So okay, once again, out of work. I have the just out of work routine down pat. Box of shit brought back from the office that I won’t peek in for at least a month, check. One-third of a newsprint page comprising the Journal-News’ Sunday help-wanted, check. Create a new email address for all correspondence from prospects, check. Apply online for unemployment (who am I kidding I know they will just laugh at it), check. Update and print out a few copies of the resume, check. (Those are obsolete this time but it’s the routine.)
What always gets me in trouble during these breaks from the working world is looking for constructive things to do once I’ve made my daily visits to CareerBuilder and Monster and a few others of their ilk. Next week I add LinkedIn. I need structure to the day, like I have when I am actually working. I need to do something that takes some cognition but that is in the end with no merits outside of having filled my time. I know this is probably going to be a long hiatus what with the job supply-demand situation and my being old.
Yep 48 years old. Cheating death.
A year and a half ago I started Weight Watchers. I’m hovering around 207 pounds now, down 93, but I’ve hit a plateau. At the beginning of this year I added a gym membership to the clean living part of my Me For Me (Or I Die Painfully) program. So more trips to Planet Fitness, or more fitness walks at least. There’s a way to tone the body doing nothing but moderate walking, I discovered last year with the help of the web. I will explain at some point. No operators are standing by.
I never saw the appeal of the personal blog. Maybe because I’m at heart a shy person. I rationalize the antipathy by comparing bad blogging to Mein Kampf instead of Plutarch’s Lives. But here’s the thing: what I have done with my life up to this point has generally gone pretty wrong. So logically I should embrace my inner George Costanza and do the exact opposite. “Hi, my name is Eric, I'm unemployed and I live with my parent.“ Yeah, like that. Oh and I’m single, balding 48 bespectacled and my last job was bookkeeping.
I referenced Hitler, Plutarch, and George Costanza in the same paragraph up there. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention. This is going to be a dark ride.
Sidebar: Ground Tools
My work habits are Anal with capital A. I make a pile of all the raw data or other material I think the task might need. I could stack windows on a screen but usually I print the shit out. I gather up whatever tools I might need, like colored highlighter pens. I visualize what the output of the project at hand is supposed to be. I map at least 3 ways to get there in my head. I pick the one that seems easiest even if its most likely to give the wrong results. I shuffle the printed crap into the order I guess I will need to reference it.
Oh, time for lunch.
For this piece of burning goat entrails that is going to be my blog (my offering to you, get it?) I am getting my highlighters in order. I don’t know the first thing about blogging, or tweeting, or Foursquare dancing, so I’m going to make things up as I go along. I am a little computer-savvy (very dangerous) so I’m going to party like it’s 2008.
I hate Microsoft and its miserable software and I always have. My personal computer has always been Apple, starting with a //c. Right now it’s a 2008 era Mac Mini which I know most Mac-heads look down on like Seth Macfarlane looks down on Matt Groenig. It gets a lot of use and makes a halfway decent internet machine. It doesn’t know how to play Windows Media files and sucks playing most Java applets. A substandard graphics chip makes it useless for most animated gaming. The cute little box adapts to all kinds of crazy bizarre stuff I throw at it -- it would let me code in Unix if I cared to, I’ve run Ubuntu and Windows 7 Beta on the thing just because I wanted to get a taste of them. That’s why I got a computer in the first place, to explore inventions other people are constantly thinking up.
The explorer in me decided that for this blogging gig I am going to use tools I never have before, albeit 2008 technology thus obsolete. Unlike Twitter I realize from the start that there is no way to monetize this thing, so all the software has to be free. I’m composing in Google docs, which reminds me of version 0.5 of Microsoft Works except the software is on Google’s server not mine. The blog infrastructure is Blogger (you knew that) but did you know that’s part of Google too? I once dated a girl I could swear was actually an avatar being run by a Google engineer in Palo Alto...complete with a 3 second satellite lag. When I’m in the mood I will make it a point to use the Google Chrome Mac browser even though the thing is just outta beta and feels still unfinished to me; otherwise I suckle Apple’s teat by using Safari (a hot-rodded version but still Safari). From time to time I might try to make captures with an HTC Imagio phone - excremental Windows Mobile yeah, but it had a 5 MP camera on the back of it and a big bright screen.
What always gets me in trouble during these breaks from the working world is looking for constructive things to do once I’ve made my daily visits to CareerBuilder and Monster and a few others of their ilk. Next week I add LinkedIn. I need structure to the day, like I have when I am actually working. I need to do something that takes some cognition but that is in the end with no merits outside of having filled my time. I know this is probably going to be a long hiatus what with the job supply-demand situation and my being old.
Yep 48 years old. Cheating death.
A year and a half ago I started Weight Watchers. I’m hovering around 207 pounds now, down 93, but I’ve hit a plateau. At the beginning of this year I added a gym membership to the clean living part of my Me For Me (Or I Die Painfully) program. So more trips to Planet Fitness, or more fitness walks at least. There’s a way to tone the body doing nothing but moderate walking, I discovered last year with the help of the web. I will explain at some point. No operators are standing by.
I never saw the appeal of the personal blog. Maybe because I’m at heart a shy person. I rationalize the antipathy by comparing bad blogging to Mein Kampf instead of Plutarch’s Lives. But here’s the thing: what I have done with my life up to this point has generally gone pretty wrong. So logically I should embrace my inner George Costanza and do the exact opposite. “Hi, my name is Eric, I'm unemployed and I live with my parent.“ Yeah, like that. Oh and I’m single, balding 48 bespectacled and my last job was bookkeeping.
I referenced Hitler, Plutarch, and George Costanza in the same paragraph up there. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention. This is going to be a dark ride.
Sidebar: Ground Tools
My work habits are Anal with capital A. I make a pile of all the raw data or other material I think the task might need. I could stack windows on a screen but usually I print the shit out. I gather up whatever tools I might need, like colored highlighter pens. I visualize what the output of the project at hand is supposed to be. I map at least 3 ways to get there in my head. I pick the one that seems easiest even if its most likely to give the wrong results. I shuffle the printed crap into the order I guess I will need to reference it.
Oh, time for lunch.
For this piece of burning goat entrails that is going to be my blog (my offering to you, get it?) I am getting my highlighters in order. I don’t know the first thing about blogging, or tweeting, or Foursquare dancing, so I’m going to make things up as I go along. I am a little computer-savvy (very dangerous) so I’m going to party like it’s 2008.
I hate Microsoft and its miserable software and I always have. My personal computer has always been Apple, starting with a //c. Right now it’s a 2008 era Mac Mini which I know most Mac-heads look down on like Seth Macfarlane looks down on Matt Groenig. It gets a lot of use and makes a halfway decent internet machine. It doesn’t know how to play Windows Media files and sucks playing most Java applets. A substandard graphics chip makes it useless for most animated gaming. The cute little box adapts to all kinds of crazy bizarre stuff I throw at it -- it would let me code in Unix if I cared to, I’ve run Ubuntu and Windows 7 Beta on the thing just because I wanted to get a taste of them. That’s why I got a computer in the first place, to explore inventions other people are constantly thinking up.
The explorer in me decided that for this blogging gig I am going to use tools I never have before, albeit 2008 technology thus obsolete. Unlike Twitter I realize from the start that there is no way to monetize this thing, so all the software has to be free. I’m composing in Google docs, which reminds me of version 0.5 of Microsoft Works except the software is on Google’s server not mine. The blog infrastructure is Blogger (you knew that) but did you know that’s part of Google too? I once dated a girl I could swear was actually an avatar being run by a Google engineer in Palo Alto...complete with a 3 second satellite lag. When I’m in the mood I will make it a point to use the Google Chrome Mac browser even though the thing is just outta beta and feels still unfinished to me; otherwise I suckle Apple’s teat by using Safari (a hot-rodded version but still Safari). From time to time I might try to make captures with an HTC Imagio phone - excremental Windows Mobile yeah, but it had a 5 MP camera on the back of it and a big bright screen.
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