Posted 10:32 AM by Tim
Been a while since I managed to get a post out. What can I say? I haven't had anything to say.

Yesterday, the girls manged to make $0.50 by selling rocks to the other kids. Not bad really. Bren rewarded them with another $1 for their chores and such. They took that cash and gave it away to the other kids. We have got to start teaching them about money.

In gaming related news, I've got a tourney coming up this weekend. Seems like next to nobody will be coming out to play it though. The few people that have previously confirmed coming have all recently flipped that position and said that they were not coming. I have little hope for this tourney now, but there's no way to pre-emptively cancel it. I suppose that it is all part of the learning process. Oh well, if we don't get 16 people to show, then I'll just have to change the prize structure to 50-50 cash split. I lose money on the deal, but at least I get something.

Posted 10:24 AM by Tim
So I'm reading some random blogs and stumbling through the links when I get to this: http://objective.jesussave.us/creationsciencefair.html.

Despite the crazyness of the whole idea, this was the most jarring:

2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"
Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.

This has to be one of the most backward statements I've read in a long time. Too bad that it had to come from a 7th grader.

The rest of the site is pretty hit and miss. There's some good science in there, and some really bad science in there ("Pokemon Prove Evolutionism Is False"). The experiment about the bacteria cultures is something that I find interesting. I'd have liked to see more about their methology (whether the experiment was repeated, or used multiple samples to avoid statistical variations and probability).

I'd have to say that I take some offense to this stuff, but I really can't hold someone's belief against them. I just hope that they have another one in Toronto sometime so that I can get out there and see it in person.

Posted 12:56 PM by Tim
Wow. I have been really bad at getting an update out here. Let's recap the most recent weeks and figure out what I've been doing.

Last weekend, I went to Detroit to talk with a recruiter guy down there about doing something about getting me a job. It seems to have gone pretty well. Now if the market could just convince itself that it was all better, we'd be fine. Last week I also talked to a local short-term staffing company about getting me into a few areas to do some quick work. I had to take about 3 tests that day, and then a test on the next day, and a questionnaire, then yesterday, 2 more tests. I've scored pretty high, so I'm overqualified. That's recruiter speak for, "we're not going to hire you." It sucks to be too qualified for a job. The employer knows that you're going to get bored quickly, and they don't want that. Boredom means that you get distracted and that means that you end up doing a bad job in the end... even though you could do very well.

I've got a tourney to run this weekend. Strangely, I've got a bit of the jitters about running it. They're cashflow concerns mostly. I've got to get 7 people to show to break even, and if that many don't turn out, then we're pretty much stuck. Maybe I've got to do some better promotion on it. That's probably the trouble.

Speaking of tournaments and games and weekends, my weekends are pretty booked. 19 - tourney, 26 - LARP, 2 - tourney, 9 - LARP, and I'll probably host another tourney the weekend following the 9 if the one coming up does alright. That is: If I break even, I'll hold more tourneys.

I'm finding that my motivation has been very low, but my desire has been high. This is leading to a lot of frustration on my part. I really want to do things, but I can't seem to summon the energy to do them. Look at how long the blog has sat. That's a good enough example of what's going on down here in my head.

Posted 2:33 PM by Tim
Well, it's been a dearth of posts lately, hasn't it?

Ok. What's been happening here. Well, the employment situation is unchanged. I still have no job. The money situation has gone a little off though. I'm doing what I can to make it work out.

I've been thinking lately that it would be good if I could just run about and od all the little small jobs that I always figured I'd do if I were ever in this situation. I suppose that part of the trouble is that I've got the girls, and that I know almost nobody. Really. I can count the number of people around here that I really know on one hand. Sure I've met people, but I've never really managed to get to know people really well. It doesn't help that most of the people that I know don't have jobs either.

I've been trying to get some editing done. It hasn't been going well. If I lucky I can manage about one page a day. That doesn't include retyping. Which I've yet to really get to. :(

I've been running about today applying for jobs. It's been alright. I've managed to talk to some people, and I'm waiting on a call right now. Waiting sucks.