Good news

So, after much deliberation and consideration, I went back to the metro and asked if I could work there. My friends Kim and Jeff were amazing and not only got me rehired but did it quickly too. I'll be on the schedule that starts this Friday!

The pay isn't fabulous but it's not much lower than nintendo and the work environment and management are about 10 billion billion billion times better. So I am very pleased and Angela is really happy as well.

I went in on Sunday to fill out some paperwork and I spent like 3 hours there chatting with old friends and new people too. It was really fun.

I have some pictures to post that we took at the blowing sands gallery this weekend. We dropped in there with Anita and Jim. They both seemed to enjoy the show. Jim became our official first customer of The Jerks too! He bought one of the collections of the first twelve comics that I made for the gallery. You can see the cover, and order one if you want, here.

Anyway, I can't find the cable to get the pictures off my phone at the moment so I'll edit this post and add them tonight or tomorrow after I find that darn thing.

--Abe

Volcano pics

Check these out! Straight from Iceland. Those pictures are just amazing.

We're headed to Stumptown this weekend. Going to drive down to Portland in the morning and drive back that night. It's going to be a really long day but should be a lot of fun too.

I've been working on one of my stories a lot lately. I'm super happy with how it's coming along. So happy that I want to talk about it and tell everyone about it but instead I'm going to just get back to work on it. You all can read it when I'm done :-)

I thought that this interactive chart was very interesting. You don't often see this type of unemployment data broken down by metro area. According to that chart the number of people employed in the Seattle area has decreased an average of 4.63% per month for the last three months. That's just scary.

--Abe

I'm boring

I just can't think of anything to talk about today. I had the same problem on Monday. I started researching something, got distracted, forgot to post and then forgot what I had been researching. Angela made fun of me when I told her.

Yeah, Alice was pretty average. It looked ok but the story was kinda meh. There were big stretches of "Hey look at how cool our CGI is" that added nothing to the movie at all.

I read a number of financial blogs. I used to read them daily but they started really depressing me so I'm down to a few times a week. Ah! I remembered what I was researching! I found this article on RollingStone. I'm pretty confident that if that doesn't make you angry as hell you're either a banker or so out-of-touch that you don't even understand what you've read.

--Abe

Posty post post

We've been watching Lost on the netflix streaming thing. I'm enjoying it quite a bit more than I anticipated I would. The direction is damn fine, the music is good, the writing is excellent and the acting is pretty damn good too. We're only up to about episode 12 in the first season right now. We've been watching it more sparingly than I would like because it freaks Angela out so we have to stop a few hours before we go to sleep. She's such a baby :-P

I reminded myself why I hate linux this weekend, at least for desktop use. I won't go into the gory details. Good thing windows 7 is basically pretty darn good. And almost every piece of open source software that I would use in linux is available in windows and works as well or better anyway. So.

I'm almost done reading Wolves of the Calla which is book five of the Dark Tower series. I'm really looking forward to getting to the end of this story since I've been reading it most of my life at this point. I've been sitting on the bed and reading for a few hours most nights. The dogs come in and hang out with me. They love it but Angela feels left out because she has to sit on the couch alone while she knits.

The job search is still basically fruitless. There are *tons* of jobs in the medical field. Not a one of which am I qualified for. I'd go to one of the community colleges and get a quick certificate in phlebotomy if I could afford to, but in order to be eligible, I need to pay for one quarter of full time classes which is a bit of a catch-22.

I'm so deeply thankful for Angela. Without her I'd have long ago found myself living in a cardboard box somewhere.

One of our neighbors got a job at the new Little Caesars pizza that opened in the mini-mall next to our apartment. Funny how all the people that got hired there for jobs that interact with the public are college and high school girls. They did hire one older guy, he's probably in his 50s, to stand on the sidewalk and wave a "5 dollar pepperoni pizza" sign. Of course that's a grand opening promotion and will end soon. I feel for that guy. I wonder what he will do when the promotion is over and they don't need him to hold that sign anymore. I would have gladly taken that job.

--Abe

edit:

I thought that this post on Mish's blog was hysterically funny because I have sent my resume off to at least three local vets/kennels for exactly the job that he is talking about.

Oblivion part 2

So, here's my review of the sand box part of oblivion.

The fact that creatures scale to your level completely destroyed my ability to enjoy the sandbox aspect of this game. As my character leveled up, she seemed to get less and less powerful. The numbers on her gear and in her character sheet got higher and higher but she got less and less powerful in relation to the creatures I was fighting.

So, the sand box gets a big fat raspberry.

I played Torchlight last night. I noticed that they had added steam accomplishments sometime after I had stopped playing. So I made a vanquisher and played for a few hours.

Torchlight is the most fun game that I've played in forever. Within minutes of playing I kept finding myself thinking stuff like "Damn this game is so much fun!". So I'm probably going to keep playing it, ostensibly so I can get the achievements but really just because it's fun.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm glad to see that the Greeks are finally getting some air time in the mainstream media.

If you've noticed that the weekly unemployment reports are being touted as good news upon good news for the last few weeks, take a look at this which points out that the 4 week moving average is showing an increasing trend in unemployment claims since about January.

--Abe

LoTRo Fails me

So, I played lord of the rings online all last weekend and I had a great time. My other game subscription was ending so I decided to renew lotro. Only problem is that turbines billing system won't accept my card number and won't let me update the one they have on file. So, after a few days of trying, I decided not to play lotro.

The computer room looks fantastic! It's all clean and organized. There's plenty of room to walk around and the floor isn't covered in a 3 inch layer of dog hair! It's awesome :-)

I applied for a technical support job at a place up in Bellingham. I'm really hoping that they call me at least because I've sent my resume to this specific company for a few different jobs over the past year.

I don't have a lot to say today. Sorry if you feel ripped off.

--Abe

Gone in the works

Well, I think I (we) have a solution for our photo problems. We got new phones that seem to take pretty good pictures. Good enough for the Web anyways. LG Neon. So we bought the $20 cord to transfer the pictures on the phone to our computers. And that way we won't eat through batteries for the real camera so fast. We bought it online today because the store at the mall sucks. So we should get it in the next week or so and then there will be pictures galore. Maybe more than you ever wanted.

Anyways, I really like the new phones. Some things bug me, like on my old phone, I could set the weekly recurrence for a number of weeks (like every 3 or 4 weeks), but on the new one, it is either every week on the same day or every month on the same date. Blegh. Oh well. Also, no games. And horrible ring tones. I think I might be able to fix that when we get the cord and I can put some ring tones on my phone. Maybe.

I started inking the Gone story. I am nervous and excited. I hope it looks good in the end. Abe likes it. I don't know what to think. I am really enjoying working with the nib pen. I had to go buy new stuff though because mine are all about 15 years old and rusty. Sigh. I feel old that I have 15-year-old rusty tools. Still. I got them in high school/junior high. The new ones work great. Really great. I have not had a drip since I got the new ones. I like the old handle better because it had a larger cork grip, but the new one is ok. It was only $3 at Dakota Art. I also bought three pairs of nibs, one pair of which does not fit in this handle. Doh. What an idiot. It would have been nice if the people at the store had pointed it out, but maybe I looked like I knew what I was doing.

I wish I new how to use Illustrator and Flash because Penny Arcade has a position open for an Associate Designer. Oh well. At least my boss is giving me a lot of graphics work lately. That is pretty fun, actually. I am pretty good with Photoshop, though I just learned about the effects for layers in the last month, so I am pretty unqualified for a real designer position like that. Still. It would be totally awesome to work for Penny Arcade, who are no more than a 15-minute car ride away. And that is bad traffic. Abe found that while job hunting this morning. He would have applied, but he is even less qualified for that than I am.

Speaking of drawing (though not really), I am also working on a funny one-page boxing comic. It is taking longer than I expected, but it is pretty fun and I think it will turn out great. I haven't decided on whether or not I will color it, which will add a lot of time. It is a pretty busy comic, even though it is such a simple idea. So far it will be three sheets (of tracing paper) already: the comic, the background, and the shading. I am doing the shading on Gone on a separate sheet of paper from the line inking, too. I just realized I am only half way done with the first page because I forgot I had to do the shading. My self imposed deadline for Gone is the 15th, but if I can't (and I don't think I can) I should be able to finish it up on Saturday (the 16th) if my friend doesn't call me to come up this weekend. Not sure what I will do with it when it is done. If I want to get it published, I shouldn't put it up on the Web anywhere.

Monday update

Angela stayed home friday because she wasn't feeling well. So we watched Buffy and Battlestar Galactica. We watched almost the entire second season of Buffy and most of season 2.5 of BSG.

On the economic front, I wanted to show you this chart which shows the percentage of the US population that is in the workforce. This includes the people that are reported in the unemployment rate. We're basically back to the percentage we had in the mid-late 70s and mid 80s.

--Abe

Economic stuff

I'm no expert on economics, I studied anthropology in college, but I read the news daily and I follow a few financial blogs that are run by people that really know their stuff. They report in much finer detail than more general news sources like CNN, NPR, or BBC do. Below is a sort of summarization from a number of different sources.

Today the government announced the unemployment numbers for December. According to their statistics 85,000 jobs were lost last month. They also revised November from a loss to a gain and October from a gain to a loss. The official reported unemployment rate sits unchanged at 10% for December. That only includes people currently receiving unemployment benefits.

2.5 million people were "marginally attached" which means they are unemployed and have looked for a job in the last 12 months but not in the last 4 weeks. In December of 08 that number was 578,000 people. These people are not counted in the reported unemployment number or percentage.

Between November 09 and December 09, the number of people receiving "Emergency Unemployment Compensation" benefits rose from 3.594 million to 5.143 million people, a 43% increase. And, those people are not counted in the reported unemployment numbers either.

Officially, unemployment is 10%, Clearly though the number of people without jobs is massively higher and is closer to 20%.

Things are just as bad in Europe too. Take a look at this article at the NY Times. Unemployment in Latvia is over 22% and Spain is over 19% In Spain, people 25 and under are 43.8% unemployed.

This is a huge amount of data to digest but there are some very interesting details in it. The numbers are in a wonky format though, if you see 207,000 read it as 207 million and 4,100 is 4.1 million. That chart shows quarterly data from 1999-2009 in both raw and seasonally adjusted formats. Annual numbers are in the far right column.

At this time, 73.9% of people age 25 and over with a bachelors degree or higher are employed which is down from 78.5% in 1999. 65.5% of people age 25 and older with a bachelors degree are employed, down from a high of 72% in 1999. 56.1% of people age 25 and over with a high school diploma are employed, down from 62.6% in 1999. And only 39.7% of people age 25 and older who do not have high school diplomas are employed, down from a high of 43.3% in 2007.

Sources are:

http://www.zerohedge.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/

http://www.bls.gov/

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

--Abe

Jobless again

I don't want to talk about it. On the bright side there'll be a lot more posting here from me starting now. And our house will finally be clean again. I baked real bread last night. Not batter bread but kneaded bread. I made two loaves of oatmeal maple syrup bread. It is SO tasty. I sent a few slices to work with Angela so she could share with her coworkers.

I started playing Dragon Age Origins a few days ago. I got it for my birthday back in December but the controls really turned me off the first time I tried it. I tweaked with the controls and got them working a lot better for me and now I'm really enjoying the game. I made a lady dwarf warrior. I'm going with dual wielding. The story so far is more mystery and promises than story but I'm only like 2 hours in to the game. If it doesn't pick up a bit in the next few hours I'll worry but for now I'm just assuming that the developers are assuming I'm a moron and are consequently spending WAY too much time letting me figure out how to move, click buttons and watch cut scenes.

Unfortunately for them I mastered those skills over a decade ago . . . .

I spent a few hours looking for jobs this morning and I've spent the rest of the day cleaning up the Christmas decorations. Once that is done then I can start actually cleaning the house. LOL

--Abe

Wednesday

So, turns out I'm a jerk. I know, big surprise. I did not get us the dvr bundle and Angela is now very sad.

I'm continuing to look for a job too, because my sense of the one I have now is that it is seasonal and that all the "there's a great chance that you'll be hired as a permanent employee" stuff they told me during the interview and hiring process was absolute bullshit. When I started training, probably 90% of the cubicles in the office were empty. Now its down to probably 60%. I bet by thanksgiving they will almost all be full. And my intuition tells me that by the middle of January or so they'll be 90% empty again.

Of course, unemployment is still rising and, just this morning, the news was reporting the "good news" that just 500 some thousand *new* applications were made last week in comparison to the 500 some thousand + a few thousand more new applications were made last week. Slightly less-bad news is good news! Up is down. Poverty is prosperity.

We haven't made a lot of progress on our debt since I started either because unexpected and unavoidable expenses keep coming up. Like Angela was sick and had to go to the doctor. I've had this weird pain in my side for like 6 months and it finally got so bad that I went to the doctor and it turns out I have some sort of lump that needs to be removed. My doctor told me that it was nothing to worry about "unless it's black and nasty looking when I cut it out of you". I actually really appreciate how direct my doctor is about stuff like that.

A rock hit our windshield last weekend when I was driving to work and now we have a dime sized star-shaped crack on the drivers side. It's directly in the middle of my field of vision but I think it's too far up to really bother Angela. We're going to fill it with one of those window repair kits but we need 15 minutes of direct sunlight to do it and it's been cloudy and raining for like 3 days now.

I have a half day of work today so I don't leave till 12:30 or so. The EQ2 guys are upgrading the hardware that my server runs on so I can't play. I've done a bunch of stuff around the house, read an entire web comic, posted here, looked for jobs, played with the dogs, done laundry and dishes. I'm bored and the future looks bleak to me right now.

--Abe

Wednesday Comic!

Angela drew this one on the tablet. It looks great!

I'm so tired. Monday night at 2 am Ernie started this terrified howling that woke us both up. The poor guy had had a bad dream or something and scared himself awake. He was so scared that he actually pee'd a little in his kennel.

We took care of him for a bit until he clamed down but then it took me about an hour and a half to fall back asleep.

Then I woke up about 45 minutes late because, in my mostly asleep panic, I had turned off our alarm. I got ready for work in about 20 minutes and was able to make it on time thanks to tuesdays being work at home day for Angela.

It was very exciting. And that's why I'm tired right now.

So, it turns out that there's a 95% chance that my job is seasonal and they just don't tell the people they hire. I've been talking with people that work there who are actual employees and they told me that they usually let all the people with my job go starting in mid-january.

Angela and I decided to curtail the frenzy of buying stuff that we had planned in favor of saving and paying off bills so that, if I do get laid off again, we'll have a much easier time of if because our expenses will be lower and we'll actually have some money in our savings.

Going to sleep now.

Abe

no comic friday

Sorry, no comic at the moment. I might post one later today or this evening. Instead I want to post a few links to some explanations of why the recent "drop" in unemployment is not a cause for celebration like most of the media is making it out to be.

One

Two

Three

In a nutshell, the unemployment rate "dropped" because, first, people ran out of unemployment benefits, even the extended and extra extended benefits, and, second, people reported that they have given up the job search and hence are no longer counted as unemployed.

Frighteningly, there are about 1.5 million more people set to lose even the extra extended benefits by the end of the year. So, if the reporting of unemployment continues as it has, expect the media to report a falling unemployment rate, and the end of the recession!, while more and more people lose unemployment benefits and still have no jobs . . .

--Abe

Belated monday comic

I got busy yesterday and completely forgot to post the comic!

I both suck and blow. My sincerest apologies to anyone who was waiting with baited breath for the new comic.

Since we are mmo-less these days I've decided to go back and play a bunch of the old games that I never finished or couldn't get in to before.

I played Civ IV for a while. The "tutorial" took me 4 hours to play through! I'm kind of terrified about how long a real game will take! I've never played a civilization game before though. It was fun.

Then I tried to play Homeworld again. I got to about the forth or fifth mission and got completely creamed. I really want to play the game though so I decided to play some other RTS games to learn the genre before I go back to Homeworld.

Which led me to Warcraft 3. I've played through the tutorial and the human campaigns and have just started the undead campaign. I'm really enjoying the story and the game itself is a *lot* more forgiving than Homeworld.

I've got another short story done and Laura gave it the go for graphicnovelization after reading it. So that's my project for today. It's about 25 pages long in short story form and it's going to be a pretty hefty graphic novel script when I'm done. Luckily, it uses a lot of the same characters as the story she is currently working on. So, that will save a bunch of development time.

Still unemployed. Still no calls or contacts.


--Abe

Friday comic day

And Arthurs day continues. This is really what it's like too. The stuff that seems to take all night to do when you work all day is finished *way* too soon when its all you have to do.

And, when you look for jobs every day, you can get through all the new listings on 20 or 30 websites in just an hour.

I really understand why all those housewives in the 50s we're doing speed and drinking constantly.

I went to the job source office a few weeks ago to see if they could help me find a job. They told me the single best way to get a job right now is through your friends or family. Which is great except I don't really have any friends and I don't speak to my family. Also, I'm not eligible for worker retraining because I didn't work as a contractor long enough. I did, however, work as a contractor long enough to not be eligible for unemployment. *sigh*

On a brighter note, well, I'm working at learning latin so I can get my bachelors degree finished. It's a months long project but, at least I'm going to come out of this time of unemployment with something to show for it other than an expanded waistline and a preternatural ability to get stains out of a toilet bowl.

Woot!, as Angela would say. Those of you that know her, know that no other person on Earth is capable of putting as much sarcasm into the word Woot as Angela. When it leaves her lips, it absorbs light. Birds fall from the sky. The sun hides behind the moon. Chuck Norris curls in to the fetal position and cries like a little girl. I grin like an idiot.

Also, damn, Master of Puppets is a great album.


--Abe

An honest mistake really

After I drew this it occurred to me that bringing a bottle of milk to a "MOO-Aholics Anonymous" meeting is like showing up to an AA meeting with a six pack in hand. Ah well.

Apparently Arthur has some sort of video game addiction problem.

I'm spending my time these days learning as much as I can about starting and running a small business. My goal is to use the unfortunate circumstance of my months long unemployment to start a business that might eventually support both Angela and I.

Listening to Pink Floyd and baking some chocolate bread at the moment.

--Abe

Games and such

I've been giving the free-to-play mmo Runes of Magic a bit of a try for the last week. I'm thinking I'll write up a detailed review in a week or two but in the mean time some quick and dirty thoughts follow.

The game is definitely higher quality than the other f2p games I've tried. The client downloaded very quickly even though its 3.4 gigs. It runs pretty well too. Although I did see a lot of people in the newbie area complaining about lag, I experienced none myself. I made a mage and the early abilities seem clearly distinguished, have nice effects and an interesting upgrade path.

I'm burned out on EQ2 at the moment. It's both the game and the community actually. I'm at a point with my characters where I can't progress them without doing group content and I've spent months trying to get groups going for the places I need to go without luck. The community itself is just abysmal these days. 1-9 is like an open sewer of idiocy, filth, arguments and snotty sniping. And since they've made it take just a few weeks of playing to get to the level cap the over-all quality of players has significantly declined.

So, me and Angela cancelled our accounts.

She's been playing The Sims 3 and I've been playing Neverwinter Nights 2. Last time I played NWN2 I got about 20 hours in to it and got bored. I was playing a Paladin which is the class I've played in every D&D game I've ever played. This time I made a Warlock and I'm having a blast. The game is more of a challenge. I'm having to use and control my party members a lot more. I giggle every time my character sets some poor thug on fire.

The story is kind of slow and the game is *really* lacking in the type of humor I expect from a game made by people that worked on Fallout. But, so far anyway, the party combat is keeping me interested.

I'm still looking for a job every day without luck. It's gotten to the point that it's like some sort of sick joke. I busy myself with writing, drawing comics, cleaning the house and researching possible means of self employment. I've never wanted to run my own business but it's looking more and more like that is going to be my only choice.


--Abe

Nothing

Angela made me two cool scrubbies from her weird japanese scrubby book. One is just a blue circle but the other one is an elephant :-) Its so damn cute I haven't used it to clean anything yet.

I've been kind of depressed the last week or so. It's been six months since I was laid off. I've had one job interview in that time and it was last week. I've written a bunch of stories and done scripts for comicsbooks but it's all seeming like a big waste of time right now. When I stop to think about it for too long I start to feel like I'm going to cry.

Angela made my day yesterday when she came home and told me it was my half birthday. She took me out to dinner and I felt like a normal person for a little while.

The warhammer graphic novel is Exterminatus. I didn't like it that much either. The characters are flat and uninteresting. I am *really* enjoying Vampire Wars though. It's written well enough that the writing gets out of the way of the story. The characters are decently interesting and the setting is great. Thats really the problem with most of the warhammer stuff. The setting is awesome but the characters just feel forced and card board.

My guardian, Eunika, in EQ2 is level 75. I've been tanking stuff for my guild since I have the highest plate tank. Here's a picture of her. She's wearing level 12 master crafted armor in her appearance slots because it looks really cool.

The guys I'm playing with are a mix or newbies and players that have been away for a long time. It's been a lot of fun going through content that I haven't played in a while.

Game Update 52 is in the works and there are a lot of new features but the one I'm most excited about are shadows that are calculated and rendered by the graphics card. Previously all shadows in EQ2 were rendered by the CPU and it was an *immense* performace hit to enable them. I downloaded the test client last night to try it out and with shadows on full on test I get 25 frames a second more than I do on live with shadows enabled.

For some reason, a lot of people have been talking about what EverQuest 3 might look like if SOE were to announce it soon, say at fan faire. The topic of EQ3 comes up every so often but it seems to me that its getting more talk this time than it usually does. I've been thinking about it and here are a few things I would like to see.

No classes. This is a *huge* change but I really want to see a system thats skill based with progressive specialization as your skills get higher. An example, you start the game as "adventurer" there are trainers in the newbie area that correspond to the general divisions of melee, magic, crafting and support. You do quests for each one and the teach you an ability in return. As you use the ability you gain skill in it and are able to unlock choices at certain thresholds of skill. You might have 2 slots and six abilites to chose from though so your choice at one threshold determines what you will be able to chose from at the next threshold.

At the lower level scharacters should be fairly generalized but as they are played more and more they will progressively specialize. There would, of course, have to be ways to get your choices undone so you can try different combinations and permutations.

I would also like to see crafted gear be customizable by the crafter. So not everyone makes the same broadsword +1, then iron broadsword +1, etc. If the crafters can use different raw materials to determine the types of stats on a given piece of gear then every weird combination of abilities will be able to get gear with the stats they need to be effective. This is a big one for me because I play an Inquisitor in EQ2 and Dennika is very much pigeon holed into playing a specific role by the gear she is able to wear and what is available in the game.

I very much want EQ3 to not be a min/max stats and gear game like EQ2 is.

I want the creatures and enemies in the game to have and use spells and combat arts. The mobs should use tactics that are appropriate for the type of abilities they have. Casters should try to stay at range. Mobs should be social. They should run away, call out to their friends, ring alarms, use roots, stuns, mez's, dots, heals, etc. Mobs should use strategies consistently so players can figure out the strategy a mob is using and create a counter strategy. They should be a challenge, but the rewards need to be inline with the challenge. RoK is still an exercise in frustration for most soloists and the rewards, both in terms of xp and gear, are a joke. A mob that can one shot me damn well better give me more than .001% of a level's worth of xp.

I would also like to see a more or less seamless world like Vanguard has. I'm not talking about a world like WoW that is essentially a series of well constructed maps connected together by a few specifically designed points. I'm talking about a single world map with large geographic areas that bleed into each other like on the earth. Not large themed maps like eq2. A seamless world where you can ride your horse from the ocean, through a swamp, to a grassland, to a forest, to a forest in the foothills, to a pass through a mountain range, to a high dry desert, etc.

There should also be a good fast travel system like the bells, boats, griffons, spires and druid rings in eq2 and / or the rifts in vanguard.

I have more thoughts but I'll write them down later on.

Abe