Back at Starbucks tonight— Shocker! This particular Starbucks is located less than a mile from our local university, CalState, San Bernardino. The benefits of that close location are a larger-than-normal store with plenty of small tables and plenty of outlets for laptop cords. For some reason, the music also tends to be set at a lower volume than is customary. On the negative side, the store ocassionally fills up with college kids— like tonight!— and college kids these days seem to be only a few days removed from potty training. They are so young! And so loud! This being Friday night, they're just hanging out with nary a thought of studying.

I have just recently begun to use a wonderful app supplied by Google. (What do they not supply?!) This app is Reader and can be accessed from the Gmail page. I imagine it is also easily accessed from any other Google page. Reader is an aggregator for RSS feeds. If you check a particular website frequently and that website supports RSS feeds, you can subscribe to the page through Reader. Then, every time you log into Reader and that page has been updated, it will be highlighted with easy access to the update(s).

I first started playing with it by subscribing to all the web comics that I frequently read. Previously, I had to bookmark each web comic and then click on them every day or so to see if there was a new comic. Now, all I have to do is check my subscriptions in Reader. Each comic that has been updated will be highlighted, saving me the truble of clicking through the entire list. Since then, I have discovered that The Onion supports subscriptions so that each new story triggers a highlight. And, I've even begun to put some of my favorite podcasts on the list. It's such an easy way to check for updates across a growing list of favorite sites. Check it out.

FYI: here are some of my favorite web comics:

The Order of the Stick. My friend James introduced this comic to me about 3 years ago now. It is still one of my favorites, despite a storyline that has bogged down. If you've ever enjoyed fantasy or D&D, this one is a must.

Beaver and Steve. This was absolutely my favorite comic until it either ended or went on extended hiatus last year. I recommend starting from the beginning and reading through to the end. This is a gem.

Dinosaur Comics. You have to see and read this one to believe it. Apparently the creator cannot or will not draw. Every new comic is composed of the exact same six panels every day, and only the dialogue changes. Surprisingly, this formula works exceedingly well. I recommend reading at least 10 or 12 comics before deciding whether or not it's for you.

Perry Bible Fellowship. Beautiful artwork married to some of the most disturbing jokes ever! Like the famous chips, you won't be able to stop with just one.

Kate Beaton. Wonderful comic style married to— history?? Reading is believing. Kate Beaton makes me want to know more Canadians.

Well, that should get you started. I may follow up one of these days with another list. There are so many great web comics out there— stuff that shames the comics which get printed in the papers. (Although, I do follow a few printed comics on their websites as well.) Go out and enjoy yourself!

"When birds burp, it must taste like bugs."— Bill Watterson

One of the stars in my personal universe passed away yesterday: John Updike. He was an author from the Northeast, and his books and stories were full of real human characters and the most masterful prose one could read. You will have encountered his work if you've read The New Yorker magazine at all in the last 30 years. He was a frequent contributor of short stories, book reviews, and commentary. You may also be familiar with his work via the 80's movie, The Witches of Eastwick. Updike wrote the original novel of the same name. (The movie is a weak adaptation, and Updike was not involved with the screenplay.) Coincidentally, just a few weeks ago, Updike published a sequel, The Widows of Eastwick.

Amongst readers of his books, Updike is probably most well known for his series of 'Rabbit' novels, featuring the lead character Harry Rabbit. Not written as a series, they depict the everyman and the everyday life of the lead character. He has the common problems of life in the 70's and 80's, but the novels are anything but common. If you've never read any Updike, the Rabbit books are an accessible 'in' to his world.

My personal favorite of his books is Couples. I've read it twice, and I feel that I could read it again. It is an intimate look at the lives and sexual follies of a group of neighboring couples.

I first encountered Updike during a sophomore writing class at UW. I wish I could recall my instructor's name so I could credit her. She introduced me (and the class) to Updike and one of my other favorite authors, John Cheever. If you've never appreciated a well-written short story, I recommend The Stories of John Cheever. I re-read this collection every several years and relearn my love of the short story.

In case you're curious, my holt trinity of writers actually contains four authors. Technically, that violates the definition of 'trinity', but there is no author I would throw out of the group as lesser in talent. Nor are there any other writers I would rank at their level. (Although, Iris Murdoch places fairly close.) The two writers accompanying Updike and Cheever, in no order, are John Irving and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I will save discussions of them for future posts except to say, if you've seen the movie The World According to Garp but you've never read the book, then you haven't encountered John Irving at all.

And so it goes.

"Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism."— John Updike

I often make profoundly bad decisions. Several years ago I realized that I should become like George in that episode of Seinfeld where he decides to do the exact opposite of his natural inclination. It's likely that I wouldn't be any worse off if I did that. The problem for me would be tricking myself into first determining what my actual first inclination is, rather than convincing myself that the opposite course was the true path so that, in fact, I ended up doing what I would have decided to do. If you think that's complicated or makes no sense, you should try living in my head for awhile!

So today I made the Apocalypse of financial decisions. With no prospect of a new job coming anytime soon, I chose to cash out my 401(k). Now before you overreact to that statement, it wasn't worth that much. I was 100% invested in company stock, and it would be an understatement to say that First American's stock has been underperforming lately. In fact, there is a convenient chart on Fidelity's website for monitoring the progress of my 401(k) savings plan and since the first of the year it is already down 8.9%. Yes, 8.9% in three weeks. I know stocks are something you play over a long period (unless you're a day-trader), but my actions today seemed more like saving my last few pennies from disappearing. Several centuries ago you could invest your life savings to fund a trading ship on a single voyage, and your return was a percentage of what the ship brought back. If the trip was unsuccessful, you could end up with significantly less than what you started. If your ship was sunk by pirates, you might not even know why you never saw a cent of your investment again. To me, the stock market seems about as safe as the waters off Somalia...

I should get my check within the next few weeks. As I said, it's not all that. It will buy me a few more months to figure out what I'm doing. More significantly, I believe it will give me enough money to make some sort of dramatic change in my life. Right now, the top three dramatic changes I'm thinking about are (in no particular order): buy a new car, move out of San Bernardino, or commit to going back to college full time. If I'm smart, I can maybe swing two of those things. (But, remember the Costanza effect. I'm not very financially smart.)

One of the ideas I've had in my head for the past several weeks is to get into a surveying job/career. I've always wanted to try that. I think it would be cool traipsing about the landscape surveying. I figured there would be some sort of state licensing regulating land surveyors, and I was right. Turns out you need 2 years of post-high school education in surveying just to qualify to take the first level of examination. Not fully disappointed yet at discovering that, I then did some research on where one could acquire that education. Even that pursuit turns out to be difficult as no local schools have programs in that— not even the technical schools like ITT and Devry. I did eventually find a small community college in the city of Orange with a program, which I'm going to check out further. This would be a great way to achieve two of the goals I mentioned earlier, as I would have to move closer to the school to make it happen.

Ugh. So much to think about and figure out.

On a more personally dramatic note, this afternoon I traded in my black DS at GameStop. I have a couple DS Lites, but my black one was my first and my favorite. I have easily 1000+ hours of game playing on it. It was still in remarkably good shape— even the guys at GameStop said so!— but a few months ago I dropped it a few inches and it landed directly on the On/Off switch. Since then, the switch does not want to spring back as it should and lately it takes two or three attempts to switch it on or off. Since I have a back-up DS ready to go, I decided to get a little credit for the broken one. Surprisingly, GameStop gave me $50 credit, which I used to pre-pay for Pokemon Platinum, due in March. I'm a huge Pokemon fan— deal with it.

Laters.

"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver."— Ayn Rand

New Year Redux

Welcome to the New Year! Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year— or Lunar New Year if you choose a more PC phrasing. Break out your lucky red clothing and bet on number 8 today! As most people know, I was declared to be Chinese in 2005 so I've been looking forward to this new year. hoping that it will bring more than the Western new year has.

The new year is the Year of the Ox. I was born in the Year of the Tiger— Grrr!— and this coming year does not look to be a good one for me. It seems Ox and Tiger are not a good mix. In the upcoming 12 months, I can look forward to 3 neutral ones and 9 unfavorable ones. My financial and employment prognostications are similar— bad with a lot of careful attention paying. On the other hand, there is a new opportunity for a relationship and I have been advised to be nicer to the people in my life. Go figure.

Check your own fortune for the new year here: Chinese New Year fortune. (Results not typical.)

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I picked up the Sunday edition of the San Bernardino county newspaper today, hoping to find something interesting in the Help Wanted column. It turns out the Help Wanted column is not what it used to be. In fact, the massive Sunday edition consisted of four half-page columns of ads. It took me longer to decide which cartoons I didn't want to read in the funnies section. (They're still printing Marmaduke!) No lie, 15% of the job ads were for security guards. Apparently that job hasn't made the jump to internet yet. (And, I can tell you from six months of personal experience, you're lucky to find a guard who can read the want ads to begin with.)

So, there's one more job source I can cross off my list. Monster.com has been very nearly as useless over the last six months. I completed a profile and a resumé online and constructed an email filter, looking for I.T. jobs. In return, I get a daily email of jobs that only fit my filter by the fact that most of them have an 'i' or a 't' in the job title. Every three or four days, the email contains a double listing for 'coffee host' up at the Barstow Station. Maybe they're thinking that coffee makers are electric, therefore you need the computer guy to operate them. That's certainly not far from the belief of several of my managers over the last 10+ years...

Every time I apply for a ground-level I.T. position with the county I get an email back six weeks later saying that I'm unqualified— despite the fact that I am over qualified for those positions. It's frustrating. (Although, I've since been informed that the proper way to fill out an employment application with the County of San Bernardino is to make sure that my resumé contains every 'key' word in the job description. The applications are initially reviewed by HR personnel, who don't know how to properly evaluate an I.T. application.)

All this and I got gently reprimanded by my parents over the phone today because I haven't found a job yet.

Oops, 70 minutes into the New Year, and I'm already being snarky to others.  *sigh*  It's going to be a long year.

"Oh you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY and they meet at the bar."— Drew Carey