Tell 'em what I took, man!

2011-12-05T20:46:00.006-07:00

They see me trollin’, they hatin’

I’m sure it wouldn’t take but a few clicks from a google search to be off to the races finding a whole hell of a lot more than I ever needed to know about the psychology of trolling. The more I see it though, the more fascinating it becomes. I mean really what would compel someone to spend so much time and energy just for the single purpose of pissing people off? Is it really just the ability to bring out the negativity in others that would cause a person, like a junkie, to return again and again spewing vitriol to raise the ire of a group of people they probably don’t even really dislike that much? Is there some endorphin rush that happens in the brain when you see a bunch of pissed off replies to a post? Why are so many people so intent on being assholes?

I can’t speak for other types of forums, but I spend a good deal of time on college football message boards trying to get as much information as I can on my beloved University of Houston Cougars. They had a pretty incredible year—12 and 0, in fact, and even prior to their jaw-dropping, mind numbing loss for the conference championship that cost them not only the trophy but a shot at a BCS game, the trolls were out in full force. All year long, win after win I came across post after post of the most vile, terrible, wretched crap imaginable-- I mean seriously, an unhealthy amount of hate--and not just on one site, mind you. Some of these folks would look for every single scrap of internet news or conversation piece they could find, and feel a mad rush to foment their hatred:

Your team sucks. If they ever even play anyone halfway decent, they’ll get blown out. They shouldn’t even have a team. The only reason your quarterback has broken so many records is because he’s been at the school for 12 years, and plays against high school teams. Hahaha, you don’t have a chance of winning this next game.

The one phrase that came up over and over again, which I found interesting and a bit counter-intuitive, though, was ‘no one cares.’ No one cares about your crappy high-school stadium or your shitty high school team. If the troll didn’t care so much, then why in the hell would he take the time to comment or reply to every single mention of the team he can possibly find on the fucking internet? And what type of rhetorical sway would he expect have, really? Would he expect a few denigrating lines would be a compelling enough argument for a true die hard fan just to say, 'you know what, you're right our team does suck, and I've been wasting all of my time and energy buying tickets, going to games, giving money back to the school, and generally hoping they do well. I think I'll just get a new hobby or just be one of those front-runner assholes. Thanks dude. Now I see the light.'

If there’s one particular nefarious skid mark in the underpants of humanity that any UH person thinks about it when he hears the word ‘troll’—it would have to be the incomparable MDAstro. This guy is the Heisman Trophy Winner of Trolls. A self-proclaimed fan of LSU (speaking of front-runner assholes), I have seen this guy on every single article or conversation ESPN has put out about the UH. You would think, since LSU has a pretty good shot at winning the MNC (that’s mythical national championship for those of you who don't watch NCAA football—coined since there is no playoff in college) all MDAstro’s time would have been spent lauding and defending his team. Certainly there was no shortage of news and conversation he could have picked up on if he really even were a fan of anything.

Yet somehow, during game time, especially earlier in the season before UH was even ranked or talked about-- when the game conversation posts were mostly gamblers asking if they should take the over, taking about their parlays for the weekend, and posting up websites that had worked for them in making their picks the week before-- one person was always there to dissuade any uncertain bettor from calling his bookie to put some money on UH: MD Astro. Ah, don’t take the over, it’s a sucker bet. Everyone knows Cougar High is gonna’ lose. Hahaha!

Not only that, but he seemed to make it a habit to try and be the first one to post some derogatory tripe on every single game conversation about the school as soon as the forum was posted. I noticed that towards the end of the season though, when the cougars started receiving a lot of national attention due to their winning ways, the trolls were out in flocks. A lot of them, unbelievably, were Boise State fans! You'd think, for a team that took so much abuse for so long as being the most consistent BCS busting team, that they would have had our back a bit. Maybe trolling is like zombie-ism. You get exposed to it too much, and you become one of them!

2010-01-09T21:54:00.017-07:00

If you’re gonna do it, you might as well do it right.

Went and saw the IMAX 3-D version of Avatar on Saturday. It had been a long time since I’d seen anything filmed in IMAX, much less anything in 3-D. But I have to say it was well worth it. There wasn’t a moment when I wasn’t completely enthralled with what was taking place on screen. The depth of expression on the Navi’s faces, the seamless integration between animation and live action, the cool symbiotic bonding thing, all the impossible jumps, the decadent proliferation of colors on the screen—all were mesmerizing.

As far as story-line goes, though: meh. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Dances with Wolves. It was almost the same exact plot-line:

White man reaches deep into the frontier of a natural, savage territory.

Natives dislike white man.

Gradually white man wins trust and respect of locals.

White man starts stroking inner Gaia, goes native, and decides to switch sides.

Other white folks find out white man went native, and look at him with derision.

War ensues.

We get close ups of the devastation and pain wrought upon the natives by the now "other" evil, greedy white folks.

And everyone in the audience gets to feel guilty.

OK, movie is over, we’ve had our cathartic moment of collective guilt, but we don’t have to feel bad anymore, so let’s hop into the SUV and go get some ice cream.

The only real difference in this case is that in place of "white man," it should read, "lanky blue weird-looking alien dude mentally controlled by crippled white man in special bio-link tube."

As one of the inevitable extensions of the virtual reality craze from way back in the nineties, I'm surprised this concept hadn't been tried before in a major motion picture. There's a sci-fi series of books I read which took the idea to a severe extreme: Otherland by Tad Williams. The last three of the tetralogy are pretty much devoted to what's going on with the major characters while they're "in the tube." And, like Avatar, one of the main characters lives much more completely in his virtual life than in his real one because of a physical defect. Whereas Jake in Avatar doesn't have the use of his legs, the Otherland dude has progeria, the weird aging disease where a seven-year-old has the body of an eighty or ninety-year-old. Man, those books were intense! If James Cameron made a series of movies based on those using the same budget and technology used in Avatar- now that would be awesome!!

2009-07-31T20:23:00.011-06:00

Maybe what I do really ain’t so bad.

My last entry, posted so many eons ago, was written for the purpose of justifying to myself what I do now. My conscience made me write it really—that blubbery little wuss! As I had just been reeled into the debate by agreeing to work in the industry, I was trying to discern whose side I was really on. Was I a tool benefitting the evil mega-corporations? Was I making it easier for the insurance corporations, HMOs, and pharmaceutical companies to enslave us all into monetary submission? Was I in some small, cog-like way making it harder for the impoverished to receive health care? Was I in effect, indirectly killing people, in fact? Or was I doing something noble? Was I promoting the saving of lives?

It’s an important question to ask, I think. Some people will go their whole lives and never even bother to attempt to justify what they do. A paycheck is a paycheck is a paycheck to them is the refrain. But as I have this overactive hyper-sensitive wussy conscience, it was necessary to go through this dilemma, and I think I’ve finally found something that will quiet that silly, annoying little voice. Here’s a breakdown of how the conversation went:

“Certainly,” I told it, “we can at least agree on one thing: that I could be doing something far, far worse. It’s not like I’m making tobacco or junk food or heroin. I’m not polluting the atmosphere with choking smoke. I’m not making little remote control death machines or evil robots, or sharks with frickin’ laser beams, or any of that crap. I mean, really, Erin Brockovich doesn’t have shit on me!"

The reply from that snotty little crybaby was, “Maybe so, but “don’t get all smug and sermonize to people that you’re doing the right thing. You didn’t take this job because you thought it would give you the chance to become some kind of martyr. You did it for the money and the security it provided, and that’s it!”

“And judging by the latest quarterly earnings report you just read, don’t try and fool yourself that you’re working for some charity organization!

“So what?” I replied to that obnoxious little turd. “Just because something is profitable doesn’t mean that somehow it’s inherently evil. Can’t a company make money AND help people at the same time? I mean really, what the hell is so wrong with that?”

And before that little punk could open its mouth again, I showed it this:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

2009-05-09T10:48:00.011-06:00

The Caduceus and the Rod of Asclepius

In going over the user guide documentation for the Computer-Aided Dispatch software which is the cornerstone of the company for which I now work, I came across an image which represents a symbolic metaphor for the dissonance of current medical practice in the United States-- two symbols, in fact, embedded with all the potent intrigue of a Dan Brown novel. In studying the software's map module, which can be used to locate an organization’s vehicle posts, medical facilities, and patient pick-up and drop-off locations I was presented with an idea that made me pause and reflect.

When an emergency call taker gets a call from an injured, wounded, or sick individual, she must find out, among other things, where the incident is taking place—the ambulance’s pick-up location—and enter that information into the application’s user interface. If the call taker maps the location, and sends it to a dispatcher, the dispatcher will see the pick-up location marked on a map in the symbol of a "Caduceus." I noticed that the symbol looked slightly different than what I had seen on the sides of ambulances when doing general research about Emergency Medical Services—the six pointed "Star of Life." In the center of the Star of Life exists the Rod of Asclepius—what I had thought to be the ancient Greek symbol for medicine. I came to ask myself the question: what’s the difference-- other than the presence of an extra snake and pair of wings in the Caduceus and their absence in the Rod of Asclepius—between the two symbols? Naturally, I looked them up in Wikipedia and came to find a symbolic inconsistency representative of perhaps the greatest controversy in the medical profession today:

The rod of Asclepius (sometimes also spelled Asklepios or Aesculapius), also known as the asklepian, is an ancient symbol associated with astrology, the Greek god Asclepius and with healing. It consists of a serpent entwined around a staff. The name of the symbol derives from its early and widespread association with Asclepius, the son of Apollo, who was a practitioner of medicine in ancient Greek mythology. His attributes, the snake and the staff, sometimes depicted separately in antiquity, are combined in this symbol.

That was pretty much what I had expected. Why then was a Caduceus used instead of the Rod of Asclepius in the map module of the software I now support? I did some more research on Wikipedia and came across the following:

The caduceus is sometimes used as a symbol for medicine or doctors (instead of the rod of Asclepius) even though the symbol has no connection with Hippocrates and any association with healing arts is something of a stretch; as the symbol of the god Hermes, its singularly inappropriate connotations of theft, deception, and death, as well as the confusion of commerce and medicine in a single symbol, have provided fodder for academic humor.

“The confusion of commerce and medicine:” how very appropriate to the ongoing war between patients, insurance companies, HMOs and government. All of the connotations embedded by the two symbols were evoked in my thoughts in a sudden flash: The insistence of putting a monetary value on medical care to the detriment of the patient; the alarming number of bankruptcies in this country as a result of the inability of individuals to pay their medical bills; the election campaign discussions about the government’s role in health care and health care as an economic industry; Michael Moore’s Sicko; the ambivalence in the role I provide at this new job: am I promoting the saving of lives by helping to ensure that dispatchers are able to use the software efficiently in getting ambulances out on scene to help patients, or am I making life worse for the sick by providing an arsenal of data which can be used by the organizations to justify billing the sick into oblivion—all of these thoughts represented themselves in those two symbols.

Even though I’m now far removed from the analysis of literary symbolism during my days as an English major, the weight of the connotations carried by those two symbols just makes me say "WOW!”

2009-03-23T22:02:00.004-06:00

I saw the original of this a while back. I almost peed my pants it was so damn funny. The sequel is equally as hilarious:

And just in case you haven't seen the original:

2009-03-10T20:00:00.010-06:00

Thirty-Four Days and counting. . .

. . . of being unemployed. I will say I have been doing what I can about getting re-emplyed within all these free moments. I’ve had six interviews so far, three of which have been over the phone, with none yet yielding any fruit. A temporary position seems to be on the horizon, but then again the staffing agencies have a penchant for sugar coating situations in which they know the position is already filled because the client has decided to choose someone internally for the job or the agency have another candidate in mind for the position and are only considering you as an alternate should said candidate become unavailable.

I went through the process of looking up staffing agencies in the yellow pages, and making an exhaustive list. I called each of them asking what type of industries they specialized in and put my resume forth for any that were related to IT or clerical/administrative work. I’ve been pretty good about checking Monster, Career Builder, Hotjobs, the local newspaper, Dice, and yes, Craigslist on a daily basis for any new positions that may have become available. Two of the positions for which I was interviewed were straight off of Craigslist, whereas the other job search sites just got me calls from some of the same staffing agencies I had already been soliciting directly. I have another interview tomorrow. Wish me luck.

As frustrating as the job search always seems to be, I’ve come away a huge realization that I should just accept regardless of the economic situation we happen to be in at the time. I guess I've always had a kind of naivete in thinking it still possible to get into a business on the ground floor and reap the benefits of company loyalty and hard work as you gradually climb your way up. This notion is well dispelled by Martin Yate in Knock 'em Dead: The Ultimate Job Search Guide:

The job security and professional growth our parents were raised to expect as the norm is a thing of the past. [O]ver the course of a fifty-year work life, you can typically expect to change jobs about every four years, and you may well have three or more distinct and different careers in what will probably be a half-century work life.

Gone are the days in which you could get your foot in the door of a company and simply work your way up within, not even thinking for a moment that you can be kicked out at any time because of mergers, recessions, restructuring, or obsolescence. The reality of our great new age is that company loyalty is important to maintain your position only insomuch as your position is maintainable. The bottom right-hand corner of the quarterly balance sheet has far more sway as to whether or not you become promoted or redundant than anything you can possibly do within your time at the company. I don’t write this to sound bitter or resentful. I merely mention it as an unquestionable fact. For a business to stay in business it has to create a profit. The less directly you are tied to bringing in that profit, the thinner the sheet of ice on which you tread.

You have to constantly ask yourself “How important is what I do here to the life of the company?” If it’s anything less than absolutely critical, you could very well find yourself on the chopping block the next time that figure on the balance sheet takes a hit. In a decision to downsize, a higher-up may tell all the department heads that each of them has to choose two people in their department to get rid of. That some of these may be heart-wrenching choices, which I don’t doubt was the case at my last job, is irrelevant. The necessary number are going to be gone at the end of the day either way.

2009-02-14T16:03:00.003-07:00

Unpleasant Surprise

So I go to work a couple of weeks ago, doing my regular routine. Answering calls and following up on e-mails-- resolving issues, and trying to make our clients happy. It's a Friday, so the volume is relatively light. I spend the majority of the morning with someone trying to install the web application on his "server." For some reason, the installer keeps quitting midway through, but no errors are written to the Event Viewer.

I look to make sure that he has IIS installed. Check.

I find out if he's an administrator on his machine. Check.

I download a fresh installer to his desktop to make sure the one he got wasn't corrupted, and try to run the installer again. Same result. The blue installation bar rolls back and you get a message saying the install failed.

I then copy the files created by a successful run of the installation on my computer to his desktop via our FTP site. I go to set up the web site manually, first attempting to put the necessary file permissions on the folders in question, and I notice something odd. There's no security tab. I check what operating system he's running. It's XP Pro. Had it been something stupid like XP Home edition, where there are no security tabs, the system wouldn't know how to apply the Network Service account access to the web application files. Why he isn't installing this to a computer with an actual Server operating system (installing IIS web services on XP limits you to only 10 concurrent connections) I don't ask.

I go to the folder options to make sure that simple file sharing has not been turned on. It has not. What gives? All the bases are covered, so why doesn't the security tab show up? For the hell of it, I open up the disk management console and I look at his partitions. I put the phone on mute, shake my head and chuckle to see that he installed the partitions in the FAT32 file system. You're not able to apply directory security to folders on a FAT32 partition. No wonder the installer quit. Why he wasn't using NTFS like everyone else has been (since like 1995) I will never know.

I give the user the bad news, telling him he'll either have to find another machine to put the web application on or re-install the operating system with the NTFS file system. He agrees to re-image the machine using his Norton Ghost application.

I handle several more issues the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon. Around 1pm or so, we get an announcement that there's going to be an impromptu meeting in the auditorium in the lower level of the building. We're told by our manager not to answer any more calls after 1:45pm. At around 1:30 one of our techs is called to the desk of a consultant to take a look at a computer issue. A few minutes later the rest of us get up to go to the meeting. A colleague and I are told to go ahead and head down-- everybody else will be following shortly. I get to a half-empty room noticing there's a few people from each department. Then I look down to the first row to see the Vice President looking despondent-- past us and through us, with his head in his hands. There's a moment of tension and confusion, a few more people trickle in, and then he begins "As you all know the recent economic downturn has had a dramatic effect on our sales over the last few months . . ."

I just stare in shock as he eliminates everything I'd been working for the last twenty months, cancels my health insurance, halts my 401K, suspends my paycheck, destroys any potential for growth in the company, obliterates a well-worn comfortable routine, and injects deep uncertainty into my life. The revelation engenders feelings of frustration, concern, anger, and even a kind of humility within the twelve other souls who had the misfortune of being told to head down early along with me. "The rest of us will be down there shortly."

One of the women in sales angrily demands that she be given commission for a big deal she's been working on, that looked to be in the final stages of completion. The VP nods yes slowly. Another breaks down completely, and starts whimpering. A consultant demands to know how it was that they made their decisions. "It was a mathematical formula," he states, but doesn't go into any details. After the HR director goes through our packets, explaining the severance process, what to do to file for unemployment, our options for COBRA, etc., we depart, and go back upstairs, supervised, to an empty office where we're allowed to grab only the essentials-- the rest of our stuff is to be couriered to us the next day. I feel like I've just been shot, or stabbed, or hit over the head with a blunt object.

I've never been laid off before. It's a strange mixture of feelings. On the one hand, there's the expected anger, disbelief, and real concern. At the same time, however, there's a feeling of release. Major liberation. I can do pretty much whatever the hell I want now. Pursue the same type of career, take a different track, seek more responsibility, less responsibility, just take out some loans and go back to school, go abroad again, or see how long I'll be able to stay on unemployment. I've filed, and have already had an interview at a staffing agency. I've got my resume on Monster, Careerbuilder, Dice, and I do searches every morning. Severance check should be here soon, and that will get me through until the UI checks start coming in, so I won't starve or have to sell my car anytime soon.

The fact that I'm just one out of about 700,000 in the last two months is both frightening and consoling. There's a lot more competition out there for the same jobs now, but I guess it's good to know I'm not the only one feeling the pinch. Hey, at least now I've got some time to write some blogs . . .

2009-01-21T23:24:00.005-07:00

Book Review: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Just finished reading this gigantic ode to suffering last week and have been letting my thoughts percolate. My first impression is that it was morally and emotionally exhausting to the extreme. The plot consists mainly of the tumult between three (possibly four) brothers and their father, each representing within themselves and amongst each other the great moral quandaries of the day. There’s Dmitri, the oldest brother who is ruled by his passions to the brink of fatal violence; then Ivan who espouses the nihilism and atheism typical of the intellectual trend of the day, juxtaposed by Alyosha,

who for the majority of the novel, appears as a monk, filled with the virtues of religious humanism—the yin to brother Ivan’s yang. Then there’s Smerdyakov who may or may not be the fourth son, born of a crazy street lady, prone to epileptic fits, (incidentally referred to as “the falling sickness”) who becomes employed by the father, Fyodor Karamazov, as a servant.

The beginning of the novel doesn’t jump right in, but painstakingly sets the scene, guiding us into the life of Fyodor, the father, who establishes himself as a selfish, noisy, licentious old booze hound. He takes no part in his children's upbringing, instead throwing them all in the yard for the servants to sort out. The distinct character of each of the boys is described, and already the seeds of a terrible impending tragedy take root.

Anger and enmity arise within all of the children, except Alyosha, who attempts to act as the family's moral anchor. Not altogether in vain, he's charged with quieting the familial strife and lack of faith. The tension emerges most prevalently in Dmitri, (and for brevity's sake we'll just follow his plot thread). Angered by his father’s refusal to pay the rest of his rightful inheritance Dmitri lashes out at him, beating the crap out of old Fyodor on one occasion and also publicly humiliating poor Snigeryov by grabbing him by the beard and throwing him into the street. He attempts to hire this Captain Snigeryov to strong-arm the money out of his father, but ultimately Snigeryov’s failure just raises Dmitri’s ire and desperation.

A key witness to this public display of humiliation is none other than Snigeryov’s son, Ilyusha, who upon seeing his father brought so low, starts having the epileptic fits that later cause his death at the end of the novel. A very sad, drawn out, and heart-rending death it is—one which I found later on was undoubtedly inspired by the death of Dostoyevsky’s own son via the same “falling sickness.” Apparently, little Alyosha (that’s right, the same name as the priestly son in the book) inherited these seizures from his father, and for that Dostoyevsky felt perhaps a tremendous misplaced amount of guilt. The father-son relationships and dilemmas throughout the novel are no doubt manifestations of the real life torment the author went through in his relations with both father and son. It’s been reported that Dostoyevsky started having his epileptic seizures when he witnessed the death of his own father. Are we cheery enough yet? Good. Now back to the plot.

If the anger within Dmitri was not quite stimulated enough by his father’s refusal to pay him his rightful dues, we find out that both father and son have the hots for the same woman, Agrefena Alexandrovena, affectionately known to them both as Grushenka. This playgirl tart of a woman toys with the Karamazovs' emotions for her own amusement, planning the whole time to get back with her old flame, a Polish dignitary from whom she’s been removed for five years. Dmitri, ballooning with concern about the possibility of his father absconding with his money to marry Grushenka, feverishly tries to raise enough cash to whisk her away himself. We discover as well, that he not only needs the money for Grushenka and his fantasies of removal with her to some far away place, but that he has a debt to a former betrothed, the vindictive Katerina Ivanovna. Katya places 3000 roubles in his charge to send to a relative, but out of his lust to impress Grushenka, he takes her to a nearby town, and instead squanders half the money cavorting with the gypsies, minstrels, and drunks.

In a mad dash for cash he hits up Grushenka’s benefactor with a an ill-proposed business deal, and failing that attempts to negotiate with a contractor charged with one of his father’s properties in another nearby village. Both attempts wash out, and he makes one last gambit to get money out of the talkative Mrs. Khokhlakova (minor character- not important). At a fever pitch of rage and jealousy, he unconsciously grabs a pestle and heads over to his father’s house where he learns from Smyerdakov about a secret knock employed to let father know she’s arrived. He uses the knock in hopes to find out whether his beloved is with father, but convinced she’s not there and making his escape, is nonetheless assailed by one of the servants, Grigory, whom he pulverizes in the skull with the pestle. Not knowing whether he’s killed Grigory or not he goes back to the servants of Grushenka’s benefactor where he initially grabbed the pestle and finds out, through forced interrogation of the servernts, about Grushenka’s deception and current whereabouts. There’s kind of a hazy disconnect just before his return to the servants, as though Dmitri hasn’t been conscious of what he’s been doing the last hours. He’s even unaware of the blood all over his face and the matted, bloody handkerchief in his pocket that he had used on Grigory, trying to determine if he was still alive.

Totally defeated, and convinced that he has in fact killed the servant, Grigory, Dmitri Karamazov plots his own suicide, but intent on making one last hoorah before the end, uses the other half of the 3000 he got from Katerina to once again shoot the moon with the locals of the town where he and Grushenka had such a good time previously; the same place, not coincidentally, where Grushenka and her old flame are now rekindling their old sparks. A bizarre scene unfolds with Dmitri befriending rather than confronting his rival and his entourage, and hearing the most glorious tidings from Grushenka that she in fact does love him and wants to be whisked away—her Polish past love had lost his charm—Dmitri indulges in the excesses of a debauched party…

… Only to discover the following morning a detective in his midst charging him with the murder of his own father. What follows is the trial and epilogue, and I won’t go into any more details at this point should you be enticed to brave this 1000 page monster of gut-wrenching moral horror. I will, however, give you my own personal insights:

I found Brothers Karamzov a bit like nicotine or even crack for that matter. You start it, and it tastes like shit. It’s tedious, loquacious, probably missing much in translation, steeped in all the class division and stuffy etiquette of a Jane Austin novel. You know it’s bad for you and you shouldn’t do it, yet as you continue you just can’t seem to turn away. I found myself inspired to drink vodka as I read this book. I’m not normally a big vodka drinker, but I acquainted myself with the likes of Smirnoff, Stolichnaya, Ketel One (even though it’s Dutch, not Russian), and Sobieski (once the Poles were introduced) as I scanned through page after page detailing the universal pathos of the human condition. The narrative tone felt kind of like being cornored by a drunken, mutton-chopped old Victorian pontificating on the nature of mankind, pocket watch in hand. Once I finished I was exhausted. I was spent. I wanted to become catatonic.

I mean, I had read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina a while back, thinking that was pretty damn tragic, but that looks like a comic book compared to this! I may sometime in the distant future, out of a since of sheer masochism have another go at it, or even pick up House of the Dead or worse yet Crime and Punishment. Why in the hell would I want to do that you may ask? Well, it’s because there are some writers who have the ability to cast a hook in your heart and drag you into the zenith of their hopse and then suddenly down to the very nadir of their despair, and Dostoyevsky is definitely one of them.

Nas Drovye, kids. That’s Russian for “Cheers!”

2008-12-04T22:05:00.003-07:00

The Biggest Failure of Mankind: The Daily Commute

Driving through the snow this morning on a jam-packed freeway going about two miles an hour I got to thinking: Why in the realm of universal possibilities is it that people have decided to arrange a society that makes it necessary to do this every day? In hundreds of cities in countires all around the world you see the same thing. I mean seriously, is this the best manifestation of the potential for structuring our lives?

How long has it really been like this? I mean, sure there are telecommuters and people that can walk to work either because they’ve refused to settle for a job that was too far away from their home or have refused to settle for a home too far away from their job, but the numbers still aren't significant to allow us a smooth, unfettered, stress-free drive to work. Despite all the engineering, lane widening, car pool lanes, spurs, and loops, in every major city every single morning it's the same damn thing! We've had freeway systems now for what fifty, sixty years, and still no one has yet been able to figure it out! I guess it’s just another one of those things that becomes unquestioned based on the fact that it's been routine for so long. Routine does a strange thing to the human mind, I think. Eventually, routine dulls your curiosity and numbs your natural inquisitiveness. You just accept, without thinking about the method by which something is done as a result of just repetitively doing it every day. Every once in a while, you do have that “what in the hell am I doing” flash of brilliance, but inevitably it fades all too quickly. I participated in a no car day last spring I think it was, but that token joke of an attempt at social awareness didn't really seem to do much but give corporations an excuse to advertise on the T-shirts they silk screened specifically for the event.

I suppose with all my indignant complaining, I could just as easily ride the train, except for the fact that I wouldn’t be able to make it to my other job on time. If there was a train that went from Orchard Station out to the location of my second job, then I would be all over it. But unfortunately, that’s not the case and I’ve been unable to work out a solution that would make it feasible--another failure of the transportation planning in this city. If I had my way, every major urban area would have dedicated train lines going from the periphery to the center so that any two points within a 25 mile radius could be reached in 15 minutes or less. I’ve gone over the logic several times in my mind about dedicating my commute to the existing Denver Light Rail: Maybe if I took the train to work, I wouldn’t need a car, thus also removing the necessity to have the second job with all the money I could be saving. Of course, then I say to myself it’s not just commuting to work that I use my car for.

I begin to realize all the things I take for granted about my ride: the opportunity of a summer road trip or drives to the mountains surely make up for the slight inconvenience of the additional (not really even) eight extra hours I work a week. Also, there are all the little things like not having to reduce the amount of stuff I buy at the grocery store because I know I have a reliable transporter at the ready to carry a month's worth of food. Or I can relish the ability to go out to a nice restaurant without having to plan a route, find the times, get on the bus, and take an hour to get there. But for all that, today I seriously entertained the notion of pulling my car onto the shoulder and just walking down to the next exit and getting a taxi to work, never to return to my commuter ways. As it goes now, if after I die someone were to do a statisical analysis of the percentage of time I spent doing things, driving in traffic will probably be in the top ten, maybe even five. God what a depressing thought!

2008-08-31T12:01:00.005-06:00

My Take on the DNC

So the Democratic National Convention came and went last week, and nothing much has changed. On the street lamps you still see the vertical standards welcoming people to the DNC, but they might as well just be banners for advertisements or a reminder of the semi-annual quilting fair in a small town at this point.

Mayor Hickenlooper spent about 50,000 dollars on security expecting there to be mass protests akin to the Seattle WTO riots. Riots never really manifested, and once again a major political event failed to live up to the hype.

I'm almost disappointed that no stones were thrown nor bags of feces / pails of ink dumped on the riot police. It makes for great television. On the other hand, it made me frown to know there wasn't much evidence of abuse of power, either. No split lips and busted heads like in the 60s. Damn!

The largest gathering of protesters occurred during a march led by Iraq Veterans Against the War after a free Rage Against the Machine concert (that I could have gone to but didn't --- stupid work) at the Denver Colosseum. The following video gives a brief idea of what change was effected as a result of the protest:

Unfortunately, I don't believe these vets were given any opportunity to read their letter at the convention. Would it have been different if their numbers were larger or are people always at the mercy of convention organizers as to whether or not their voices get heard?

As you might expect, I've had a lot of conversations with friends, acquaintances and coworkers about the convention and politics in general in recent days, and I've come away with some questions that I'd like to ask the readers (if any) of this blog:

What changes will you see in the day to day lives of ordinary citizens (including yourself) should Obama / Biden or Mccain / Palin be elected?

Are special interests and corporations so invested in the politicians in terms of campaign contributions and other financial influence that the political results both foreign and domestic will be the same regardless of who's elected?

What is the most compelling argument for electing either Obama or McCain?

Do you wish, like I do, that people would stop using the word "experience" and talk more about the political platforms of both campaigns?

Are you justified if you decide not to vote because you remain disillusioned and apathetic as in previous elections, or do you feel that this election is too important to be ignored?

Would things be different now had Al Gore been elected in 2000 or would we be roughly in the same place?

Apart from the shiny things, high words, and asinine slogans that are part and parcel to every political convention, I will say that I was impressed by Gore's speech at the nomination ceremony at Mile High Stadium. He was the only one to make much mention, as he has before, of the climate crisis which seems to have been ignored in the majority of the speeches by the other politicians.

It's this very issue that has me shaking my head at Obama's 180 on energy policy. Before, he was against lifting the ban on offshore drilling, but now has said he would be willing to allow it as compromise for a bill that would provide help to alternative energy programs.

This somehow, all of a sudden, has become an unquestionable given: We have to get off of foreign oil and lower gas prices, therefore it is absolutely essential according to both parties that we allow offshore drilling to occur. This just doesn't make sense to me. It's been pointed out, and rightly so that even if we do lift the ban, we won't see a drop of new oil for ten years. Even so, proponents say, speculators will push the market price of gas down if they know there are new wells being put in the ground.

Is it just me, or was part of the reason for soaring gas prices, the off-shore rigs that were taken offline as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita back in 2005? Is it just me, or has the number and ferocity of hurricanes increased over the last decade or so, most likely, scientists claim, due to warmer temperatures in the Earth's oceans? All you have to do is look at the size and strength of Gustav, now hurtling towards New Orleans, once again threatening it's total destruction. It may be paranoia on my part, but if existing offshore rigs are put in jeopardy as a result of typhoons and hurricanes, won't building more of them just raise, rather than reduce, the price of oil? Is it too far of a stretch to think that oil companies are engaging in a little bit of "disaster capitalism" with this approach?

What do you think?

2008-06-10T11:36:00.000-06:00

Last Sunday I went to a "system works" party with friends and coworkers to celebrate the first Sunday in which, like a truely free human being, you can go out and purchase booze from the liquor store on a Sunday. Hell Yeah!

I've never understood why it takes so long to repeal prohibition-era laws still on the books. Prior to this glorious liberty, which was passed through referrendum several months ago, you had the option to either go to a bar or restaurant, or go to the grocery store to get yourself some 3.2 percent alcohol beer. It was always annoying as hell. They might as well just not even sell it at all!

It happened to me several times, especially during the summer, that I would have the sudden notion of going to the park on Sunday and invite my friends to grill and drink, only to remember the fascist tyranny under which we lived at the last moment. I once even went so far as to get the patties from the grocerty store, not realizing until just before I was to check out (while thinking about getting a bag of ice for the cooler) that my whole enterprise that day was mired in futility.

Now, however, I'm able to be enjoy the liberties for which my forefathers fought, and head down to Logan Liquors where I can fill my cooler with local brew summer ales and draft cans of Guinness.

One of the few times one is able to enjoy the fruits of pure democracy in action.

2008-05-19T11:46:00.003-06:00

Overwork

I have a second job teaching ESL on Wednesday and Thursday nights. And yes, doing this in addition to the full-time job at the software company is every bit as exhausting as it sounds.
Early on, when I realized that the tech support job alone wouldn’t be enough to foot the bills, I looked around to see what other part-time employment I could get that would help me maintain my extravagant lifestyle of paying bills on time and not going deeper into credit card debt. I wanted to do something mindless and repetitive like data entry, but was unable to find anything part-time.

ESL also came to mind as it was something I had experience with, and I had, in the last year, supplemented my income by teaching online. But I was a little remiss to actively search for another ESL job since I would have to take the work home with me, plus I had left the ESL industry in Japan because I felt burnt out. But, necessity is a mother so I sucked it up and started scouring CraigsList where I soon came across a school that looked promising: Teikyo Heights Loretto University.

It seemed like a perfect fit-- part of a network of educational institutions associated with the Teikyo Group: a Japanese educational consortium comprised of universities in Japan, the US, Germany, China, Russia, the UK, and the Netherlands. I thought this should be easy since they would most likely promote studying abroad to the Japanese students at the sister campuses. Since I have experience teaching English to Japanese I figured I would be an obvious choice as part-time instructor.

It was not to be, unfortunately, when I went to the interview. Though there are a few Japanese students, the majority of the denizens that were traversing the halls of the old Sisters of Loretto building (which they’ll constantly remind you is at the highest point in Denver) are not Japanese. I found as well that their affiliation with the Teikyo Group was tenuous at best. I applied anyway, but the only positions that available were subs. They would add me to the call list and contact me if something came up. It never did.

My search pretty much stalled out after that. It’s kind of hard to believe, when compared to the prevalence of ESL jobs in countries abroad how difficult it is to find sustainable work teaching English (especially if you don’t have a Master’s Degree) in the US. I suppose this may be easier in places with greater international prominence, but surely there’s a large enough population, even in a cow town like Denver, of F-1 Visa students and other immigrants to find worthwhile employment.

Eventually I did come across a start-up language school that was sharing space at the Community College of Aurora at Lowry. I could work twice a week teaching four hours a night for 20 bucks an hour. Plus they’d pay me for an additional hour of planning for each day I worked. This was back in September, so I’ve been working there continuously (except for the semester break in early March when the company expanded into a new building) for the past nine months or so. Damn! Has it really been that long?

The new semester started in April, and after about eight weeks of class I’ve come to realize that I still don’t really know all that much about the countries that my students are from. The majority of the class is from Tajikstan, but I’ve got a very diverse group of students comprised of: Israel, Morocco, Costa Rica, Romania, Mongolia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria. So in the interest of not sounding like a moron by making sweeping, incorrect generalizations when talking to my pupils about their respective homelands, I plan to devote the next few entries of this blog to discussing language and culture.

2008-05-14T11:01:00.009-06:00

Catholic Church Recognizes Extra-terrestrials!

In defending what seems to me a pretty surprising claim by the church that aliens might possibly exist, Reverend Gabriel Funes says, "[H]ow can you rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Talk about your grocery store Catholic! I had always thought that the only other-worldly places named in the Bible were Heaven, Hell, and purgatory, but then again, even the existence of purgatory is only inferred.

I'm not willing to do any research on it because I hate Tom Cruise, but I bet this kind of news is just going to be used by Scientologists to try to prop up the legitimacy of their ridiculous cult. Disgusting.

And what kind of ramifications will this have on Catholicism if aliens are added to the official canon? Well for one thing they'd have to revise The Lord's Prayer:

Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done
On Earth (and Pluto and Alderon and Vulcan and SJ-7854930C) as it is in Heaven

OK, yeah, maybe I am having a little bit too much fun with this, but then again, if you believe there's a connection between the Catholic Church and aliens, you'll probably think there's something to this as well:

2008-05-10T13:19:00.012-06:00

On Liberty and Entrapment

A few weeks ago I attended the Appleseed Project run by the Revolutionary War Veterans Association. I had been invited by a friend, who was a gun nut, and was interested to see what it was all about. I didn't have a lot of experience shooting a rifle, and therefore decided if there was a clinic that could improve my marksmanship, then it probably wouldn't hurt anything. Surely, there were worse ways to spend a weekend than knocking the crap out of paper targets with my friend's SKS.

We drove west into the mountains at about 6:00 pm and arrived at around nine to the private ranch where the event would be held the next morning-- just in time to see the owner opening up the barbed-wire gate. We asked if it would be all right to build a campfire. We were at an elevation of around 7,000 feet, so even though it was mid-April, spring comes late to the wilds around Cañon City. Unfortunately, due to dry conditions we were denied our request. So I spent the night in the shivering frost under two sleeping blankets and a fleece roll that I had bought at the sporting goods store earlier that day. Needless to say I didn't get much sleep. The next morning, as we were hoping for the sun to come over the valley and warm our chilled bones, the weekend event began to take shape and the thirty or so participants gathered at the meeting point. There we went through intensive safety instructions and were lectured about the historical importance of the date on which this event was scheduled.

The significance of the date (from a Wiki article) is as follows:

On the night of April 18, 1775, (English) General Gage sent 700 men to seize munitions stored by the colonial militia at Concord, Massachusetts. Riders including Paul Revere alerted the countryside, and when British troops entered Lexington on the morning of April 19, they found 77 minutemen formed up on the village green. Shots were exchanged, killing several minutemen. The British moved on to Concord, where a detachment of three companies was engaged and routed at the North Bridge by a force of 500 minutemen. As the British retreated back to Boston, thousands of militiamen attacked them along the roads, inflicting great damage before timely British reinforcements prevented a total disaster. With the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the war had begun.

While listening to the trainer muddle his way through an explanation of the 'first strike of the match that set off the powder keg' I kept wondering what would possess someone, other than an absolute steadfast firearms devotee to want to come out and do this shit. The average person today would probably consider the very notion of doing something like this a hobby for whack-jobs and militia wannabes. I was waiting for the big cheese-it-up section in which someone was going to tell me that I wasn't a true American until I owned a rifle.

I swallowed my prejudice as best I could, however, and tried to take the lessons to heart. I wanted to hear what had to be said from a purely mechanical perspective, reminding myself that there's nothing inherently political about being able to fire a rifle. After all, who knows when you might need it? What if you get stranded in the wilderness or the price of food gets so high that it's just more economical to hunt?

So I focused on the end goal: developing the ability to accurately hit a target at 500 yards. I learned the six steps to superior marksmanship: sight alignment, sight picture, respiratory pause, focus on the front sight, keep your finger on the trigger, and follow through. In addition, I learned how to find my natural point of aim, adjust sights by calculating minutes of angle, and how to shoot standing, sitting, and in prone position. It was all new to me, and it hadn't dawned on me until near the end that our ultimate goal was to make a rifleman's score on the Army qualification test. I fell far short, but without question had marked improvement between the first and second days. My patterns were tighter and towards the end I felt I was able to call my shot, knowing where the projectile would strike at the moment of fire.

The first day passed apolitically, much to my liking, since I'm not really the type of person that likes confrontation and I didn't want to get into a political discussion with the folks on the range, many of whom I could tell just from a few moments speaking probably wouldn't like where I stood ideologically. But, at the end of the training we were cajoled to take political action, not explicitly instructed to vote Republican mind you, but to vote against the Demon-crats at every turn, since they represented a threat to the rights of the citizens to own arms, and that was the essence of being an American. I must say it left me with a bad taste in my mouth, seeing that at such a critical time for our country, that was the only political topic anyone there seemed to give a shit about.

The bottom line is this: people who are fervent about protecting the second amendment aren't so because of their love of liberty, but because of their love of firearms.

They don't give equal weight to the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights. What about freedom from cruel and unusual punishment? Certainly the incumbent Republican administration is explicit in their affront to this law when they appoint an Attorney General who won't even identify the medieval practice of water boarding as torture. My problem with the NRA and people like I met at the Appleseed Project is that they're incredibly myopic. But that's the nature of interest groups and lobbyist who fail to look at the big picture, who try to convince everyone to cast their vote based on a single specific issue.

I mean really, if you want to tag the protection of civil liberties as the cornerstone of your political view, then clearly the current administration has done more to infringe upon the rights of the individual citizen then any Democratic 'gun grabber' administration in the history of the country. If the worst that Clinton had done was to drive up the price of ammo and make a few assault rifles unavailable to people, well, I'd take that over being complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people based on an out-and-out lie.

On the other hand, do I think people should be allowed to own assault rifles? Yes. There's nothing inherent in a piece of wood and iron that will kill you or turn you into a crazed murdering maniac. One does not automatically provoke violence by purchasing a rifle. I can understand the appreciation of a firearm as an object of beauty, as a survival tool, and as a symbol of something that has allowed people to take their destiny in their own hands. Yes there need to be more stringent gun control laws and tougher enforcement on existing laws so that criminals and the mentally disabled are denied access, but wholesale restriction won't prevent criminals from seeking them on the black market.

If people justify their right to own arms as a manifestation of free choice, then there are lot of other freedoms they should equally defend. If people should have the right to own assault rifles, then they should also have the right to determine whether or not to have an abortion, or to have the right to marry if they're gay. They should defend the right to due process, stand up for the principal that one is innocent until proven guilty, and be especially interested in making sure that the state must give a reason for holding you against your will. If we are true with ourselves about what it means to be free, and hold ourselves to a more absolute definition of freedom then people should also have the right to die should they feel that to be the best course of action. It may be morally hard to swallow, but it's a clear manifestation of free choice nonetheless.

Going into a broader consideration of liberty and restrictions I find it prudent to ask the question: what in human experience ensnares and what liberates? I'm not speaking just about law and enforcement here, but the broader, less apparent internal and social constraints which restrict us from being able to behave and become who we want.

The issue was made large and relevant to my recent experience with Appleseed when I watched Into the Wild just a few days afterward. Certainly we're born into obligations that have the capacity to prohibit total realization of self. The obligation to your family and moreover their expectations of what you should become are difficult in the best of contexts, and can be overwhelming when taken to the extreme. That was the covert tyranny which the protagonist was attempting to overcome in his disappearance into Alaska. Influence, the will of the group, a web of obligations, social conditioning, the expectations of your friends, your family, and your peers: all have the ability to trap and to negate the actualization of desire.

By attempting to withdraw from the natural traps of socialization you evoke suspicion, contempt, and even fear. It's a bold endeavor indeed to attempt to transcend them. But the question is relevant still: What would you do with absolute freedom?

2008-01-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

Crash!

Well, my next entry was going to be about the 50-gallon aquarium I just picked up from a friend and the insight that a plunge into the world of keeping fresh water fish would provide, but events out of my control have compelled me to change my topic. Last Saturday while driving up to Winter Park Ski Resort on US 40 I lost control of my vehicle on a patch of ice and swerved into the opposite lane, getting broadsided by a large SUV. I've told this story so many times now it sounds like lines memorized for a play, but there's no adequate retelling without the basic facts, so here it goes:

My cousin came into town from DC for a long-anticipated break from working at the Department of Defense and a return to the slopes. He had lived here in Denver for a few years while getting his graduate degree in International Relations from the University of Denver. We met up at a bar with some friends of his he had known from his hometown, Dallas, and caught up over some drinks. I had a cold and had been planning to call in the next day anyway, so we drank until late that night. I took it easy the next day trying to get myself over the cold as best I could and preparing for the next day's drive up to the mountains.

I woke the next morning eager to go out to a resort I hadn't yet been to, picking up my friend on the way. We cruised down I-70 until we came over the first foothill, descending onto congested traffic that stretched pretty much the whole way to our turn off for US-40. As soon as we exited onto that stretch of road the traffic cleared out and, eager to make up for lost time, I hit the accelerator and cruised to about 50 miles an hour. I passed one car and as I was getting back into the right-hand lane, noticed a slight slippage of traction, so I slowed down to about 40 and continued on up the road. We passed the town of Empire and headed up toward the winding switchbacks of Berthoud Pass. That's when I felt another separation from the road, but this time instead of fish-tailing a little bit and straightening myself out as had happened in that little shift before, my car made a hard left on it's own and I realized I had absolutely no control of the vehicle.

I want to say I had just enough time to see the vehicle we were headed for, but the moment seemed to last a sizable duration of time. I had time to say 'Oh shit, we're gonna hit!' at least twice before the actual collision, and after, all I remember is coming to, a little woozy, a little disoriented but trying to stay calm and get out of the car. I asked if my friend, Fred, the passenger was all right, but I don't think I even looked at him. He said he was alright, his leg was hurt a little, but that he couldn't open his door-- details of that exchange are pretty murky. But the biggest disconnect, the foggiest part of this when trying to think about it now, is accounting for the collision and all the resulting events that took place: the passage of time and chronological ordering of events. I don't remember the noise of the crash, I don't remember the sensation of banging my head against the interior, I don't remember my car spinning back into the right-hand lane. I don't even remember, and didn't even know until much later, about the other two cars that had been damaged. All I remember is getting out and looking over at another car-- I can't even recall if it was the one that had hit us or the one that had been forced off the side of the road to avoid the collision. And then I heard someone say that I was bleeding. Just after, a paramedic came up and told me to hop up in the ambulance. They later carted Fred into the truck as well, saying that it looked like he had probably dislocated his knee. Then the driver of the other vehicle was brought in on a board, her neck secured by a brace. They told her she had had a head injury but they wanted to keep her stable just in case there was any damage from whiplash.

They rushed us down to Saint Anthony's, and after the paperwork had been filled out I sat in a triage room waiting for the nurse to come and staple up the gash in my head, passing the time by listening to the drama unfolding behind the adjoining curtain between the nurse and the family of this three or four year old Hispanic girl who had apparently managed to shove a bead deep inside her nasal cavity. "You're going to have to calm her down, and use this syringe to shoot some water up her nose because she's gonna be really upset when I get in there." They gave me a tetanus shot and then the staples came, and yes they were about as fun as you would think getting staples to the back of the head would be. They released me and I looked on the display panel for the room where Fred was located.

I found Fred's room and asked how he was and what was going on, that's when I learned that he had suffered a tibial plateau fracture, meaning that the tip of his tibia in his left leg where it joins with the femur behind the patella had been severed. (I've used the analogy of the end of drumstick on a piece of chicken shearing off when I get to explaining this part about a hundred times, but looking at the diagram on the right that analogy kind of sucks ass.) Yes it was pretty serious, and yes it would require surgery, but at least, in this case the fragments were still there and can be pieced together more easily then if the bone had shattered. Long story short, he won't be walking for at least a month or two, and likely will be out of work for at least three. The lady driving the large SUV, Joy, had basically the same treatment I had: more yummy staples to the back of the head having suffered, thankfully, no injuries to her neck or spine.

All things considered I feel really lucky as it definitely could have been far far worse. I'd like to say it's been conducive to some deep introspection, but I guess the big picture hasn't really hit me yet. I've been too wrapped up in just logistical concerns like how to get to work, what I can do for Fred and his family while he's on the mend, and waiting for the onslaught of phone calls to come in from the insurance companies. Life goes on as they say, and that's good enough for me for now.

2007-10-30T22:28:00.000-06:00

NOVA Goes Bust

Well, I can safely say now that I left the Japanese eikaiwa school business at the right time. Recent mega corporation NOVA officially went belly-up last Friday, closing down it's schools and suspending operations indefinitely, thereby disaffecting scores of staff, teachers, and students. There is the posibility that an outside buyer will save the staggering giant as they haven't applied for full bankruptcy, but have opted for 'reorganization proceedings'. However the likelihood of salvation seems meager at best, with two of the three likely candidates for bailout immediately declining to take on the burden.

I had never even once considered that my relatively posh, albeit mind-numbingly repetitive, job of 'teaching' English to Japanese denizens could ever suddenly come to such a jaw-dropping halt. But that was the reality for nearly 6,000 instructors and staff in early October who saw their future with the company cut short. Those living in NOVA housing, as I had done at the start of my one and a half year stay, have recently come home to find evictions on their doors, since NOVA had not paid the rent they normally deduct from teacher salaries. Instructors have yet to see a dime of their pay from late September on while some staff have been unpaid since July.

Here are a few numbers just to give you an idea of the scope of the demise:

Total number of schools in operation shut down: 924 in addition to the huge multimedia center in Osaka

Total market share by revenue in 2003: 61.5 billion yen ($61,500,00)

Total number of students: 410,000

Total number of foreign workers: 7,000 (5,000 of which were language instructors)

First quarter losses for fiscal year 2007: 4.3 billion yen

What could precipitate such a massive, rapid decline?

Well it didn't happen overnight according to the earnings posted by NOVA several years prior to the collapse. Net sales began a long slow decline as early as 2003, and prompted an aggressive campaign of marketing, promotions, and the opening of new schools. The practices, suspect from the beginning, gradually became more and more draconian causing a huge rift with students as they were no longer able to return unused tickets for refunds. As a result of such measures and the disaffection of customers it inevitably brought about, the Japanese government got involved and in June of 2007 a six-month ban against soliciting new long-term contracts for students was placed on Nova by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. This was to be the death knell for the language school giant, as the loss of their reputation or social face, such a precious commodity for any business in Japan, precipitated their meteoric fall.

As far as what will happen to the language industry in Japan in general, its flagship now sunk, the future is unclear. Some feel that the collapse will actually be a boon for other language schools and provide better salaries and more scrutiny in the selection of teachers. They maintain that once the bitterness subsides, Japanese in general will still need to realize the necessity of integration within the global economy and the fact that they'd better learn English and other foreign languages or be left behind. Others however, feel this is just the beginning of the end, as the economy wanes and the percentage of the elderly increases. As a general trend, salaries of foreign workers had been on a steady decline since 2001 or so, and the decision will ultimately have to be made as to whether the average student, considering foreign opportunity will decide to be a consumer or a student.

2007-08-20T22:34:00.000-06:00

Critical Review of the Zeitgeist Movie

I was recently sent a link to the latest conspiracy theory peep-show known as zeitgeist.

The following is a review of such:

I found the movie somewhat compelling, with the last part sending an Orwellian chill down my spine. However, I also found the presentational elements to be overly-sensationalistic, the content to be overburdened with quotes and gratuitous clips of violence and destruction, the music cheesy, and the composition of the argument to be too jigsaw puzzle-like to swallow. Basically, the movie is broken up into three parts, the first an affront to the Christian religion stating how it's basically a composite plagiarism of astrological mythologies of the ancient world; the second more 9/11 conspiracy; and the third a damnation of the federal reserve bank-- how it has been the cornerstone of every evil act perpetuated by our government since it's inception, and how it will precipitate a totalitarian one-world government in the near future in which every civil liberty and right to privacy will be completely eroded.

As with the case of many conspiracy theory documentaries, there are lots of points of contention. Certainly myriad debates, points and counterpoints can be rendered at any time in the movie, fomenting either an exchange of scholarly debates or the usual hurling of personal insults on web forums that result when people just happen to disagree. I'll pick just a few sections of the movie that piqued my curiosity.

In part I:

Are their really that many parallels between Egyptian and Christian religious doctrines, e.g. Virgin Birth / Anointment / Crucifixion / Resurrection / Afterlife or is it just a preponderance of coincidental, agenda-filled comparisons of convenience to make the point? Certainly I accept the idea that elements in the Bible have very significant similarities with other religions traditions. I remember from a Western Civ. class in college, for example, that the word for 'rib' in Sumerian is the same for 'to make live,' an important coincidence among many when comparing the Sumerian 'Epic of Gilgamesh' with the stories of Genesis in the Hebrew Old Testament. The proximity temporally and physically between the ancient Hebrews, Sumerians, and Egyptians definitely makes the dissemination of mythological explanations for the origins of humankind quite possible.

Further, the assertion that the Egyptian God Horus, merely an allegory for the sun, arising later in the figure of Christ is at least compelling enough to take into consideration. But, as far as the claim that the historical Christ never existed, well, the jury's still out on that one. For lots of people it will take more than the assertion that just because there aren't any (sans Bible) objective historical references that confirm his existence, that, by definition there could not have been a real Christ, to sway them otherwise.

In part II:

I'd like to say I'm extremely skeptical when it comes to 9/11 conspiracy theories, but I have yet to find convincing answers for the following points:

How DO you explain the explosions that appear on video beneath the impact of the planes on buildings one and two and then again on building number seven which wasn't even hit directly by the planes?

Why was building seven not even mentioned in the official 9/11 commission report?

Is it true that the heat of the flame from the impact of the planes on the WTC could never have become hot enough to physically melt the steel of the frame, thereby causing the buildings to fall into their own footprint?

That being said, I don't necessary subscribe to the idea of an "inside job," because I don't think there's really any compelling evidence to prove it to be so. Just because you ask a question that you can't answer, doesn't mean some shadow conspiracy of evil greedy world bankers, supernatural phenomena, or alien force must therefore be the only logical explanation.

Then again, being relatively uninitiated to the dearth of CT videos and books that must now be widely available it's difficult not to be at least a little alarmed with the idea. If anyone could provide any suggestions of videos, books, or sites that promote or pan the major claims, I'd be interested to know.

In part III:

Perhaps the hardest to take in, part three begins with the claim that the main reason that colonists took up arms in the American Revolutionary War was to escape the control and regulation of our currency by the usurious King George the 3rd. But, irony of ironies the scheming robber-barons of the early 19th century pissed on the noble sensibilities of our forefathers, establishing the uber-evil federal reserve which would later become the instrument of enslavement of the American people. The movie makes the claim that income tax is evil, that there's no law saying you have to pay it, and that the lion's share of what you pay goes directly into the pockets of the rich bankers.

Well then I suppose no money is ever dispensed to: The Department of Health and Human Services, The Department of Education, The Department of State, The FDA, The National Census, The EPA, Medicaid and Social Security (although these are separate deductions), The Department of Transportation, NASA, The Department of the Interior, The Department of Agriculture, The Centers for Disease Control, etc., etc. For a real look at how your income tax is broken down, and the proposed budget changes for 2008, click the following link. What is scary looking at this poster, however, is the overall amount of money spent on military expenditures, the number of circles on the list deemed "classified," and that the budget is broken down quite simply into an overall classification of Military and Non-Military. As someone who believes we shouldn't have gone into Iraq from the start, it's hard to stomach that 67% of my tax dollars go to military funding-- that I have to pay that much to keep myself 'safe from terror.' As the one who has to pay that amount, shouldn't I have more say in how it gets allocated?

The movie further attempts to prove that the last three major wars were coerced and manipulated by this clandestine League of Evil. I don't buy the Lusitania bit, and I don't think anyone really forced the hand of the Japanese Emperor in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but the Gulf of Tonkin incident as the guiding farce behind the start of the Vietnam War (which was never even officially declared a war) is spot on. Finally, I'm intrigued to learn more about the Amero, the new currency that's to be adopted as the universal tender of North America similar to the Euro, the national identity card slated (apparently) for May of 2008, and the plan to implant people with chips for identification and control. I'll suspend judgement on that until I have more information about it. From first glance, however, it appears to be, at best, over-alarmist.

Overall I've come away from the film with the following questions and answers:
Have governments, religious clerics, or any organization of authority used lies, deceptions, fear, the media etc. to control the majority? Of course!

Is it scary how many people don't read, how much trash there is on television, how complacent and uninvolved people have become in this country? You bet your ass!

Has every conflict that ever arose in the history of the United States been instigated by the CIA who in turn were working under the orders of a secret society of wealthy elite? NO!

Was 9/11 an inside job? I seriously doubt it, although many questions remain.

Has the Bush administration failed to sell us this war? Absolutely, though it still goes on despite the fact that the majority of Congress and the American people disagree with it, the executive branch of government now having become too powerful, putting in jeopardy the system of checks and balances specified by the constitution.

Would I recommend people watch Zeitgeist? Yes, because it at least opens up debate and questions the legitimacy of our government to do the things it does to people.

Do I get annoyed of being told all the time that I need to wake-up and take action and that the truth might be more sinister than I'm willing to accept? You're goddamn right!

Am I done with this post? YES!

2007-05-31T20:52:00.000-06:00

Working in a software company gives you some intersting insight into the technological advances we can expect in the near future. I overheard one of my colleagues talking about this and thought I'd try and find some video for it. Behold the result: the Microsoft Surface PC. It seems like a pretty exciting technology that can have a lot of commerical and educational benefits. We shall see how well it goes over, as I'm sure the initial price tag will be something only the five richest kings of Europe will be able to stomache. However, if it does become a common phenomenon, you can kiss all that confusion about who ordered what at a restaurant goodbye.

A little too gadgety for your tastes? Perhaps. But working well, this kind of user-friendly technology might be the linchpin when it comes to moving away from the standard desktop PC. We've already seen the explosion of handheld devices drawing more and more attention away from the traditional box. I've had several clients sending e-mails asking about the compatibility of our software with portable devices and tablet PCs. Not just yet for the small outfit I work for, but who knows what kinds of things the future will bring?

The above video, though kind of long, and perhaps not presented as flashy as the potential of the technology suggests, gives you a good working overview of the kinds of applications that can be implemented by this software. I think it's also an attempt by Microsoft to try to wrest some market share of mp3 players away from Apple. My take? A silly sub-ploy that won't go over so well. I, for one, think it's a damn shame they'd have to resort to this kind of technological integration to get people to buy those sorry-ass zunes. Seems to me, people aren't going to buy an mp3 player just because you can trade songs on a neato graphical interactive table.

As for the potential in restaurants, resorts, and casinos? I see people jumpin' on that bandwagon real quick. There's no doubt the kids are gonna love it, too!

I wonder how many potential spin-offs there will be to this. It could very well be that we'll finally have the holographic touch-screen computers that we always seem to see in sci-fi films.

2007-04-08T19:35:00.000-06:00

Trip to San Francisco

I had a meager two days to settle into my temporary home in Denver before getting on the California Zephyr and riding out to San Fran for a friend's wedding. The sun was shining the first day, so I made some hay, signing on with Robert Half Technology to try to get my foot in the door in an IT helpdesk position. I scored pretty well on the tests, but I have yet to see any definitive results. Hopefully next week interviews will be forthcoming. Besides, it was time for vacation so there was no need to worry about inconsequential crap like work.

My friend and I went down to Union Station on the 30th hurrying to catch the 8:05 train, which was, naturally, delayed a little over two hours. So we walked down the 16th Street Mall to find a place for breakfast, and our bellies full, trundled on back to catch our train. The inital part of the ride was breathtaking as we went up through the still snow-covered Rockies to Winter Park / Granby station. The Dome Car definitely makes the ride more scenic, as well as providing a welcome break from the monotony of the coach. I was worried a little that it might be uncomfortable trying to sleep on the coach seats, and that it might have been better to shell out the extra cash for a sleeper, but once I sat down, I knew my concerns were unfounded. The coach seats recline at a deep angle and offer plenty of leg room. I just had to accept not being able to shower for two days. No biggie, 'cuz I'm adaptable like that. I was pleased with the decision to make the trip out by train because of the view afforded me and the familar comfort of being able to walk around the cars with few restrictions. It reminded me of those trips I used to take out of Hlavni Nadrazi in Prague to Dresden, Berlin, Bratislavia, Vienna, Budapest and Cesky Krumlov.

If you just want to take the train as a method to get to some premier ski resorts from Denver, thereby avoiding the ever-crowded I-70, I highly recommend it! In fact the entire route through Colorado, via Granby, Glenwood Springs, and Grand Junction is not a bad way to view the countryside. The highlight of the Colorado corridor is of course the Glenwood Canyon. On the opposite bank from the technological marvel that is that stretch of I-70, you are enthralled by views high up the Canyon Walls. The scene is just staggering, even better than what you would see driving along the highway. I stayed in the dome car nearly the whole of that stretch, my eyes transfixed on the abundant natural beauty of the American West.

The stretch of rail between Grand Junction and Green River, Utah was no less exciting. The sun was beginning to set and the unusal rock formations, millions of years in the making, can't help but capture your imagination. It was my first time in Utah, and I definitely hope to make the trip to Arches National Park, Moab, and the Canyonlands someday to see the dramatic formations that we only caught desultory glimpes of from the train.

By midnight we had arrived in Salt Lake. Obviously there wasn't much to see in the darkness but I did catch a glimpse of the Mormon Tabernacle, at least I think that's what it was. Sunrise found me waking up with a view of the vast expanse of the Nevada desert. That's when I realized just how slow we'd been going. We couldn't have been pushing more than 45 mph or so the entire trip, which can get really grueling with the uniform desert vista and nothing but an Ipod and Dostoyevsky to keep you company.

Just outside of Winnemucca Station we came to a complete stop. It was here I realized how unfair it must be for the Amtrak folks to have to subjugate themselves to the whims of Union Pacific, who dictate not only when but if they can use their rails. Apparently there were some freighters behind schedule and we had to wait a whole four hours before we could continue our crawl into Reno. Finally we reached the Sierra Nevadas and the terrain opened itself up to some more spectacular scenery. By the time we had reached the end of the line, Emoryville, we had travelled a good 35 hours. It seemed as though it had been much longer, the moment of departure from Union Station in Denver like a distant memory.

We caught the bus to Ferry Station at one of the many piers along the Embarcadero, and descending the Bay Bridge, beheld the shimmering lights of the city. San Fran is in a word, remarkable. It's easily one of the most unique American cities I've ever been to. The city has a real interest in reducing emissions as evinced by the expansive MUNI trolleybus system and the BART rails which take you from the city center directly to the airport in under 30 minutes. The topography of old San Fran is unique as well with steep streets canyoned by old Victorian Townhomes, some of which direct your gaze straight out to the sea. We were picked up by my friend's cousin whose couch and cot we would surf for the next four nights. That night we went down to the local bar and had a brief tour around our area, just north of the notorious Haight Ashbury. The next morning we got up, threw on our fancy duds and walked down to the Great American Music Hall, the venue for the wedding. Escorted as we were into an ornate deep red interior with ceiling frescoes and gold trim I realized that the bride, who had been a fellow teacher in Prague, had really gone all out for her big day. I won't go into the details of the cermony and reception, but suffice it to say four martinis and seeing friends you hadn't seen for several years in a city you've never been to is hella cool!

That evening found us at a local bar for an open mic poetry reading of which there is no shortage of in San Francisco. Back in Houston I went to a couple of these, but there just didn't seem to be much spirit in them. People were either uber-pretentious or just embarrassing to watch. Made skeptical by such experiences, I was happy to be exposed to some real talent and had a kind of rekindling of my interest in literture. San Francisco is a cultural mecca, and not just for its abundance of grand halls. You get the feeling of a thriving, for lack of a better word, plebian art scene where folks take a deeper interest in painting, music, literature than in your average city; where people might actually stop and listen for a moment to a street corner orator-- a refreshing break from strip malls and the ho-hum nine-to-five.

The second night found us in the Mission District, which I would describe as working class chic; where the Revolution, though wearing more fashionable clothes than it used to, still will not be televised. We listened to more poetry, since my freind's cousin was recruiting talent for the second annual poem dome, where artisans from all over the city gather to spit their venom in the confines of San Fran's immaculate City Hall. This night wasn't nearly as good as the first, or at least didn't start out that way since we left to meet another cousin halfway through. It consisted of a few decent poems and some less than inspiring hip-hop. We didn't really get a chance to do much typical tourist sightseeing, but that's OK because I always like to leave a little for a second visit, but we did make it down to Chinatown on day three for some shopping, damn good seafood and stiff Mai Tais at the Empress of China restaurant. We went down the main drag of Chinatown out to a major thoroughfare, the name of which escapes me, as you would expect after some stiff-ass Mai Tais, into the City Lights Bookstore, owned to this day by the Beat Poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. That alone makes me want to make a second trip!

2007-03-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

Is it sloth or sheer genious?

This week's badass of the week award goes to this guy, simply for having the innovation to think outside of the fridge. Some people would say this device is just another example of the decay of a society already on the verge of social collapse. Compared to what though? Pet rocks? Surely this invention is less stupid then a lot of other crap.

See for yourself and make your own call.

Then take a look at some of the competition. Is a robotic beer arm really any stupider?

2007-03-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

Later this month, after my initial move from Houston to Denver, Colorado, I'll be taking the California Zephyr from Denver to San Francisco to attend a friend's wedding. Although it's likely to be a scenic and enjoyable train ride, it occurred to me when booking the one-way 33 and 1/2 hour trip (I'll be flying back), how sorely we need more and better quality high speed trains to connect major cities in America. The only substantial corridor connecting major cities is the Amtrak Acela Express that links Washington DC to Boston via New York City. Even at a top speed of about 150 miles per hour it pales in comparison to its European and Japanese counterparts.

Many of course make the claim that since fuel costs are much less here than in Europe and the density of the U.S. population is so much less than that of Japan that high-speed trains here just don't make any sense. I can understand the logic behind that argument, but I think there are several corridors of cities that would be well-served by the kind of technology that is routinely enjoyed by people in all the other industrially advanced countries of the world. I'm not alone in this idea, as evinced by the proliferation of municipal, non-profit, and even corporate interest in building high-speed rail in the U.S. I was surprised to learn, for example that even here in Texas there is a group who have designs to create a network of high-speed trains linking Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas together in something called the Texas T-bone. It will likely be a cold day in hell, given the current political climate before this is realized, but it is at least heartening to see the growth of interest in the idea.

The airline industry which even with all the government subsidies has become an increasingly risky, difficult to sustain business in the U.S. has even jumped on the train bandwagon because they see it as way to get more passengers to airports that can serve longer distance flights. I mean really what's not to like? It's more fuel-efficient, it has a higher passenger capacity, it's less expensive to operate than an airline route, it's safe, and newer technologies are constantly being developed to increase the speed of these trains. People seem to forget that before the 1950s, trains were THE way to get around in the U.S. I found an interesting discussion about the issue of high-speed trains here. Also, I noticed that in Japan which has a mind-numbing array of variety when it comes to public transportation, there's a national train service and a growing privatized train industry. So I will not, WILL NOT, entertain any Limbaugh-esque argument that federal subsidies for trains will just create a welfare state of apathetic federal workers who sit around all day like they do in France, blah blah blah.

After all, providing high-speed energy-efficient rail as a supplement to already heavily-government-subsidized highway and airline industries is hardly any more a waste of tax payer money than the cash we have to shell out for this ill-begotten, reprehensible, unjustifiable war in Iraq!

2007-02-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

This week's entry: Is he bad ass or frivolass?

Back in 2003, a man was fired from IBM for logging on to an adult chatroom during work. Now he's trying to SUE the company for violation of the American Disabilities Act. How could you sue a company on such seemingly ridiculous and unrelated grounds? Well, according to the former employee and Vietnam war veteran, using the internet was "a form of self-medication" for post-traumatic stress suffered after losing a good friend in battle. So during a break in his regular schedule, James Pacenza logged on to an internet chatroom in order to "tempt [himself] to perhaps become involved in some titillating conversation."

Yeah right, nice choice of words there perv-boy.

Unfortunately for Pacenza, however, he forgot to log out of his session, and some of that 'titallating conversation' was plainly visible for all the other employees to see.

And you know, I could see him winning the case if during his initial interview he had mentioned his dirtly little coffee break plans to his manager.

Oh yeah, just one thing I think I should let you know before I start, Mr. Sanders. Well, you see, every once in a while a get a little down during the day, so, uhm, in order to perk me up a bit, I might have this uncontrollable urge to log on to SpankyChat and tell Debra773 how much I wanna reach down and peel off her silky lace panties, and that kind of thing. I mean, you know how hard it is being a vet and all. We've got special needs that the average person just can't understand.

Had he said that at the outset of his 19 years at IBM and they hired him on anyway, then, maybe ONLY THEN, would I think he have grounds for a case. Further, if he wins the case, what kind of precedent would be set? I mean, would Bob in the cubicle next to you, the guy who just finished his tour of duty in Iraq, then be allowed to disrupt your hard work on those TPS reports with all that moaning and heavy breathing? Maybe I should go tell my boss about that time in high school when a bully beat me up and gave me a weggie right in front of the hot valedictorian I sat behind (but never talked to), just to try to get my SpankyChat on too.

Even so, if he is somehow able to pull it off, I will gladly award Pacenza:

The awawman bad ass of the week!

2007-02-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

My bad-ass of the week award goes to:

pilot Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine

Who thawarted a hijacker's attempt to divert his Canary Island bound plane to Paris.
Realizing that the assailant, who had boarded the flight from Mauritania, didn't speak any French, the pilot made an announcement over the intercom to the passangers of his plan to knock him off balance. The hijacker, who may or may not be Mauritanian, was apparently holding a gun to the pilot's head but was knocked off balance by a sudden manouver of bad ass, pilot Lemine. After falling to the cockpit floor and dropping one of his pistols, the crew overpowered the hijacker and poured hot water on that rat-fucker's face. Get the whole account here.

And here's a lesson to all you would be hijacker pricks: If you demand the pilot take you somewhere even at gunpoint, you had damn well better know some of the language of the place you intend to go.

So here's to you, Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine, you're awawman's bad ass of the week.

2006-12-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

So far, in my haphazard attempt at blogging, I have failed to mention that Japan is not the first place I have lived abroad. I was in the Czech Republic for a year and a half prior to my moving there. I find it prudent to discuss the differences between the two because I believe the duality of the experience is unique, although I know perhaps six other people who have lived in both places.

Work life:
Nothing could be further apart than teaching English in Prague and teaching English in Japan. First of all, let’s take a look at the social approaches to learning the world’s most internationally recognized language. In the Czech Republic learning English was an expediency; a means to an end. When I arrived, the Czech Republic hadn’t yet joined the European Union, but they were on the cusp so the demand for English teachers was to promote broader integration with member nations. My trainers in Barcelona (I started the whole work abroad fettish with a TEFL course there) told me as much when I was there. I believe at least two of them had spent a good deal of time there. Throughout the time I worked there, I ran the gamut of different attitudes. Learning English could be a very leisurely activity or an utter nightmare. Unlike in Japan, there was no disguising how people felt about it. I wasn’t too keen on the early morning business classes, and in fact, neither were many of my students. Generally, the evening classes at the school were my favorites. Twice a week for 90 minutes I would stand up in front of a group of people and actually put my TEFL training to use. Although I usually didn’t prepare as much as I could have or should have, and perhaps I lacked imagination, I was genuinely concerned about the students’ performance. I used a variety of activities: writing, speaking, listening, grammar, vocabulary, conversation, peer review, role-play, forum, presentation, dictation. I graded papers, I got people interested, I entertained--I read about English grammar, educational theory, and second language acquisition. I actually taught. And generally, my efforts were appreciated. I never once received a complaint. In retrospect I don't feel it's going out on a limb to say that the approach to teaching employed by the Caledonian School felt far more academic than what I was made to do whilst (yeah, I said whilst) teaching at NOVA.

A typical working day at the Caledonian school consisted of waking up at 6:00 in the morning, taking a shower and getting ready, then grabbing a jablkovy zavin and cavu s mlekem (apple stroodle and coffee with cream) from a bakery near Namesti Republiky and trudging my way to class. The winters were long and cold. I’d usually try my best to force my eyes open as best I could, and just get through the morning lesson. I did a lot of work in the morning at various Komercni Banka classes throughout the greater Prague area. I had one seven o’clock class at Namesti Miru I particularly disliked, though I didn't mind watching the snowflakes falling on the Medieval Cathedral in the square.

Towards the end of my stay they had me going to a middle school once a week. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated it would be, and the classes were only 45 minutes long. Typically, after one or two morning lessons, I’d go to school at Andel to have lunch at the café in the basement, use the internet, and plan the day’s lessons at the library. During lunch, I usually had the opportunity to meet with friends and socialize about students, lessons, Czech life, or make plans to go drinking that evening.

Social life:
There was a lot of drinking in the evenings at the school, and especially throughout the greater Prague area. Our haunts included but were not limited to:

· The pool hall near Lucerna and then another closer to Namesti Republiky when the former had closed down. The latter was a revamped ballroom with a vast coffered ceiling, bowling (pins-on-strings) lanes, darts, and a plethora of billiards, snooker, and pool tables. They also had Cerna Hora on tap, a cheaper, but still tasty Pilsner.

· The Lucerna dance hall itself, which I got dragged to more times than I’d like to admit. This featured cheesy-easy eighties music, with a notable focus around the late 80s and early 90s, when the wall had fallen and took with it all of Soviet Czechoslovakia. Those days must have been absolutely electrifying—you could still feel the remnants of the magic whenever The Final Countdown was pumped through the sound system.

· The bar Nevada—this sleazy herna bar was the natural choice for those teachers who wanted to flex their lush muscles after the Caledonian café had closed.

· The Reggae joint near Dlouha Trida, which a French teacher from Mali who lived in a nearby room in the days when I was staying at the Hotel Dum (pronounced 'doom') in Modrany, recommended to me.

· Vinorady. Despote spending my first week in Prague living there, in a 36-person dorm, and seeing the occassional show at the Acropolis, I didn't spend a lot of time in that area. I remember the adjoining restaurant as well because it had chairs hanging upside down from the ceiling.

· U Buldoka (At the Bulldog)—this was your average meat-market conveniently located near the school

· The bar Ujezd at the tram station with the same name. This was a drinking hole on the way back from the school next to the popular Bohemia Bagel.

· The cavernous wine bar, U Sudu was located near Vaclavske namesti. If you walked past Lucerna to the next intersection it was off to the right somewhere. My memory has become pretty foggy at this point.

· Battalion, this was a bar filled with shady characters located on Na Prikope, the wide shopping lane that runs perpendicular to Vaclavske Namesti.

· The Marquis de Sade. A large-plan open floor room that had apparently used to be a brothel. We spent many drunken nights at this place, but in fact, I only puked outside there once.

So, If the photos, links, and the Romantic idea of barfing on cobble-stone streets have piqued your interest in travelling to Prague you can find a good link for things to do and see here. And if you're man or woman enough you should try the yellow line pub crawl. That is, start at one end of the line and have a beer at each station and see how far you can get. My personal best was an admirable 16, though I was beaten by my roommate.

Because we all had the weekends off, I spent a lot more time outside of work with fellow teachers, and as such was able to create social bonds the likes of which were logistically much more difficult in Japan. I’d usually have a late afternoon class at the school, or some evenings I’d go to the Phillip Morris building at Karlovo Namesti. I worked at a lot of large companies including Unilever, Phillip Morris, ING, Citibank, the magazine company Hachete Fillipacci (which was nice because it was really near my house and was full of lots of hot women) and some smaller local outfits as well, after which we'd arrange to meet at one of the above mentioned dives, but mostly just the basement cafe would suffice.

As for classes, it sounds like a lot of travel, but it really wasn’t so bad. The main commercial area of Prague is not quite that big, so I found that taking the subway or the tram I was able to get from any of my classes in around ten to fifteen minutes. I was lucky not to get any airport classes or suburban middle school assignments. This convenience is, of course, barring the first five months or so of my stay in which I was settled at the above-mentioned Hotel Dum, an accomodation intially provided me by the school. It was nice of them to put me up, but not so nice to choose a place that was so far away from the center of the city. It took a good hour and a half to some places. And as the scheduled classes were very early in the morning, I had to wake up sometimes at 5:30 to make it to class. And if that wasn’t enough, the hotel was often full of wily German, Spanish, or Italian high-school students on class trips who were allowed to raise hell up until and sometimes past 4 in the morning. On more than one occasion I was late, but I always stayed later to make up the difference.

Work life in Japan is far, far different. First of all, there is nothing even remotely academic about the organization for which I work. They are far more interested in customer growth and retention. They could really give a damn if the students are actually learning anything or not, or if they’re getting value for their money. In terms of the quality of teaching provided by myself in Prague versus that which I churned out on a typical day at NOVA, there is no question that the Prague students bar none got a much better deal. At NOVA, it’s more like a language factory. You have eight lessons a day for which you are given no more than ten minutes to plan for between classes. They look at English teaching as no better than producing microchips on an assembly line or efficiently helping as many customers per hour as possible in a quality control queue. At NOVA, you are an interchangeable part. There’s not much room for original ideas, and I’ve found that the students don’t particularly appreciate it if you have them. English teaching is a binary code-based system of data entry and recapitulation. Every language act has a one-size-fits-all clearly prescribed formula. At times, you feel like you are programming a robot. At others, you're having a fascinating conversation with an intelligent, captivating individual.

In general, there’s seldom any art to your work. But the thing that brought me there and kept me there was that the money was far better (even taking into account cost of living) than in the Czech Republic, and I had debts that needed to be paid off. As well, I’d grown accustomed to the system, and became pretty comfortable in the routine. Moreover, despite the bleak picture I present, there are in fact a few advantages. First of all, you don’t have the extended day that you do in Prague. You work a little less than eight hours, and when you finish, your work is done. There’s no necessity to plan for the next day, because every lesson plan is basically the same with minor variations. You don’t have to grade papers; you don’t have to do the annoying small jobs, like typing up cloze activities (though I have tried this in some classes), or cutting out role play cards or objects to be used in a game. At first, the biggest disappointment to working at NOVA, despite the aforementioned factory feel is the necessity of having to teach kids. Kids generally are allowed to run amuck in Japan without the slightest fear of punishment or retribution. In fact, we instructors are forbidden to discipline at all; if they start acting up, we have to walk back to the reception desk like sullen younger siblings to tattle on our naughty, bullying brothers and sisters. In general, the Japanese yearning for social accord or conformity hormone so pervasive in Japanese society manifests itself in children from about the age of 7 or 8, sometimes earlier, though, of course, there are exceptions either way. But, there are those rare occasions where you get a glitch in the matrix, a student who won’t be quiet, doesn’t listen, says derogatory things about you right to your face, or who throws heavy objects at your testicles. Daisuke you little bastard! Even in these circumstances, all we can do is tell the staff to come in and deal with the child, who is usual reprimanded by a cooing admonishment or a candy-soft slap on the wrist. Kids’ classes at NOVA are largely a daycare service. The curriculum is designed merely to keep them busy, and is composed of such ludicrous target language as “It’s windy, so I’m fine.” It took me some time before I could develop the right approach and use of materials and games that the classes could become tolerable. You certainly do not feel adequately prepared to teach kids after your meager two days of training in which no kids are involved, and in which no veteran kid’s teacher classes are observed. I spent most of the time holding hands and singing with a 35-year-old. If you sit back and think about it, it’s pretty insane.

More on my Japanese experience later . . .

2006-12-15T16:34:00.000-07:00

So today marks the one year anniversary of my return from Japan. One year ago today I was on a plane flying to Vancouver to visit my ex and check out the Pacific Northwest for the first time. Since I hated the 14 hour cramped uncomfort and customer diservice of the Northwest flight out of Detroit on the way to Japan back in April of 2004, I thought I'd break up the trip back home and see something new on the way. Having heard so many good things about the west coast and in particular British Columbia itself, I figured I'd give it a go (as my Aussie friends like to say) to see what all the fuss was about. I was not disappointed. I had originally planned to do some snowboarding in Whistler but it turned out to be too far away, and then tried to book accomodation at the closer, less popular and less expensive Mount Washington, but was still unable to make the cut. In fact, from a financial standpoint, I picked a pretty dumb time to leave. I should have calcuated all the last minute bill paying I was going to have to do, perhaps waiting until after I had received my last paycheck before I left, because I ended up having to borrow 500 yen from a neighbor just to pay the bus fare to the airport. I had thought I would have just enough cash to get there, but after the train of utility folks had come to collect their final bills--a madenning revolving door of head scratching, sucking of teeth, bows, and thumping balances with index fingers-- I realized I had become (except for my last 1000 yen note) completely skint (as my English friends like to say). And what's more, I wanted to pay my final cell phone bill by credit card in the airport, but of course they don't often accept credit cards in many places in Japan (you would think that the airport would be an exception), so I had to tap out cash on said credit card just to be able to pay the bill.

Initially I arrived in Vancouver, met up with Sonia who was working as a travel agent, and took the ferry over to Victoria. From there we hopped on the bus to her place, dropped off the stuff and took a look around. Victoria, I thought was a fantastic place, though perhaps a little too small for my tastes as a place to settle down. And then we went to Tofino, a quiet seaside town that had plenty to offer in terms of relaxation and natural beauty. The air was so clear, the sunset so beautiful, and the experience of hanging out with the ex not nearly as weird as I had anticpated it to be. We toured some of the provincial parks on the cost, impressed by the thick pines as we watched the driftwood buffeted on the shores. All in all, it was a good experience, and one which to my mind was a much better way to slowly reintegrate yourself into your native culture after an extensive time abroad. After all, think of all the physical things you have to re-acclimate yourself to-- the time difference, the difference in temperature, humidity, air pressure, elevation, flora and fauna, allergens, etc.-- let alone the cultural challenges.

It's interesting when you realize how much is written about travel experience, and the musings of a culture from a foreign perspective, but you find very little about reintegration and the difficulties of overcoming reverse culture shock. Part of which is how naked your home culture becomes upon returning. The opportunity to travel and live in a foreign culture provides the opportunity to not only objectively assess that culture, but to give you a fuller understanding of your own. I came to places like Japan and the Czech Republic only to find myself ruing the seeming lack of any particular defining American culture when compared with the rich historical traditions the other places possess. Even our language is borrowed, and we have no truly defining native ethnicity, except for the Amer-Indian tribes dwelling on Reservations and in relative obscurity in the national limelight. As well, many of us non-native Americans feel cut off from our own cultural heritage. Many first generation immigrants see their children completely losing touch with their past. And the only thing that seems to connect us is our desire for material gain. Our culture, in large part, is defined by our materials: our cars, our stars, our pop icons, our brand names and restaurant chains. It's not surprising then that the things that most expats say they miss when abroad are restaurant franchises. I've been guilty of same of course, looking at my fourth bowl of noodles in as many nights and thinking, "Damn I could go for some IHOP pancakes right about now." At least Christmas is one tradition we manage to keep above being exploited for material gain . . . Bwa ha ha!!

2006-11-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

So the other day I had the bright idea to try this for grins:

Delete all the files on the Toshiba IDE hard drive (the one that came with my laptop, but I removed in favor of a 100 gig Samsung replacement).
Copy all important files to a folder on the C drive of the borrowed Compaq PrettySorryO, and then replace the Samsung laptop hard drive with the Toshiba listed in number one.
Install the newest evaluation copy of Server 2003. Update the drivers if necessary: web cam, headphones, network card, and possibly the removable storage device. In fact, I probably shouldn’t erase the Samsung hard disk until I’m sure I can find and install all the necessary drivers.
The idea is that the drivers necessary for the equipment that’s on that laptop are already loaded in the memory of the Toshiba hard drive, so I shouldn’t have trouble with my sound card any longer.
Also, it might be a good idea to buy a cheap desktop from someone on craigslist. Then I could install another Server computer to screw around with. Or I could just download and use VMWare.

OK, so I tried this. I deleted and formatted the Toshiba IDE hard drive. Then I installed the R2 version of Server 2003 that came with the book. I found a CD with the driver of the network card. I also upgraded a related driver for the network card listed in the device manager. I still should try and find the newest firmware for both the card and router. Although, I should check to see which version of the router I have. I was reading earlier on the Linksys forums that I could have some potential problems if I want to screw around with VPN routing through the Linksys router. Apparently the version 5 & 6 releases of the router had serious limitations to VPN routing, but a guy on the site recommended ‘flashing’ the router with some open source UNIX software, and that seemed to fix the problem.

I haven’t bothered with trying to search for and/or install the drivers for the headphones, web cam, or storage device, but I get the same problem when it comes to the sound card and the PCI card, the drivers for these devices just don’t seem to be supported with Server 2003. Once I get that new computer I’ll once again wipe the notebook hard drive and install XP on it, and hopefully that will have the necessary sound card drivers on it. It makes sense if you think about it. Why should you need to have a sound device on a server? That’s not its purpose. There were also a couple of other devices (consistent with the last install) that failed to load, but I don’t think any of them are necessary for server functionality.

As for the drivers that DO work with the Operating System, namely the Device Driver for the Logitech USB headphones and the web cam (even though it’s not digitally signed), I suppose I can find and copy them to CD from the entries I have in the WINDOWS folder on the Samsung IDE hard disk, which has now become the external drive. When I finally make that laptop my functional production XP computer, I’ll wipe that external drive and use it just for storage: unless, of course I find a cheap laptop that will support it. Then perhaps I can load another operating system on it and have another working networked computer. Maybe I’ll load the version of Puppy Linux I saw available for download. That’s pretty sweet to be able to have a functional operating system for FREE!

Also, I found a lot of really good general information about computing from some PC World articles.

But even after the installation of said OS, the installation of Active Directory, and a brief check of the DNS utility to make sure all of the necessary resource records were there, I was unable to ping client to server / server to client. I suspect firewall problems. How else would I not be able to receive the necessary ICMP packets. What was more perplexing was the fact that I didn’t receive a helpful reply when I ran the nslookup utility on the server.

What’s up wit dat? I think I’m gonna play a game to see how long I can go without getting frustrated or giving up. Also, I think I got rid of File and Print sharing services for the workstation’s NIC based on bad advice when seeking help at an MCSA forum.

Try putting that back on, then make sure the firewall is turned off, then make sure that you’ve got static IP addresses on the client and server and the client is set up to use the server’s IP address for DNS name resolution. Also check the router configuration to make sure that nothing is preventing it from routing packets between machines, though I don’t know what could be doing this, and have never seen the router interfere with traffic on the local network, but I suppose it’s worth a try. Also, give the workstation a reboot and then try to join it. You might even pre-stage the computer account in Active Directory Users and Computers, and then try to join it.

2006-11-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

Log of Events leading to an eventual career as network administrator or as the head of my own private e-business:

There are a number of skills I must possess in order to ensure optimal performance of a network. The most current issue that has been perplexing me is the inability of my test workstation to join my test domain.

Relevant facts and actions are:
The server is configured as a domain controller, a DHCP server, an IIS server, and a DNS Server. This is necessary, although not best practice, because it’s the only server I have in my possession.

The DHCP server has a scope configured in the private IP address range from 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.254. Scope options are configured to assign IP addresses within the range and to provide the DNS server address of 192.168.1.102. This is the address of the server, but I can already see a problem in the fact that I’ve configured the server with an IP address within the scope. It would be better to configure the server with a static address that is NOT within the range, i.e. anything between 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.99 as this would prevent the computers (even though all I have is the one workstation) from having IP configuration redundancy problems. I have also assigned a default gateway server option of 192.168.1.1. This is the address of the Linksys wireless access point router within the network used to send packets back and forth between computers and to and from the internet via the ISP. At some point I suppose I should install forwarding for internet accessibility, and use the local DNS server for name resolution to network shares in an internal domain. I’ve disabled DHCP and DNS on the router.

Most of the time the culprit of not being able to join a workstation to a domain is simply entering an incorrect domain name. But this most assuredly is NOT THE CASE, because I’ve checked it a dozen times.

I can ping the workstation from the server and vice-versa. The client is configured to obtain its IP address from the DHCP server. It is able to do this successfully, so it doesn’t seem that the problem lies with DHCP.

However, I am unable to ping the FQDN (fully qualified domain name) of the server from the workstation or server itself suggesting there’s either a problem with Active Directory or the DNS server as these two services are inextricably linked. These are the most likely culprits responsible for the failure of the workstation to find the domain server when I try to join it to the domain. The error I get when the workstation fails to find the domain states that it was unable to find the DNS SRV resource record necessary for joining the domain.
So, in order to diagnose DNS I could use debug logging and / or check the error events on the DNS server Event Viewer. It makes sense to verify whether or not it’s the DNS server that’s causing the problem, as its elimination as a possible culprit would mean it was the Active Directory partition that’s malfunctioning. I should research the results of the Event Viewer errors or the ‘Incoming’ results of debug log. I will document the results of this process in the next post.

Also, I should run the dcdiag command-line utility to test the integrity of the Active Directory server. There are a bunch of diagnostic tools available to troubleshoot server malfunctions. The difficult part is knowing what to do with the information that gets returned, or being able to make any sense of it for that matter.

What I have done so far, in my reckless haste, is to just remove the DNS service altogether and reinstall it with the same parameters as before. This has proved inadequate in solving the problem. I also tried restarting the DNS Server Service to no avail.

Then, in feckless reckless haste I removed and reinstalled the Active Directory partition, something of course you would NEVER want to do in the context of a large production network. But, I did learn that removing the Active Directory and replacing it to make it possible for the workstation to join the domain was also ineffectual. And to further complicate matters, I should have realized that doing so would create a new Administer User Profile that would replace my old one. It makes finding necessary files and folders created in the context of my previous User Profile difficult and time consuming. Plus I have to reinstall a lot of programs and tweak a bunch of settings just to get back to the setup I had before uninstalling the AD. Let that be a lesson to you, young man!

So now, I need to organize the files and folders of the various administrator accounts and merge them into the current profile. In fact, I need to start thinking about which files I plan to save once the evaluation copy runs out of time, and backup those files to the external hard-drive. At some point I plan to get another computer to be used as a full time server, so that I can replace with OS of my laptop with XP Professional (I’m finding some devices and programs just don’t work the same on Server 2003). I suppose the rule is Server is Server and Client is Client and never the twain shall meet.

Ideally, I’d like to find a computer that can run Server 2003 from some schmuck on craigslist who also has a copy of the XP Professional CD because I ended up having to install the one copy I have on a borrowed workstation.

The painful lesson I learned from this fiasco is that if you upgrade to XP Professional, you can roll back to 95, 98, ME, or 2000, but you can’t roll back to XP home edition. I put the evaluation copy of XP on the (borrowed) computer and had to install my legitimate copy on it once the 180-day evaluation period ran out. If I hadn’t, there would have been hell to pay because of all of the files on the computer would have been lost, and I might not have been able to borrow the computer again.

Another issue that has caused me some concern was my inability, back in the day when I successfully networked these two computers in a domain, to copy the local profile and save it to the network share of user profiles on the server. The idea was to do this, and then create a user account in Active Directory with the same name as the local account and point the profile location of the user account to the share on the server. I tinkered with nearly everything I could think of in my ill-fated attempts to do this, including changing the local security policies to deny logon rights to the Administrator. That was brilliant! Luckily I still had another administrator account I was able to use to return the security policies to their default settings. So as you can see, it’s been basically a comedy of errors when it comes to smooth network functionality, but I suppose the important thing I’m learning is what NOT to do.

Rule number one: Don’t do anything in haste and frustration. Problem solving requires patience and discipline. You need to approach each problem you come across with the cool analytical reasoning of a machine. You should use the following process as a guide:

Encounter the problem
diagnose the circumstances
eliminate possible culprits
isolate the cause
determine a remedy
fix the problem
document everything you’ve done
recreate the problem
fix the problem again
smirk like a badass

Nowhere in this process is it written to give up, get pissed off, smash the computer with a golf club (although the thought has occurred to me more than once), or state that the problem is beyond your ability to resolve.
Hopefully the next post will be filled with glowing highlights of how I figured out was wrong, successfully joined the computer to the domain, and created a roaming profiles of all user accounts.

2006-10-16T11:41:00.000-06:00

If at first you don't succeed . . .

I got over the hump last Friday, and obliterated the 70-291 Server Infrastructure test with a score of 920! I was meticulous in going over the practice tests provided in the CD that comes with the Microsoft Press text book in addition to reviewing a host of other materials provided to me by my mentor. Additionally, I did a lot of supplemental reading from other texts included in the course website. I found the text, MCSA/MCSE Exam 70-291: Implementing, Managing and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure Study Guide (Syngress Publishing 2003) to be a MUCH more informative an interesting read than the robotic drivel churned out in the Microsoft Press study guide. As such, I'm determined to read whatever preperatory text they have for the 70-293 exam from cover to cover before registering to take it.

As a result of the last accomplishment I'm more than halfway done now with the MCSE certification. Whether or not this is going to translate into a worthwhile investment remains to be seen, but I know I've seen a lot of job postings that specifically mention this credential as a prerequisite or at least an attractive supplement to experience.

And speaking of experience . . .

It's noteworthy that I've failed to mention so far in any of my postings what it is that I do, and what, if any, relationship this might have to my stated objective of becoming a network administrator. The reason for the ommission is that at the time I came home from from overseas and started working, I was extremely paranoid that any mention of the company I was working for on a personal site might constitute a breach of the non-disclosure agreement I had signed. Also, I'd probably be much more likely, if I started blogging about my job to do what most people inevitably do when they start talking about work, to bitch and bitch and bitch. But, I'd heard horror stories about people who'd been fired from their jobs for complaining about working conditions there on blogs or myspace acounts. So I decided to just stay away from the issue entirely.

But no more . . .

Seeing that I no longer work at the position mentioned above I'm at liberty to present to you my list of gripes and bitter wounds suffered from slaving away for 'the man':

From late January of this year to late September I was working as a contractor for ExxonMobil as a clerical assistant hired on for what was initially a six month project. The project consisted of archiving producing property well sales and prepping these documents for shipment to offsite storage. It was an easy job, as admin contract assignments usually are, and towards the end of it I was even moved into my own office, a rare treat for such a peon job title.

All in all I really can't complain too much about the position, but I will say the department I was in is full of fossils, some of whom can't control their bowels. Initially I was sat caddy-corner to this one guy who made no attempt to control his rampant flatulance. No joke. I'd be sitting there and it would be real quiet, and then out of nowhere 'BRAAAAAAAAAAP!' like a cruise ship was coming in to dock.

I also found that my manager was forgetful and unfocused, often blaming myself and another coworker for mistakes she had made. She was hypocritical too, deriding me for coming in late a few times when she herself was consistently late the whole time I was there. Conflicts were really rare, however, so I don't want to present the impression that it was a hostile environment. Really, I got away with murder most of the time. My co-contractor and I would sometimes go into vacant conference rooms to play hackeysack for a good fifteen minutes at a time in addition to taking far more smoke breaks than we had been allowed. Not to mention the fact that all I did was study or surf the internet the vast majority of the time. But my colleague was no different. What set us apart was his constant interaction with boss. He even went so far to go out with the boss and her husband one night to prove that even though he was a white boy, he could shake that thang with the rest of the brothahs. It was at this point that I new favoritism had set in, and if there was going to be a decision as to who was going to stay and who was going to go, it was gonna be me.

I just wish I would have had a little more warning. I called in on a Tuesday morning a couple weeks ago to say that I wasn't going to come in because I was sick, which was true. My boss showed real concern in her wish for me to get better, and didn't seem to be upset in the least by my abscence. Then about two minutes after I hung up, the temp agency called me to say that my manager had had a meeting the previous day with her boss, and they had concluded that the project was nearing completion and therefore ExxonMobil (which had made a record 36 billion dollars in the summer quarter) could no longer afford to have two contractors working on the project. It would have been nice to at least finish out the rest of the week.

But who cares because I found another job, an open-ended temp assignment at Royal Dutch Shell, just a few days after being let go. This one is slightly more related to the networking industry as it involves the retention of records in Outlook for the litigation department. My hope is that such experience will help to better understand the function of Microsoft Exchange Server in terms of remote access, security, deployment, retention of records, etc.

I'll keep you informed of further developments . . .

2006-07-18T18:34:00.000-06:00

Wow, talk about a hell of a long time since a last post! I'll skip past the petty excuses, and just delve right into the nexus of the issue. The issue is that ever since coming back from Japan, I haven't been able to think of a compelling role for this blog. Of course, what with two jobs and studying for an MCSE, I could of course make the all-too-often used, but palpably true, excuse of being too busy.

I have, though, finally thought up a point to this blog, which will, out of my impatient human nature, demotivate me just as much as motivate me to write about it. My plan, now that so much suspense has been built up for it, will simply be to chronicle my studies up to and possibly, beyond becoming a network administrator. Or if not this lofty goal, I hope it will at least find me some kind of position in the IT industry.

First, the background . . .

I have been studying for certification exams since January of this year, and so far have received:

The CompTIA Network+ Certificate
A Microsoft Certified Professional Certificate (which seems kind of a dubious title, seeing as it in no way has made me feel like a professional of any sort) for Windows XP Professional, also known as the certification of a passing score in the 70-270 exam.
A Certificate of passing the 70-290 exam which covers implementing, managing and maintaining a Windows Server 2003 enviroment.
Currently, I'm working on the 70-291 exam: Implementing, Managing, and Maitaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure.

I have studied for, and have been able to pass the first three listed test using the curriculum provided by TechSkills here in Houston.

For any of those who might be thinking about developing a career in IT, through said institution I hereby submit my review:

Techskills is the type of institution that can be beneficial or a complete waste of money solely depending, (like life in general) on the ability of the student to motivate himself to study.

The curriculum, if given it's just scrutiny, is relatively sound. Generally you are shown a series of web-linked lectures related to a particular topic or objective of the test. These may include things like: installations, transferrng settings, troubleshooting, file sharing, backups and restores, DHCP, DNS, VPN, network topolgy, routing, terminal services, updates, performance monitoring, disk management, recovery tools, IIS, user profiles, group, user, contact, computer accounts, device management, security, etc. this list is by no means exhaustive. Anything you are willing to learn about is made available to you.

This is, in addition, to an on-line tech library which makes available hundereds of related e-texts, which I understand you will be able to use, even after the period of your education has expired.

In addition to this, you are provided the corresponding industry-standard text for each exam. The most useful of which I find to be the included software. You get technical encylopedia and extensive practice tests included in the CD that comes with the book, although these I find to be tangential in that they cover a lot more than the related objectives require. What's really useful is the evaluation copy of the operating system covered on the test. You get 180 days to modify, monitor, maintain and mangle (should the fancy take you), an enterprise edition of Server 2003 (which I'm using to write this entry, as a matter of fact). A pretty good value, if you consider the retail edition of the same OS costs upwards of $500. And luckily for me, I've got four more tests to go, which means, an additional (not including the time remaining on this edition) 720 days in which I can use Sever 2003 to mess around with before I have to decide whether or not to buy a real copy.

Another benefit, and I believe this to be crucial for anyone just starting out, like myself, is the physical lab available on-site which uses Norton's Ghost software that captures images of an O.S. to be distributed out to networked computers.

Say for example you want to see the permutations of networking ServerNT with a Linux Red Hat computer and Windows ME. All you have to do is find the corresponding file in the Ghost Server, boot the client using the Ghost boot disk, relay the image to the client and you can create that network without having to go through the painful process of physically installing each OS.

Some technologies, however, might be employed by the more savvy at a much lower cost than that offered at Techskills. For example, you could buy the test prep book on your own, install the evaluation CD, then install Virtual Server offered as a free download by Microsoft or some other 3rd party virtual networking software. You can then install OS instances of up to 64 other computers with the one caveat, that it will eat up your processor, so you'd better have something fast if you plan to employ a lot of images. I've even heard that Microsoft is now making Virtual PC free of charge to keep pace with other virtualization virtuosos.

Form my point of view, the real lab is the environment most conducive to learning because it gives you an idea what it will be like troubleshooting both hardware and software issues, the likes of which you are sure to come a cross in a real networked infrastructure. It's important for me, at this point, to feel the connectors on the 10BaseT ethernet cables (or RJ-45s if you want to sound techy) and follow them along to the switch or hub. The physical aspect forms a better basis for visualising the infrastrucre and topography of the endless scenario questions you are sure to encounter in each of the exams. Also, it provides an added dimension to troubleshooting, and error elimination useful for test and real world issues.

The crux of the success of the Techskills company lies in their ability to guarantee passing scores on the exams by providing weekly tests that resemble, uncannily at times, the actual questions you will find on the vendor exam. I've gathered so far, that the exam application TestPrep is an in-house application developed from previously released versions of the test. I assume that this is different from some web-sites that offer complete brain-dumps, or entire pools of every question that might show up on the exam.

It's my assumption, that as these have become more and more popular much to the dismay of Bill Gates and professionals in the industry who got where they are "the hard way," a lot of the tests are being revamped to include less multiple-choice questions, and more hands-on skills, such as actually creating the right kind of share permissions, or going through the motions to set up a performance baseline based on question-specified requirements.

Even so, the practice tests allow you to demonstrate your knowledge of the specified test objectives and give you a greater since of confidence if you are able to navigate the questions successfully.

I don't want to give the impression that the school is all flowers and chocolate, however, so I'll end this post with a few gripes:

Be prepared to pay for some of your test vouchers. Each exam you take requires a voucher that you have to buy. The kind of course you decide to take determines how many vouchers will be paid for by the school. In my case, I went with the deluxe package which basically provided me courseware and materials for 15 months for the grand total of $8,000. Although this was never explicitly stated before I signed up, that fifteen-month period only included three vouchers. That's right count 'em, three. So from here on out, I have to pay for my own vouchers to take the tests.

Don't be fooled by the Test Past Assurance gimmick. They say that if you fail an exam, they'll pay for you to retake the exam five times with no questions asked. The course is set up so that you are not even allowed to schedule a vendor exam until you have scored at least 900 or more on each of the school final exams. This is a difficult feat, and some courses have more finals that you have to complete than others. I only know of a few people who have been allowed to schedule an exam after failing it once until the mentors are fervently convinced that the student has the capacity to pass it.

Don't expect a lot of help from the mentors. You'll find them extremely busy with orientations and sales pitches or just screwing around on the internet. Aside from some rare exceptions, they usually don't give you but a few minutes of their time to help you with a configuration issue. To give you an example, I once handed in a lab to be graded by a mentor, only to have him jeer at me, sloppily sign the front page, and toss it back to me. They will, however, get on you if you have gone too long without taking a weekly exam.

Even so, you come back to the realization that your success in an IT career, just as any other career, generally depends on you, and your motivation to learn, master, and apply the material in a real setting. My gamble is, that if I get enough certifications, I can get an entry level position and then have the opportunity to learn from the seasoned professionals who have been doing it long before me. And there is always the alluring hope of tuition reimbursement. Just whether these possiblities are realized remains to be seen.

2006-03-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a Japan flashback:

I just want to say that I devoted myself wholeheartedly to trying to teach the Japanese good English the entire time I was there. Of course there were a lot of setbacks and frustrations-- a lot of the time the students would continue making the same mistakes, or they wouldn't talk at all, be it out of shyness, neverousness or not wanting to make a mistake. But despite all the coyness and cultural taboos, I worked really hard with them and it wasn't long before I felt them improving just a little bit more each time I saw them.

So taking a break from it all, I went to Kawaguchi-ko (one of the five scenic lakes near Mt. Fuji), with my brother who was on vacation with me at the time, to see the sights. I was feeling really good about myself-- feeling like I was really making a difference and was helping to promote English in Japan to a level on a par with her Asian rivals. I was walking on air that day.

But at the funicular station at the base of a mountain slope jutting up from the lakeshore I was crestfallen to witness the following:

This is no doctored image. This is an actual sign posted up at the entrance of the Kawaguchi-ko funicular station. Yes, you're reading it right. It says "End time is last time of downhill FECES from mountaintop station."

How do such things happen I wondered. What could they have been really trying to say here? What was the original Japanese word they were looking up when they came up with 'feces'? Who the hell are the greatest ride staff? Is this some kind of joke?

These thoughts perplexed me as I went up to the top of the mountain. And all the elation I had felt just moments before was dashed to pieces. I brooded for a long time about my role in the world. I had some depressing thoughts that despite all my good intentions no amount of teaching conversation, grammar, TOEIC prep., or business courses would or could ever stop the Japanese from posting weird English signs all over the place.

But just when I had reached the nadir of feeling sorry for myself, I heard a whistle followed by a great rumbling . . .

And then I heard a man shouting at me rapidly in Japanese. I couldn't understand well what he said, but it was something like:

今時間だよ！山の下へ行こうよ！急げ！　　

It's time. We've got to get to the bottom of the mountain! Hurry!

I got my brother and I rushed to the funicular along with a couple of other tourists who were from mainland China. We raced at top speed down the mountain. The driver was calmly heroic in his handling of the carriage. He seemed to live for such moments--had the aura of pride about him. That's when I looked at his T-shirt. It read, "Greatest ride staff."

I looked away again wondering if we were going to make it to the bottom of the mountain before the force of the earthquake knocked us off the rails. And then I looked over my shoulder. . .

There was a rumbling, kind of squishy sound, and then an awful stench that wafted up my nose. I almost puked. It was surreal when it happened, but if my eyes did not mistake me I had just seen a gigantic ball of shit rolling down the mountain. Needless to say I was completely shocked. I got off of the funicular panting for breath, coming down from the rush of adrenaline that had only moments before been pumping through my veins. I looked at my watch. The ride that felt like an eternity had in fact only lasted three minutes. Then I looked over at the furnicular. I noticed it was car no. 36.

After that, I went back to the sign that had made me feel so badly about everything earlier that afternoon. I read it again and a smile crossed my face. I felt reassured that I really had been making a difference in the world teaching English, and my prior joy returned to me.

Here's a picture of the downhill feces that nearly did us in that day.

I dedicate this posting to the greatest ride staff, whose guidance saved my brother and I from being run over by a giant ball of shit.

2005-10-30T19:13:00.001-07:00

My brother came to visit me recently, and I set up an ambitious travel itinerary. I'll do retrospective posts for each of these, but in general, this is what it looked like:

Oct. 22 - Jidai Matsuri, Kyomizu Temple, and Gion in Kyoto
Oct. 23 - Kobe ropeway, cruise, and stroll around Nankinmachi
Oct. 24 - Osaka castle, Nanba, and the Umeda Sky Tower
Oct. 25 - Tokyo sightseeing bus tour: Tokyo Tower, Imperial Palace, Asakasa
Oct. 25 - Shinagawa and Roppongi
Oct. 26 - Nihonbashi, Ginza, Tsukiji, Meji-jengu, Harajuku, and Shinjuku
Oct. 27 - Kawaguchiko (lake near Mt. Fuji)
Oct. 28 - Kyoto part two: Ginkakuji and The Path of Philosophy
Oct. 29 - Nara: Kofukuji and Todaiji

All in all it was a really good trip. I did as much as I could to keep him disoriented and bemused. My only regret is I didn't keep a photo journal of the food. We hit some damn good places. In the future, I'll try to feature some of the bars, restaurants and venues I like in Japan, but I'm not making any promises. For now, you'll just have to accept any mention of food as a general overview of Japanese cuisine. Therefore, don't post asking me for directions or specific names, for you must remember that when people go out to eat it's just possible they might consume large quantities of alcohol which in turn may make them forget where they went, what they ate, or why they woke up next to that midget stripper.

The trip in fact lasted ten days total. Oct. 21st was the date of arrival. My brother, though not having had much sleep in the previous 48 hours, showed a remarkable ability to deal with the jetlag. To his credit, he opted not to punk out and go straight to bed, deciding instead to go to an okonomiyaki restaurant with us in local Nishinomiya. I must say, I was impressed.

On October 30th, Thomas went by himself to Hiroshima to get the most out of his JR railpass. I would have gone, but I couldn't afford the fare. If you're coming to Japan just for a short time on a travel visa, the JR railpass is an incredible deal. You can travel on any JR train from Kyushu to Hokkaido. And you can take the Hikari Shinkansen or Kodama Shinkansen trains (the two slightly slower ones) to anywhere for as long as the pass is valid. You get seven days for about $26o. Just to give you an idea of the normal fares, I paid roughly the same amount for one round trip Kodama ticket from ShinOsaka to Tokyo.

Anyway, you can get Thomas' take on Hiroshima directly and lots of other things he's interested in, including photos and info. on my nephew here. He left this morning, and should arrive back in Houston around 7:30 this evening. If only he'd bought that Ultraman suit for Halloween . . .

2005-10-23T08:32:00.000-06:00

Oct. 23 - Kobe ropeway, cruise, and stroll around Nankinmachi

Doing like we had done the day before, we walked into the ticket office at Hankyu Nishinomiya Kitaguchi station, but this time bought the day pass for Kobe. Also a great value, this pass allows travel between Osaka and Kobe, as well as including fare for the Mt. Rokko ropeway and a free cruise in Osaka Bay.

We took the train into Sannomiya and from there went to the JR station to procure Shinkansen tickets for the trip to Tokyo we would be taking on the 25th. After that we took the subway to ShinKobe station to board the ropeway, a series of gondolas which take you up the mountains abruptly jutting up less than a kilometer from the coast. We were lucky enough to have great weather that day, and so were able to get a fantastic panoramic of Kobe and the fertile-crescent megopolis of cities, suburbs and satellite cities that engulf Osaka Bay. Just visible on the horizon was the floating island of Kansai airport, and much nearer the beginnings of another man-made island airstrip being built in the sea near Kobe. Port Island, Rokko Island and several other strips of land also strech out tentacle-like into the Bay. It's land reclaimation taken to an extreme-- a Japanese extreme mind you, but not surprising when you think that only 25% of Japan's natural landmass is suitable for habitation.

At the top of the Mt. Rokko ropeway there's an herb garden overlooked by a Swiss-style chateau. There's no shortage of greenhouses, trails, or tea houses, coffee shops, or souvenir emporiums to keep one occupied. You get the impression, though, that the area is targeted to an older crowd, built as an escape from the glitzy, racous city below. Not a bad way to spend a quiet afternoon if you're in the mood for tranquility, quiet reflection, or just trying to recover from last night's sake binge.

We returned to the subway and then went out to Harborland station in order to catch the Concerto Cruise ship for a trip out into the bay. There are several versions of this cruise. You can upgrade your booking to get a cake set, which we opted to do, or you can book into the much longer, swankier dinner-cruise. On board, we chowed down on cake and guzzled down coffee and tea, and then went above deck to take in the view round the bay. Since we had opted for the shorter cruise we didn't get too close to the Akashi Kaikyou Bridge-- apparently the longest suspension bridge in the world.

2005-10-22T08:30:00.000-06:00

Oct. 22 - Jidai Matsuri, Kyomizu Temple, and Gion in Kyoto:

I had secured a good 13 days off through regular paid holidays and four shiftswaps which required I work straight through a weekend. And despite forecasts of scattered showers I was in a genial mood as we left that morning. Thomas had slept off the jetlag quite well, and we made our way to Hankyu Nishinomiya Kitaguchi station, where we bought a Kyoto day pass. If you're ever in the Kansai area and want to spend a day of sightseeing in one of the main cities, getting a day pass from the ticket center of any major Hankyu station is a good way to do it. The Kyoto pass includes travel on the Hankyu rail anywhere it goes in the Kansai area throughout Osaka and Kobe and Kyoto including travel on the Kyoto buses and subway lines. In addition you get a bunch of coupons for discounts to sightseeing hotspots, such as temples and museums.

We got our tickets and then took the train to Osaka. You can catch trains to Kawaramachi (the main Kyoto Hankyu station) at Juso station, but it makes more sense to go all the way to Osaka to be assured of getting a seat for the hour long train ride into the heart of Kyoto.

We made our way to the Imperial Palace and took our seats, only to be approached immediately by a bunch of school children speaking formulaic English asking about where we were from and where we've been to in Japan so far. They gave us origami cranes and what looked like frogs, some students of course, being more adept at folding than their classmates, and then were shooed away by their teacher to the next group of foreigners along the parade route which stretched on either side of the wide walkway leading to the main entrance of the Imperial Palace.

Although a copy of the original, built in 1855-1856, and situated well northeast of its first location, I found it impressive to know that there had been an imperial palace in Kyoto as early as 794AD. And even though the procession commemorates the founding of the city, the actual festival itself wasn't started until 1895 to celebrate Kyoto's 1,100 anniversary. The Heian Jingu Shrine where the festival ends was built in the year of foundation as a commemoration of the removal of the capital from Nara to Kyoto. In the evening there is a second event known as the Kuruma Torch Festival held at Yuki shrine. Jidai Matsuri is one of the big three festivals held in Kyoto. The other two are Gion Matsuri held on July 17th and Aoi Matsuri which you can see on May 15th.

Another good one to see, should you ever get the chance is the Nada Fighting Festival held in Himeji on October 14th and 15th. It's a visual spectacle where different brightly colored fronds are stuck onto the end of thick bamboo poles and palanquins (portable shrines weighing over two tons) are slammed together in a ritual fight. Yes, sometimes people are trampled and killed, but it is believed that the harder the knocks, the more appeased will be the spirits who enjoy watching the event. I went to the Nada festival last year, before I had bought a digital camera, so I'll have to scan my photos later on.

As for the festival we saw on October 22nd, though much more subdued than it's counterpart that took place a week earlier in Himeji, it's a really good way of visualizing Japanese history as representatives from Heian period to the Meiji Restoration are featured in the procession. I found it notable that there was so much interest in featuring important women of the various ages in the festival. For example, Lady Shizuka, featured right, was a dancer in Kyoto and the favored concubine of Minamoto Yoshitsune. Yoshitsune was a talented general and half-brother of Yoritomo, who eventually gained control of Japan towards the end of the Heian period. Yoshitsune was so skilled and liked that he gained the favor of the emperor and his court, much to the dismay of Yoritomo who eventually forced his suicide and had his head brought to him in a jar of sake. This and other exploits of Lady Shizuka and Yoshitsune, as well as his retainer, Benkei feature not only in Kabuki and Noh, but in a few western novels as well. Sorry, I haven't read any of them, so I can't give you any recommendations.

In fact, I haven't even read the Tale of Genji, perhaps the most seminal work in Japanese literature. Here too, we have an example of an important woman in Japanese history, Genji's author, Murasaki-Shikibu (featured in contemporary clothes at front, below). But perhaps the most striking image of an importatant historical woman in Japan I saw at the festival was of Tomoe Gozen, the wife of general Kiso Yoshinaka.

Perhaps the Japanese equivalent of Joan of Arc, she was skilled as any man with sword and spear, fighting bravely along with her lover. I think her image captured my imagination the most out of the entire procession. I won't go into too much detail, as this post is already running pretty long, but click here to learn more about this stunning figure.

After the festival had wound it's way out of sight we headed for lunch back in Kawaramachi before hopping the bus out towards Gion and Kiyomizu temple. Perhaps the most popular temple in the area, Kiyomizu's origins date to 798 but what you can see dates back to about 1633. "Kiyomizu" actually means "clear water," which might explain the tendency for visitors to drink from the nearby Otawa waterfall using long-handled tin cups. It is said that the water from this spring has magic curative properties. I suppose it can't hurt to take a sip. The Gion area is a must see if you ever come to Kyoto. The old-fashioned houses and narrow coble-stone streets leading up to the temple are well worth the sore legs you're likely to feel afterwards. That part of Kyoto, is filled with interesting sites, including Ryozen Kannon Temple, Kodaiji, the Yasaka pagoda, and Maruyama Koen park. If you head north from Kiyomizu temple you can continue on up into the park to get a look at Chion-in Temple and Shoren-in Temple or make the earlier left into the Yasaka shrine, and re-enter the modern world as you walk down the steps to Shijo-dori street.

2005-10-10T19:11:00.000-06:00

As promised here's a picture of the clock tower in Izushi.

I can't tell you too much about it, just that a traditional temple gong was used to chime the hours. While this picture was being taken this scary old Japanese lady was winking at me. That explains the expression of mixed emotions on my face. And when I say old, I don't mean like middle-aged old. In fact, Japanese women have the highest life-expectancy in the world. So this lady must have been pushing 80 but was still able to manage that come-hither stare. Yipes, like wow Scoob, we gotta get back to the Dream Machine and find Thelma. Ream Rarine!? Arrouwgh!?

Actually I wanted to stay longer to get pictures of the clock tower from different angles. And I would've gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for you meddling geriatrics.

2005-10-01T01:01:00.000-06:00

When I was young my father used to always tell me to get my head out of my ass. But contrary to what you might be thinking, this is not a picture of my attempt to take his advice. In fact, it is the proper way to view Amanohashidate. Get more information here.

If you do get the opportunity to make it to 'The Bridge Over Heaven,' I recommend taking the motorboat tour around the sandbar. And if you have time on the way you should check out Izushi to glmpse the Meiji-era Clock tower, and get a taste of the local soba (buckwheat noodles).

More on that on the next post. Maybe you might even get to see a picture of my face!