Real moonbatt or brilliant parody?
There is a website that has been in existence since 2005. It does have pics of Kay posted.
There is also a Twitter page (which I am now following).
Other Lefties link to her posts…
All this seems to be empirical evidence that she is in fact a bonafide lefty, but her comments are SO off the wall…too good to be true really…
I just can’t decide.
“A U.S. Marine from Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, takes aim as he tries to protect an Afghan man and his child after Taliban fighters opened fire in the town of Marjah, in Nad Ali district, Helmand province”
(See more photos of this Marine)
And let this one picture be the rebuttal to every Zinn quote I’ve been subjected to over the past two weeks…
This is just bizarre. As NBC continues its screwed up process of broadcasting the Olympics by delaying the actual telecast of important events until prime time, apparently a bunch of folks are pissed off that real news sources are reporting on what’s actually happened. They’re targeting the wrong thing, of course. If they’re upset that the news is being reported before it’s being shown on TV, the real problem is NBC’s decision not to show stuff live on TV or to webcast it for those who would prefer to see it live. But people are taking out their anger on newspapers who are giving live reports of what’s actually happening:
“Could you please ask the editor of the front Web page to not name the winners within the headlines/sub-headlines?” asked Ken Waters of Phoenix. Matt Gooch of Harrisonburg, Va. said he was disappointed when The Times reported the results of the men’s downhill before NBC showed the event. “This is not Taliban news, nor TARP news, or even Paula Jones type news,” Gooch said. “There is no meaning to this except the anticipation and suspense that sports viewers feel watching the event live. Please help me understand why your organization needs to spoil the experience.”
Other news organizations are hearing similar complaints. Liz Spayd, managing editor of The Washington Post, told a reader who asked for a spoiler alert yesterday that, “It’s an issue we’re trying to evaluate right now.” She said that it’s a tricky question “for a news site whose greatest value is to break news. We don’t want to be the game spoilers, but when big news happens — an unexpected gold for the U.S., for example, we want it prominently visible on the site.”
Thankfully, the NY Times “has no intention of changing its approach,” recognizing that it’s a news organization, rather than a business to prop up NBC’s ridiculous broadcast scheduling choices.
This does highlight a larger issue that I’ve been noticing lately. In our more “real-time” society, especially with things like Facebook and Twitter, the idea that you can hide from “spoilers” is increasingly arcane. Now, for most broadcasters (other than NBC, apparently) this should represent good news: as it will drive more people to watch content live, rather than trying to save it for later, since they’ll want to avoid spoilers ahead of time. In this case, though, NBC has apparently decided that it knows better than to enable such things.
Of course, plenty of people are smart enough to realize just how badly NBC is managing this, falsely believing that people will just sit and wait until NBC decides to show what it wants, rather than letting people actuallyfollow what’s happening. News reports are popping up highlighting how many people are pissed off at NBC for the ridiculous decision to hide live events in a real-time world. With the end result being that NBC’s brand is being dragged through the mud for not understanding how to broadcast a sporting event in a real-time world:
“In the age of DVRs, Hulu, and mobile phone scoreboards, the pointlessness of NBC’s broadcast strategy — Olympics and otherwise — has never been more obvious. People don’t eat dinner during Nightly News then settle in for three hours of prime-time network programming anymore. They want things when they want them, not when NBC wants them.”
NBC’s bizarre reasoning for this is that it wants to put all the “highlight” moments during prime time when it can sell the most advertising. But, apparently no one there thought that perhaps they could show the actual events live and then use prime time for a nice summary of what happened that day at the Olympics. In that way, they might actually get more viewers. If you ever wanted the epitome of a company still living in the last century, it appears to be NBC Universal.
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DANVILLE – Three of the six people charged in the July murder of a Danville businessman pleaded guilty to lesser charges earlier this week.
Victor Lee, 20, and Stanley D. Porter Jr., 19, both of Danville, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to possession of a firearm with no firearm owner’s identification card, a Class 3 felony, in connection with the death of Bennie W. Moten. They’re each facing five years in prison.
Antonio L. Morris, 28, of Chicago, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, a Class 1 felony. He’s facing 10 years behind bars.
Lee, Porter and Morris’s plea agreements still hinge on whether they testify against the other co-defendants at their murder trials.
The three men originally were indicted on first-degree murder charges, along with Reginald D. Siler, 27, of Chicago and Michael J. Sullivan, 33, and Torrence Woods, 36, both of Danville.
Siler, Sullivan and Woods still face charges of murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm and aggravated battery. The are scheduled to stand trial on May 3.
If convicted of murder, they could face between 20 years and life in prison.
On July 6, police found Mr. Moten, 45, of Danville, lying in the street in front of his business, J.B. Professional Detail, on Cleveland Avenue. He had been shot multiple times.
Mr. Moten’s business associate, Tovian Watson, was also shot.
Watson was able to run to a nearby business on East Main Street for help.
Watson was taken to the hospital for treatment and released later that day.
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services
Here’s the manliest links on the web served up hot and fresh:
Is She Good in Bed? How you can tell right away [MadeMan]
If Men Wrote Women’s Magazines [Cool Material]
So You Want My Job: Rocket Scientist [Art of Manliness]
6 Sexiest Figure Skaters of the 2010 Winter Olympics [COED Magazine]
The suit: two buttons versus one [StyleCrave]
6 Absurd Movie and TV Plot Twists That Actually Happened [College Humor]
Sporting Event Marriage Proposal Fail [All Left Turns]
10 Health & Medical Myths Exposed! [Bloke Buddy]
How Long Could You Survive After Kicking A Bear In The Balls? [Double Viking]
5 Not-So-Manly Things That Are OK to Like (We Won’t Tell) [The Rugged]
Gallery: Yawning Celebrities [EgoTV]
Five Not So Inspirational Winter Olympic Moments [Gunaxin]
Don’t Leave the Interstate: Sights to See on I-70 [TSB Magazine]
Lake Placid Bobsled and Skeleton Experience [Mantripping]
Whiskey Toothpaste [Tasty Booze]
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Richard Berner at Morgan Stanley explains that while a European sovereign debt crisis would likely slow European economic growth substantially, and weaken the Euro, the U.S. would be relatively unscathed.
That's because, relative to the entire global economy, America's linkages to Europe aren't actually that large. This is especially the case in terms of U.S. bank assets:
Richard Berner @ Morgan Stanley:
Limited spillover to the US: We estimate that a 1pp slowdown in European growth might shave 0.2% from that in the US. Three channels matter: exports, earnings and financial linkages. Europe accounts for about 29% of US exports, 8% of S&P revenues and 4.6% of US banks’ total assets.
Contagion tail risk: Contagion spreading from the European banking system is the biggest tail risk. If the crisis spills over into broader risk-aversion and a drying up of liquidity – the functional equivalent of the US subprime crisis – we believe that the consequences could be more dire.
We believe the greater threat is probably in regards to sentiment. A major European crisis would increase risk aversion globally. Oddly enough, this would most likely mean a flight of capital into the U.S..
Add my twitter for a hand-picked stream of posts like this: @vincefernando
(Via Morgan Stanley, US: A European Slowdown Would Only Nick The U.S., Richard Berner, 17 Feb 2010)
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A recent note from Gluskin Sheff’s David Rosenberg does a nice job characterizing the tenor of the market right now. As he puts it: The Era Of The Green Shoot Is officially Dead
What more can you say? Back in April of last year, a -0.3% print on retail sales
would have been reason for celebration because it was widely seen as a
sequential improvement over -1.2% the month before. Now, last Friday we saw
a +0.5% reading on the January sales figure, and the Dow drops 45 points.
Good just isn’t good enough anymore for a market priced for perfection. In a
real-life example, just take a look at what happened to the once-hot sports-bar
chain Buffalo Wild Wings — it just posted a year-over-year sales performance of
20% for Q4 and the stock price responded by sliding 13%.
One source of reduced risk appetite may also be coming out of the fixed-income
market because high-yield bond funds suffered a huge $984 million net outflow
last week (largest redemption in five years) and new-issue activity was forced to
grind to a near-halt ($5.1bln from $32bln a week ago). Not only has corporate
bond issuance slowed, but Bloomberg News reports that companies are either
cancelling or postponing planned debt placements at a pace we have not seen in
2½ years — 16 issuers covering an estimated $7.3 billion over the past month.
In the past month, we have seen the biggest sell-off of U.S. junk bonds since the
equity market bottomed out in March 2009 — average junk bond yields have
surged nearly 100bps from their recent lows and stand at a nine-week high of
9.42%. The net asset value of bond funds (Lipper data) fell $1.6bln last week in
light of the market declines and renewed redemptions, the largest such drop
since November 2008 as the credit meltdown was approaching a peak.
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Google just introduced a pretty useful new feature in Google Docs, a web clipboard. Also labeled as Cloudboard or Server Clipboard, the tool does what it sounds like, it acts as a clipboard manager for Docs enabling you to copy content, even multiple separate pieces, from one app to the other while retaining the original formatting. Most users won’t have a rea… (read more)
Are you excited yet? Let us know below.
With photos. Medinet Habu is a fabulous site with a lot of the original colours still in tact.
The matching Indiana Jones fedoras on two leading archeologists as they entered the ancient Temple Rameses III of Medinet Habu were necessary shields for working in the 104-degree Egyptian desert in October.Egyptian excavators emerged from among ancient pillars to greet Egyptologists Raymond Johnson, director of the Epigraphic Survey based at Chicago House in Luxor, and Gerry Scott, director of the American Research Center in Egypt, who are working to save their national history.
Medinet Habu lies miles away from the more famous Luxor and Karnak Temples but, unlike these two World Heritage Sites on the Nile’s East Bank where a USAID-funded dewatering project has slowed the rate of deterioration, the West Bank temple continues to decay due to groundwater intrusion. Building structures become porous and cracked by rising groundwater levels. The wall surfaces where hieroglyphics and drawings are etched have begun falling away.
“The surface is sloughed off the stone, like skin,” Johnson said.
Though some buildings have stood since 2000 B.C., neighboring sugarcane irrigation has caused water levels to rise and bring salt into the base of the ancient buildings, Johnson said.
In an effort to cut cost, Tata Motors owned Jaguar and Land Rover are planning to cut down from using six platforms to just two. The move will also include a platform share between the Range Rover SUV and the XJ sedan.
Insiders says that building a Range Rover out of the same structure that underpins the XJ won’t be as difficult as it sounds, requiring only a couple of inexpensive modifications. Also, sources say that a super-size 7-seat Freelander will replace the current Discovery, so that model won’t require a direct replacement.
Click here to get pricing on the Jaguar XJ.
Jaguar’s aluminum architecture will also change from the current wide, luxury version to a new, narrower and more flexible structure that will underpin all of Jaguar’s future models, including the upcoming XE roadster.
– By: Kap Shah
Source: AutoCar
It’s not much of a secret that Google is always working on and testing new features or versions of its products. When it is satisfied with the current state of a feature or just needs a lot of data, it quietly serves the test versions to a small subset of users. With hundreds of millions of people using its most popular products, it only needs a very small portion of them for conclusive results.
However, most of the time, the test subjects are Google employees themselves and almost … (read more)
Bill Ackmans’s Pershing Square became the largest shareholder in Corrections Corp of America last quarter.
Ackman boosted his stake to 10.9 million shares in the fourth quarter. In the third quarter, the hedge fund manager reported owning 7.3 million shares.
CCA designs, builds, manages and operates correctional facilities and detention centers on behalf of the government. Forbes notes Ackman’s saying the stock could go up to $40.
Last October he gave a complete presentation on why he was so bullish on the one kind of real estate that was consistently growing.
If Ackman stayed in CCA throughout January, he took a beating – the private prison company’s shares dropped steadily in January from $24.55 to $18.71. Now it’s trading around $20.
For more about what Ackman and his competitors are up to, see our 60-second guide to what hedge funds bought and sold last quarter >
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Mr. Potato Head was always a fun toy to play with when I was younger. But let’s face it, the dude was kinda weak. No more. The Iron Man edition gives Mr. Potato Head some much needed attitude.
The model was just introduced at this year’s Toy Fair and – hard to believe – is timed to coincide with the upcoming Iron Man movie sequel.
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For those who haven’t had the chance to wade through all the different articles about the JAMA paper (see yesterday’s post) Kate has provided an excellent summary of the main findings. See:
News from the Valley of the Kings (Kate Phizackerley).
This article looks at the JAMA article and disputes some of its claims – and says that other claims in the paper are unsurprising. With family tree.
The team behind the work, led by Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, thinks that King Tut may have weakened and died from some combination of these conditions — especially considering that he also had a fractured leg2, an injury perhaps sustained as a result of his foot problems.But other experts argue that finding evidence of malaria is unsurprising, given that the parasite was probably common in Egypt at the time. Moreover, in malarious regions people who survive the disease in childhood often acquire partial immunity that protects them against full-blown malaria later in life. The lack of internal organs in mummies makes a definitive diagnosis impossible. “No data are available to assess that malaria was the cause of death,” says Giuseppe Novelli, head of the medical genetics lab at Tor Vergata University of Rome.
The authors also believe that the malaria finding is “the oldest genetic proof for malaria in precisely dated mummies”. Experts say this is no big deal, however, as mummies thought to be from this period and earlier have already been shown to have had P. falciparum malaria3,4. Moreover, changes in the human genome that have been attributed to malaria’s influence show that the disease has been around since ancient times5.
Differential diagnosisThe damage to King Tut’s foot may also be open to alternative explanation, experts say. A diagnosis of necrosis cannot clearly be made from the published images, says Gino Fornaciari, director of palaeopathology at the University of Pisa in Italy, adding that it could be secondary to malaria.
Archaeology Magazine (Mark Rose)
News reports are coming out today about Tut, malaria, and his family DNA. Here’s a quick take based on an early cut of the Discovery documentary and the Journal of the American Medical Association press release.The bone degeneration in one of Tut’s feet is very clear. Genetic evidence of malaria is said to have been found in Tut’s mummy and three others. The researchers speculate that bone degeneration and a broken leg plus malaria might have done Tut in. Some of the versions of the story suggest that Tut was “frail,” a view that runs counter to our March/April cover story, “Warrior Tut.” I suspect that they are overdoing it a bit.
The positive identification of the mummy from tomb KV55 as Akhenaten–thought by many to be Tut’s father–is a little puzzling as the mummy’s age at death estimated osteologically and dentally is too young. The individual was perhaps just a bit older than 20, while mid-30s is what we’d expect for Akhenaten. It isn’t clear to me that identification of KV55 as Smenkhkare, possibly Tut’s brother, can be ruled on the DNA results. (I’ve emailed the project’s DNA specialist about this point.)
Somewhat startlingly, the so-called “Younger Lady” mummy from KV35 is said to be Tut’mother.
Experts in Egyptology eagerly await the announcement Wednesday of the results of DNA analysis of the mummy of Tutankhamun, some hoping for a scientific and historical breakthrough, others pointing to the difficulties and limitations of the exercise. . . .A first difficulty is the condition of DNA evidence taken from embalmed bodies by dozens of people with many products, and may be again handled during excavations and looting.
“The major problem is to have a reliable DNA for remains as old,” said Michel Wuttmann, the French Institute of Oriental Archeology (IFAO) in Cairo.
Mummies past under X-rays in the past may also have damaged DNA. The mummy of Ramses II, treated with cobalt bomb to kill the fungi that gnawing, was now a highly degraded DNA.
Mr. Wuttmann hoped however that research on Tutankhamun will advance in this technique. “We are delighted to have a reliable instrument and a validated procedure for many other studies, often less dramatic,” he says.
Very critical, Abdel Halim Nureddin, former head of Egyptian antiquities and professor of archeology at Cairo University, declares on his part “not able to say categorically that DNA testing can give true results on mummies over 3500 years.
“DNA tests in archeology are not sufficient. There must be other archaeological evidence that allows us to establish with certainty the genealogy of Tutankhamun,” he says.
Archaeologists are divided among those hoping the DNA results will lead to a scientific breakthrough and others who believe DNA testing can not be conclusive.
“We need other archaeological proof to establish with certainty the lineage of Tutankhamun,” said Cairo University professor Abdel Halim Nurreddin. “DNA testing is not enough.”Michel Wuttmann of a Cairo-based French archaeology institute said Wednesday’s revelations could help unravel other “less spectacular” mysteries.
American archaeologist Raymond Johnson meanwhile told AFP: “We are very interested in having another tool in the study of these ancient families.”“I think other analyses have proven that it can be very useful in showing close genetic relationship,” he added.
Raises some interesting questions, but doesn’t attempt to answer them.
As sleuthing tools become more widespread, ethical questions are bound to emerge.What is considered a decent lapse of time before scientists can carry out a “historical” inquiry on human remains?
And should great figures be entitled to the same protection of privacy as private individuals?
“All historians are guilty of enjoying reading the mail and personal materials of others,” said Howard Markel of the University of Michigan in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), where the Tutankhamun probe was published.
“The penetrating wonders of 21st-century medical science… (require) pondering all the ethical implications of such inquiries to avoid opening a historical Pandora’s box.”
“This is one sick kid,” Egyptologist Emily Teeter, assistant curator at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, said after learning of the research. It shows that, based on DNA tests and CT scans, Tut had a genetic bone disease and malaria, which combined with a severe broken leg could have been what killed him about 3,300 years ago at age 19.The results appear in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. They further dispel the more romantic and popular theories about what did him in, like being murdered by a sneaky palace foe.
The findings stem from the most rigorous research yet on a mummy that has fascinated the world ever since his largely intact, treasure-filled tomb was found nearly 90 years ago.
But historians say the new evidence will likely only intensify public interest in King Tutankhamun because it brings the boy ruler down to Earth.
“It makes him all the more human and all the more fascinating,” said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan.
The more realistic picture, fleshed out by testing Tut’s mummy and those of his family, has its own mystique. Beneath the golden splendor in which they lived, ancient Egypt’s royals were as vulnerable as the lowliest peasant: Three other mummies besides Tut’s showed repeated malaria infections.
Unable to resist the opportunity for a backward glance, Reuters have added a piece about how they reported the original discovery of Tutanhkamun’s tomb.
Reuters sent Valentine Williams, brother of Chief Editor Douglas Williams, to Egypt as its special correspondent. However, there was a snag. Lord Carnarvon had reached an agreement with The Times for exclusive rights to the story. Despite this, Williams contrived not only to obtain news of the discovery of the intact sarcophagus within minutes of its happening but also to be the first to get a ‘flash’ out to the world.The climax came on February 16, when taking a gamble that the final breakthrough into the chamber was imminent, Williams made his secret preparations.
First, he telephoned Reuters Cairo office to buy a car, and, as there was then no road, arranged for it and a driver to be sent to Luxor by rail. Under cover of night, 20 Eqyptians manhandled it to the Nile, levered it onto a small boat and hid it in the rushes on the western bank. This would be used to speed the news from the Valley of the Kings to the western bank of the river.
Next, a boat was hired to take the news across. He then arranged for a local car (a very ancient Model T Ford) to be on standby to carry the news from the eastern bank to the cable office in Luxor. As he waited near the tomb entrance, Valentine kept in his pocket two prepared telegram cables, each marked Urgent (triple rates). One read ‘Tomb empty’, the other ‘King’s sarcophagus discovered’.
Marc Faber made a characteristically bold statement today, following up his championing of India over China.
He claims china’s managed ‘soft landing’ has as much as a 30% chance of simply crashing.
Which means that industrial commodities, which make up the vast majority of commodities, have a 30% of crashing as well…
Last year, total loans by banks have increased by a quarter of GDP. In addition to this they have large excess capacities across industries. I expect the Chinese economy to slow down considerably. The bigger question is that, will it crash? To that my answer is, yes, that is also possible. If you look at the economic history of the US from the year 1800 to year 2000, they had lot of ups and down caused by financial crisis, economic crisis, Civil War, World War One and the Great Depression and so on. We expected to have a big setback in China, which I think is quite possible. I think there is 99 per cent possibility that China will slow down considerably and I would say there is 30 per chance that it will crash. Also if growth in China slows down, it will have devastating impact on the industrial commodity prices and also on those who supply these commodities.
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Soon all that will remain will be the memories.
Residents of Homewood and Flossmoor still will have recollections of spending summer days catching some rays, gathering the courage to jump off the high-dive or teaching young kids how to swim at Dolphin Lake Pool.
But the pool will soon be gone, leaving only the Dolphin Lake Clubhouse at the site.
The Homewood-Flossmoor Park District Board made it official by voting Tuesday night to close the 50-year-old pool at 183rd Street and Governors Highway in Homewood.
Commissioner Sue Bertram termed her vote to close the pool the “hardest decision I’ve had to make in 18 years on the board.”
Board president Bob Haderlein said it came down to simple finances.
“We have to look at the reality of the situation. This is what we have to do,” he said.
The park district, which owns and operates Dolphin Lake Pool and Lions Club Pool, also in Homewood, has been considering closing one or both of the aging pools because of mounting maintenance bills and shrinking attendance the past 10 years.
A public discussion last month about closing Dolphin Lake Pool showed residents were split on the idea. While some suggested seeking alternative funding sources to keep the pool open, many expressed regret but supported closing the pool to deal with the financial losses the park district was experiencing. The two pools have lost a combined $729,000 since 2001.
The next step is dismantling Dolphin Lake Pool.
After Tuesday’s meeting, park district executive director Debbie Kopas said the park district will talk to several excavators to see what needs to be done to take out the pool.
Immediate plans are to turn the former pool into a green space.
“We’ll survey the public up the line to see what they want to do with the pool site in the future,” Kopas said.
In the meantime, the park district will consider ways to deal with larger crowds expected this summer at Lions Club Pool, 1041 Ridge Road.
Kopas said if the same number of people who have been going to Dolphin Lake Pool the past few years switch to Lions Club Pool, the site should be able to accommodate the increase.
“It may be crowded on the hottest days of the summer,” she said.
Kopas said the park district is considering using a grassy area west of Lions Club Pool to bring in equipment to attract younger children and teenagers to free up space at the pool.
Kopas didn’t expect parking or traffic to be a problem.
“It’s the same entry and exit as years ago when more people were going to that pool,” she said.
Kopas said the park district is committed to eventually building a new community pool but not for at least five more years. The location is still being considered.
“The only spot that could handle it is where Lions Club Pool is now,” she said. “Maybe it could be built after that pool is closed.”
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services
In the rear of the Orland Park Public Library, lifelong machinist David Blaha reports to work each morning. The silence is a world away from the din of the machine shop that laid him off nearly two years ago. The tools of his new trade are a laptop computer and the library’s reference books that offer advice on resume writing and prepping for job interviews.
He tinkers with applications now. He fixes appointments, all hoping to land another job as a maintenance machinist.
Orland Park resident Dave Blaha has a daily ritual of going to the library to spend his time searching job boards and sending out resumes. The machinist has been out of work for 22 months but refuses to give in or give up.
(Joseph P. Meier/SouthtownStar)
Blaha, 53, of Orland Hills, now lives by this routine.
“Looking for a job is a full-time job,” he whispered, mindful of patrons reading nearby. “That’s why I get out of the house and come here.”
Thing is though, the hiring process is nothing like it used to be, he said. You can’t just show up anymore to see a guy and walk out, a few questions later, with a start date. Most companies won’t even accept dropped-off resumes.
Hiring is a multilayered process, with numerous tests and conversations, that starts with an online application. Blaha has taken welding tests, drug tests, medical tests – even something called a listening and observation test.
He’s had to show a birth certificate, a passport – even his diploma from Reavis High School proving his graduation.
“You’d think I’m going to be president of the United States,” he said.
‘You can’t give in or give up’
Blaha adores machines. They’re in his blood. His Slavic surname translates roughly to “man of bronze.” His father, a master machinist, lost his hearing working all his life in a machine shop.
He can look at a part and visualize the mold that made it. And making machines work again thrills him.
“I have a natural knack with machines,” he said. “Repairing something is like bringing it to life.”
But in March 2008, the mailing machine company in Crestwood Blaha was working for told him his drilling and milling skills were no longer needed. With the economy buckling, companies were spending less on mailings and on the machines that stuff them.
Between March 2008 and December 2009, Illinois has lost 90,300 manufacturing jobs, while the nation lost a total of 1,869,000 jobs in that sector, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.
Blaha, meanwhile, has gone through the seven stages of grief that job counselors warned him about.
And he’s torn through a good seven incarnations of resumes with help from area job clubs.
The clubs – Blaha is up to three, sponsored by St. Elizabeth Seton in Orland Hills, St. Germaine in Oak Lawn and Our Lady of the Woods in Orland Park – help keep his morale up. He’s gotten help tweaking his resume and polishing his interviewing skills.
An active church and choir member at Our Lady of the Ridge in Chicago Ridge, Blaha draws on his Catholic faith to keep it together.
“I think prayer helps me the most,” he said. “You have to believe it’s going to get better. You can’t give in or give up.”
‘Economy has gotten better’
A fter decades of early morning starts on the job, Blaha still wakes up at 6 a.m. The library doesn’t open until 9, so he drinks coffee, reads the news, gets dressed.
Though some of his job club colleagues still don a shirt and tie every day, Blaha prefers T-shirts.
Setting up by the library’s broad windows, he checks an e-mail inbox that’s full of tips about potential jobs. He jumps on the new ones for any maintenance machinist jobs within 30 miles of home.
“You’ve got to get on the job right away and apply within three days or they won’t even call you,” he said.
Some of the ads prove useless, Blaha’s learned over months of doing this. Companies with dozens of listings all over the area are actually training schools trying to get you to click through, he said.
“I tend to stay away from staffing services. They’re more of a pain, more of a runaround.”
At least he has listings again to try for. In October, Blaha received only a few job matches a day. Now he’ll hit on 25 or 30.
“The economy has gotten better just watching the job things that come up,” he said.
By 2 p.m. each day, he heads home to check messages on his answering machine and set up his plan of attack for the next day. He makes dinner for the younger brother he’s shared an apartment with since both men divorced 18 years ago.
After 22 months of job searching, Blaha thinks he’s mastered the dance.
One company just turned him down, but he’s deep in the process at a second – a real company, not an agency.
But he won’t quit the hunt until he has a final offer to accept and a start date, saying, “Until you have a job, you don’t have one.”
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services
The acquisition that sparked Google’s latest M&A spree is finally closing after several delays and six months in the making. The company announced its intention to buy video codec maker On2 in August for $106.5 million. The offer was deemed too small by the shareholders and Google increased its bid to about $133 million, an offer that … (read more)
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Detroit News columnist calls electric cars “inferior in every way,” which gets a response Well, that’s going to get a rise out of people. |
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Shocking Omission? First 2011 Chevrolet Volts reportedly won’t be E85 capable Want biofuel in the Volt? Gotta wait until 2011. |
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Geneva preview: EYE concept has connection to Tesla Motors It’s not the Model S, but it looks pretty good anyway. |
Other news: | |
AutoblogGreen for 02.18.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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