My Old Blog

Actually work isn’t really hard, it is just long (no sexual reference intended). As explained more scientifically here, it is difficult to write nice long, well thought-out posts when I don’t have time to think anymore.

All my useless opinons, which are very important to me, are harder to formulate when I don’t have the time to dwell on them. On the other hand, time to think isn’t always a good thing.

What all this has to do with my website is that I have noticed the frequency of my posts have increased, while the quality of writing has deteriorated. The entries have gotten shorter too.

And I always thought I was such a good writer?? Maybe its just that I had more time to put into it.

Additionally, as outlined here, thinking is something done by the idle. Labor is concerned with bread and water, not its cosmic significance. I have yet to decide whether or not a J-O-B is a good thing or not in the philosophical sense, but I am sure of one thing:

It makes you a hell of a lot more boring.

Perhaps that is because you must be interesting to be useful if you are not working. If you are jobless and interesting, you’re an idealistic dreamer trying to beat the system. If you are jobless and boring you’re just a loser.

If you are working you don’t have to care whether or not you are boring…you’re still getting your shit done.

Still, I hope to have the leisure to consider a few twisted, useless and unrealistic thoughts every once in a while. Otherwise I may just have to go rob a bank or something….

I couldn’t resist. The company where I am working has a huge client database with names and contact information for each client.

Microsoft is one of the clients and it lists Bill Gate’s phone number (425 882-8080). I didn’t figure it was a direct line, but the temptation was too great so I called it today.

Unfortunately it was just a general number. A secretary answered.

I wish it had been his voice mailbox or something. I wanted to ask if he had an extra billion dollars lying around.

Right now I am in training for 8 hours a day.

Classes in college lasted, at the most, an hour and a half. I couldn’t stay awake even then. 8 hours is an eternity.

We’re learning something about a database and using a bunch of acronyms that I’d rather not remember.

It isn’t exactly unbearable though. Coffee, Cokes, and food are free. I’ve had two cups of coffee and a Coke, so far this morning….at least I’m awake, if a bit jumpy.

Ok….now its hours later: 6pm. I’m freaking tired and need some food. I think I’m gonna go home and watch a movie or something. Good thing I only live 10 minutes from work. Otherwise I’d have to fight the mindbending Altanta rush hour traffic.

I just got back from Altlanta. I have a new job and a new apartment and I’m tired from the drive.

I’ll tell you some amusing bits about my first two days of work tomorrow.

Tuesday I’m going to Clemson to speak with the head of the Economics department.

I’d been trying to arrange a meeting with anyone who’d agree since December. On January 29 I wrote an email to Robert Tollison, who I was told is the most senior and respected economist on staff. Here is his reply: “I am sorry but I am terribly overcommitted at the moment. If you could wait until June, I would be happy to meet with you.

June?? He doesn’t have an opening on his calender until June? If I am ever that busy please shoot me. In his defense, at least he didn’t say no. In fact, I am planning to write him back at the end of May to set up a time…..just for kicks.

I can’t figure out why it takes so long to do things. Maybe one day I’ll get it. I remember reading advice about how long to wait to follow up with a recruiter or potential employer. Most sources suggest a week or 2. Most of the time it is a month or more before I hear back from them. Sometimes they call and it has been so long since I originally applied I don’t even remember who they are or what the job is. I just end up sounding like an idiot.

I told Bobby McCormick I was researching an article called “FAQ about the Economy”. He agreed to meet with me. My next post will have to be called “FAQ about the Economy” so that, technically, I will be researching such an article and not make myself a liar.

I really don’t know what I expect him to say. I’ve been collecting these questions for a long time, and many of them I’ve answered myself. Still, it should be interesting.

Its been a while since I’ve made a post.

I haven’t been doing much, nor I suppose have I been thinking much.

I look for jobs that I’m not qualified for, drink lots of coffee, play basketball, drink heavily on occasion, and see my girlfriend. Oh yeah, and I sit in front of this computer alot too.

I’m reading three books right now.

“Topgrading” is a business book about the challenge of recruiting and keeping talented employees. Its ok, sort of strikes me as a long advertisement for the author’s consulting services.

“Inside a US Embassy” is a behind the scenes look at life in the Foreign Service. I’m taking the Foreign Service exam in April and thought that before spending 3 mosquito-infested years as the ambassador to Upper Volta I’d do a little research on the job.

“A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is about the Siberian work camps under Stalin. It paints a pretty grim picture. I don’t understand why the book is so famous. It is fair at best.

I just finished “The Progress Paradox”. It is the best non-fiction book I’ve read in recent memory. I loved it. It outlines the rise of the American economy against the fall of American well-being. It is extremely interesting, both psychologically and economically.

Other than that, nothing. I would like to make a trip to visit some friends, but I don’t have the money. If I had a job, I’d have the money, but not the time. Oh well.

I think I’ll go to bed.

I responsed to Josh’s comment about my post on January 9 here.

Some time this weekend I’ll write about the conversation I had with William Greider today.

It has come to my attention that I have not been updating my website very much at all during the last few weeks.

Part of that is because of the holidays and the rest of it is due to the fact that I started seeing a girl I met at a networking function. It seems I am better at getting a date than at getting a job. Most of the time that before was spent at my computer in the evenings is now spent with her.

I am not implying that I now don’t have time…after all I am unemployed. I have actually amassed an amazing and frightening amount of data about all my favorite subjects. I feel like a walking database of labor, tax, health and wage statistics. I joked the other day with my sister that if I decided to go back to get a PhD in economics I would already have most of the research for my thesis done before the first day of class.

And it isn’t that I’ve suddenly decided that my readers should no longer be burdened by my obsession. It is just that I am now gathering new material faster than I can organize the old material to be published….which in turn makes it even harder to organize. So I promise to continue to post yummy tidbits about how much our economy is supposedly doing for us.

Do I have any New Year’s Resolutions? Sure. I resolve in the next year to continue to clarify what I believe and either do something about it or move to some place that shares my views. I resolve not to sell myself into wage slavery and to never work a job that does not in some way express who I am as a person. I resolve to put my family and friends above all else. I do not resolve to lose any weight, nor eat healthier, nor quit drinking, nor pursue any other silly promises that won’t last the week.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!!

I spent the holidays with family mostly. The presents both given and received were great. The food was abundant and delicious. I am thankful that everyone has remained relatively healthy another year…even my 17 year old dog. And finally, I am happy for the time together and also happy that it only comes once a year.

Overall life during the holidays has been slow and enjoyable, if a little boring…much like life not during the holidays. I got some nice stuff for Christmas even though I didn’t ask for anything. I have everything I need and more materially.

I just really have nothing to say right now. I think I’ll go watch Saturday Night Live.

I read the Ten Pillars of Wisdom years ago. It is from that book that I take one of my favorite quotes:

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

I once visited Wadi Rum and Aqaba while living in Israel in 1997…or maybe it was 98. I went to Jordan to see Petra, which was in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Wadi Rum was far more impressive although it was semi-accidental that I went.

Lawrence of Arabia is a very long movie, split into two parts by an official intermission. I saw the first half years ago in Wadi Musa at the Petra Hostel, where I am sure they still show it nightly.

The second half I watched for the first time tonight. It is one of the most amazing stories I could ever conceive: that a man could lead an entire race of people, to which he didn’t belong, through sheer strength of will for no other reason than to feed an ego that he feared and a belief in himself that threatened always to swallow him up. And yet you knew his love of Arabia was real at the same time.

It is a similar story to that of Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness, yet not so allegorical. The story of T. E. Lawrence is true. Crazy.