As found on the Western Mass Craigslist this morning:

When an employer needs a temp, they call the agency and the agency looks through its files to see who they have available who meets the employer’s requirements. If it’s you, they call you up and send you to do the job.

The employer pays the agency.

Remember that you are not the agency’s client. You are their product. Be a good product and you can usually get work.

I’ve been on an extended posting hiatus as my life has been severely topsy-turvy. With that out of the way, I plan to resume regular posting.

I just finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. It’s a fantastic page turner. I’m tired and excited to be at the end of my journey. It was the longest and most intense 607 pages I’ve ever read. Following Mr. Toru Okada through the loss of his cat, his wife and a normal life, Murakami manages to capture the essence of Japanese society and a fresh perspective on the World War II conflict between Soviet Russia and Japan. There is an astoundingly large cast of characters which Murakami manages to interweave and maintain track of–it doesn’t feel awkwardly overwhelming as in other novels. The translation by Jay Rubin strikes a perfect balance of readability and poetry. Even the word play and puns slip through unharmed. Astounding.

I think my next major read will be Our Horses In Egypt by Rosalind Belbin. From The Good Book Guide:

“Our Horses in Egypt” depicts the work of a troop-horse in the Army - and of exotic Cairo, in political unrest - as meticulously and exuberantly as “Hound Music” recreated the milieu of Edwardian fox-hunting.

Apparently, some of the novel is written from the perspective of Philomena, the requisitioned horse of Griselda Romney. This promises to be an excellent read.

Andrew Sullivan discusses `enhanced interrogation‘ techniques authorized under the Gestapo. Their methods are strikingly coincidental with the Bush administration’s own programs of interrogation at Gauntanamo and elsewhere.

Are you quite convinced that Bush is off his rocker? I certainly am. The position of the President must inevitably be a stressful one. How qualified is our President to govern in this state?

(Via The Atlantic Online)

I’m very busy coding, but enjoy the mashup. I made this quite a while back, but I’ve never posted it here.

Picture it this way:
you’re stuck running
the hard sell gig
in supermarket heaven.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t
like to donate a dollar, sir?”

How hard could it be
to sell the rest
of a little tyke’s life?

“Think of the children, ma’am.”

Look at it with a smile.

In some faraway hospital,
a withering kid’s
$100,000 chemo bill
just turned into a
$99,999 chemo bill.

With enough luck,
the poor sap will live
long enough to pay it off.

That is,
after they find
a cure for cancer.

But think of it this way:
your dollar could be
the one.

Maybe some kid won’t have
to get his head shaved.

Maybe you won’t have
to spend your dollar
on the last flower she’ll ever see.

Maybe it won’t be
your kid.

Even so, ma’am,
show a little cheer.

It isn’t all bad—there’s
progress made every day.

No one said this was easy.

After all, you’re running
the hard sell gig
in supermarket heaven.

• I will wait more than 25 seconds before calling their phone.
• I will not call 47 times if they fail to pick up after the first time.
• I will not call at 3 AM
• …Even if I have a nightmare
• …Especially if I have a nightmare.
• I will avoid discussing how I think all Christians should be burned at the stake.
• I will resist the urge to groom myself more than I would otherwise do.
• However, I will remember to brush my teeth.
• I will not immediately engage in a scar comparing competition.
• I will not lament the loss ex-girlfriends/boyfriends/midgets/goldfish crackers.
• I will not act like a creepy obsessive maniacal psycho stalker.
• I will not google them.
• I will not scrutinize their tax or phone records.
• I will not call them before actually receiving their phone number from them.

6th grade and I’m living in Kaiserslautern, Germany. Middle school is the coolest thing since… not moving this year. I’ve got open campus lunch. I can walk to Burger King. I can walk home. Lunch is an hour. A whole hour.

Lunch isn’t my problem. My problem is the kids giving me shit right outside the school. They’re yelling and taunting. Christ, who taught these kids the word “gay?” They’ve got bikes, I don’t. I can’t exactly run. One of them comes over to me so I kick his front tire and take off down the stairs.

I cut over into the nearest doorway. Fourth grade wing, art classes I avoided like the plague, little kids. At least they can’t bring the bikes in here. I run down the hallways. If I can loop back around the building and come out in the middle school wing, I’ll be safe.

“Hey you, come back here!”

Oh shit, teacher. Fuck that. I keep running. These kids want my head.

I wind my way up to the middle school and run past my locker. Everyone’s looking. Who’s the crazy? It doesn’t matter, I’ll get to move soon enough anyways. Starting over is the one perk of being a military brat.

Push the bar, open the door and I’m out. I slow down. I don’t see the assholes anywhere. Back to the rest of my life. I walk up past the school bus lot and into the teachers parking lot. Hey look, a bottle on the ground. I pick it up and smash it right behind a teachers car.

“Hey you, what do you think you’re doing?”

Please, not again. The teacher yells at me to get in her car. Like hell I will. She asks where I live and I tell her I’m not going with her. I’m walking home, bye. It’s after school. I don’t have to listen to this garbage.

She’s got the nerve to start following me. I’m panicking and I don’t need an angry teacher telling my dad more of my misadventures. I’m just up the hill from my building now. Then, she asks me again where I’m going. An idea sparks.

I point to my building and tell her I’m going in there. She speeds up and goes around the corner to park. Instead of going around to the front of the building, I take off for the back of the building.

There’s a stairwell and a door that’s always open. It goes down into the basement. It happens to be right under my apartment’s window. I hope my dad doesn’t see this. I step across the logs and junk strewn in the water at the bottom.

Once I’m in the basement, I dash up the stairs. I pray she can’t see me through the outside windows. I don’t see her; that’s good enough for me. I get inside and say “Hi” to my dad.

I wait in my room for half an hour. Nothing happens. That’s good enough for me. I tell my dad I’m going out to play baseball with the other brats. I’m not sure where I’m going, but I might as well get out of the house.

I peek out the door at the bottom of the stairwell. No sign of her. Score one for military brats, zero for bitchy Department of Defense teachers.

I cut across through the woods behind my building and cross the road. This way leads back towards the school, but I doubt she’s looking for me anymore. Just to be safe, I’ll walk down the hill through the woods.

“Hey faggot!”

Shit, not now. This day just isn’t working out.

Need to get something off your chest? PostSecret didn’t publish your postcard? Let Confess 2.0 hear your sins and worries. If you’re no baddie, sin vicariously.

I’ve just finished a quick and dirty port of GNU ed to Win32. It should still compile under *nix, but it avoids POSIX specific calls under Win32. If you’re using MinGW and MSys, you’ll need to build your own version of GNU Regex and link against it.

Download the source code.
Download the binary.

Amy Tenderich is a blogger. She’s also a diabetic. The gadgets she needs to live are clunky and outmoded. They look like some basement hacker threw them together with the amazing side effect of keeping someone alive. A purely accidental side effect at that.

In Amy’s open letter to Steve Jobs, she asks him to step up to the plate on behalf of those tethered to medical devices. She makes the case that Apple can make an iPod and enrich the lives of millions—why not an insulin pump? Even if Apple cherry picked one device to soup up with sensible, modern industrial design, it might well revolutionize the medical device industry and the lives of those dependent upon them.

I strongly encourage you to get on the horn and promote her letter. Maybe Apple will change the world—again. Steve Jobs, if you’re listening, here’s your chance to make a mark on the lives of millions more.