Blog Master G

Alexandra Trustman explains in The Brown Daily Herald that CNN producers put her up to the Mac or PC question in last week’s Rock the Vote debate: “I’m writing in response to the Daily Jolt forums, the student dialogue and The Herald representation of me and my question at CNN’s Rock the Vote. I’m extremely disappointed in the student body’s reaction, especially because they weren’t privy to the circumstances under which I had to ask the question, a situation that occurs daily in the media. To clear things up, I was called the morning of the event and asked by the executive producer of the show if I would ask a question at the forum.”

(Thanks, Crissy, for the heads up.)

Seen today in an SF Vassar Club email:

“If all the girls at Vassar were laid end to end,
I wouldn’t be surprised.”

– Dorothy Parker

Last night marked the official start of our packing up for our cross-country move. It was exciting and helped to make it all seem a bit more real. We started by boxing up all our books, which we plan to ship to my in-laws’ house since we’ve been informed by two separate moving companies that that’s a good way to save on the moving expense. The US Postal Service’s media mail rate is cheaper than the per-pound rate we’d pay the movers for the same service.

We also cleared off and listed on craigslist the first piece of furniture we’ll be selling, our blue corner shelf.

Just under six weeks and counting until departure…

I must be from the future. This is certainly news to me. I just logged onto the Web site of the credit union where I hold one of my accounts and was greeted with the following message:

“You last visited us on Monday August 26, 2019”

That’s the text I see, yet when I simply copy and paste, here’s how it shows up:

“You last visited us on document.write(showDate(‘2003/11/11 21:09:37’,””,” at “))Monday August 26, 2019”

I guess the credit union doesn’t like Safari very much.

Anyhow, back to how I’m from 2019. I’m now reminded of Flight of the Navigator and Terry Wallis, about whom I’ve previously written.

Not working certainly has a way of keeping one busy. I’ve found that getting out of the house and doing stuff really helps me focus and feel motivated, rather than sitting around, aimlessly surfing the Web or watching movies to pass the time.

Today I’ve accomplished quite a bit:

• Took the dogs to romp around at Ocean Beach on this beautiful, sunshiny day
• Updated the Word version of my resume (recently cleaned up and chopped down to two from four pages, thanks to pointers I learned in last week’s career workshop)
• Went to Kinko’s to finish updating my resume, print it and a cover letter, and fax to a potential employer in New York
• Reluctantly turned down contract work since the company that called wants local people (bad because turning down work — especially work that sounds interesting — is hard; good because it makes me feel like companies like what they see)
• Stopped by Yancy’s to inquire about having our going away party there and negotiate drink specials (success!)
• Visited my local Internet cafe (iwired cafe)…oh wait, I’m still here; this is my first time leveraging my Airport card outside the house; did I mention that wireless Internet access rules?

Yesterday I cold called a company in Saratoga Springs whose Web site Jen found. I talked to the CEO, but didn’t realize until after I got off the phone that he was the CEO. As I learned in my career workshop, the following are the top three most effective ways of getting a job (how employers hire):

1. Networking
2. Cold calls and drop ins
3. Web or newspaper postings

Contrast this to how we tend to spend our time looking for jobs:

1. Web or newspaper postings
2. Cold calls and drop ins
3. Networking

Later this week I have a call with another company in Saratoga Springs, which happens to be my best prospect and one I found through, you guessed it, networking.

As I’ve written several times in the past, I feel strongly about fighting Big Tobacco. I’ve lost two family members in the past two years to cancers caused by smoking. The Voices Against Tobacco site is one of the many ways you can make your voice heard. Tobacco affects us all; it kills nearly half a million people every year.

You can read my story, which I submitted a few months back, on this page of the Voices Against Tobacco site.

Please add your story, too. Let’s put people behind the numbers, and maybe one day the companies that create these addictive products will put human beings before profits.

(Thanks to Matt with MR&R for the recent reminder to write about VAT.)

Saturday was an East Bay triple header. No, the A’s aren’t playing in November. Jen and I had three parties to attend around the East Bay, one of which was my awesome great aunt Nora’s 85th birthday party. We met up with my Dad there and got to see an uncle, an aunt, a cousin, and lots of extended family. It was great seeing Nora sing and dance. She’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever known, and I’d be fortunate if I’m half as lovable, caring, and humorous as her — at 85 and counting.

After that exhausting day, I woke up Sunday and headed to Sacramento with Ben and Enoch to hit the Sac Snow Show and hang out with James. I bought four tickets at the door (two for me and two for E) ’cause you can’t beat $12 tickets that are a $57 value each to use midweek at either Northstar or Sierra (where, I learned Saturday, my cousin will be starting on ski patrol this year). And since I’m not working, my trips to Tahoe will not be limited only to weekends this season. So with these two tickets and the three discounted (anytime-use) Squaw tickets I bought, I’ve got to put in a good number of ski days before the end of December when we head to Saratoga Springs. I just hope my back is better in the next couple weeks.

Ben got an awesome deal on some new Salomon skis. After the ski show, we hit Luis’s, the old hangout of the Sactown gang. We all ate too much food since that’s what happens at Luis’s. Even the lunch special single item dishes provide plenty. Their tortillas rule. I am really going to miss good Mexican food in New York. I sure hope they have some decent places there. Luis’s margaritas pack a punch, too. One was enough to make me a bit tipsy.

This morning I woke up to 65 email notifications of comment spam. Grrr. I have a previous version of MT-Blacklist installed, so along with updating to the latest version (1.61-beta), I’m also going to keep an eye on the Comment Spam Clearinghouse for the latest version of the MT-Blacklist.

Additionally, I’ve changed my blog configuration to require commenters to leave name and email address in order to post. Hint: If you don’t want your email address to show up on my site, just put your own URL or link to your favorite Web site and that will show up instead of your email address.

In other news, my back continues to hurt like hell. Moving company number three (United) should be here soon to provide an estimate.

Greetings from the 14th floor of the Lee Hecht Harrison building in San Francisco. Today is day one of my two-day career workshop. I’m currently on a lunch break and being the obsessive blogger that I am, thought I’d take this opportunity at one of the computers in the lab to write a post about my experience so far.

I usually zone out or even fall asleep during any kind of lecture or seminar (ask Jen about our college days), but I’m actually finding this seminar interesting and quite helpful. It’s only a quarter over, but already we’ve gone through some really valuable exercises — identifying our skills, interests, and personal values. Much like any other project, finding a job or a new career requires the same discipline: Milestones, professional objective, etc. I now have a fat binder that will help me with all this fun stuff.

It’s now time to get back to class, so I must sign off. We’re spending the afternoon reviewing our resumes, so hopefully I can trim mine down from the four pages it currently is.

Did you remember to vote yesterday? I sure hope so. I haven’t seen the numbers, but I would guess that due to the lack of an action hero running for any public office, the number of people who turned out to vote yesterday wasn’t as high as the number who voted last month.

The greatest news here in San Francisco is that there’s going to be a run-off mayoral election December 9 between Green party candidate and president of the Board of Supervisors Matt Gonzalez and the big-money, screw-the-homeless, Willie-supported Democrat, Gavin Newsom. Contrary to what the Chronicle is reporting today, I totally disagree that “Gavin Newsom goes into it with a huge head start.”

At first glance, the numbers suggest that Newsom is the clear favorite with 73,635 votes, representing 41.4%. What may not be as obvious, though, is that despite the fact that Gonzalez has 35,753 votes or 20.1%, he will also get the votes that were split between him, Angela Alioto, Tom Ammiano, and Susan Leal, who together represent an additional 59,928 votes (34.8%), more than enough to blow Newsom away in the run-off vote. I’d be surprised if a significant portion of those votes ended up going to Newsom.

Yesterday was a great day for the city of San Francisco, and December 9 may be even better (besides the fact that it’s my wife’s and John Milton’s birthday) — and historic. Will one of the country’s major cities put a Green mayor in office? If any place would, it’s San Francisco.

Here’s to making history.