Jack's New Writeups

Where were you that Saturday when it rained? (place)

2009-08-29T16:23:25Z

I like this rain.

I was a student at a music preparatory school growing up - I spent every Saturday from the age of six to seventeen on the campus of a local state university, though it was a college when I started. Some days my mom or, when I was older, a friend with a car would give me a lift, but most of the time I caught the bus. The campus locked down to vehicular traffic on weekends and the bus stop was on the opposite side of the school from the music building, so getting to class meant a bit of a walk. And in the fall, when the weather turned, the rain as I remember it fell lightly but in quantity, whispering against the interlocked pavement stones and chilling everything it touched, but chilling it gently.

When I would get home by father would more often than not be lying on the living room floor, propped up on a gigantic corduroy pillow with a bag of potato chips on his chest, watching whoever was playing whoever in football…

August 1, 2009 (place)

2009-08-01T05:38:15Z

Fact of the day:

When it's first being sprayed, when it's still wet and glistening and slowly drying overnight into pseudo-permanence, the paint your municipality uses for the double yellow lines down the center of Main Street, if it's anything like the stuff my municipality uses, smells like freshly-baked donuts.

I swear I'm not making that up.

How to kill that mocking bird outside your window (person)

2009-06-02T06:38:39Z

Confront it with a mirror;
let it mock itself to death

November 18, 2008 (person)

2008-11-18T16:38:53Z

My mother has worked in Human Resources for something like 25 years; the more time I spend looking for a job, the more I begin to think that she is the only even slightly sane person working in the field, anywhere.

There are a whole bunch of reasons for me to be frustrated by this, particularly today, but there are ~~two~~ three that stick in my head.

Customized job application forms, online or otherwise
Know why I have a resume? To keep from having to write out the same information over and over and over again. So why do companies insist on using proprietary web or application forms that require me to fill out tiny boxes with my personal information in them and then, if they're really nasty about it, ask me to upload my resume, the document I wrote to keep from having to do mindless, repetitive actions?
Salary requirement conversations
What a waste of time. "How much would you like

…

Editor Log: November 2008 (person)

2008-10-31T08:32:04Z

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

This shouldn't come as a shock to anybody who spends any amount of time in the catbox - six years on this site and I still manage to mis-message things better kept quiet - but I'm stepping down as Editor-in-Chief.

It was a practical decision. The EiC position was one born out of necessity - managerial responsibilities on E2 were traditionally split between Vision and Day-to-Day Operations with the latter taking cues from the former and generally trying to keep things running while the brains of the outfit worked on the big picture, a scheme that worked perfectly well when the various Directors spent most of their time scheming up new ways to make E2 awesome and less of it keeping the place running.

That system worked perfectly well until Katherine and Alex went through the administrative revolving door - Alex's managerial style is hands-on in a different and, I think,…

October 15, 2008 (place)

2008-10-14T04:42:54Z

I love Lowell (So there. I said it.) but sometimes dealing with the infrastructure of a town this simultaneously large, diverse and cranky is like being sucked into a time warp.

Take for example the local bus company, the Lowell Regional Transit Authority.

On the one hand, the company does a great job - it will get you from an array of locations around Lowell to the center of town and to the commuter rail every hour for a buck, or it will get you from an array of locations around Lowell to any of the other locations around Lowell for a buck fifty if you're willing to wait for a transfer, and there are discounts for daily use. Nifty. It doesn't run outside of some fairly normal hours that include, apparently, Sundays, but let's leave that for the moment. It does what it can.

What the bus company apparently CAN'T do is tell you where to catch your bus or what route it might be taking because their maps…