Taken at dusk today from a snowy Pier 56.
Warning: Before you waste time on this site, be advised it asks for personal information at the end, after you’ve already spent ten minutes answering their questions. They think I’m a Mr. Steve Harper who lives at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, ON….
That site claims to offer an impartial evaluation of what cities are best for a person. But the top places it came up for me are (in order):
None of those answers make much sense for me, though I’ll cut them some slack on Eugene and Corvallis, since none of their questions had anything to do with allergies. (In the same vein, Salem is listed in the next five cities.)
But what’s with Albuquerque and the Arkansas towns (many more AR towns appear further on in the list)? I specifically answered desert and hot-summer questions as negatively as possible, yet they still recommend places contrary to those desires! And despite multiple Oregon entries, there’s no towns whatsoever in either Alaska or Washington that come up on their list.
Why Arkansas and not Alaska or Washington? Why only one place (way on down the list) in Northern California? It makes me suspect some sort of sampling bias in the cities they have data on. Maybe they haven’t rated places in all states yet, or maybe they’re getting kickbacks from chambers of commerce.
I just got back from a weekend trip to Vancouver, BC. Met a very interesting guy I had run across on the Internet who sounded like he had a lot in common with yours truly (he does).
But it wasn’t just him. It was about eighteen hours into my visit that it hit me: after being in Vancouver for less than a whole day, I felt more at home than I’ve felt after a year and a month in Seattle. It’s not only Vancouver that does this: I feel likewise on my frequent trips to Portland. And when I lived in the Bay Area, after a year I had more close friends than I did after a decade in Seattle.
Yet more evidence that I’d have to be a fool to plan to stay here long-term.
Yes, the establishment media did choose to use the most pejorative possible translation of patria, but even if you translate the oath to “my country, socialism, or death” this is still creepy.
While for many poor it probably is literally a choice between socialism and death, that choice remains for them to make personally. To have the leader of a power structure proclaim it for them, while at the same time conflating “socialism” with that very power structure, does not bode well.
That’s particularly the case once one realizes Chavez also wants to remove all term limits on himself (a technique, combined with sham “elections,” that many past Latin American dictators have used to achieve life presidencies).
Taken at dusk today from a snowy Pier 56.
I’m a little disappointed in the above, as I had to crop out a problem which I think (and hope) was caused by an interplay between a flaky old telephoto lens (I acquired it for $40) and the shutter. The temperature might also have played a part, as it was freezing cold when I took that picture.
Update (warning: camera geek speak follows): I think I figured it out. I was wearing gloves when I installed the telephoto lens, and couldn’t easily feel if it “clicked” or not. Being a cheap lens, it had at some time in its history been dropped, and one of the mounting bayonets is a little out of tolerance. So unless one turns hard, it doesn’t mount all the way, the aperture lever doesn’t properly engage, and exposures are off. The "shutter" effect can be explained by the shutter opening before the aperture had finished moving. So I’ll be back on the pier tonight attempting to be more careful.
And I don’t expect it to be warm…
One of the longer cold snaps in recent years is gradually drawing to a close as temperatures slowly moderate. Yesterday was sunny and bright; by the afternoon the sun was strong enough that the combination of dry, cold air and warm sun brought to mind winters I experienced in the Rockies as a teen and young adult. It was a real treat to see the mountains frosted with snow all the way down to their bases, and the sunset was the sort of cold-day sunset one rarely sees in the Pacific Northwest.
By tomorrow it should be all over as the temperature rises into the forties and the forecast snow changes to rain.
Unexpectedly, a meeting was announced at work. Its purpose became obvious the instant I walked into the conference room and saw there were only two other participants: the CTO and the head of personnel.
Until today, I’ve always seen layoffs coming before they hit. Although a shock, for a number of reasons it doesn’t come at a completely inopportune time:
As for where to go from here, I’m going to hold off jumping to conclusions for a few days only. Then I’m going to start the ball rolling. One mistake I don’t want to repeat is the strategy that worked so poorly from 2002 through 2005.
That’s the ugly reality behind the delicate wording of this article’s delicately-written headline.
I just was visiting a friend who — in typical Seattle fashion — proclaimed it “impossible” to remove the highway from the waterfront. Which, in a nutshell, says why Seattle will never become a great city any time soon: great cities strive towards greatness; they don’t make excuses as to why they are incapable of achieving it.
A current detainee speaks of the torture and humiliation he has experienced at Guantanamo since 2002.
By Jumah al-Dossari, JUMAH AL-DOSSARI is a 33-year-old citizen of Bahrain. This article was excerpted from letters he wrote to his attorneys. Its contents have been deemed unclassified by the Department of Defense.
January 11, 2007
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba — I AM WRITING from the darkness of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo in the hope that I can make our voices heard by the world. My hand quivers as I hold the pen.
In January 2002, I was picked up in Pakistan, blindfolded, shackled, drugged and loaded onto a plane flown to Cuba. When we got off the plane in Guantanamo, we did not know where we were. They took us to Camp X-Ray and locked us in cages with two buckets — one empty and one filled with water. We were to urinate in one and wash in the other.
At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.
What I write here is not what my imagination fancies or my insanity dictates. These are verifiable facts witnessed by other detainees, representatives of the Red Cross, interrogators and translators.
During the first few years at Guantanamo, I was interrogated many times. My interrogators told me that they wanted me to admit that I am from Al Qaeda and that I was involved in the terrorist attacks on the United States. I told them that I have no connection to what they described. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I did not encourage anyone to go fight for Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have done nothing but kill and denigrate a religion. I never fought, and I never carried a weapon. I like the United States, and I am not an enemy. I have lived in the United States, and I wanted to become a citizen.
I know that the soldiers who did bad things to me represent themselves, not the United States. And I have to say that not all American soldiers stationed in Cuba tortured us or mistreated us. There were soldiers who treated us very humanely. Some even cried when they witnessed our dire conditions. Once, in Camp Delta, a soldier apologized to me and offered me hot chocolate and cookies. When I thanked him, he said, "I do not need you to thank me." I include this because I do not want readers to think that I fault all Americans.
But, why, after five years, is there no conclusion to the situation at Guantanamo? For how long will fathers, mothers, wives, siblings and children cry for their imprisoned loved ones? For how long will my daughter have to ask about my return? The answers can only be found with the fair-minded people of America.
I would rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed. I am hopeless because our voices are not heard from the depths of the detention center.
If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. Please remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo suffering the same misfortune. They have not been charged with any crimes. They have not been accused of taking any action against the United States.
Show the world the letters I gave you. Let the world read them. Let the world know the agony of the detainees in Cuba.
[Mirrored from the original at the Los Angeles Times.]
It is the classic career-change book, the one that comes up again and again in recommendations. Many folks swear by it. Yet no formula for any complex task is infallible, and I do have some questions about the applicability of formula it details for my situation.
The biggest flaw in the book is that it encourages people to follow their passion, yet passion is but one factor that determines one’s success in the job market. The demand for a service or product is critical. Make or do something that nobody wants and it matters not how good a job you do: nobody will buy it. You might as well just sit there twiddling your thumbs for all the good it will do putting food on your table and a roof over your head.
Also crucial is salesmanship. Even if there is some demand for what you desire to do, how good are you at selling yourself? If you’re not sufficiently good at carving out a market niche for yourself, again: forget it. The amount of effort one needs to spend on marketing is, of course, inversely proportional to demand. Those seeking to do the hottest jobs can sell themselves with little or no effort, while those seeking to do the jobs least in demand can be natural born salespersons and have nothing to show for it. And how much do you like selling yourself? If you dislike it, maybe it’s best to temper that passion in return for less distasteful salesmanship.
It’s all very relevant for me, as Parachute would have my passions point me into a field with what appears to be an extremely limited job market (I’ve already done some preliminary research). It’s not purely theoretical, either. I have a friend who went to a career counselor, got all fired up on Parachute and following his passion, quit his day job to pursue it… and ended up in bankruptcy court a few years later.
The true believer, of course, will assert that maybe he could have succeeded had he tried just a little harder, of followed the book a little more faithfully. Trust him, the opportunity is out there somewhere. It just has to be found. Problem is, that’s an unfalsifiable proposition: demanding that someone disprove it is asking to prove a negative. It’s like the theist who refuses to entertain the idea that God may not exist because nobody can prove He doesn’t.
Update: Fair’s fair: I have since learned that the friend that ended up in bankruptcy court did so as the result of blindly following his dream without consulting Parachute or any other career-change book, and as a result made several major errors in his self-employment attempt (starting with failing to draft a business plan).
Second Update: After looking at a recent edition of Parachute (it had been years), much of the misplaced idealism about passion-following actually seems to be the fault of a certain particular workshop facilitator inspired by the book, rather than the book itself. The book is still somewhat overly-idealistic for my tastes, however.
This just popped into my head, fully-formed, a moment ago, as such sentences are wont to occasionally do: “It is fundamentally difficult to ‘reform’ or ‘work with the constructive elements of’ what amounts to a planetary suicide cult.”
And no, I'm not referring (only) to “islamofascism” — that bogeyman of the right-wing — but to global capitalist industrial civilization.
Was in Portland for nearly a week on an information-gathering trip (for ideas related to post-high-tech employment). No big breakthroughs, but for a variety of reasons I wasn’t expecting any. Did get some ideas and make some useful contacts to get the ball rolling.
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