1) I passed the A+ Essentials exam! FINALLY!
2) I STILL need to finish the NaNoWriMo book I worked on in November. :(
3) In another week I'll be just another pirate looking back at 40.
4) I keep asking you Chinese spammers to buy my book, but NOOOOOOOO you cheapskates are just here for the free donuts! Shame on you!
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
I'm getting spammed by the Chinese?
Last two entries had comments on them trying to link to other locations on the 'Net. No comments at all, just the links. That never looks good, so I trashed them.
If you Chinese guys adding comments are really reading this, could you at least put in a sentence or two so I know I'm not getting spammed by 'bots? Better yet, can you guys go on Amazon.com and buy my book? Awesome sauce!
Update 11/24/18: All this week I've seen a serious uptick in traffic to this article. Oh, great, I did something to anger China again.
Dammit, you guys, will you AT LEAST leave a comment in English because I can't read Mandarin or Cantonese or Klingon! AND BUY MY BOOKS!
Update 3/30/19: And the Chinese are back. Traffic to this article is just... meaningless without an honest comment below. IN ENGLISH! You're dealing with a guy who flunked out of college-level German, OKAY?! /headdesk
If you Chinese guys adding comments are really reading this, could you at least put in a sentence or two so I know I'm not getting spammed by 'bots? Better yet, can you guys go on Amazon.com and buy my book? Awesome sauce!
Update 11/24/18: All this week I've seen a serious uptick in traffic to this article. Oh, great, I did something to anger China again.
Dammit, you guys, will you AT LEAST leave a comment in English because I can't read Mandarin or Cantonese or Klingon! AND BUY MY BOOKS!
Update 3/30/19: And the Chinese are back. Traffic to this article is just... meaningless without an honest comment below. IN ENGLISH! You're dealing with a guy who flunked out of college-level German, OKAY?! /headdesk
Update 12/13/22: What the absolute hell? I just got yesterday three more spam comments to moderate. At least this time the comments were in English, and were coming from what looks like Italian domain names.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Ten Books That Influenced Me the Most (Updated 2015)
(updated 12/23/2015, see below)
Picked this up on Sullivan, floating about the other blogs:
Hmm. Biggest problem for me as both an enthusiastic reader in my teen years and as a librarian for most of my adult life is trying to narrow this down to ten. I dare say a lot of them are over on my Library Thing page (linkage to the right of the screen, no your other right), but some aren't.
I think I'll list them in chronological order as best I can remember:
Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey - Around Second or Third Grade I was into the paranormal stuff: UFOs and Ghost stories. The non-fiction stuff. There were a few titles on the Dunedin Public Library (this was back when it was in an abandoned Publix storefront) and this book I kept reading over and over. It introduced me to the Bell Witch legend, for one thing. It made me wonder what had happened to Merriwether Lewis (whose ghost was supposedly scraping at a water bucket ever since his mysterious death).
Han Solo at Star's End - okay, so it's not the Dune or Foundation series, which I also read at the time (between Second and Fifth Grade). But I ain't gonna suck up to all seven people reading this blog and list 'classic' works and get all mopey and philosophical about the profound literary intents of Asimov and Herbert. You get the trashy stuff I like dammit! I grew up to Star Wars: these pulp paperbacks (such as Splinter of the Mind's Eye) were filling in the years between the films and I liked them. Star's End was fun and had some pretty mature stuff to it - deaths, betrayal, snarky commentary - compared to the other more juvenile titles available to me at the time.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The first truly absurdist literary work I came across (Catch-22 was five years later). The first time I realized that not only does God have a sense of humor but that God was sometimes laughing AT us instead of with us. What amazed me when I go back to re-read his works were the bits of misanthropy I had not realized back in my youth: the jaded despair Adams had for humanity and our inability to see the problems past our own noses. The mood shifts explained away via the series' most cynical character Ford Prefect, who knew madness when he saw it and knew the best response was to avoid it at all costs and go to parties instead. I think that's why most H2G2 fans have a hard time accepting the follow-up book So Long And Thanks For All The Fish: it's perhaps Adams' most optimistic book in the series, or at least ends on a happy note...
Batman: Dark Knight Returns - actually it was Issue 2 of the miniseries, but the collected book itself in the end belongs on the list. It was in Mr. Henderson's journalism classroom back in oh 1986, during a free period between getting school newspapers together, that I spotted a copy of that Issue 2 sitting on a table. Not knowing whose it was, I picked it up and read it, fascinated by the artwork and the kinetic detail (I put it back when done, btw). The more I read it (not just the images: the narration balloons, the dialogue, the words themselves) the more I got hooked. This was the issue with the fight between Batman and the Mutant Leader, with a girl Robin showing up, the Batmobile literally bursting onto the scene as a tank (!), and the intermixing background noise of the DC Universe's fictional media debating the merits of costumed vigilantism. I had until then a vague interest in comic books, mostly some beat-up issues me and my brothers bought in paperback dealers, but this was what drew me in. I sought out a direct comic store from there on right about the time DC went through it's Crisis on Infinite Earth stage. As they were re-booting at the time it was the perfect moment for me to jump in, and I immersed myself (much to my parents' dismay) with the comics culture for about 10 years. But by 1996 I started to drift away, the costs of keeping up getting too much and the DC publishers having a very hard time keeping track of their convoluted re-booting. I've stuck to the occasional graphic novel from then on.
Killer Angels - In hindsight, the novel about the Battle of Gettysburg gets a tad... preachy... but it introduced me to some of my personal heroes, especially Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine (seriously, that's how I call him). One of these days I gotta go visit Little Round Top.
Rosa Luxemburg - we're getting into my college years now, and it's between this and any handful of titles I read for a Literary Utopias class. Problem there is, I can't recall any of those Utopia titles impressing me too much: like Ferris, I came to realize that -isms are bad and those Utopias all have one flaw. That utopias are impractical in real-world application. Actually there's a second flaw with Utopias: the utopian idealist is so intent on creating a model society that any human trait (sins such as greed, envy, lust) that would conflict with that utopia would be ignored rather than resolved, dooming said utopia when that human trait rose up.
So I point you all to a biography of someone I had to read about for another college class, one dedicated to reviewing and comparing/contrasting biographies of famous Great Men of History. I had Churchill, FDR, and Rosa Luxemburg. Talk about your contrasts. The first two guys would agree to the Great Man theory of historical thought: Luxemburg being a hard-core communist (international communist, not the Leninist types that dominated the 20th Century) would have argued more for a People's History where the flow of history came from the masses desiring change (in truth, it's a combination of the two: people push for change, but it takes the right leadership to focus that power in the best possible direction). One of the things I did get from reading the biographies on Luxemburg was that the communist movement wasn't entirely focused on Lenin and his Soviet cronies: there were other commies who disagreed with Lenin's motives and ambitions. It helped to read up on communist and socialist theory that wasn't tainted by Leninism... and still see the flaws inherent in communist theory. Leninist party rule led to corruption; Marxism itself oversimplified economics and class systems, and failed to recognize future trends that would lead away from industry and capital superstructure: those factors would lead to its failure at the end of the 20th Century.
There were about three biographies I relied on for the research: I'm pretty sure one was by Frolich, another by Nettl. The third one might have been Ettinger. Most of what I got from reading on Luxemburg was sadness of a sincerely-led life gone to waste.
Sandman: Fables and Reflections - part of my comics reading focused on the... macabre literature that DC was publishing that would lead into their Vertigo brand: I had begun reading Swamp Thing just as Alan Moore was leaving it, and from Swamp Thing I picked up the spin-off work Hellblazer (aka the one with the trenchcoat badass Constantine). A third one began at about the same time: Sandman, which started off as yet another horror-themed series but by the second "volume" began shifting into more high fantasy plot lines. Where the replacement writers and artists for Swamp Thing and Hellblazer thought it was all about the shock value (and where the artwork for Swampie went into questionably bad pencil/inkwork), Sandman retained high production value especially as one writer - Neil Gaiman - was in charge of the narrative. No one else wrote a Sandman story. Over the years Gaiman stuck to various themes, guiding the story lines to what was recognized by fans as a fixed ending - the fall of the Dream Lord - and providing a satisfying conclusion to the series. Few other comic books - excuse me, graphic narratives - could claim to aspire to high-quality literature (the closest I could suggest would be the Love And Rockets / Palomar series by the Hernandez Brothers. Dave Sim tried with his Cerebus but it drove him mad).
This particular volume I'm promoting - Fables and Reflections - is a sort of short story collection: in-between the epic story lines Gaiman wrote - Doll's House, Season of Mists, Brief Lives, Kindly Ones - were one-off stories of various characters affected by their dreams and the decisions they made whilst dreaming. Fables and Reflections collected the ones printed before and after Brief Lives (Gaiman's meditation on mortality, loss, and responsibilities), and included stories of regular people (sort of) and famous historical figures (Augustus the first Roman Emperor, Harum al-Rashid the caliph of Baghdad at its height of legend, Robespierre of the Reign of Terror, Marco Polo the traveler and historian of Kublai Khan). Among the famous historical figures is Joshua Abraham Norton, a expatriate businessman in mid-19th Century San Francisco who loses his fortune... and through the manipulations of the Dream Lord Morpheus playing against his Endless siblings finds his calling as Norton I, Emperor of the United States. It was Gaiman's tale that introduced me to the Emperor Norton, and after additional readings on him over the years I've come to respect the man. You ought to read up on him too. Then call the city of Oakland and insist the Bay Bridge be named in Norton's honor. Oakland never did like the Emperor... :(
American Gods - Gaiman gets two entries here. Oddly enough I don't think he's the best writer I've ever read (that would be Ray Bradbury: pity his best stuff is short stories and they're spread all over the place): he is however the most enjoyable, and the one who has proven to best mess with the established tropes.
American Gods carried over a theme from Gaiman's Sandman work: that the Gods (the pagan ones) are real, defined not by their own existence but by the belief system and legends created by us humans. It turns out that the United States is swarming with gods brought over from the Old World, but because of how and who we worship anymore the pagan gods have to 'find work' in other professions: Egyptian gods working at a funeral parlor in Cairo, IL.; a nameless god of fortune presiding over a Vegas casino; the goddess that may have been the Queen of Sheba reduced to a call girl; a Germanic death god reduced to near-retirement at a slaughterhouse; and Odin left to playing con games across the nation. The biggest problem for these aging gods is that the belief system in effect allows for newer gods to be born: a computer geek god, Media as the goddess of television and its' hypnotic, consuming ways; foot soldiers comprised of every conspiracy theory the wingnuts believe in; and more. And the New gods are convinced they need to destroy the Old gods to claim America for themselves.
The beauty of American Gods is how Gaiman focuses on how legends are born, on how myths perpetuate and how people even need to Believe In Things (even the fantastic, even the cynical) in order to exist in the Real World. The plot itself is irrelevant: the fun is in the details and the clues. And like most Gaiman stories, the climax isn't the big battle or the great moral victory (which actually rarely happens in his works), the climax is... well, that would be telling too much. Just remember this: only the gods are real...
No Plot? No Problem! - Shameless plug for the NaNoWriMo.
Price of Loyalty - A book focusing on George W. Bush's first Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, this is a fascinating insider look from a noted business and political figure whose falling out with the Bush/Cheney/Rove crowd was big news. While O'Neill's early focus in the administration was on getting passage of Bush's prized tax cut package, the later chapters detailing the descent into war-frenzy after 9/11 are chilling. O'Neill's recognition that the push for an Iraq War required the government to pull back on the tax cuts led to in my mind the most insulting moment in political history: a disinterested, almost nonchalant VP Cheney telling O'Neill "Deficits don't matter." Trillions of dollars in debt later, Cheney still needs to see jail time for that kind of blase mismanagement and political short-sightedness.
There have been tens of other books published about the nightmare that was the Bush the Lesser administration - Dean's Worse Than Watergate, anything by Glenn Greenwald - but this one by Suskind is more accessible as it has a likable and believable protagonist in O'Neill, whose forays into the world of business (Alcoa executive) provides a surprising amount of humorous moments.
There you have it. Took me 3 days to pile this list together. Now, is anyone willing to add my book to their list of influential titles?! Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?!
UPDATE: I should have included this one, which I wrote about over on my political blog.
The Selling of the President - A book about the 1968 Presidential campaign, one of the first to use aggressive television advertising to market a candidate as though he were a new car. Follow the link back to my politics blog to read the full review of it, 'cause it's too lengthy to list here. Thank ye.
Picked this up on Sullivan, floating about the other blogs:
Tyler Cowen lists the books that have influenced him most and encourages other bloggers to do the same.
Hmm. Biggest problem for me as both an enthusiastic reader in my teen years and as a librarian for most of my adult life is trying to narrow this down to ten. I dare say a lot of them are over on my Library Thing page (linkage to the right of the screen, no your other right), but some aren't.
I think I'll list them in chronological order as best I can remember:
Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey - Around Second or Third Grade I was into the paranormal stuff: UFOs and Ghost stories. The non-fiction stuff. There were a few titles on the Dunedin Public Library (this was back when it was in an abandoned Publix storefront) and this book I kept reading over and over. It introduced me to the Bell Witch legend, for one thing. It made me wonder what had happened to Merriwether Lewis (whose ghost was supposedly scraping at a water bucket ever since his mysterious death).
Han Solo at Star's End - okay, so it's not the Dune or Foundation series, which I also read at the time (between Second and Fifth Grade). But I ain't gonna suck up to all seven people reading this blog and list 'classic' works and get all mopey and philosophical about the profound literary intents of Asimov and Herbert. You get the trashy stuff I like dammit! I grew up to Star Wars: these pulp paperbacks (such as Splinter of the Mind's Eye) were filling in the years between the films and I liked them. Star's End was fun and had some pretty mature stuff to it - deaths, betrayal, snarky commentary - compared to the other more juvenile titles available to me at the time.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The first truly absurdist literary work I came across (Catch-22 was five years later). The first time I realized that not only does God have a sense of humor but that God was sometimes laughing AT us instead of with us. What amazed me when I go back to re-read his works were the bits of misanthropy I had not realized back in my youth: the jaded despair Adams had for humanity and our inability to see the problems past our own noses. The mood shifts explained away via the series' most cynical character Ford Prefect, who knew madness when he saw it and knew the best response was to avoid it at all costs and go to parties instead. I think that's why most H2G2 fans have a hard time accepting the follow-up book So Long And Thanks For All The Fish: it's perhaps Adams' most optimistic book in the series, or at least ends on a happy note...
Batman: Dark Knight Returns - actually it was Issue 2 of the miniseries, but the collected book itself in the end belongs on the list. It was in Mr. Henderson's journalism classroom back in oh 1986, during a free period between getting school newspapers together, that I spotted a copy of that Issue 2 sitting on a table. Not knowing whose it was, I picked it up and read it, fascinated by the artwork and the kinetic detail (I put it back when done, btw). The more I read it (not just the images: the narration balloons, the dialogue, the words themselves) the more I got hooked. This was the issue with the fight between Batman and the Mutant Leader, with a girl Robin showing up, the Batmobile literally bursting onto the scene as a tank (!), and the intermixing background noise of the DC Universe's fictional media debating the merits of costumed vigilantism. I had until then a vague interest in comic books, mostly some beat-up issues me and my brothers bought in paperback dealers, but this was what drew me in. I sought out a direct comic store from there on right about the time DC went through it's Crisis on Infinite Earth stage. As they were re-booting at the time it was the perfect moment for me to jump in, and I immersed myself (much to my parents' dismay) with the comics culture for about 10 years. But by 1996 I started to drift away, the costs of keeping up getting too much and the DC publishers having a very hard time keeping track of their convoluted re-booting. I've stuck to the occasional graphic novel from then on.
Killer Angels - In hindsight, the novel about the Battle of Gettysburg gets a tad... preachy... but it introduced me to some of my personal heroes, especially Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine (seriously, that's how I call him). One of these days I gotta go visit Little Round Top.
Rosa Luxemburg - we're getting into my college years now, and it's between this and any handful of titles I read for a Literary Utopias class. Problem there is, I can't recall any of those Utopia titles impressing me too much: like Ferris, I came to realize that -isms are bad and those Utopias all have one flaw. That utopias are impractical in real-world application. Actually there's a second flaw with Utopias: the utopian idealist is so intent on creating a model society that any human trait (sins such as greed, envy, lust) that would conflict with that utopia would be ignored rather than resolved, dooming said utopia when that human trait rose up.
So I point you all to a biography of someone I had to read about for another college class, one dedicated to reviewing and comparing/contrasting biographies of famous Great Men of History. I had Churchill, FDR, and Rosa Luxemburg. Talk about your contrasts. The first two guys would agree to the Great Man theory of historical thought: Luxemburg being a hard-core communist (international communist, not the Leninist types that dominated the 20th Century) would have argued more for a People's History where the flow of history came from the masses desiring change (in truth, it's a combination of the two: people push for change, but it takes the right leadership to focus that power in the best possible direction). One of the things I did get from reading the biographies on Luxemburg was that the communist movement wasn't entirely focused on Lenin and his Soviet cronies: there were other commies who disagreed with Lenin's motives and ambitions. It helped to read up on communist and socialist theory that wasn't tainted by Leninism... and still see the flaws inherent in communist theory. Leninist party rule led to corruption; Marxism itself oversimplified economics and class systems, and failed to recognize future trends that would lead away from industry and capital superstructure: those factors would lead to its failure at the end of the 20th Century.
There were about three biographies I relied on for the research: I'm pretty sure one was by Frolich, another by Nettl. The third one might have been Ettinger. Most of what I got from reading on Luxemburg was sadness of a sincerely-led life gone to waste.
Sandman: Fables and Reflections - part of my comics reading focused on the... macabre literature that DC was publishing that would lead into their Vertigo brand: I had begun reading Swamp Thing just as Alan Moore was leaving it, and from Swamp Thing I picked up the spin-off work Hellblazer (aka the one with the trenchcoat badass Constantine). A third one began at about the same time: Sandman, which started off as yet another horror-themed series but by the second "volume" began shifting into more high fantasy plot lines. Where the replacement writers and artists for Swamp Thing and Hellblazer thought it was all about the shock value (and where the artwork for Swampie went into questionably bad pencil/inkwork), Sandman retained high production value especially as one writer - Neil Gaiman - was in charge of the narrative. No one else wrote a Sandman story. Over the years Gaiman stuck to various themes, guiding the story lines to what was recognized by fans as a fixed ending - the fall of the Dream Lord - and providing a satisfying conclusion to the series. Few other comic books - excuse me, graphic narratives - could claim to aspire to high-quality literature (the closest I could suggest would be the Love And Rockets / Palomar series by the Hernandez Brothers. Dave Sim tried with his Cerebus but it drove him mad).
This particular volume I'm promoting - Fables and Reflections - is a sort of short story collection: in-between the epic story lines Gaiman wrote - Doll's House, Season of Mists, Brief Lives, Kindly Ones - were one-off stories of various characters affected by their dreams and the decisions they made whilst dreaming. Fables and Reflections collected the ones printed before and after Brief Lives (Gaiman's meditation on mortality, loss, and responsibilities), and included stories of regular people (sort of) and famous historical figures (Augustus the first Roman Emperor, Harum al-Rashid the caliph of Baghdad at its height of legend, Robespierre of the Reign of Terror, Marco Polo the traveler and historian of Kublai Khan). Among the famous historical figures is Joshua Abraham Norton, a expatriate businessman in mid-19th Century San Francisco who loses his fortune... and through the manipulations of the Dream Lord Morpheus playing against his Endless siblings finds his calling as Norton I, Emperor of the United States. It was Gaiman's tale that introduced me to the Emperor Norton, and after additional readings on him over the years I've come to respect the man. You ought to read up on him too. Then call the city of Oakland and insist the Bay Bridge be named in Norton's honor. Oakland never did like the Emperor... :(
American Gods - Gaiman gets two entries here. Oddly enough I don't think he's the best writer I've ever read (that would be Ray Bradbury: pity his best stuff is short stories and they're spread all over the place): he is however the most enjoyable, and the one who has proven to best mess with the established tropes.
American Gods carried over a theme from Gaiman's Sandman work: that the Gods (the pagan ones) are real, defined not by their own existence but by the belief system and legends created by us humans. It turns out that the United States is swarming with gods brought over from the Old World, but because of how and who we worship anymore the pagan gods have to 'find work' in other professions: Egyptian gods working at a funeral parlor in Cairo, IL.; a nameless god of fortune presiding over a Vegas casino; the goddess that may have been the Queen of Sheba reduced to a call girl; a Germanic death god reduced to near-retirement at a slaughterhouse; and Odin left to playing con games across the nation. The biggest problem for these aging gods is that the belief system in effect allows for newer gods to be born: a computer geek god, Media as the goddess of television and its' hypnotic, consuming ways; foot soldiers comprised of every conspiracy theory the wingnuts believe in; and more. And the New gods are convinced they need to destroy the Old gods to claim America for themselves.
The beauty of American Gods is how Gaiman focuses on how legends are born, on how myths perpetuate and how people even need to Believe In Things (even the fantastic, even the cynical) in order to exist in the Real World. The plot itself is irrelevant: the fun is in the details and the clues. And like most Gaiman stories, the climax isn't the big battle or the great moral victory (which actually rarely happens in his works), the climax is... well, that would be telling too much. Just remember this: only the gods are real...
No Plot? No Problem! - Shameless plug for the NaNoWriMo.
Price of Loyalty - A book focusing on George W. Bush's first Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, this is a fascinating insider look from a noted business and political figure whose falling out with the Bush/Cheney/Rove crowd was big news. While O'Neill's early focus in the administration was on getting passage of Bush's prized tax cut package, the later chapters detailing the descent into war-frenzy after 9/11 are chilling. O'Neill's recognition that the push for an Iraq War required the government to pull back on the tax cuts led to in my mind the most insulting moment in political history: a disinterested, almost nonchalant VP Cheney telling O'Neill "Deficits don't matter." Trillions of dollars in debt later, Cheney still needs to see jail time for that kind of blase mismanagement and political short-sightedness.
There have been tens of other books published about the nightmare that was the Bush the Lesser administration - Dean's Worse Than Watergate, anything by Glenn Greenwald - but this one by Suskind is more accessible as it has a likable and believable protagonist in O'Neill, whose forays into the world of business (Alcoa executive) provides a surprising amount of humorous moments.
There you have it. Took me 3 days to pile this list together. Now, is anyone willing to add my book to their list of influential titles?! Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?!
UPDATE: I should have included this one, which I wrote about over on my political blog.
The Selling of the President - A book about the 1968 Presidential campaign, one of the first to use aggressive television advertising to market a candidate as though he were a new car. Follow the link back to my politics blog to read the full review of it, 'cause it's too lengthy to list here. Thank ye.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
I Survived South Florida
From my previous post, discussing my trip back to the Ft. Lauderdale/Miami metro and what I expected from the job interview:
As for the interview itself? Florida National College was hiring for Library Director. Supervisory, with two librarians, a library assistant, and a handful of clerks on staff, so it was a better staffing situation than the previous small college I interviewed last year.
The interview itself went... I have to admit I was rusty. Haven't interviewed in a year. There were questions from the panel about why I had a year-long gap on the resume: I noted I was taking classes for computer certification and was job hunting, noting the current difficulties of the job market. They asked about how I lost my last full-time job: I answered honestly (incompatibility) but it's never easy explaining why you lose a job. They seemed to be packing in a set of interviews that afternoon, so I do know there's competition for the spot (in this market there has to be. Officially it's six people per open job: from the rumors I'm getting it's more like twenty per open job!)
Well, we'll see how it goes.
Except for the traffic. I'm pretty damn sure South Florida traffic is still a frakking nightmare.Hmmm, yeah, that was pretty much right. I-595 heading in Thursday night, definitely nasty. The drive into Hialeah on I-75 went well, but driving back? Bumper-to-bumper from Miramar to Weston...
As for the interview itself? Florida National College was hiring for Library Director. Supervisory, with two librarians, a library assistant, and a handful of clerks on staff, so it was a better staffing situation than the previous small college I interviewed last year.
The interview itself went... I have to admit I was rusty. Haven't interviewed in a year. There were questions from the panel about why I had a year-long gap on the resume: I noted I was taking classes for computer certification and was job hunting, noting the current difficulties of the job market. They asked about how I lost my last full-time job: I answered honestly (incompatibility) but it's never easy explaining why you lose a job. They seemed to be packing in a set of interviews that afternoon, so I do know there's competition for the spot (in this market there has to be. Officially it's six people per open job: from the rumors I'm getting it's more like twenty per open job!)
Well, we'll see how it goes.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Going Back to South Florida
As in the Boca-Broward-Bimini Triangle... Palm Beach/Broward/Dade Metro of Doom. I'm going back for a job interview down there. Going back...
I moved there in 1994 to begin my first full-time job as a Librarian I at the North Regional / BCC Library. It was a brand new structure back then, fresh paint, new carpeting, new shelves, new everything. Lord, that was 16 years ago, and it was pretty beat up the last time I visited in... what was it, 2004?
What happened was... I had wanted to work in academia, you see. And the NR branch was part of a County Public Library system. While as a joint-use library it also served the community college students, in truth there wasn't much in the way of academic-level research offered. So even though I had a decent job there, I kept sending my resumes to colleges here and there, just looking, interviewing sometimes (why I didn't get that North Florida job, I'll never know, I thought I nailed that interview). So in some respects I never really wanted to stay there...
Part of it also was the fact I took a promotion up after about six years from Librarian I to II, which moved me to a supervisory role and into the Public Computer Labs... at other Regional branches. Worked at South Regional for about seven months in one of the most cramped staff offices I'd ever seen (it had been built before the widespread need for computers at every staff cubicle... it was also built with some of the shoddiest materials I'd ever seen, the roof LEAKED, this was a Library for God's sake), then transferring up to another brand new Regional library for about a year... then transferred from there to the Main branch as a regular Reference librarian again until 2003 when an opportunity opened up at my alma mater UF. Job history from there gets a little more complicated to where I'm sitting here unemployed in Pasco County wondering just what the hell I've done wrong job-hunting the last 14 months...
I last visited Broward County for a friend's retirement party. That was 2004, maybe 2005. Only stayed for that and not much more. It's been six (maybe five) years since I'd even been down there. I know South Regional built a new building roughly 4 years ago. I figure most of the people I knew working there probably moved on... It's been so long, and I never made an honest effort to keep in touch.
The job I'm interviewing for is a small private college in Dade. If I have some time, I might visit a few old haunts, see how the place has changed... sure it's been five (six) years since I'd been down there... but I know things change within a heartbeat.
Except for the traffic. I'm pretty damn sure South Florida traffic is still a frakking nightmare.
I moved there in 1994 to begin my first full-time job as a Librarian I at the North Regional / BCC Library. It was a brand new structure back then, fresh paint, new carpeting, new shelves, new everything. Lord, that was 16 years ago, and it was pretty beat up the last time I visited in... what was it, 2004?
What happened was... I had wanted to work in academia, you see. And the NR branch was part of a County Public Library system. While as a joint-use library it also served the community college students, in truth there wasn't much in the way of academic-level research offered. So even though I had a decent job there, I kept sending my resumes to colleges here and there, just looking, interviewing sometimes (why I didn't get that North Florida job, I'll never know, I thought I nailed that interview). So in some respects I never really wanted to stay there...
Part of it also was the fact I took a promotion up after about six years from Librarian I to II, which moved me to a supervisory role and into the Public Computer Labs... at other Regional branches. Worked at South Regional for about seven months in one of the most cramped staff offices I'd ever seen (it had been built before the widespread need for computers at every staff cubicle... it was also built with some of the shoddiest materials I'd ever seen, the roof LEAKED, this was a Library for God's sake), then transferring up to another brand new Regional library for about a year... then transferred from there to the Main branch as a regular Reference librarian again until 2003 when an opportunity opened up at my alma mater UF. Job history from there gets a little more complicated to where I'm sitting here unemployed in Pasco County wondering just what the hell I've done wrong job-hunting the last 14 months...
I last visited Broward County for a friend's retirement party. That was 2004, maybe 2005. Only stayed for that and not much more. It's been six (maybe five) years since I'd even been down there. I know South Regional built a new building roughly 4 years ago. I figure most of the people I knew working there probably moved on... It's been so long, and I never made an honest effort to keep in touch.
The job I'm interviewing for is a small private college in Dade. If I have some time, I might visit a few old haunts, see how the place has changed... sure it's been five (six) years since I'd been down there... but I know things change within a heartbeat.
Except for the traffic. I'm pretty damn sure South Florida traffic is still a frakking nightmare.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Geekin' Out On Trek
If I have any blog readers, you might know I'm a huge geek. Well, both in girth and in attitude, but still.
Grew up a huge fan of Star Trek, for one. Also was hard into video gaming, as I was a middle-schooler the years that console and arcade gaming exploded on the market. Atari Boy, y'all. Evolved from there into other scifi obsessions (X-Files, the Matrix) and other gaming habits (computer and Massive Multiplayer Online).
All of this is leading up, of course, to this previous week. When Star Trek Online finally came out (nice Websnark review here).
This had been a game in development for AGES. Other franchises of fantasy and scifi had come out with MMOs of their own - notably Star Wars Galaxies and Lord of the Rings Online - but Trek seemed to have serious issues.
A lot of it had to do with roleplay within the established universe, as it were. Most other games, you create a character and play it however you want, no problem. The powers and actions of that character based on Archetype, sure, but otherwise you can do whatever you want wherever you were (depending on zone hazards, of course). But Star Trek is, well, a little different. Star Trek is an ensemble effort: a character in Trek is part of a crew. A Trek character serves a function on a starship, be it a bridge officer, a security guard, an engineer, an Away Team scientist, a medic, what have you. In a true roleplay environment, your character would be performing ship duties alongside hundreds of other online players... bumping into each other, arguing over who gets to work the Botany lab (or worse, arguing over who gets to sit in the Big Chair), filling out paperwork... in other words, getting bored out of your mind as you would in the Real World. It also meant that when the ship you were on finally went into battle or a conflict of some kind, the success of the ship depended on hundreds of fellow online players, which meant shiploads of lag or problems with key players not being online when the action goes down. Meaning harsher gameplay that wouldn't really be any fun at all. Word is/was the original game designers were trying to create that kind of MMO experience... and were failing miserably.
Other companies passed this project around like a hot potato before it landed with Atari and Cryptic Studios. The people involved here (including a particular person I'm not a huge fan of from the CoH days) made a judgment call for playability over pure roleplay.
They created a situation in-game where everyone gets their own ship and becomes Captain of their own crew.
The Trek purists, for what I know, did howl at that. The gaming purists I'm willing to bet cheered their asses off.
It does simplify the game. No arguments over who gets to be a Captain as EVERYONE gets to be one. The argument now is more about A) what ship you really get and B) how quickly you can upgrade to the bigger (Enterprise) better (Enterprise-E) ships (ENTERPRISE!!!).
No arguments either on who plays what role as bridge bunnies, uh officers. Each Captain hires on or 'buys' other officers at key positions (Tactical, Science, Engineering) depending on the number of Assignment slates available (higher ranks achieved adds up to 5 spots). The bridge crew also works as your default Away Teams with you (basic Red Shirt security guys to fill the spots not yet unlocked in Assignment).
Multiplayer works like this in Trek: you fly your ship into star systems, to either patrol them, locate problems, fight off bad guys (Klingons! Who have allied themselves with the Gorn, the Cardassians, and a few other minor villain classes), and otherwise cause havoc before the Prime Directive comes in. You have fleet battles and beam-down away missions. And you automatically team with anyone else who enters your system working the same mission objective (if people come in half-way through a mission, the objectives scale to difficulty accordingly).
Ship and crew upgrades come with Inventory items to boost shields, weapons, engineering, science, and tactical advantages. You can sell Tribbles, if you dare. Leveling up in rank involves 'training' your talents in particular matters as well as training up your bridge NPC officers (you can install Inventory items like more powerful phaser rifles to your bridge crew as well).
I've been playing for the past week (between job hunting and all). One of the advantages of Cryptic being involved is that Trek Online gets the Character Creation system that Cryptic enjoys deploying: it's one of the most complex of all the MMOs out there, but also the best as it lets you choose uniforms, body shape, facial color and structure, EVERYTHING. Eric at Websnark is particularly thrilled he built a Tree officer (!).
For myself, I am now Captain (Lt. rank, actually, but working to actual Captain status) of the USS Esoteric (yes, Phil, I'm borrowing one of your favorite words, sue me!), flying about the Vulcan/Risa sectors handling a lot of zone hunting missions and doing my best not to attract attention from the GIANT SPACE WASPS OF ALTAIR NINE! eeeeeeeeeek. Anywho. The game is a bit of a blast... except I'd really love to get more weapon slots on my Cruiser. Only two in front (Phaser, Torpedo) and one in back (Phaser). I need more torpedo tubes!
Gameplay itself is a lot like the old Starfleet Command game: you fire attacks, you balance your shields, and you turn and circle about in space with your strongest shields facing your opponents at all times. Meaning a lot of evasive maneuvers and spinning about the game grid. Ground attack fights with Away Teams are a lot like regular MMO PvE: shoot at bad guys, get your teammates to heal you or buff your shields, and target the bad guys with special attacks for a one-shot kill. Oh, and the Away Team missions if you team with other players have the 5-character slots filled by your teammates and by whatever NPC the team leader chooses (haven't played that option yet, but should be interesting).
I haven't run into any PvP instances yet, although I'm pretty sure that aspect is in the game - probably the Neutral Zone between Federation and Klingon space...
And now... TO INFINITY... AND BEY... what you mean, wrong show? Sigh. Go geeks!
Grew up a huge fan of Star Trek, for one. Also was hard into video gaming, as I was a middle-schooler the years that console and arcade gaming exploded on the market. Atari Boy, y'all. Evolved from there into other scifi obsessions (X-Files, the Matrix) and other gaming habits (computer and Massive Multiplayer Online).
All of this is leading up, of course, to this previous week. When Star Trek Online finally came out (nice Websnark review here).
This had been a game in development for AGES. Other franchises of fantasy and scifi had come out with MMOs of their own - notably Star Wars Galaxies and Lord of the Rings Online - but Trek seemed to have serious issues.
A lot of it had to do with roleplay within the established universe, as it were. Most other games, you create a character and play it however you want, no problem. The powers and actions of that character based on Archetype, sure, but otherwise you can do whatever you want wherever you were (depending on zone hazards, of course). But Star Trek is, well, a little different. Star Trek is an ensemble effort: a character in Trek is part of a crew. A Trek character serves a function on a starship, be it a bridge officer, a security guard, an engineer, an Away Team scientist, a medic, what have you. In a true roleplay environment, your character would be performing ship duties alongside hundreds of other online players... bumping into each other, arguing over who gets to work the Botany lab (or worse, arguing over who gets to sit in the Big Chair), filling out paperwork... in other words, getting bored out of your mind as you would in the Real World. It also meant that when the ship you were on finally went into battle or a conflict of some kind, the success of the ship depended on hundreds of fellow online players, which meant shiploads of lag or problems with key players not being online when the action goes down. Meaning harsher gameplay that wouldn't really be any fun at all. Word is/was the original game designers were trying to create that kind of MMO experience... and were failing miserably.
Other companies passed this project around like a hot potato before it landed with Atari and Cryptic Studios. The people involved here (including a particular person I'm not a huge fan of from the CoH days) made a judgment call for playability over pure roleplay.
They created a situation in-game where everyone gets their own ship and becomes Captain of their own crew.
The Trek purists, for what I know, did howl at that. The gaming purists I'm willing to bet cheered their asses off.
It does simplify the game. No arguments over who gets to be a Captain as EVERYONE gets to be one. The argument now is more about A) what ship you really get and B) how quickly you can upgrade to the bigger (Enterprise) better (Enterprise-E) ships (ENTERPRISE!!!).
No arguments either on who plays what role as bridge bunnies, uh officers. Each Captain hires on or 'buys' other officers at key positions (Tactical, Science, Engineering) depending on the number of Assignment slates available (higher ranks achieved adds up to 5 spots). The bridge crew also works as your default Away Teams with you (basic Red Shirt security guys to fill the spots not yet unlocked in Assignment).
Ship and crew upgrades come with Inventory items to boost shields, weapons, engineering, science, and tactical advantages. You can sell Tribbles, if you dare. Leveling up in rank involves 'training' your talents in particular matters as well as training up your bridge NPC officers (you can install Inventory items like more powerful phaser rifles to your bridge crew as well).
I've been playing for the past week (between job hunting and all). One of the advantages of Cryptic being involved is that Trek Online gets the Character Creation system that Cryptic enjoys deploying: it's one of the most complex of all the MMOs out there, but also the best as it lets you choose uniforms, body shape, facial color and structure, EVERYTHING. Eric at Websnark is particularly thrilled he built a Tree officer (!).
Gameplay itself is a lot like the old Starfleet Command game: you fire attacks, you balance your shields, and you turn and circle about in space with your strongest shields facing your opponents at all times. Meaning a lot of evasive maneuvers and spinning about the game grid. Ground attack fights with Away Teams are a lot like regular MMO PvE: shoot at bad guys, get your teammates to heal you or buff your shields, and target the bad guys with special attacks for a one-shot kill. Oh, and the Away Team missions if you team with other players have the 5-character slots filled by your teammates and by whatever NPC the team leader chooses (haven't played that option yet, but should be interesting).
I haven't run into any PvP instances yet, although I'm pretty sure that aspect is in the game - probably the Neutral Zone between Federation and Klingon space...
And now... TO INFINITY... AND BEY... what you mean, wrong show? Sigh. Go geeks!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Job Hunting Update Jan. 2010
It's been one full year of joblessness. I'd been spending most of it studying up for the CompTIA A+ certification exams.
The CompTIA A+ 220-601 Certification for Essentials? Tried it twice, once in December and once this month. Missed both times by what looks to be one question (arrrrgggghhhhhh)
The CompTIA A+ 220-602 Certification for IT Technician? Tried it last week. Passed by what looks to be 1.5 questions! (wooooohoooooooooooooooo yeah baby yeah I RULE I RULE)
Problem is I still need the Essentials to be fully certified for computer tech support. And the problem there is the CompTIA exams are upgrading to cover more Vista (why?! Vista sucked!) and some Win7 (which should be more appropos). So I gotta keep studying and re-trying for the601 701 exam. Sigh.
Meanwhile, I can send out more resumes and try more job possibilities and... and... there's not much else to do with a state unemployment rate at 13 percent AND GROWING. I shoulda been a CEO...
The CompTIA A+ 220-601 Certification for Essentials? Tried it twice, once in December and once this month. Missed both times by what looks to be one question (arrrrgggghhhhhh)
The CompTIA A+ 220-602 Certification for IT Technician? Tried it last week. Passed by what looks to be 1.5 questions! (wooooohoooooooooooooooo yeah baby yeah I RULE I RULE)
Problem is I still need the Essentials to be fully certified for computer tech support. And the problem there is the CompTIA exams are upgrading to cover more Vista (why?! Vista sucked!) and some Win7 (which should be more appropos). So I gotta keep studying and re-trying for the
Meanwhile, I can send out more resumes and try more job possibilities and... and... there's not much else to do with a state unemployment rate at 13 percent AND GROWING. I shoulda been a CEO...
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