Sunday, June 27, 2010

Ouch

photo via Raddudes

My first rejection post-layoff this morning:

Hi Daniel,

We appreciate your interest in Blank Design Group and the position for which you applied. After reviewing the applications received by the deadline, yours was not selected for further consideration.

We appreciate the time you invested in your application. We encourage you to apply for posted and advertised positions in our company, for which you qualify, in the future.

We wish you every personal and professional success with your job search and in the future. Thank you, again, for your interest in our company.

Joey Silvera
Senior Designer


What's weird is I don't remember receiving rejection letters from companies. I thought they just didn't contact you. So I thought for sure they were calling me in for an interview.

Anyhow, thanks Joey at Blank Design Group. Great jumping-off point for my birthday celebrations today!

Friday, June 25, 2010

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Texting

Just learned how to read texts. I'd always thought that the first window you see to view texts (much like the home page of the email inbox, before you click on an individual email) was the only text my phone could read. So it's like I've just been reading subject lines the whole time. When people would ask if I text, I'd say "my phone is really antiquated and my plan only allows for eight words of text." This wasn't true at all. I just didn't know you could click on each text to read the whole thing!

So I was able to go back and finish reading five years of texts. One that really stood out was from a friend of mine who killed himself in Miami by jumping off a building back in '06. Delayed onset of schizophrenia my wife's shrink says it probably was. He was 28. Most people lose their sanity much earlier.

Anyhow, he had sent me a text that read "Do you ever feel like you're slowly going..." I thought nothing of it and of course never clicked on it to read the whole thing. Two days later he killed himself. So I look back through our emails and our texts to see if there was any clues I may have missed. Not surprisingly, this one stood out. "Do you ever feel like you're slowly going insane" the text must have read. So I'm kicking myself thinking I could have saved his life. If only I had called and settled him down. At the time I received the text, I thought he was just stressed out over exams or some girlfriend. He always had lady issues and would call to discuss constantly. Turns out the text read "Do you ever feel like you're slowly going retarded?" So I guess it wasn't some huge clue that I should have acted on. Probably should've called him anyhow. Sorry, Curtis.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

One thing that's cool about being the father of a small child?

I feel smart again. She doesn't know anything! Hopefully that'll change though. Then I'll go back to being retarded just like Charlie in Flowers for Algernon.

Sunday, June 06, 2010

re: Facebook

via Daily Dish:

Facebook Is Destroying The Closet

Joshua Alston makes the case:
Social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter simply don't allow for compartmentalization. A buddy once told me that his gay friends and his straight friends are like light and dark liquor—ideally, they shouldn't be mixed. But social networking forces you to shuffle your decks; friends, family, drunken hookups, and co-workers all get equal treatment—equal weight in a news feed or stream. Presenting a partial portrait of who you are becomes tricky.
That's not to say staying in the closet on Facebook can't be done. It's possible, as long as you're willing to work it like a full-time job.


Not that I'm in the closet but I agree with Alston's basic premise; I'm not on FB cuz there'd be things I'd want to share but not with everyone--I'd imagine myself holding back. That's what makes facebook boring. Too safe.

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

SlothMobile

I was approached by SlothMobile to do their logo. This is a mock-up banner I'm sending to them. What do you think (please click on image to enlarge)? The line "Taking our time, like a phone bill" was taken from a song by the UK-rapper Ty called "Mind Made Up." In the song the metaphor is immediately understood to mean he's relaxed and unrushed (just like the way you file away a phone bill and forget about it till the day before it's due) but I'm not sure if it works here.