April 2008 Archives

I just got back from my new job and it is pretty cool so far. 
I got awarded my federal work study about a month ago and I decided
that the job I would accept would be at the office of the college
president.  I knew that it would basically be doing office
work and filing, but because of my business major I really need any
experience I can get.  I know that I won't be getting any huge
business lessons during this experience but the sooner I learn the
extranious skills of office software
and procedures the easier it will be to just fall in to any job I get
eventually.  Today I actually got my start on learning microsoft
fax software which I don't think I would have learned at any
point in college.  They really found that I am underskilled
when it comes to network
fax systems.  Once I have this down I will be able
to use it during college if I do need it but most likely it will only
become useful when I reach the job market.  I also know for a
fact that they will soon be training me on sip phones

systems which will definately come in handy while I am still in
college.  At some poitn I will have to do a professional
internship and to alreay have networking skills will definately get me
ahead in the class.  I am really excited about this experience
for both the experience and the knowledge I gaining about the way that
the presidents job works.  I have always seen myself
eventually going on to some type of political future and when I see the
workings of a political office I just get really excited about being
there.  I find that most of the people there lack the same
feeling about the position of working for the president, but I am just
not phased by that because they are there for career and not
experience.  I just hope that I don;t burned out by all of
this before finals week comes because I plan on doing the summer
semester this year and won't get a break before the next school year.

As a student working on academic theatre, I am used to
getting complimentary tickets (comps) for the shows that I work on. Now right
now, that isn’t all that big of a deal, since the shows I am in or working on
at the moment would never cost anyone more than ten dollars or so. So it isn’t
that exciting to be able to give comp tickets to my friends and family.
Someday, though, fingers crossed, I’ll be involved in something with

Broadway-level prices, and giving out comp Broadway tickets will be a treat. Letting
my family bypass all the nonsense of dealing with Broadway ticket brokers,
paying hundreds of dollars to come see a current Broadway shows, will taste
sweet.

You have to wonder, though, how many comp tickets they give
out to people involved in the show. On the one hand, they run for much longer
than shows at regional theatres (and even longer than academic theatre
productions, which only run for a weekend or two), and their primary audiences
aren’t friends and family of those who work on the show. On the other hand,
tickets are pretty expensive, and do they really want to give up a couple
hundred dollars for friends and family of the cast and crew to come see the
show when many of them would probably scratch together enough to come anyway?
So how many comp tickets are you going to get as an actor – two? Four?

Does it change based on what you’ve done for the show? Maybe
I’m biased, but I feel like the playwright, lyricist, composer, or whatever,
should get more comps. Thinking about it, I’m not sure why I think that, other than that if it weren’t for the playwright,
the play wouldn’t be performed at all – you could exchange one actor for
another, though, or one designer for another, and the show would still go on.
As a playwright I would want essentially unlimited comp tickets. Okay, I’m
definitely biased.

I was in taking another payday
advanced, when I had to sign
a waiver that I was not in the military. 
I inquired as to why, and was informed that if you are
military
personnel or an immediate family member to one, you are not allowed to
take out
this type of cash
advance.  I
asked why
and was told that apparently the government does not support these
types of
businesses and are in the process of trying to shut down the whole
industry. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do understand that the interest charged on these loans is truly quite substantial; however, our government is not interfering in this because they are concerned about that.  They are truly only concerned because these companies provide a service to people who have bad credit or no credit, that our government can and will not provide.  I believe that the government is trying to knock them out because they are the competition, but truly they provide loans to people who are in immediate financial need quickly and easily and most importantly without credit.  This is an important service, and one that many people have needed to take advantage of at one time or another and it truly frustrates me that in a time of financial hardship, military families cannot take advantage of this service.

Our government has created a huge amount of financial strain on the people in this country and especially on military reserve families, who never anticipated that they would be sent off to war for 6 months to 2 years at a time.  To think that in their time of financial need that they are unable to take out a Payday loan to me seems a bit absurd.   I mean if the government should want to help anyone; it should be those who are putting their lives on the line for this country. 

Occasionally, everybody needs some financial assistance, and unfortunately taking a payday loan can be a difficult decision as once you start taking it, it becomes difficult to pay back.  Many people get caught up in this cycle of taking out a loan then immediately after paying a loan taking it back out again.  Unfortunately, once people start taking out this type of payday advance, it seems that they always come back because it is an easy way to catch up on bills quickly and the immediate fix is always more attractive to Americans than the long term one.

In the last semester I have completely changed all of my plans for
life.  I think that I want to change my plans of moving to the
midwest and become a jeweler, and instead become a film producer in
Italy.  I want to spend long sleepless nights playing music
and talking about art in Florence
apartments.  All semester I have been studying art
history and film and Italian.  All three have resulted in a
total shift in my consciousness and now I just want to travel halfway
across the earth to find my dreams.  I have actually gotten to
the point of doing my research.  With only two semester of
school left I have signed up for the summer semester to make the time
come a little bit faster.  The past month or so I have looked
in to mostly Rome
apartments and Lucca
apartments.  This past week though I began looking
in to the area around Venice. 

I have talked to a couple of realtors about various Venice
apartments with both of them looking pretty promising and
very affordable on my expected budget.  I don't quite know
what I will do when I get there because I have never actually been
there or anywhere outside of the country for that matter.  I
just know that I have an image in my head and dream that I want to see
fulfilled before I get to old to enjoy the small details or go with and
sudden changes in plans that may arise.  I always knew this
was the way it was going to be I just didn't know that Italy was the
place to be.  Before this semester I really had no idea where
I would go, but I have always known that my flight would be quick and
focused but the destination was always a mystery.  Now that I
have come to a decision about where I will go it's just a matter of
details.  I guess that is really just a part of my bigger view
of life.  Most decisions are huge sweeping ideas that are
meant to bring to life the images in our heads.  When we have
finally comes to grasp the fact that we can create whatever is in our
minds then we know that the world is just a place to figure out all of
the details before it all comes to pass.  That's why I don;t
fear anything anymore because I know that all of my dreams will be
fulfilled it's just my job right now to work out all of the little
details and make sure that I don't give up too many of them to the flow
of life.  

I am almost down to
my last year in college.  In about a month I will officially
be a senior.  I know it always reaches this point and people
get all nostalgic, but I would much rather just try to enjoy it rather
than push away what's going on around me right now.  I mean
even though I only have one more year till I graduate and hit the real
world, there is still a lot that I can and must learn before I get to
that point.  For example my job right now affords me a ton of
experience both as a regular job, and as experience that will make it
much easier to slide in to another job and grow myself from
there.  Right now what I do is work for this company that does
large scale manufactured goods distribution.  Coming from a
communication background I obviously don't have anything to do with the
big money deals for the company, but I am one of the guys behind the
scenes that makes it flow much smoother.  I am currently in
the process of upgrading the companies regional PBX phone system

to a PABX
system.  It sounds boring if you don't know what that means,
but for a company, it means streamlining, eliminating useless jobs, and
allowing those in charge to focus on the money making issues they are
expected to make.  I really love working with this technology and it's a
lot of fun working with other guys who are a passionate about it as I
am.  We all love our jobs and the experience of working with
these kinds of people is certainly and experience I would like to keep
with me when I move on in life.  Also, I have an internship
that I have to do in the fall on top of my normal class load. 
I only have about three high level classes and the rest are just the
general education courses that I neglected to take early on in
college.  All in all this next year should be a huge learning
experience and a lot of fun, and maybe I'll find some time for
nostalgia in there somewhere. 

I have to talk about
something cool we did today for my economics class.  Went on a
field trip today for my macroeconomics class that was meant to show us
in very concrete terms how a nearly free market works on a small
scale.  We went to a sports auction in the city where they
were selling different kinds of sports memorabilia. 
Basically what the teacher was trying to show us by bringing us there
is how a group of people buying and selling something, a market, will
work out different types of deals with very little outside
regulation.  The only regulation here was the general value of
appraisal that are put on each card.  These appraisals are
very loosely watching as barters often go around those values depending
on the particulars of the trading.  It was especially
interesting to watch the deals that went on around the rare trading
cards which were always done very carefully and everyone made
very carefully calculations and paid very close attention to the
appraisal values because they could be trading cards worth thousands of
dollars and didn't want to get screwed over.  It was also
interesting to see the different ways in which cards were treated
depending on the sport.  I didn't know that there was such a
large market for basketball cards or baseball cards
because I had always only collected the football cards
when I was kid.  Today I saw people trading single basketball cards for
upwards of a thousand dollars each.  I think our teacher
really did a good job by picking such a cool example for all of us to
see. Some students had no idea what a bartering system actually looked
like and how much skill and wit it actually took to get what you wanted
out of a deal.  Even though they were trading something that
had very little national recognition, these guys were so serious about
their business because it was their livelihood.  I think that
was what made the illustration so accurate because these guys weren't
acting, their lives were riding on these cards.  

I have been getting ready for summer break in a few ways this
week.  Firstly, I have been making my plans for my week trip
down to see my family in Florida.  We are going to do a bunch
of vacation type stuff and it should be a really great time. 
We should even get to do some boating.
I have just been trying to figure out travel plans and then trying to
coordinate the plans once I am there.  I like to micromanage
my whole life down to the hour, it keeps me out of trouble I
guess.  Although this trait can be a curse, it also really
comes in handy sometimes, especially for planning this Florida trip.
The other thing I did was to get my summer job.  They already
know I'll be off for that week and the rest of the summer  I
will be working at the discount
marine electronics shop downtown.  Now if you have
ever met me you would know that I know absolutely nothing about
anything close to boating or marine electronics. 

I really took the job out of both an extreme need for a job over the
summer, and the fact that I don't know anything about boating
accessories.  I had applied kind just for the fun of
it because I was doing a whole day of job searching and just figured it
wouldn't hurt to try.  Of course they were the only place that
got back to me besides a pizza shop that I really didn't want to work
for.  So I decided, out of my adventurous nature, to take a
leap of faith and try my hand at being a boating
supplies salesperson.  Yesterday I did my training
session and I realized how little I know but at the same time how much
I know from prior experience.  I mean I have never done any
boating myself so trolling
motors were a bit new to me.  When we got to boat designs and we
talked about trim
tabs I was sort of shocked because I knew all about
them.  When I was a freshman in high school I got my pilot's
license and I knew that they are a big part of a lot of planes I had
flown before.  I just thought that was really cool, but I am a
dork after all.  Now the very specific boat parts are a little
mind boggling, but basics like a lowrance depth finder I can handle.
That is a really cool gadget by the way, especially the ones with GPS. Marine
electronics are incredibly advanced these days.