Long Beach Comic Con
Last month my friend Pepe and I had a table at the Long Beach Comic Con. Pepe is doing his best to promote his self-published comic “Tales of Blood and Fire” It’s a project that has been years in the making.
I have always been an attendee of these shows. This was the first time I’ve actually worked at a con. I had a blast. I got to meet and talk with a few people in the comic and entertainment world. Thomas Jane was there promoting his new film “Dark Country”. We didn’t get to see the 3-D premiere, because it was Pepe’s step-daughther, Josy’s birthday, and I was looking forward to dinner that night.
Thomas Jane and Tim Bradstreet were pretty laid back. Jane spent all day Saturday walking around barefoot. Something he confided to me was the norm for him. On Sunday he had shoes on. Apparently, convention security had asked that he wear them. 🙂 Both Bradstreet and Jane were down to earth and friendly. They both walked the floor of the convention, taking time to stop and talk to fans and independent artist in “Artist Alley”. Bradstreet took the time to autograph and draw a sketch in my copy of “Archetype” and Thomas Jane autographed “The Punisher” print in the book.
I walked the floor several times. I found that some of the “big” celebrities (who shall remain nameless) were either AWOL or didn’t want to talk or pose for photos unless you bought something from them. Oh well, some of the other were more friendly. I met Bob Clark, “The Gorn” from Star Trek TOS. Nice guy, I had to laugh when I found out he actually lives out in the desert near where the Gorn fought Kirk.
Other Trek actors I had the pleasure to meet were Arlene Martel (Spock’s fiance from “Amok Time”) and Crystal Allen from my favorite episode of Enterprise “Bound”.
I also met Adrienne Wilkinson, the actress from Xena and the video game “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” . She stopped me in the aisle and said she liked my “Sith Happens” t-shirt. We chatted for quite a while.
I really had a great time. I’m looking forward to the Bakersfield and Seattle Cons. Here’s a link to a few photos we took.
My life, as it was then, as it is now (Part I)
I’m not sure what I want to put here. I moved from New York back to California last year. Quite literally starting over from scratch. Leaving almost everything and everyone I care about. I packed everything I could fit into my little Chevy and hit the road. Actually, this part was probably the most fun I’ve had in years. Driving picking my route along the way, I headed west.The first night I stayed just west of Cincinnati. I was a little irked that motels and other places were about $40 a night to the east. I ended up paying $80 where I stayed.
The next morning I was up and headed out on I-90, going through Indiana and Illinois to my destination in Wisconsin. My friend ![[info]](https://i0.wp.com/l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?resize=17%2C17){kind=small}
brother_blaze graciously offered a place for me to crash for a few days and enjoy his hospitality. I enjoyed seeing his family again and visiting sites in and around Lodi, WI. Thank you, Blaze. I had some photos of the sculpture garden we visited, but I seem to have misplaced them.
I left Wisconsin a few days later. The thing I remember most was the beautiful country I traveled through. The trip across the bridge spanning the Missouri River was breath-taking. I stopped for the night in Rushmore, South Dakota. My only complaint was not having access to much Wi-Fi in some of the more remote places. When I did find, I imagined it was because they wired some of the cows with Wi-Fi like this:
and this:
Seating at the local McDonalds
A place to vent
I’ve been home for a little over a year. While I’m happy to be with family I can’t say it has been a success. I’m still looking for work in a terrible economy. California’s Unemployment is up to 12.9% according to last week’s figures.
I accidentally lost my website domain due to a lack of communication. Hopefully it will be rectified in the next week or so. But I will use this site to say what’s going on in my head.
It’s late, I’m tired. I’ll write more later.
Twilight Tour
On Saturday evening I went to a twilight tour fund-raiser for the Exotic Cat Breeding Compound in Rosamond, CA. What a great organization. I had been to the compound about 25 years ago. It has grown quite a bit since then.
My only regret is that I really don’t have money to donate to these majestic animals right now and that I forgot my camera and had to take pictures with my phone.
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Frak yeah!
Your result for the Which Starship Captain Are You? test…
Well done, Bill Adama!
26% Benjamin_Sisko, 17% Kathryn_Janeway, 15% Jean-Luc_Picard, 17% Johnathan_Archer, 29% William_Adama and 18% James_T_Kirk!
Take the Which Starship Captain Are You? test at HelloQuizzy
Job Seeking
Nobody reads this site but I’m going rant anyway. I’ve been seeking work since August of 2008. As the economy has crashed I have watched job opportunities dwindle from 60 to 90 a week to a dozen on a good week. I sit here doing odd jobs for people to make spending money. I read job web sites and career blogs every day. I have been to Los Angeles a half a dozen times (an expensive trip, it’s 250 mile round trip) to look for work.
I’m not losing faith, I will find a job. I just don’t know where or when yet. What is frustrating is knowing that I have 18 years of experience in my field but since I don’t have a degree, I get passed over for jobs. It bothers me because I know I could do most of the jobs I am applying for in my sleep. I have tried to go back to school. It was going well until I had some major life changing events happen that resulted in me moving 3500 miles back to the west coast. I also had to put school on hold till I can get my life settled.
I had an experience today which really made me angry at the way the system works. I logged onto a new site for career path analysis and advice Path101 Alpha. I used the site’s resume analysis tool thinking would give me some usable advice, HA! after loading my info it tells me that my carreer experience and expertise are reasonably high in value. But since I don’t have a big network of contacts or a degree I rated half of what I should have when all four categories were averaged out.
My beef with this is, it’s just a straight average of the categories. This doesn’t seem scientific or helpful at all. If I were a company hiring people, I would want good people with tons of expertise and experience over a PIECE OF PAPER any day.
Don’t get me wrong education is important and I kick myself for not pursuing it earlier in my life. I was lucky I got a great job at 22 working for a military contractor. I started off as a data entry operator and by the time I left two years later I was cataloging flight test films in a huge database that I helped design and construct. I moved to Seattle and got an even better job with a Fortune 300 company managing their Human Resources Information Systems, a fancy name for another huge database that I helped design and implement. I did all of this without a PIECE OF PAPER saying that I went to college. These are just 2 of a number of great jobs I have had.
It is my belief that if you are going to build a social site to look at and compare the areas of expertise, education, experience, and networking, these things are not all equal in value. Expertise and experience in my opinion count for lot more than education. Networking is a useful thing to have and in my work life it also given me access to many of the job opportunities I have had.
You may not agree with me, that’s okay. But think about this, our tax dollars are being used to give billions of dollars in bailout money to financial institutions. This money is theoretically to jump start the U.S. economy. But while the citizens in this country struggle with job loss, foreclosures, and just being able to put groceries on the table, companies like AIG give millions of our tax payer bailout money as bonuses to incompetent executives who manipulated the system for greed and caused this country to fall into a major economic crisis. Some of these executives are no longer employed by AIG. I’m certain, although I haven’t found proof, that every one of these executives had a PIECE OF PAPER that says they went to scool. Meanwhile, John Doe on the street is literally “on the street” because he’s losing his home. Companies need to start looking for and rewarding experience and stop giving fortunes to incompetent boobs.
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Trials make us think; thinking makes us wise; wisdom makes life profitable.
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