amazingadrian

 

I've got mixed feelings. It seems as though I finished up my job training (with Walgreens) yesterday. While I made high marks on my tests, I did find out that there really where not any job openings. Apparently, we did the job training to get onto a waiting list, and will get hired for a position only if nobody else inside the company wants to transfer to it. This means that it is possible, even after going through all that, that I still might not get the job. The person who conducted our final tests today told me that it could take as long as a month for trickle down to pull our names up on the list of candidates, so at least I am looking at a month's worth of work lost.

 

Oh well, for the time being I still have some time left with the workshop at the Vocational Rehab. I can earn money from that, although it isn't much...

 

Since my time leading up to the job training at Walgreens, I have managed to read two new books during my collective breaks. "How Things Don't Work"  by Victor Papanek & James Hennessey, and "The West End Horror: A Posthumous Memoir of John H. Watson, M.D. As Edited By Nicholas Meyer". The first book focuses on the fact that many of the things we take for granted in everyday life are actually poorly designed. Inefficient at best, wasteful at worst. Such things as the bathroom are given as case examples of broken design and efficient alternatives are offered. It's a book with a lot of ideas, although having been written in the mid 70's, it is also somewhat outdated. Since it is written also by college professors, it tends to read as a textbook; however, I found it to be quite an engaging read, as it continuously raises excellent points, clever ideas, and witty insights. There is one issue that I had with the book. While it approaches many things with a list of alternatives, it does, despite a preface to the contrary, have socialist leanings. This comes out strongly in the chapter in which the authors point out some common appliances that are better suited to sharing than private ownership. While they start out with good suggestions, they get kind of side tracked and begin insinuating that everything would be better off shared, which really didn't mesh with the earlier statements that the book was non-political. However, that's the only place you'll see anything like that. It also goes into length about how some items on the market are unneccessary altogether, and makes a great case as to the ease and durability of "traditional" items over their electric bretheren. It also suggests that items that you make yourself are better than ones you can buy, and list the ease with which even novices can build things from kits that come equipped with good instructions. Even such complex things as modern electronics can be gotten in kit form, usually at a savings cost over retail items.

 

The West End Horror is a "lost" Sherlock Holmes tale, in which the great detective meets the likes of Bernard Shaw, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde while tasked with solving a peculiar murder case within London's theater scene at the time. The book is true to the world's greatest detective, and seems to have gone through great lengths to be historically accurate, making this a must-have book for those who would study Holmes as a real-world person. It fills in some gaps; some events which Dr. Watson mentions in the other books are given detail here. However, there is something about this book that does not make it quite as entertaining as the A.C. Doyle classics. It might be the way that the case is set up around these historical figures...I dunno. By the time all the clues fell into place for Mr. Holmes, I felt as though I had already an idea of what was going on, which took away from the cleverness. Although it was still a pleasant read, and a good Sherlock Holmes book.

 

Also, the Friday before Easter, I finally got that cd that I ordered from Ross Valory. The Storm's debut album. It's pretty good too! The Storm is Gregg Rollie's first group away from Journey, and the lineup includes Ross Valory, a fellow founding member of Journey, and Steve Smith, Journey's quintessential drummer. It also includes Kevin Chalfant on lead vocals, who replaced Steve Perry for a period of a few months following the Raised On Radio tour. They came out with their cd in the early 90's, and earned some notriety for scoring a hit on Billboard and winning an award for having a song get the most radio play for those years. Unfortunately, they where dropped from their label because of the rising rap scene replacing rock music in their label's reporitore, and their debut cd went out of print shortly after; a second cd was rejected altogether, although found release a few years later on a different label. Thanks to Ross Valory's website, www.rossvalory.com, you can now purchase re-issues of both The Storm cds!

So there you have it.  That's what's been going on with me lately. I will continue to keep working with Vocational Rehab, and sometime within the next week I should finally be completely moved in with furniture and everything.
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Now playing: Bad English - Price of Love
via FoxyTunes    

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