Running up the bidding prices of certain items on eBay will never not be fun

In other news: why are you still reading this here? Why are you not on FB?

Laid-off again on tuesday, went to helpful employment symposium yesterday(and will go to monday's as well), going to work on Access class and stuff learnt at symposium today.

Also: eat bagel sammiches and diet coke. If you fail to plan for these things, you plan to fail. Or something.

you may find this relevant to your interests:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cats_with_fraudulent_diplomas

Like weird/semi-obscure British TV? Blackadder, Jeeves & Wooster, Little Britain, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, etc?

Want to come hang out downtown with like-minded interesting folks in a environment conducive to drinking lots and laughing at deadpan puns?

Then get ready for this! I'm going to be holding another night of Jeremy's Clevely Titled British TeeVee Night at the Low Brow next Tuesday, Nov 3rd. We're starting at 6pm and going until 10 or whenever everybody leaves.

We'll be showing a mix of British stuff: Jeeves & Wooster, Blackadder, Doctor Who, and a few other interesting bits.

A brief sample:



The Low Brow is at NW 10th & Hoyt, just up 10th Avenue from Powell's books. Right by the Streetcar and the #77 and #17 bus lines.

Portland Zombiewalk 2009 photos (assuming this works)

Still working for electrical contractor, not very happy, having been assigned a full 40 hour week only a handful of times since getting employed. And some of those are gigs out in Astoria, Longview, etc.

I just got this forwarded to me:

HEALTH CARE RALLY

Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 10 AM

Terry Schrunk Plaza

SW 3rd & SW Madison, Downtown Portland

...I have a job again, as a low-voltage apprentice.

Rest in peace.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/26/obit.ted.kennedy/index.html

Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy dead at 77

(CNN) -- Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the patriarch of the first family of Democratic politics, died Wednesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, after a lengthy battle with brain cancer. He was 77.

[...]

Obama named Kennedy as one of 16 recipients of the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. A White House statement explained that the 2009 honorees "were chosen for their work as agents of change."

"Senator Kennedy has dedicated his career to fighting for equal opportunity, fairness and justice for all Americans. He has worked tirelessly to ensure that every American has access to quality and affordable health care, and has succeeded in doing so for countless children, seniors, and Americans with disabilities. He has called health care reform the "cause of his life..."

From the Daily Mail:

Six months after Matt Smith was unveiled as the new Time Lord, the actor finally began filming scenes for his Doctor Who debut this week.

The 26-year-old actor and the doctor's assistant Karen Gillan, 21, were spotted on location in Cardiff filming their first scenes together.

A sneak peek of the new show, which won't be broadcast on BBC until 2010, gives fans a chance to see the Doctor's new costume....

Massive amounts of fuzz, no bass, and Ray Manzarek on organ. Really.

Okay, job interview skills guy today tells me I need to spend up to 70% networking.

Problem is, I don't really know how to do this for professional reasons. How does I find a job thru setting up a social network, in terms of finding people who know people, etc.

Is there a way i can set up some sorta rss feed to get my FB updates posted on here?

Ya know what? It's suddenly occurred that since I've been unemployed, I've been living a helluva lot more. Meeting more cool people, having housemates and a dog around here now, biking a shit load more, losing weight again, taking improv classes, reading comix again, and I have plenty of maters in the ground, growing away for this year's crop. Even my talky pshrink said I seemed far more balanced.

Also, here's me with Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies:

From the Onion:

Oh, No! It's Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run!

By Matthew Barnes
May 28, 2009 | Issue 45•22

I…I think it's finally over. Our reactionary emotional response seems to have stopped it dead in its tracks. If I'm right, all we have to do now is smugly reiterate our half-formed thesis and—oh, no! For the love of God, no! It's thoughtfully mulling things over!

Run! Run! It's making reasonable, fact-based arguments!

Quickly! Hide behind self-righteousness! The ad hominem rejoinders—ready the ad hominem rejoinders! Watch out! Dodge the issue at hand! Question its character and keep moving haphazardly from one flawed point to the next!

All together now! Put every bit of secondhand conjecture into it you've got!

Goddamn it, nothing's working! It's trapped us in our own unsubstantiated claims! We need to switch fundamentally unsound tactics. Hurry, throw up the straw man! Look, I think it's going for it. C'mon…c'mon…yes, it's going for it! Now hit it with the thing that one guy told us once while it's distracted by our ludicrous rationalizations....

Army dudes over in the Sandbox are forming empathic ties with their service droids:

..."One of the psychologically interesting things is that these systems aren't designed to promote intimacy, and yet we're seeing these bonds being built with them," said Peter Singer, a leading defense analyst at the Brookings Institution and author of "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century" (Penguin Press HC, 2009).

Singer highlights many accounts of human soldiers feeling strong affection for their robots - especially on the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams where Packbots and Talon robots undertake the risk of disabling improvised explosives planted by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One EOD soldier brought in a robot for repairs with tears in his eyes and asked the repair shop if it could put "Scooby-Doo" back together. Despite being assured that he would get a new robot, the soldier remained inconsolable. He only wanted Scooby-Doo...

The place written about in the last entry had work for me for about 1.5 weeks, and that was that. Am now back hunting.

In other news:



Also, Jeremy Clarkson reviews the new Honda Insight:

Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.

So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.

So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more...

Okay, so the guy called me back and finally has enough work for me to come in and help out on a trial basis. I'm going into the office in the next two hours to fill out paperwork.

This is good.

Oddly enough, I feel kinda weird now. I've spend 2 months out of work and only the past month not worrying about the finance part. Now that somebody is going to bring me in to try to me out for a week or two, it feels like I'm losing something.

Of course, the thing I'm losing is the aimless and directionless sitting around and/or drinking during the day, which is just stupid after two weeks. My lack of motivation will conquer all!

Part of it is that since I can easily overthink things, I'm really indecisive about stuff like job choices as I can see the different benefits in each one. Also, more crucially, I can't stand missing out on things or disappointment, so I can go down one path and instantly question my own judgement as to whether the other was better. I fear & despise disappointment and regret so much that it can paralyze, which is why you'll never see me running for public office unless I'm good & drunk.

It's this insecure, self-questioning, & hilariously non-confident thing that I have, where I've internalized so much criticism(thanks, high school teachers Mom & Dad) that I doubt my choices on many things. Except for stuff like getting my engineering degrees or moving to Portland. No doubts or regrets about that at all.

But anyway, work: it's good. I base the overwhelming majority of my self-worth and self-esteem on accomplishment and pleasing others, and so I'm lost when I can't fix something or solve some other problem that somebody has. At least now I'll get to paid to muck about with gear again, which is what I'm best at.

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! Stop by your local comic shop for free stuff!

in other news: