Drea comes home in a few hours. Which is won­der­ful. This stay was far longer and more demor­al­iz­ing than the pre­vi­ous one, though she comes home far more healthy. Its funny how that works.

I ter­mi­nated my leave of absence at Kodak today. It was a tough deci­sion, but nec­es­sary for a number of rea­sons. It didn’t appear that any posi­tions would open up (cur­rently they’re only post­ing for 16 exter­nal jobs here in Rochester). And after news of the latest round of lay­offs, I really had to ques­tion if that was an envi­ron­ment that I wished to return to. It’s bit­ter­sweet. I’m going to miss not get­ting back to seeing kodak.com’ers each day. How­ever, we’ll still have tacos… hows next Tuesday?

And I’ve off­i­cally moved my Chicago grad­u­a­tion to Decem­ber. Its a dis­a­point­ment, but I need to do more research and read­ing to write the thesis I want to write. And at this point, I’d rather get it right then get it done. So per­haps, at the end of it, I’ll even under­stand Bourdieu.

Ok… before anyone else goes into a tizzy about my retail appli­ca­tions, allow me to explain. This is NOT a full time pursuit.

At all.
No way. No huh.

How­ever, what I am look­ing for is a short term, part time source of income while I engage in a more exten­sive job hunt. There have been a few full time oppor­tu­ni­ties that have arisen. But cur­rently none of them have been what I am look­ing for. And, for the moment, I’d prefer not to commit to a full-​time posi­tion that isn’t right. Espe­cially since the Rochester Scene doesn’t really allow for taking a full time posi­tion for only a few months. Plus full time would make it dif­fi­cult for me to finish my writ­ing tasks, and there­fore my Mas­ters. And fin­ish­ing the Mas­ters is the most impor­tant thing right now. Well, both that and being able to cover expenses.

So that’s why I’m cur­rently look­ing at tem­po­rary retail jobs. And a few other avenues (TW I don’t have your cur­rent e-mail addy… could you drop at line to “mbernius at gmail.com”).

My goal is to have full employ­ment by mid fall.

This is one that I should have seen coming a mile away and never even thought of: net­worked juke­boxes. This dis­cov­ery begins with another rev­e­la­tion: a cup of pre­mium coffee costs the same amount as a pint of beer. Plus, con­sid­er­ing that I drink beer far more slowly than coffee it seemed to make good eco­nomic sense as well. And it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve, um…, lubri­cated my writ­ing with an adult bev­er­age. Con­ve­niently, just last week I noticed that the Mac­Gre­gors, a local water­ing hole, by RIT was offer­ing free wire­less access. So, after drop­ping off today’s series of appli­ca­tions, I opted to go there for a beer and to write.

Ini­tially I didn’t pay any atten­tion to the wire­less reg­is­tra­tion process. What did catch my eye, was a neon mono­lith in the corner of the bar. The “Rock-Ola” stands about 5’7” and has a 14 inch flatscreen LCD at eye level. And just as I noticed the Rock-​Ola, the screen stated that it was an inter­net juke box. Actu­ally it was making the claim “I’m the coolest juke box in the world.” Upon inves­ti­gat­ing I have to agree.

Ecast­ing has a great model. Bars can buy a Broad­band juke box, which then also dou­bles as a wire­less hub for the estab­lish­ment. And then patrons can choose from the already down­loaded albums, or, for a slight fee, browse Ecast’s whole library and down­load the song/album that they are look­ing for. The down­load stays locked in the machine so there’s no fear of unli­censed dis­tri­b­u­tion. We have a juke box that always has the song that you’re look­ing for.

And all I have to say is “Damn! Good idea E-Cast.

I’ve started apply­ing to a number of retail jobs and all in all, its been an odd expe­ri­ence. I’m begin­ning to be exposed to the var­i­ous frus­tra­tions that other pro­fes­sion­als face when cir­cum­stances forced them to make this type of a change. Most of these appli­ca­tions really are not set up for salaried posi­tion. I keep get­ting asked for what my hourly rates were in pre­vi­ous jobs. I haven’t been hourly since I was in col­lege. And its very wired to be apply­ing for a $10 an hour job and list­ing your pre­vi­ous gig at some­where around $30 an hour (And I’m not ever sure if thats right).

Also, at least two of the jobs have had online appli­ca­tions. While that process moves pretty quickly, both had these exten­sive Myers Briggs style per­son­al­ity based ques­tions. Here are few exam­ples, moving from the expected to the, well, kind strange:

• You change from feel­ing happy to sad with­out any reason
• You get angry more often than nervous
• You have con­fi­dence in your­self

  Ok… I can sorta under­stand those. But who can expect to be given an honest answer to the next two:

• You swear when you argue
• Right now, you care more about having fun than being seri­ous at school or work

  Come on! Don’t you think saying “Yes, I always swear when I argue” is going to hurt you get a posi­tion? Or that “right now I care more about having fun than working” is exactly what employ­ers are hoping for? Then we get to the inter­est­ing one:

• It is mad­den­ing when the court lets guilty crim­i­nals go free

How are you sup­posed to answer that? And why is it there? If I dis­agree does that flag me as some­one who approves of crime? Or if I agree is that a sign that I’m so reac­tionary? Weird.

But what is the most dis­tress­ing is that the inter­view process has been reduced to a series of ques­tions that don’t even need to be asked by a person. Again, we have the case of automa­tion of a “fuzzy-logic” process. While its not a bot, I have to admit that this entire expe­ri­ence has been alien­at­ing. Espe­cially because I got asked the same ques­tions on both appli­ca­tions. And I real­ized that I was trying to remem­ber my pre­vi­ous answers in hopes of not being incon­sis­tent. I mean, what does it mean if I was hard on crime yes­ter­day and not today.

I’m sure that the idea is that based on my answers I get flagged as a good can­di­tate for one posi­tion vs. another. I wonder if there is a web­site there that offers coach­ing for how to answer these. You know: be hard on crime and ready to swear if your a cashier, but man­agers should be softer and never swear.

btw: if any folks out there know anyone at Harris Research, can you let me know. I’d really like to chat with some­one from there.

Ok. As an attempt to move away from the doom and gloom blogs, I’ll tell you about my cur­rent plans and solicit advice. As you might know, I need a job. And I’m cur­rently in the process of apply­ing to a number of places such as McK­in­sey & Com­pany and Harris Inter­ac­tive. How­ever, both processes are going to take a while. So, I need some­thing to tide me over. And since I have a thesis to com­plete, it really needs to be part time. So I’m think­ing either Star­bucks or retail. The ben­e­fit with Star­bucks (or a sim­i­lar type of Coffee place) is that I get a dis­count on Coffee, I get some level of indy cred (admit­tedly much less if its Star­bucks) and if I work more than 20 hours I get some form of health insur­ance. On the other side, if I work at a place like the Gap, I get a dis­count on clothes and can revamp my wardrobe, which I really need to do.

So wadda ya think? Or should I go the Weg­mans route? Advice would be much appreciated.

Drea Update: She’s doing better. We’re hoping Monday. Thanks for all the notes of support.

Thesis Update: Drea’s doing better. Visit Head­notes to see my latest issues.

One of my latest stick­ing points is the usage of pro­nouns to refer to bots. While I real­ize there is a long­stand­ing tra­di­tion of using per­sonal pro­nouns (she, he, her, and his) to refer to machines, I have real prob­lems anthro­po­mor­phiz­ing bots. It just strikes me as a slip­pery slope for an aca­d­e­mic to engage in. At the same time, call­ing the famed Tifanny_bot “it” all the time is just clunky.

My solu­tion to this dilemma came from an unlikely source: John Leguizamo. Dri­ving home from the hos­pi­tal I heard him inter­viewed on NPR’s Fresh Air. Dis­cussing his work on To Wong Foo Thanks for Every­thing, Julie Newmar, he men­tioned that the studio hired a Drag Queen to coach him and said some­thing along the lines of: “They hired *pause* ohh, I can’t remem­ber his real name. Her drag name was [X] and she taught me everything.” And that got me think­ing about gender des­ig­na­tions when it comes to drag. Clearly the absolute (genital/chromosome) sex of the per­former never changed. He was a he. But while in the drag role the per­former assumed the gender des­ig­na­tion being per­formed. Like Lou Reed once wrote “then he was a she.”

What this sug­gests is that cul­tur­ally the chat­ter­bot pro­gram itself can be con­sid­ered an “it” while the self it per­forms, Tiffany for exam­ple, can be referred to as “she.”

Or per­haps trudg­ing for­ward. Drea’s recov­ery con­tin­ues to be rocky. For every step for­ward she takes, she seems to fall a step back. So that has taken a toll on both our spir­its. The cur­rent hope is for her to come home next Monday.

I’m trying to write. It’s tough to keep myself focused. And I just don’t have the energy to even train right now. So that’s a bit of a blow as well.

On the pos­i­tive side, I’ve been pound­ing through “fun reading.” I just wrapped up on Dou­glas Coupland’s microserfs, which I’m most likely going to use as part of my thesis. I also fin­ished Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in less than 20 hours. The Rochester D&C ended up run­ning my cap­sule review on their web­site (you’ll have to search on my name to find it). I decided to write the review as a devel­op­men­tal exercise.