On my way to work this morning, I noticed something about traffic. So much of the driving experience depends on the car directly in front of you, however, when there is a problem or delay on the road, how rarely it is the fault of the car directly in front of you. How can something be so faultless yet so influential to the outcome of events?
This blows my mind. I am going to give this more thought.
Here are my ideas/suggestions if you are desperate for a job:
1. Shotgun approach – if you live in near an area with a lot of businesses, put together a resume, put on some nice clothes (long pants, nice shirt, etc) and go from business to business asking “Do you have job applications available at this time?” Leave a copy of your resume for every business even if they flat out say, “We are not hiring at this time,” because they might need you at some other time. If you do this for 10-15 businesses, chances of getting a call from at least one is significant enough to try. Hit a bunch and you might get a call from a few. Of course, don’t bring a shotgun with you.
2. Office supply businesses – There are several major businesses that specialize in office supplies. Looking for a job at one of these businesses may be beneficial for a couple of reasons. First, if you like talking and engaging with people or active engagement with clients in a retail setting, you may find working in this general retail setting to be tolerable. Second, if you are a student, working at an office supply business might not hurt, especially if they offer employee discounts on everyday stuff that you will need as a student.
3. Movie rental businesses – There are one or two major businesses that specialize in renting movies. If you don’t mind sorting, alphabetizing, engaging with clientele, and thinking about movies, you may find this to be a bearable job if you can manage to get hired.
4. Public library – Similar to movie rental businesses, but with books in mind, if you don’t mind being around books then this might be a stable option for a summer or something. Knowing a bit about books wouldn’t hurt either. :) Public libraries may have you complete a small qualifications test along with or following the submission of an application and/or resume.
5. Chain grocery stores – Because I do not want to give any business the upper hand by suggested one over another, I leave the titles quite vague but if you think about chain businesses that are responsible for selling food products and only food products, there should be one or two businesses that pop into mind. The chances that what you and I are thinking are different are quite slim if we are both thinking about multi-state chain businesses. Seeking employment at these sorts of businesses may significantly increase your chances of getting a job. In fact, I believe that there is a chain grocery store that operates with an employee union (I wont mention the name), but realize that employment in any business with a workers’ union may be a solid method you can use to bring some steady income.
6. Tech savvy – For all computer savvy geeks and nerds out there, there are many chain and local businesses that have some sort of division of computer repair/service that may not require A+ certification or proof of higher education. If you know the difference between SATA, SCSI, and IDE or what a RJ-45 cable is, you may want to consider getting yourself down to the local tech store and applying.
7. Local drug store – Often local drug stores have general retail positions available. Find out where they are and go apply if you think it would work.
8. Pet stores/pet supply stores – if you like animals, businesses specializing in pet supplies may have general positions open.
9. Head shops - if you know a lot about different sorts of smoking accessories, or if smoking (legal things) is something that you enjoy, consider applying at a local head shop. You may find a job like this to be engaging and tolerable.
10. Book stores – there are a couple businesses that specialize in books. Similar to the library, if you like books, this might work for you.
11. Temporary work at public schools – often schools might hire general positions for the summer to do basic tasks like cleaning, organizing, building basic school-related stuff like tables, etc. Check with local public schools to see if there are openings if you don’t mind this sort of work.
12. Family connections – if your family knows anyone who owns a business, see if they are in need of temporary help. You hold a slight advantage for knowing them through the family.
13. Pizza/pizza delivery – always an option if you are desperate. But make sure they don’t take advantage of you to the point where you are just spinning your wheels without getting anywhere (literally or figuratively).
14. Ebay – if you know how to spot deals, consider Ebay. Especially if you have old valuables laying around that you want to get rid of. Ebay might be touch, and often is, but it can work if you know what you are doing.
15. Home improvement businesses – there are two or three businesses I can think of that specialize in selling home improvement products. Most of the time you have to be 18+ to work at these places because of the risk of personal injury from lifting and moving things and the use of machinery.
16. General goods businesses – there are many chains businesses that specialize in selling a little of everything. As a near last resort, consider finding work here. Pay may be lower than elsewhere, but it is money.
17. Tutoring – if you are really far ahead in one academic area and feel that you could accurately instruct younger and less skilled folk about your area of expertise, consider it. For example: Spanish tutoring, math assistance, basic music lessons i.e.: guitar, etc.
18. Coffee businesses – It’s pretty obvious which businesses specialize in coffee. Consider this an option if coffee is your thing, or you don’t mind being around hot/cold liquid all day.
19. Local nature center – if you live in an city with a local nature center with employed maintainers, you might find this to be a reasonable place to apply. Especially if you love nature and don’t mind the ‘gross’ stuff like worms, bees, and whatever else nature haters are commonly afraid of.
20. Major events staff – if you live near a place where major events always occur, you may want to look for employment there, as positions like parking lot staff, basic security, head counters, kiosk operators, etc may be available depending on the sort of even being held. This may be a good option especially during summer when a lot of major events like concerts and plays are going on while many are away from school.
–Notice how I didn’t mention fast food as an option. Sure, it’s your choice, but I wouldn’t recommend it. No offense to anyone who has worked in the fast food business, but have you ever had a good look at someone who works a fast food gig? They look really tired and exhausted and I can only imagine you might feel similar. Unless you are beyond despair, I wouldn’t seek out fast food as an employment option. The high caloric content in much of fast food and the type of people it often attracts just makes it potential pitfall if you have a managed diet or a particular lifestyle lacking the sorts of things found at a fast food business.
If you can’t find a job, it’s ok, you don’t suck if the thought even crossed your mind. Many are having a difficult time finding a job. Fortunately, I currently have a job, but that is because one of the above worked for me. I work at a computer repair store because it’s who I am and what I’m good at.
GOOD LUCK!!
Finding it hard adjusting to being home after a school year away from it? I am. And I don’t know what to do. My life seemed to be entirely manageable at school. The differences between school and home are drastic. To summarize my feelings: I prefer the environment at school.
First, the parents. At school, the only people over 40 I see are my professors. Now I am surrounded by ancient byproducts of generation X. They drink boxed wine and talk about stuff that I find hard to engage — like having a discussion for ten minutes about what the difference is between two sorts of salad at a carry out pizza place. asdfl;lkj and it is making me crazy and I have been home only 24 hours. :\
Second, location location location. Unfortunately, I live in suburbia. No doubt: I am totally grateful for having a place to live let alone live in a nice home. But the people here mostly suck. They are either dirt old or really young. Because the demographic in my home city is mainly old white retirees, everything is set up to be slow, private, and done for you. I prefer to live the opposite: fast, open, and do shit myself. …so getting sufficient exercise, getting around to see friends, etc is very difficult because it is either limited or requires the use of a car to indirectly achieve the desired effect. …at school, I could just walk almost everywhere.
Third, my lifestyle vs. theirs. While at school, I have developed a way of living that is pleasing to me. Thank goodness I don’t purposely lead a life that I hate. My parents happen to live quite differently. One example is our sleep schedules. I prefer to stay up ridiculously late and go to bed really early in the morning and my parents prefer the exact opposite. This almost completely eliminates the possibility of doing things involving loud noise i.e.: play my guitar, listen to music through speakers, etc.
…you get the point. I don’t think I should live at home any longer. Howev, I don’t want to complain about everything. To avoid being sucked into a vortex of negativity, here are the things that I really enjoy about being home:
1. I love my family, my mom, dad, and brother. Being home does enable me to directly express my love for each when I choose.
2. Reduced cost of living – fortunately, my parents have graciously extended to me the luxury of not having to pay for the basic resources I use while at home i.e.: electricity, rent, hot water, etc. For that I am extremely grateful.
This is a semi-short and to the point post about the mistakes I made as a college freshman. Ranges from stuff I should have brought, shit better left unbought, things I should have never done, to plain recommendations. I go to Michigan State University if you really want to know.
Helpful stuff to bring that is probably not on the packing list:
1. Electrical/Duct tape – comes in handy for its most obvious purpose: taping stuff to stuff.
2. Lots of AAA batteries – for TI calculators, alarm clocks, small electronics.
3. A real surge protector – huge difference between simple power strip and surge protector; no use crying over a surged hard drive.
4. Laptop chill pad – If your laptop has a fan on the bottom, consider one of these especially if you like lying in bed on your computer.
5. Toothbrush with a cover - probably keeps it cleaner, may help if flu/colds start going around.
6. External hard drive – consider around 500-750GB, especially if you have a large music collection and/or a laptop more than 2 years old. Retail tech stores will just rip you off. Get it online.
7. Pain meds – I’m no doctor…yet, but consider bringing asprin, strong/mild pain-killers, or other pills to make you feel better when in some sort of pain. PS: best to check the date too, I bought bottle of pain meds come to find it expired 2 weeks later. :(
8. Something to safely cover your eyes with as you sleep – my dorm had a shitty glare at night. Could be similar for others and a pain in the ass if you are a sensitive sleeper.
9. Ear plugs – Bring them. They can make the difference between 4 and 9 hours of solid sleep.
10. Portable water jug thing – just something like a 2 gallon holder that you can fill and clean easy. Water is probably a good thing to have access to during long periods of sitting, studying, whatev. Better than walking all the way to a drinking fountain a billion times.
Useless shit to avoid buying (many packing lists have this stuff regardless)
1. Cheap vacuum cleaner – don’t need it. Get a good one or use the dorm’s.
2. Fatty foods, caloric snacks, sugary soda, – unless you need the calories or sugar, all the pre-packed snack shit is probably a horrible choice for a sedentary studious college student.
3. Land line phone – Come on…are you serious?
4. Ethernet cable & co-ax (cable-tv) cable > 25ft – unless you live in a huge open space, save yourself ridiculous cash by getting a reasonably sized Ethernet and coaxial (cable-tv) cable. Don’t let the sales rep convince you that you need 100ft of Ethernet cord to get through college comfortable. Trust me. You’ll be just fine.
5. Padlocks – Unless you are an anxious person or go to an unsafe or crime-heavy college, then skip it. Ever had a padlock in the bedroom at home? …Ok then, base it on your answer to that.
6. Useless lighting – Unless it makes you feel better, book lights, laptop lights, and lights not designed to be on a desk or illuminate a room are probably useless unless your dorm does not already have a light or decent windows (that’d suck).
7. Huge sound system – Dorms often have restrictions on how loud your music can get before they are going to come and tear you a new asshole. You don’t need 5.1 surround to sufficiently cover your whole room. Much less will do.
8. Dvd/blueray player – Watch it on your computer or buy a good enough tv to be able to hook up your computer. Cut out the middleman already.
9. Inkjet printer – Inkjets are horribly built and absolutely sickeningly expensive to maintain thanks to corporate America (thank Epson and HP)…instead look towards a laserjet, even if it is black and white. Term papers don’t need to be in photo ink unless you really want them to be.
10. Robe – Unless you already have or want one, you don’t need one. If you have community bathrooms in your dorms, just walk there in your underwear. If you leave for breakfast, put on pants. Robes (unless pink and embroidered with your name and a smiley) are completely useless.
Shit you should never consider doing
1. Pull all-nighter before a test – bad idea even if it seems good. You’ll regret it by morning, I promise.
2 . Rely on tobacco – if you smoke, that’s your choice. If you legally consume some sort of tobacco, I wouldn’t recommend relying on tobacco as your only source of stress relief. Instead, find several other activities that can also help reduce stress.
3. Eat with unregulated dietary habits – university cafeterias have lots of food, but much of it is unhealthy. It’s best to plan ahead so you don’t turn into a fatass.
4. Fully rely on public transportation system – unless you need to, don’t rely on a bus or car to get you everywhere. Excersize will probably do you more help than harm.
5. Skip class – class attendance is a powerful tool for learning and leverage. Even if your class sucks balls, still go. It’s important unless the teacher cancels. so…go to fucking class.
Basic recommendations
1. If you are a parent of a student reading this, fuck you, your kid should be reading this.
2. If you are a student, work hard to begin creating a healthy lifestyle for yourself, apart from your parents, that you feel is right for you/your beliefs.
3. Remember that your rights as a student have really changed between high school and college. Get familiar with your rights and fucking use and abuse them. They exist to be exploited.
4. Always put your health first while in college. If your basic health needs are not being met in order to accommodate school work, something is off-balance.
5. Fill out class evaluations and write actual, human comments. Scantron surveys are only bubbles, but it is good to do them for classes. Leaving comments is even better. It lets actual people know how actual students feel about a class.
6. Put the police non-emergency in your phone, even if you don’t think you will ever need it. Even though police are often seen as assholes, they have the capability of saving your ass. And they will. So put the number the fuck in there.
7. If you get into trouble with cops, no matter the shape or condition you are in, do not tell them anything or consent to anything at all, ever! Even if they threaten you with further legal action, do not consent. If you are in legal trouble, they will shit on your life. With that said, never resist arrest. If you are getting arrested, it is too late to intelligently maneuver your way out of something. Instead, remain cool and get a lawyer.
8. Enjoy college. Don’t drink too much.
9. Don’t drink illegally if you know you are going to get caught. (can’t say it any clearer than that).
10. Never ever, in any case, bring a weapon to campus. Weapons are dangerous, crazy, and often illegal to possess on campus. Check your university’s policies if you are unsure about what their policy is.
That’s it. Go devour college. Have fun. Don’t be a douchebag.
Hey ppl,
This applies to Firefox, IE7/8, and Google Chrome users, though it is written using Firefox as an example.
Are you pressed for time? Tired of doing all of the tedious steps in searching for what you want on a site? I am. …and because it happens to me, it would be ludicrous to think that other people do not have similar experiences. So here, check this (http://mycroft.mozdev.org/) out.
Though it’s called the Mycroft Project, I have come to know this simply as Mycroft. It allows you to search, select, and download search plugins that can be accessed by clicking the down arrow on the Firefox search bar. If you don’t understand this, or learn best visually, see the image below.
See the searchbar? If you don’t see it, look at the image below.
Mycroft Project Screenshot - Cropped Searchbar Basic
Now put your favorite website into the search. If you don’t know how, see the image below.
Mycroft Project Screenshot - Cropped Searchbar w/ Entry
You will see many results. To download a plugin, click the search function that will best suit your needs and a dialogue box will appear. Click OK in the dialogue box. Then, to test out your new plugin, click the down arrow in the Firefox search bar, and select the icon (favicon) of the plugin you just downloaded.
You can rearrange the different searches by clicking “Manage Search Entries”.
This will undoubtedly save time. No longer do you have to open new tabs, type in the URL, navigate to the actual site search bar, and type your search. Now you can just type your search and press ENTER. Less steps means less time to find whatever you are looking for.
Fortunately, The Pirate Bay continues to run. Registered and nonregistered users of the site can still download any torrent file on the site. As of now, very little (perhaps nothing) has changed which would affect a user’s ability to torrent and reap the result of whatever content is specified within the torrent file.
Jack Riley believes that the trial against The Pirate Bay has made The Pirate Bay stronger and more powerful than before the trial (see http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/jack-riley-this-trial-has-only-made-torrent-sites-much-stronger-1670409.html for the article). Not only do I share Jack Riley’s opinion, but I condone what many consider piracy. Probably very few people would say this for fear of legal consequences. The sharing, distributing, and downloading of content across dozens of protocols has shaped how I see the internet, the computer, and technology in its entirety.
Note that this rare instance that I am using to express my thoughts is not about my philosophy of file sharing protocols. It is about the uselessness of trials against organizations like The Pirate Bay.
If the Swedish government knew (or cared) about what was really going on, Carl Lundström, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg would probably be laughing at (thus blogging about, or at least noting) the stupidity and lack of understanding of some other government or capitalist organization instead of wasting their time waiting to appeal. There are fundamental differences between actual data (the real data) and meta-data (data about the actual data). Similarly there is no reason to say that The Pirate Bay ever violated any Swedish law because the severs in operation at The Pirate Bay contained no actual data and there is no way to directly determine if the meta-data actually referenced any files that were truly protected from duplication and distribution. Since the actual data is contained on the computers of users of The Pirate Bay, it is impossible to say that just because the meta-data references a file called “Legally Protected File 123” does not mean that “Legally Protected File 123” is actually “Legally Protected File 123”. The user could have simply taken content completely legal to distribute and renamed it “Legally Protected File 123”. Last time I checked, a user can name a file as they please. Without meta-data referencing file hashes along with the unaltered actual data in question (which lies on whichever user’s computer), it is inaccurate to claim that The Pirate Bay is, in any means, providing its users a way to obtain and share content prohibited from unregulated distribution. It may just appear that way. The law does not apply to how a situation appears. It applies to the actuality of a situation. If the actuality of a situation is not present or does not exist, the law of any just government will be unable to prove that legality was somehow violated. Of course, this can only be said as long as there is no law against a situation appearing a certain way. If this were the case, then The Pirate Bay would not be on trial for being accessories to copyright infringement but instead appearing as accessories to copyright infringement.
Today is an important day for everyone. For those who have spent the last 8 years watching the Bush administration tear down the functionality of America, today means more than just a new president. Today, I truly feel proud to be an American. And with my feelings, I do not view myself nor this country as superior to anyone else in any other nation.
