format, and this is part of why -- he showed me this album cover and said "Look at this tiny little thing. When you buy it on vinyl, it's this big; used to be when you bought an album, you got art."
Zappa Plays Zappa. According to uploader tsaromero2008, the recording is from a show in Chicago, 2008.
I do not expect that I will wind up working in a gas station.
Good Riddance by Green Day, as performed by Glen Campbell
You know, that was a pretty good job.
I wrote about it last year, and my final analysis remains much the same -- they treated me right. They trusted me, they didn't micromanage, they paid me fairly, and in return I kicked ass and helped them roll out Windows 7 to over a thousand users. Job well done.
And the trouble with that is that there's no need for me anymore (at least, as far as the bean counters are concerned -- as far as the guy who's got to do all the imaging and packing himself now is concerned I will be sorely missed). But so it goes -- my dad's in construction; he's spent his life doing work where he knew one day the job would be done and he'd be on to the next thing.
So I'm on to the next thing, whatever it may be -- signed up for unemployment; hope I don't have to accept it. I've got an interview tentatively lined up for next week -- a place that's closer, pays better, and is direct-hire.
And that's the good news, really -- I feel like I'm moving onward and upward. I feel like there's progress and each job's a step up from the last (with an exception or two, I suppose, but this wasn't one of them). The agency keeps submitting me for jobs, and all of them are a step up from where they've placed me in the past. I think part of that's that the economy's improving and there's more work available for a guy with my qualabilities, and part of it is that I've paid my dues and they know they can trust me wherever they put me.
I was driving home today, thinking to myself hey, that's the last time I'll have to take this 25-mile drive, and feeling pretty good about it. And on the radio? Well, not Good Riddance, but something else topical -- Hello, Goodbye.
SLC, 1980. Soundboard recording, posted by YourArf.
The other flick I caught last weekend was Argo. I hadn't seen the last two movies Affleck directed, but I hear they're good, and I enjoyed this one.
Nitpicky stuff out of the way first: I thought he piled too much on at the climax. I sincerely doubt that -- minor spoiler -- the real-life Houseguests had guards speeding after them with machine guns on the tarmac.
I was also a little disappointed that they filed the serial numbers off the fictitious Argo film. In the movie, it's just a generic sci-fi B-movie -- but in real life it was a failed adaptation of Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, with production designs by Jack Kirby. I can see why these details were changed, and they're not essential to the story of a CIA exfiltration operation masquerading as a film crew, but I love that background and have been fascinated by it since I first read about it in a 2007 Wired article. Indeed, there's currently a Kickstarter going to make a documentary about the aborted Lord of Light movie.
But those quibbles aside, Argo succeeds on its own merits. It's well-acted and suspenseful, and brings attention to a largely-unknown sequence of events that happened as part of the better-known Iranian Hostage Crisis. And it's a truly crazy story -- the kind that would be unbelievable as the premise for a fictional spy movie. Truth, as they say...
And even if it's disappointing that the likes of Kirby and Zelazny don't get their due in the movie, legendary makeup artist John Chambers (played by John Goodman) sure gets plenty of props.
All in all, Argo is recommended. I caught it at a matinee; it's not going to lose much if you wait to see it at the cheap theater or on Netflix or what-have-you. In the meantime, check out that Wired story; it's fantastic.
According to uploader barun432,t he song was recorded in '66 or '67, and was played on a radio show in '68.