(Anyone that's been reading Slashdot has probably figured out what I was
doing in Sweden. I was there for most of March, and the San Francisco
thing I talked about was in January. I left Loki at the end of March, and
besides some side trips to various parts of the country, I have been in
Philadelphia. This journal's gonna jump around a little as I continue to
play catch up. Stay tuned.  --Ed.)

------

I've been craving chocolate, cookie dough Blizzards.

Recently I've been wandering over to Dairy Queen almost every night to
satisfy my craving. It all started when I was told that, despite the name
of the store, there's nothing Dairy in Dairy Queen ice cream. No milk.
None. Naturally, I had to find out if this was true, in the name of
Science, of course, and y'know how it goes. You start with the soft stuff:
Dilly Bars and those hand-dipped cones, but before long, you're playing
with the big boys and sucking down 8-balls of Peanut Buster Parfaits.
Before you know it you find yourself on the wrong side of the tracks,
giving blowjobs to strangers in a dirty bathroom to get your next Blizzard
fix.

At any rate, there is a girl working there that used to go to my high
school, and she's been working there every time I've visited Philadelphia
since at least 1995. Maybe she was even working there before I graduated
from high school.

I wanted to scoff at her under my breath for her...uh, lack of ambition,
but then I had to examine my hypocrisy; after all, the only REAL
difference between this girl and myself is that she gets a steady
paycheck.

Also, she may not be living with her parents.

Also, her cat's litter box might not be three to four inches from her bed.

So I thought about getting a job. Then I took a deep breath, played some
Crazy Taxi, and the thought passed, but only briefly. I have discovered
the horrible truth of "doing your own thing," which is code for, "refusing
to get a job," and that is, simply, that Doing Nothing Is Expensive. All
those late-night cups of coffee at 24-hour diners were adding up, and when
Geico sent me a cheerful reminder that my next car insurance bill was
closing in, I wept for the death of my savings account, which has been
somewhat anemic for quite awhile now.

So, I decided it was time for some upward mobility. And the path to untold
riches is education, right?

(I couldn't help but notice everyone with student loans just hit the
Delete button on this email. The rest of you still with me? Good.)

So, I enrolled at the prestigious Bucks County Community College, where
I'm making my way once again through EDUC101, also known as "Intro to
Teaching", which is BETTER known as, "So You Want to be a Teacher, Huh?"

Let me summarize this course. You can take it anywhere in the country, and
get the same basic synapsis.

a) Those in charge of Education (the "dimwits") have no idea what the hell
   they're doing. The only ones that do are the teachers themselves. The
   dimwits only concern themselves with the bottom line: The end result
   for the dimwits is not the product, but how much the product cost to make.
b) The teachers themselves are permently restricted from doing the
   right thing by the dimwits. Regardless of what position a given dimwit
   holds, in any given teacher's mind, the dimwit is a Neanderthal. No
   one tries to enhance the teacher's ability to teach, because sooner
   or later the teacher will get fired, sued, shot, or just plain old
   starve, in which case, the dimwits surmise, why should we expend the
   resources on those pesky teachers in the first place?
c) The students don't care what the teachers do, because it's all the
   same unproductive and/or annoying hazing session to them. The teachers
   don't care what the students do, since more interaction with a student
   means more likelihood of being fired, sued, or shot. The dimwits don't
   care what the teachers do, so long as they don't get sued, because
   sooner or later, they'll be fired, shot, or starve, which means more
   money available for whatever dimwits like to spend money on, which is
   nothing at all.
d) The only thing dimwits like to spend money on, apparently, is football.
   The only reason that dimwits spend money on Arts Education is in the
   hope that one of the students in the school-financed drumline will
   accidentally be killed by an offsides football player, which means
   cost reduction of bussing and cafeteria plans.

If you haven't developed a certain sense of hopelessness by this point,
then think like a dimwit for a moment: if you were a professional video
game programmer and went to teach highschool, even in the most highly paid
districts in America, you've taken a several thousand dollar pay cut. If
you work in the Dakotas, you've cut your salary in half, and you get laid
off for three months every year.

But we're not dimwits, so money's not important to us, right?



right?



If you've managed to get through all of that, then there may be a position
for YOU in teaching.

In the meantime, the Dimwit in me has taken to contract work.

Let me explain this briefly. Contract work comes from a few different
venues. First, you might get an email from someone to the extent of this:

  TO: [email protected]
  FROM: [email protected]
  SUBJECT: Still looking?

   Ryan,
     Saw a posting on LinuxGames.com that you are looking for a job. My
   company is looking for someone to implement casino poker machines as a
   Netscape plugin, and we think you'd be a good choice for the job.

    --alvin.



This is actually a trick. If you write back to them, they will NEVER talk
to you again. Instead, you should play hard to get, in which case they
still won't respond to you again, but at least you've saved yourself the
trouble of typing a response in the first place. The second type might be
Linux-specific:

  TO: [email protected]
  FROM: [email protected]
  SUBJECT: Job offer

   Ryan,
     Saw a posting on LinuxGames.com that you are looking for a job. We'd
    like to have you port our program to Linux, but we can't pay you
    anything for it. Interested?

    --simon.


This is NOT a trick; it's way too direct, and they are serious. Like I
said, we're not dimwits, so money's not important, right? Hey, there's a
million NCGs (New College Graduates) that think hard, unrewarding work
doesn't have to pay well if it will look good on a resume. These people
tend to starve with the teachers. It's a form of Darwinism.

Finally, there's the way I got the current contract I'm hacking on, which
is much like how everyone else gets their jobs:

  TO: [email protected]
  FROM: [email protected]
  SUBJECT: Job offer

   Ryan,
    My boss Theodore told me to hire someone, and I suspect that, while
   your work ethic is generally mediocre, you will work for cheap and
   probably  WON'T screw the pooch on any assignments we give you. Where
   can we send a check?

      --guy you used to work with.


Needless to say, all you need to read in that email is "where can we send
the check." That's MY generally mediocre work ethic shining through.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go study and write a Netscape plugin
at the same time.

--ryan.