So while I was walking the streets of San Francisco or New York or some place… I just remember it was with Apple people, OK? I came to the realization that my life is made more difficult on a daily basis because I don’t like two beverages: coffee and beer. I’m serious. If you drink one or both, you’re missing out on a world of challenges and strife. We, the teetotaler martini drinkers (not an oxymoron) are “roughing it” day in and day out. Allow me to explain this new form of minority.

My morning begins with a cup of hot tea with sugar and cream. To make tea, one must immerse tea leaves in water using some vessel for a fairly precise period of time, usually 3-4 minutes. Any longer and it’s burnt; any shorter and it’s weak. After the tea has steeped, you can add your accoutrements like lemon, honey, sugar, or cream. Then, you’re on your way. I’m lucky enough (actually, sort of embarrassed to make tea with it) to have a Flavia machine at home, so I get tea in seconds without thinking. I then add my cream and sugar and go about my business. But allow me to share what happens when I try and get a tea in the fast-paced world of 8 AM at McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts.

I frequently stop by Dunkin’ Donuts before work to pick up breakfast. I am brave enough to ask them for tea with cream and sugar. They take the order without question, adding two tea bags because of the size of the cup, and adding some secret ratio of sugar and cream with magic foot-operated dispensers. On a plus, it’s consistent - the tea is basically the same every morning because the sugar/cream/tea ratio is the same. On the downside, it’s basically the sweetest tea I can comfortably drink. I’m sure for many it’s too sweet. But I can’t do much because it’s a secret ratio with secret machines. I drink it and I like it and I settle for it.

Yesterday, for the first time as an adult, I went to McDonald’s to pick up breakfast instead. I ordered a value meal and asked for tea instead of coffee. As I waited, I happened to look at the LCD screen that shows your order to the assembly line folks. There I found my breakfast order, along with LRG SWEET TEA. I did not want a large chilled sweet tea. I wanted some medium-ish-sized hot tea. Yes, I’d have to add my own sugar and cream, but I was willing to sacrifice. But instead, I’m handed the most monstrous cup they have which I’m supposed to fill with their new sweet tea. I grin and bear it, as I wanted to try this newfangled beverage anyway. It tastes like corn syrup, for the record.

The point is, tea isn’t sitting in vats waiting for you to order it at a billion different locations like coffee is. It must be painstakingly prepared and steeped before it’s right. New business model: become the Starbucks of tea. I smell profits.

When it comes to evening beverages, I’ll occasionally seek out a nice mixed drink. Anything with vodka should work. The problem with this is that “mixed” part. I have neither the idea how nor the equipment to make mixed drinks at home (yet). I can’t walk into my local liquor store (or supermarket if you live some place cool like that) and pick up a case of cosmos. Actually, that may not be completely true. I’ve definitely had a cosmo out of a box before. It was OK. But that’s not the point.

The point is that coffee and beer are so ubiquitous and I don’t like them. At all. Not even a tiny bit. There’s a Starbucks on every corner and a brew in every bucket at the party, but Dominic won’t have it. So I spend a few painstaking minutes daily to brew the perfect cup of tea and pay bartenders a pretty penny to mix me delicious cocktails. I can only hope that some time soon I’ll find a bottled beverage I like and a form of coffee I can live with. In the meantime, who wants to make a line of bottled cosmos and open a chain of anti-Starbucks’?

It’s been a smidge over a month since last we left our blog, and I’ve been compelled multiple times recently to update it, so here we go.

I’m going to roll out three or so posts this week, and I’ll update the links here as they go live. I’m going to talk about something that makes my life just a little bit harder, the difference between groups and teams, and a word about memory errors. If something else comes up, we’ll add that too, but that’s the schedule for today. Pretty eclectic, no?

The last time I wrote here, I was trying to finish classes, finish my epic video project/keynote presentation, and get convocation (NOT graduation) over with. How did we do? Read more and find out…

Classes finished well enough, with my semester GPA falling just short of Dean’s List. Finals were a breeze since I had no English classes, so everything was multiple choice! The Richard Digital Rights Keynote, however, took a turn for the worse.

I’m pretty proud of the presentation itself. That is, the file. But the deliverable, a movie of the presentation with my partner and I narrating, was a disaster. I elected to record the narration in Keynote, as Apple swears they added this functionality in Keynote 3. They did, but it doesn’t seem to work quite right. I made the mistake of appending some additional commentary at the end of the presentation, and it completely wrecked the timing and the playback of the show. Couple this with the fact that Matt and I recorded the narration in the Library at like 10 the night before, and you don’t get a very exciting show. Very long story short, Richard was very forgiving, allowing me to re-submit the file a few times. I ended up running through the presentation again, recording it with screen capture software, and then manually attaching our narration track to the new movie file. This produced a less than stellar file, but we ended up getting a B for effort, and after spending an entire day trying to fix it, I was happy to talk away with that.

Convocation was whatever. It’s extremely awkward and anti-climactic to be at your graduation and know you’re sort of kind of not actually done yet. And you don’t have a job. You just have the sense of “What exactly am I celebrating?” But it was nice to just do convocation with the English Department and have people I actually know speak and give me well-wishes.

I just took my first exam for my online ECON 100 which will give me the 3 pathetic final credits I need to officially graduate. It’ll all be over by August.

But that’s not all that’ll happen by August! Fate, talent, and dumb luck have all conspired to place me solidly in the running for two incredible jobs on two opposite coasts. One is at an innovative and unique private high school in San Francisco, The Urban School, where they need someone to help support the incredible things they’re doing, like their 1:1 laptop program. That’s right, everyone there gets a Mac laptop and they’re all actually using them! It’s brilliant! The other is at a place you might not have heard of, Harvard University. They’re looking for someone to work at their two Campus Stores and help start some exciting new Apple initiatives there.

I spoke with the manager for Harvard on the phone already and we got along great and really connected on retail philosophy very quickly. I’m headed up there to formally interview as soon as she’s back from vacation, the beginning of July, and I don’t see any reason why I won’t get the job. I have a video chat scheduled with Urban this Friday and, being called a “long shot” by the manager there, I’m extremely hesitant to start packing for SFO. But I will do everything I can to convince them I’m worth taking a chance on.

I’m trying to limit how many times I use the word incredible, but it’s very difficult. They’re both incredible opportunities with incredible employers in incredible places doing incredible things. I’d be thrilled to bits with either opportunity and I’m comfortable saying I’ll get at least one of them. So I don’t know where I’ll be in August, but I know I’ll have a job wherever I am. I can’t wait to go to IKEA!

This post will probably end up on the about page, eventually, but I wanted to explain why the Blog is called what it’s called, because someone seems to have been wondering.

The original concept for the Blog, which then gave birth to the name, was to create a tech blog for the common man. The idea was that I would “dedicate” some of my mental “bandwidth” each day to finding all the tech news I can, which I already do. I’d then disseminate the bullet points that mattered for the public at large. I’d be doing the heavy lifting so you don’t have to. I’m dedicating the bandwidth, not you.

But before that even got off the ground, it evolved into a blog about my quest to find a job and infrequent personal musings. I still love tech, and you’ll see that come out in my posts frequently, but right now this blog is more personal. But if you need advice about technology, feel free to shoot me an email or IM.

When I haven’t been working on schoolwork, I’ve been knee-deep in job searching. So much of it is talking with yourself to figure out what you’re looking for, and that answer is constantly changing. A few weeks ago I decided that under no circumstance would I seek a job in Delaware. I want to move. It’s non-negotiable. So with my sights laser-focused solely on the Bay Area of San Francisco, I had to begin expanding my view of what I want to do and where, exactly, I’d like to do it. It had to be more than just Apple.

I did a fun trick once where you ask yourself what job you want to do if money was irrelevant and you could do whatever you wanted. It’s very hard to do by yourself because you have to be completely spontaneous with the answer. You can’t over-think it because it has to come from your “gut” to be the right answer. I played this game at a time when I strongly wanted to peruse a marketing position. The answer that came back was IT Support. The answer shouldn’t have surprised me, because it’s what I do now and I truly enjoy it, but I really wanted to diversify. I wanted to do something different for the sake of doing it. I still want to do marketing someday, but I now believe it would manifest itself more as technical marketing, and I need to build up my skills before I move in that direction.

I can’t tell you how important it is to be able to talk honestly with yourself. I know it sounds schizophrenic, but it’s horrible how often we lie to ourselves about things. The lies are self-perpetuating to allow us to stay happy in the situations we’ve placed ourselves in, burying the truth ever deeper. And if you don’t start digging for the truth, you end up down a path that ends in a breakdown: A complete loss of mental faculty because you just realized you’ve been living a lie. That’s probably an overly-dramatic description, but I hope you see the point.

So what I’ve ended up doing a lot of lately is double-checking the decisions I’m making. I keep challenging my goals and aspirations to make sure they’re true, and use that to guide my job applications and research. Through this exercise of self-awareness, I’ve stumbled upon a job I’m perfect for, in a location I wasn’t looking at, for a small college I’ve never heard of. But secure in the knowledge that the job was made for me, and the relative proximity to my original Bay Area dreams, I’m actively pursuing the opportunity. Barring issues with my timetable (I can’t really move until June) I hope to enter into a dialogue soon with the college and see if we fit together.

There was a time, really just a week ago, where I would have shot down notions I’m now treating as par-for-the-course. The job is in Penngrove, CA which is in Sonoma County - Wine Country. I’ve never been there, but as far as I know the area is uniformly gorgeous and natural. But I know with absolute certainty that it’s the right job. When you are certain that you’re finally doing the right thing, you gain a powerful ally - yourself. And when you can be your own best proponent, you’re far better equipped to deal with the rigors of job-seeking. Yes, I’d have to relocate myself. Yes, I’d have to find housing in a place I’ve never really seen before. Yes, it would be a lot of work and weeks of adjustment and rearrangement. But it’s the right job. It has to be done.

So the tech world got a friendly reminder today why DRM is bad and I’m passing it on to you. The story I’m referencing is here. First a quick note for our readers: What is DRM? DRM, or Digital Rights Management, is data that is added to a digital music file to prevent you from using it in certain ways. For example, a song you buy from the iTunes Music Store can only be played on 5 computers at any one time. The file literally “phones home” to get permission to do things. In other services, it prevents you from burning the music to a CD to listen to in your car. It can also function as a “kill-switch” as it is in the case of this story. Let me explain.

Microsoft-based music services are huge fans of subscription plans. In these, you pay a flat fee and are able to download all the songs you can possibly get and listen to them on the computer and, if you’re lucky, MP3 players that aren’t iPods. The catch is that, if you stop paying, the songs stop playing. Why? Because about every month, the file checks in with home base and makes sure you paid your bill. It then gets the information it needs to play for another month. This back and forth is completely invisible to you if you’re paying your bills and following all the rules.

But what if the server it calls to check in with… isn’t there anymore? It can’t get the information it needs to keep playing and you lose your music. Why? Because you don’t own any of it. You’ve been buying a monthly renewable license to play the songs and nothing more. The terms of use you agreed to before you set up an account (you did read them before you clicked on “agree”, right?) remind you that this could happen at any time. And now it’s about to for fools who bought songs on the MSN Music Service.

The way this service was setup, the songs are only phoning home when you move them to a different computer or upgrade your operating system, similar to when iTunes checks in. So the songs will play so long as you 1. Never upgrade your operating system 2. Never buy a new computer. You can burn the music to a CD and then rip the songs back onto the computer, as you can do with any service set up this way, but you lose quality that way and it’s a pain to do. Basically, your music is stuck on the computer you have it on right now, and that’s that. Thanks for playing. Have a nice life.

What’s the moral of the story? Support DRM-Free music services like iTunes Plus, Amazon’s digital music store, eMusic.com, and anywhere else DRM-Free tracks are sold. That way, you have a music file that will play as long as you like it to, with no strings attached, and no restrictions on your fair use of the files. Send a message to the RIAA that users can be trusted with digital content and won’t settle with archaic and stupid restrictions on fair use.

Here it is! Sorry for the YouTube quality. I can send you an iPod-compatible file upon request!

I don’t plan on posting much, if at all, this weekend. I’ll be busy doing research for my video project and other homework. But stay tuned, as I hope to put up a teaser trailer for that project in the next 24 hours. Edit: Trailer is up!!!

So I typically don’t talk very publicly about politics or otherwise enter into a discussion about such things: too many people have too many strong feelings about government and it often gets too emotional, which is not the way to have an interesting, intelligent debate. In that vein, I have paid as little attention as possible to the primaries. The way I see it, my vote in the DE primary doesn’t matter (and I wasn’t even here, actually) so why worry about the candidates until there’s only one on each side and it’s time to vote for real? It’s especially easy when I have every intention of simply voting for whoever the Democratic Party candidate is. This all came up today, which is why it’s made it to a blog post.

Somehow, John McCain came up today at work. I made the following realization about John McCain last night: the very thing which people love about him–his service in the military and POW status–is exactly what scares the crap out of me. That, combined with the fact that he is super old, makes him dangerous, in my opinion. Being a POW alone seems to me something you deal with for the rest of your life, and McCain was captured for 5 1/2 years. FIVE AND A HALF YEARS he was imprisoned, tortured, and otherwise not living the good life. How can that NOT affect you for the rest of your life? And at age 72, you’re not exactly 100% in control of your faculties anyway. Put those two together and I see a dangerous combination.

I picture some Zoolander-type situation, where McCain is sitting down with the Malaysian Prime Minister to discuss some trade agreement and just… SNAPS. Jack Bauer style. In fact, one of my friends made the comment “It’s like Jack Bauer for President. Wouldn’t you want Jack Bauer to be President?” No, Bobby, I don’t. Know why? Because whenever Bauer gets angry, Bauer goes rogue. The job of the Secret Service is to protect the President, not chase him down when he goes on a killing spree. While I’m essentially arguing that McCain is a ticking time bomb, that’s not really how I feel. But I do think his mental well-being HAS to be questionable. And he’s really old. He’s 72, c’mon. Case closed. That’s like making Dick Cheney Vice President…Oh shit…

Which brings me to the Democrats. I really don’t have a problem with either, but only one can win. So I’ve started trying to make a decision in my mind who’s best. Recently this week, I’ve been inadvertently exposed to Obama TV ads and radio spots. He really has that whole MLK inspiring speaker thing going on for him. I think that’s a powerful asset for a country in such need of genuine, respectable leadership. I think that alone seals the deal for me. I don’t care about experience because if you arm yourself with good people, you’re set, and with the power of language that he has (barring the occasional PR-snafu) he could sell ice to eskimos. With Hillary, I think her greatest asset is her strongest weakness: she’s so experienced because she’s so entrenched in the “Democratic Republic” Government Machine. She’s nearly become whatever they call “Old Money” in politics. It makes you question where her allegiances might be. I do certainly think she can help bring this country out of the funk we’re in and set us on a better course, but I also think Obama can do even more for that. Again, if she gets elected, more power to her. Go Hillary. Ra-Ra, and all that. But Obama has my vote, at the moment.

These are my opinions, and I make no warranties that they are anything but. I do respect your right to disagree so long as you do so with reason, intellect, and research. Anything less is disingenuous and unhelpful. Simply repeating over and over “Obama likes cocaine” doesn’t further reasoned debate. Especially in a country where our President is a “reformed” alcoholic. True story.

Something wrong with this story? Agree? Disagree? Comment!

So I live in Delaware. Small Wonder, 1st State, Diamond State, whatever. It’s all the same, boring, 2nd smallest state in the union. While living in said East-Coast locale, I’m trying to get a job in the Bay Area of San Francisco. This being on the opposite coast where there’s no guarantee the earth will stay still for much longer. But that’s the price you pay and the risk you take to work with the best and brightest, to be surrounded by hot, new technology, and to work at Apple.

No, Apple hasn’t returned any of my calls lately. But that doesn’t stop me from applying.

Initially, I couldn’t think of any place else I’d like to work at. After being given the cold shoulder more times than I can count, however, I have discovered Craigslist. Yes, Craigslist. The same site you can find a “no-strings attached” kind of guy or gal in an instant, and enough penis photos to give Kinsey the willies, is also an incredible site for job searching. There must be a good 20 jobs that are posted daily in the Tech Support section I’m monitoring. This is clearly where those in-the-know go to find jobs and find employees. And through it, I’ve found several amazing, interesting companies that I had never heard of before and that I would love to work for. I have applications pending with several of them.

The interface is dead-simple. Actually, ugly simple. You could code the design by hand without even knowing HTML–it’s that boring looking. But that’s the secret: it’s fast, viewable on any computer or device in the universe, and quick to find that information you need. I’ve always been one to espouse form above function, but I set my predilections aside for Craigslist, because I find at least 3 jobs every night I’m perfectly qualified for and quickly fire off resumes. I’m essentially carpet-bombing the Bay Area job market every night and getting nothing back. Why? There’s two issues: a crazy-saturated applicant pool, and state discrimination. I think the 1st goes without saying, which is why I titled this post for the 2nd.

After talking with several Californian friends and logically thinking through things, I have decided that when most CA companies see my DE address, they literally throw away my resume. Never mind that I know exactly who each Apple product is designed for. Also disregard the fact that I work on PCs every single day and consistently provide top-notch service and support. You may also not like to know that I live and breathe technology and communication. I’m a valuable and profitable mix of communication skills (English Major) and technical ability (Senior Technician) that so many candidates don’t have. But all that ends up in the rubbish bin. I’m not even given the chance of a phone interview. It hurts. A lot.

So what do you do? Do what everyone else does: game the system. The most interesting idea I got was to remove my address from my resume, which I’ve nearly done. I’ve either removed it or subordinated it, depending on what information you look at. I’ve replaced it with my name and email in a large font, encouraging companies to give me the decency of a response. I know how many applications you get, but I’m special, I promise. I’ve left intact the area code of my Delaware cellphone number, the city of my Newark, DE University, and various other facts. I’m not here to lie, and I absolutely do not; all I want is to level the playing field. To do that at Apple, for example, I had to get some of my friends who are internal to get me emails for recruiters whom I contacted directly, immediately launching myself to the top of the applicant pool and even garnering a phone interview for my efforts. But like I said, I still don’t have a job there. But at least I had a great conversation with a recruiter.

Is it about relocation, guys? Cause if it is, I will be happy to move out there on my own dime if that’s what it takes. But I’d really like to have a job first. I don’t need your money to move, but I do kinda want your money to work. Can we make some sort of deal on this?

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about piracy in the digital age, its historical roots, and avenues for dealing with it in the future, and it’s all very distressing. It’s all background to help me develop a short documentary video project I’m working on for a seminar on modern-day notions of copyright. My idea was to show students talking nonchalantly about stealing multimedia and explaining how they copy, share, and create media, and how modern law doesn’t mesh with what they’re trying to do. I didn’t realize how easy it would be to find a hook.

Let me explain. Did you know that, right this very second, no one is 100% sure that you’re legally entitled to copy a music CD you bought to your computer, much less your iPod? Mind you, you’ve only bought a LICENSE to LISTEN to the music contained on that CD, and own little more than the media it’s printed on, but traditional notions of Fair Use seem to defend your right to copy it for personal use. But then you have stories like this from the Washington Post where the RIAA argues against any modicum of common sense and a huge body of case law. To quote from RIAA’s site (emphasis mine):

There’s no legal “right” to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns so long as: 

• The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own
• The copy is just for your personal use. It’s not a personal use – in fact, it’s illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying

Contrast this with a quote I found using Wikipedia which comes from oral arguments in a Supreme Court Case:

“And let me clarify something I think is unclear from the amicus briefs. The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their Website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod. There is a very, very significant lawful commercial use for that device, going forward”  Don Verrilli, representing MGM in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.

If you read those two quotes, you can already see the problem. When you can’t agree what the problem is, you can’t decide how to fix it. When laws, policies, beliefs, and contracts don’t agree, you have chaos, which is where copyright law is right now. And students are getting caught in the crossfire.

Part of my job as a Senior Technician is to serve as a beacon of legality in the college community and provide a modicum of input into the University’s copyright and digital rights policies. I hold my torch high as I feed the iPod ecosystem and buy/download songs from iTunes. But I don’t like enough music to really steal any. I’ve always been more of a singles kind of guy, so I buy singles when I want to, pay the whopping 99 cents, and move on. They’re usually free, anyway, because I have so much iTunes credit, given to me by people who are sure I can use it. So yes, I think it’s fair to say that 99.5% of my music is legal and licensed to me in some fashion. I’d like to think I very much practice what I preach. But music isn’t the only problem…

That’s just a taste of what I’m going to be dealing with for this project. But hopefully I’ll pepper my blog with other interesting topics in-between updates.

Until next time: take care, leave feedback, and buy music. - D