Moving to Tumblr

I've decided to migrate the blog to Tumblr, for a variety of reasons. My domain name, isaacsmith.net, should automatically redirect to the new site, as well as my Feedburner link; if not, go to http://isaacsmith.tumblr.com/, where I've imported the content from this blog (thanks to this handy tool). See you there.

The Virtue of Enforced Minimalism

So last weekend, my laptop's hard drive died. I had just recently gotten an external hard drive, but didn't get around to actually backing up my data until it was too late; as a result, there's a better than even chance that about three year's worth of data has been lost. So let that be a lesson to you.¹

On the other hand, starting from scratch (and upgrading to Snow Leopard to boot) has been an oddly freeing experience. For one thing, I've discovered that TextEdit (the barebones word processor that comes with every Mac) does the job for about 75% of my writing tasks. Another realization is that a lot of stuff I accumulated on my old hard drive simply wasn't that essential. It's not a terribly original insight -- in the age of the intertubes (see footnote below), possession of information matters less than access, in the form of search, social networks, webtools, etc. -- but I couldn't help but notice.

¹ I should add that, between Gmail, Google Docs, and Dropbox, I actually haven't lost that much. The main thing that bites was losing all my music downloads -- but compared to the plight of the vast majority of people on this planet, I really should be counting my blessings.

Goodbye to All That

I'm not the only one, no doubt, who's glad to be done with this awful, soul-sucking decade. For Americans, at any rate, watching our country lurch from the horror of 9/11, to the sadistic imperialism that followed, to the economic miasma we currently inhabit, has been one ordeal after another. (Let me associate myself with the sentiments in Spencer Ackerman's Guantánamo retrospective.) The emergence of a new progressive movement, as well as Barack Obama's presidency, have been heartening, but the recent fight over health care reform shows how difficult it still is to move the country in a more equitable and just direction.

For myself, I am grateful to be ending the year employed and putting my education and talents to their intended use. Spending much of the last 18 months either underemployed or unemployed was one of the hardest experiences of my life, in part because of the disparity between the effort and expense of amassing degrees and the mostly paltry reward I got from actually working. Not that I'm owed a living based on my education, or that being unemployed would any less bad if I only had a high school diploma; but there were certainly multiple times when I wondered if I should have done something other than go to grad school. Indeed, thinking back over the last decade has been an exercise in thinking, "Should I have done this? Should I have not done that?" Your 20s, after all, are supposed to be the time when you can do anything and everything. But of course, life's not a video game, and you don't need to rack up a certain amount of points to go to the next level.

I suppose I should fill this space with some sort of list or Best Of for the decade, so I'll oblige. My song of the decade, which has helped me cope with a lot of bad shit, both political and personal, is "Me and Mia" by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists:



Ted Leo put out some great stuff this decade -- Hearts of Oak belongs in the pantheon of anti-war, anti-Bush music -- and this song, released just after the 2004 election, is one of his better ones.

Speaking of music, I'm playing around with Tumblr, which seems to be 90% music blogging. My mood is more off-the-cuff nowadays, anyway; perhaps I'll do my blogging there from now on. Happy new year, everyone!

Unemployment Blogging: The End (Again!)

A quick programming note: I've accepted a position at Garten Rothkopf, "an international advisory firm serving corporations, governments and financial institutions".¹ I'll be doing research and analysis -- blogging, in a sense -- on the politics and policy of climate change and energy. Needless to say, I'm very happy: after some five months in the doldrums, it feels great to be on the move again. I'm also happy to have beaten the average for time spent unemployed. On the other hand, the fact that five months spent unemployed is now below average should be seen as rather horrifying.

¹ Some of you might recognize the name David Rothkopf, who was a member of the Clinton administration and, more recently, wrote the book Superclass. Some of you may also recognize the name Jeffrey Garten, who was also in the Clinton adminstration and whose wife is the incomparable Ina Garten.

This Year's Model

I constantly fiddle with this blog's look (I've probably gone through a few dozen templates, at least). But I think I've settled on a look that I'll be keeping for a while. Blogger tends to be regarded as the red-headed stepchild of blogging platforms, and I have considered jumping to Wordpress or Textpattern; but with some tweaking, you can actually make Blogger do some nice things.

First, perhaps most importantly, is the template: the built-in Blogger templates offer very little in the way of customization, and most of the third-party templates aren't much better -- and tend to be poorly designed and juvenile-looking, to boot. One big exception is Ourblogtemplates.com, which offers lots of professional-looking templates that can be customized in virtually every respect; the one I'm using, Newspaper, I like for being a simple, two-column, no-images design.

For specific inspiration, I looked to Wilson Miner's website, in particular the way he uses large font sizes to make things more readable, as well as the interplay he achieves between serif and sans-serif fonts. For the color scheme, I found this palette from a color website to be quite striking: blue tones and orange tones, of course, are complementary, and I've always liked the contrast between black (or nearly black), orange, and white. I think I also had in the back of my mind the cover to Penguin's Dictionary of Sociology:


Altogether, I'm pleased with how this blog looks now. Stability is seldom seen on the Internet, but I think this current design is a keeper.

Unemployment Blogging: Or, The Double Dip Recession

So my job at EPC, which I feared at the time I was hired would not be permanent, was in fact not permanent. On top of that, I threw my back out last Friday and have spent much of the last week on a sofa with an icepack. (I was getting better until today, when I had a rather severe relapse; I'm writing this from a guest bed in my parents' house.) In short, I'm not having a very good time right now.

I'm not quite as scared as I was during my last spell of unemployment, when I had been applying to jobs for about a year, getting nowhere, and then having even the meager cashier job I had taken away from me. On the other hand, as my last job was a contract position, I have no recourse to unemployment benefits this time. So I will have to use what savings I have amassed very wisely. I sincerely hope that I will be able to stand on my own two feet soon -- both figuratively and literally.

For iPhone Users

I've added a link to the sidebar to allow you to read this blog in an iPhone-friendly format. I think it works, but if it doesn't, let me know.

UPDATE: Actually, Mofuse does a better job at this. Here's the link.

Telecommuting

One nice thing about my new job is that I'll be able to work from home quite a bit. Besides reducing commuting time and costs, I'm drawn to the idea of telework because it does away with your own self-deception about your own productivity. It's fairly easy to look busy in an office without actually getting anything accomplished: the environment can, as it were, endow even something as trivial as getting a cup of coffee with significance. By contrast, you are surrounded by the trappings of leisure at home, such that slacking off comes into much sharper relief than it would otherwise. I am reminded of this Mitchell & Webb sketch:



I was spurred to this thought by reading Tyler Cowen's writings on self-deception in Discover Your Inner Economist, which I recently picked up. It turns out a certain amount of self-deception -- about your abilities, how you think others perceive you, even your own sense of self -- is a necessary part of life. There are times, however, when stripping away self-deception needs to be done; understanding your own work habits is probably one of those times.

Unemployment Blogging: The End?

I use a question mark because the job I'm getting is a contract position, and may not last more than a few months. Still, it's an awesome opportunity: I'll be working for the Energy Programs Consortium, which does a lot of consulting related to energy affordability and assistance for low-income households. (Think LIHEAP, weatherization programs, etc.) This is a topic that I've been interested in for a while now, so I'm pretty enthusiastic. If nothing else, I'm happy to replace the headache of finding a job with the headache of filing self-employment taxes -- which could very well derail my quest to become Treasury Secretary...

Unemployment Blogging, Day 33

Good news, everyone, as Hubert J. Farnsworth would say: I have a job interview Monday. Time to rifle through Lifehacker's archives on job interview tips...

Meanwhile, in the "misery loves company" department, 62,000 people joined the unemployment rolls last week. And at least two states -- New York and South Carolina -- have unemployment insurance funds in the red. Good times!

Unemployment Blogging, Day 31

So after a month of being out of work, I will finally start receiving unemployment benefits, having spoken with a person from the unemployment bureau and confirming with them that I was in fact laid off, not fired (and thus ineligible). All I have to do now is continue to make at least two job contacts a week, and hopefully get back to work. Fortunately, I think I have the inside track on a sales position at Vandelay Industries...

Unemployment Blogging, Day 23

I received my benefits card in the mail (a prepaid debit card courtesy of Citi -- speaking of which, do check out this post by Felix Salmon on its possible demise); now I'm waiting for the actual money to be added on.

I am trying to articulate my current position in the arc of my career. I suppose I would count, in terms of relevant experience, as entry-level, but entry-level employees don't have Master's degrees. If I had spent the first few years after St. John's doing office assistant duties at a DC think tank, then maybe things would be different. As things are, however, I can count, as a base of relevant policy and political experience, on a nice series of internships, a GA'ship, my stints in the Young Democrats and Drinking Liberally, and my work on Free State Politics. Everything else, and this includes most of my paid work experience, belongs in the category of "stuff done to get by, but not build a set of marketable skills." I imagine that job gurus would tell me that you can harvest useful experiences out of even the worst jobs, but in truth, I haven't yet worked out how to sell the story of myself to potential employers -- perhaps because I haven't yet worked out how to sell the story of myself even to myself.

Current Reading

In a bid to improve my urban policy cred, I've picked up How Cities Work by Alex Marshall. Thus far, it's really good: Rather than writing a brief for urbanism, Marshall tries to explain how all types of developments -- urban and suburban -- come into being around certain types of economic activity, political priorities, and transportation options. The upshot seems to be that incorporating more density and mass transit into regional planning takes a lot more thought and effort than most people are willing to admit. I look forward to reading the case studies, which include Portland, Oregon, Silicon Valley, and a planned community created by the Disney corporation (!).

Unemployment Blogging, Day 18

A brief update:

• I officially applied for unemployment benefits, and should be getting the first check next week. Actually, it's not a check, it's a prepaid debit card, similar to the cards used for food stamps, only there's no limit, of course, to what you can spend it on. And it seems you can transfer the money into your own bank account.
• The Pew Center for Global Climate Change rang me up yesterday regarding a position that would involve working on corporate energy efficiency issues. Hopefully, I'll have a chance to follow up that pre-interview with an actual interview.
• I just realized that the etiquette concerning blogging your job search is rather murky: If you talk about the places you've applied to and what sorts of interactions you've had, is that bad form -- even if you speak of it in fairly neutral terms?
  

Unemployment Blogging, Day 3

Christmas Eve, so of course there's nothing times nothing to do re: job hunting, so I am going to enjoy the holiday as best I can. May you do the same.

But of course I couldn't write a Christmas post without including this timeless holiday classic:

Unemployment Blogging, Day 2

Part of the problem with being laid off just before Christmas -- besides the massive crimp it puts into your celebration of the holiday -- is that conducting the normal activities of a job search is stymied. First, you have parties to attend, food to prepare, last-minute gifts to buy, etc.; and second, pretty much every business is taking the next two weeks off or else operating on a severely pared-down schedule. Thus, my efforts to get back to working have taken on a "hurry up and wait" character.

Unemployment Blogging, Day 1

Or: What it feels like to be a statistic.

Being laid off, to paraphrase John Updike, is a sacred state; it clarifies the mind and pulls you out of the often stultifying routines of everyday living and working. It is also, as is the case with any contact with the divine, rather terrifying.

A synopsis: After graduating from the University of Maryland, I went to work, not at a government agency or a nonprofit (as you would expect for someone with a Master's in public policy), but at a grocery store. As a cashier. Granted, it was an organic grocery store, so it had some cachet, but that hardly helped to soften the blow of seeing all my job leads and interviews failing to pan out. It was, however, a living, something by which I could support myself until I got something better. This state of affairs persisted for seven months, during which I existed as if in stasis: neither moving on nor growing accustomed to my situation; wondering how long it would be until I would have a honest-to-god profession, not a job I could have done in high school; always chafing at the fact of never having enough money. Then, this past Saturday, I was let go. So much for my plans to turn my experience into a best-selling memoir; seven months isn't nearly enough time to establish the necessary street cred.

I take solace in the fact that I am young and well-educated, and supported by my family, my partner, and her family; that we are living through a world-historical economic crisis, which has afflicted the just and the unjust alike*; and that, as I've said, a drastic change in one's circumstances often forces you to respond more acutely than otherwise. For example, I seldom get as personal in my blogging as I am doing now; and perhaps making myself the subject of my own writing, alongside the old standbys of politics and culture, will be illuminating in some way.

Or not; I honestly have no way of knowing.

* I'll leave it to you to decide which of those categories I belong in.

Frank Eliason, Let's Talk

Regarding the screwed-up bill Comcast recently sent us, I recently got a tweet from Frank Eliason from Comcast's Customer Outreach, who offered to look at my case and see what the problem was. Impressive, really; it seems like Comcast is actually trying to repair its image and be more responsive to its customers. However, it's been about a week now since I sent him our information, but I've gotten no response. If you're out there, Frank, I'd like to hear from you.

Burn in Hell, Comcast

To the large and growing record of Comcast's continued demonstration of why monopolies* are evil, let me add this entry:

Our bill for next month arrives yesterday, and it is double what we usually pay; an scan of the billing details shows something called a "misapplied payment" is the culprit. Perplexed, we call Comcast customer service (our first mistake, I know). After calling twice and being put on hold for about 10 minutes each time, we finally get someone to explain to us the problem: Back in January, we got a bill for only less than a dollar, which at the time we assumed was related to credits we had heard Comcast had given to customers in response to a class action lawsuit. It turns out that another customer accidentally paid our bill for that month, and that Comcast only got around to fixing the matter recently.

The upshot is that, through no fault of our own, we owe two months' worth of service (January and June) by the middle of next month. But don't worry, says the Comcast representative, just let us know when you can pay off the balance, and there'll be no late fees or disruption of service. Uh-huh.

Perhaps I'm just nitpicking here, but does this seem ridiculous to you? I suppose the proper response, when getting the paid-off bill, was to call Comcast and see what was going on; and obviously if Comcast had overcharged us back in January, we would have (rightly) complained. But to complain about being undercharged would hardly be a rational response, no? I may show altruism to a cashier at a grocery store who gives me too much change, but not to a behemoth cable company (though perhaps there is no real difference).

* Technically, Comcast isn't a monopoly in the DC metro area, but my experience is that the introduction of Verizon into the cable TV market hasn't changed Comcast's monopolistic behavior all that much.

Ivory Tank

I'm not sure if Matt's moniker for our shared institution -- a term for "a public policy school that feels like a Brookings franchise" -- is accurate, but it sure sounds cool.