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April 29, 2003
new comp
the folks got a new system and gifted me their old comp, pretty excited, have a few sound editing programs, gonna teach myself those when im' not busy. work is good, debating asking for a raise, i deserve it i think but the head administrator is leaving soon and is all about cost cutting these days, so we'll see. it's no big deal.
shout out to steve, hope all is well down there.
Posted by bendan at 08:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 27, 2003
we like the moon!
thanks to bruce for sending me this video thingie, good weirdness.
my job is alright, got to translate on friday between the employees who work in the housekeeping and the kitchen and a human resourses lady, it was a little hard but i helped them express their concerns and problems. I have little faith that the corporation will listen to any of their wishes, for instance they are only allowed to work 7.5 hours a day, so if they get called in to do a 6th day they end up not getting paid any overtime for it. bullshit corporate mentality, but i knew that going in. oh well, i'm only there for 2 more months. i can handle it easy for 2 months, i'm already blocking myself from all the gossipy drama that goes on, man, nurses and nursing home staff sure like to talk shit.
Posted by bendan at 09:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 22, 2003
an entry about stuff
haven't been updating much, the internet connection at the house is down. been working a bunch, intermittenly i like and hate the job, it is nice to just zone out and file but my boss is lazy and looking for another job, yesterday each time i came back from the units she was gossipping with other employees, while i was busting ass filing as fast as i could to try and catch the department up (fucking hopeless). i can look at is as i only will be there for 2 months, but another part of me, the same part that is almost frustratingly perfectionist when it comes to video editing, sees all the disarray and would be pleased to see it fixed right. don't count on that happening.
went for my first mountain bike ride with daveo, who's birthday is today so tell him happy late birthday if you see him. the ride was good, we did keystone canyon to evans creek, i'm so out of shape but it was excellent.
since i file for a living, i've been reading this comic a bit. gotta backtrack to pick up the thread to understand it, but it's cool. get your file on.
ok all for now.
Posted by bendan at 10:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 14, 2003
work...
started my new job today, i'll be doing medical records filing and hopefully some translating between the spanish speaking patients and the non-spanish speaking nurses at manor care hospice. it seems like it will be a chill job, no ass wiping for me, i get to try and catch up all the filing for this lame ass woman who spent the last week of her job hiding papers that were to be filed in random secret locations in her office. then she quit her job. what a jackass. anyways, i get to catch all that up. should be ok, think i'll get some earfones and listen to npr all day, be in my own little world.
also think i might get work at some restaurant that has basque and italian food, busboy, heard the tips are good. it's weird to go from not working since last july to having two jobs, but i figure i'll work as much as possible from now till july 3rd, then go do my medical interpreting course, then go to burningman and the wto protest in cancun mexico at the end of september. anyone want to come along? i keep thinking of drew and myself trying to convince ourselves to take the 16 hour greyhound up there as we watched it on tv, but we couldn't cause of tests and stuff, this time i'm gonna be there, and i figure i'll be able to help out a lot cause i'm all fluent and shit. all the mexicans at the hospice seem very cool, helped some of them out today, i figure i'll spend more time hanging with the mexicans then with the rest of the gringos. hehe.
got to go snowboarding on sunday, 2.5 feet of powder, so good, though i need a bigger board, seems i've gotten a little sturdier. maybe next year i'll get back into it.
ok off to go have dinner.
oh wait, there's a new get your war on, i want to meet the guy who writes it someday. shannen got me his book for my belated birthday present, so rad. thanks shanny.
Posted by bendan at 06:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 07, 2003
just in time theory
so back when i was in college (man i love saying that, even though it hasn't yet been a year), i developed a theory as to why me and many of my friends chose to write and turn in papers right before they were due. now logic would dictate that this is because we were lazy procrastinating mofos, but my "just in time theory" would beg to differ. i recently described it over messenger to my friend molly, here's a, expanded sumation. ok here goes:
there's a well known dictum about manufacturing and production, that the longer you have something sit on the shelf, the more it degrades, degrade in this sense meaning loses it's value. a good example would be computer hardware. if you construct a high end system, then it's state of the art for all of 3 weeks, after which something else more high tech comes out, putting your already constructed machine on the road to obsolesence.
now since manufacturing and technology have developed to the point where things can be built and completed in such a small amount of time, in as short as hours, then the most cost effective way to serve a client is to manufacture everything right before you send it out, just in time, hence the term just in time production.
let's take this practice and move it over to the chore of writing papers for classes: in the same sense that preconstructed products can be left wasting on the shelf, then as i see it, the longer you let the information accumulate in your head and sit there simmering in it's own juices, the higher the quality it attains before you finally have to bang it all out onto paper, hours or even minutes before it's due. one could say that the pressure of the impending deadline causes a kind of clarity of vision, enabling you to focus entirely on the frantic yet measured task at hand. plus the fact that you finish it just in time to turn it in means that you don't sit around afterwords wondering if you should have revised it more or changed it, because you didn't have any time to. it's a done deal, a finished product.
i feel like the theory does pretty well up to here. once i got to this point in the explanation, my friend molly interjected something about "what if they paper is already a week late?" she admitted that the professor didn't seem to care that it was late, and i managed to link this to something about enoui in society and how people aren't surprised when they don't get what they want when they want it. i mean, if a product that was supposed to arrive tuesday arrives thursday, it's not such a big deal. we can usually shrug shit like that off.
molly then commented on it being very frustrating, that she wanted her motivation and drive back that used to produce such quality stuff. i started to bring this back to the theory, that she needed to "harness the pressure of an impending deadline better," but she startled me by saying that she must have "shat it out somewhere down the line," meaning her drive.
i tried to connect this to alienation in the workplace and workers showing up and shooting up the office, but she just giggled at me. it was then that i let her get back to writing her paper, and i went looking for a beer, basking in the re-occuring afterglow of having actually managed to graduate university, something neither i nor my father had so much expectations about.
dan says:
i'm telling you, this theory can save humanity.
molly says:
i don't doubt it, dan.
mollys says:
hehe
the next thing i write will be about how looking for jobs is worse then having them, cause who wants to go hunting and pleading for something they don't want?
Posted by bendan at 10:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
poor forgotten afghanistan
had a long talk with my old boss mark the other day, about the war and what's going on. he pointed out that the bush administration has already committed itself to a plan that would, optimally for them, cause a "domino effect" of democracy throughout the middle east, starting with iraq, then leading to iran, syria, and perhaps our favorite puppet saudi arabia. now mark didn't express full confidence in this plan, but he seemed to feel that if it does work then the world will be a better place for it, or at least that less terrorism will strike the u.s.
now i oppose the war for a number of reasons, i.e. that our austensive reason for attacking iraq, to "free the iraqis," plays second fiddle to to other concerns, such as oil and settling old scores. i also feel that our neo-colonialism will do more to incure the wrath of terrorists then it will to root them out and finish them off.
and when i loaded up salon.com today, what did i find but an article about the mess that afghanistan has dissolved into. in this article i read about a red cross worker who was executed by the order of a taliban that is reconstituting itself as we speak.
now when was the last time you heard anything about afghanistan in the mainstream news? i can hear mark's arguement that afghanistan has money that we've gifted them, that it was up to karzai to sort everything out afterwords, and that we've done more then any other nation to help them out. in a sense i agree that we've helped a lot, but it feels like we are leaving them in the lurch. i fear that before to long we will be hearing reports of a taliban: the revenge that will give us cause to go back into that poor fucking country for some more half-assed world cowboying. and if this is our track record of helping nations after we bomb them, then soon it will be poor forgotten iraq, and maybe poor forgotten iran, and syria, and north korea, ect..
Posted by bendan at 10:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 05, 2003
online jugglin' teacher
fancy online jugglin' teacher, this is how i will learn to juggle 5 balls and become a clown.
oh yeah, got the Against Me! record, heard it a few times before i left, finally got it, so good, so good, so good.
Posted by bendan at 02:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 02, 2003
records i will get once i get a job
1. the new cat power
2. the newest jets to brazil
3. the newest hot water music
4. against me!
5. maybe the new malkmus record
6. the new bonnie prince billy
7. the interpol record cause steve can't stop talking about it
8. the new microfones
9. the new pavement stuff, whatever it is.
10. the new yo la tengo
hell this is gonna be pricey
Posted by bendan at 06:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack