Houston, we have a job (again)

Wed Sep 06, 2006 17:20 (UTC -5)

Once upon a time — about three years ago, to be exact — I got a job offer from an old friend of the family. I accepted it, and it became my first real job. I was happy doing office-type work as a “Sales Assistant.” Ah yes, I think that was my job title, but I don’t even remember. Maybe that’s what the actual salespeople were called. Oh well. Anyway, I was making $7 an hour working 4 hours a week, and everything was all fine and good. Then, in January 2005, I got the call saying that they didn’t need me anymore and had to let me go. He said that he would call me again if they needed me again, but I wasn’t sure if I would see the day.

Last Tuesday, we were at home waiting for Tropical Storm Ernesto when the phone rang. The name of the company that I used to work for was on the caller ID. Springing up to catch the phone, I knew that the moment had finally arrived.

“Hi, this is Bill Gates,” a familiar voice said. “We were looking for Jordon Kalilich to see if he’s out of high school yet.” The office once again needed a semi-computer-whiz-type person, and I was their man.

My old boss went on to offer me my old job working 15 hours a week. He also extended the offer to my sister, who hasn’t really ever had a job before. I told him I’d get back to him. Fifteen hours is a long time when you’re a high school student. Since my school doesn’t have classes on Fridays, I wondered if I could work the bulk of my time then, but I would still have a lot more hours to contend with, and I believe the office is closed on weekends, like most offices are. I really didn’t want to work after school, but I would work on Thursday if I had to (because Thursdays are like my Fridays, after all).

My mom got back to him, and they worked out a deal that my sister and I would work on Fridays only for a total of 15 hours. I start this Friday. I guess I’m going to have to get used to waking up early on Fridays again. Plus, I’ll have to get used to the long days, but they’re actually not as long as my school day (7:30-3:00 at work vs. 7:05-3:15 at school). And, of course, you can’t forget about the money. That’s a major benefit right there. It should be nice to get a paycheck of, let’s say, $50 every week. That’s not much for most people, but it’s enough for me, considering I don’t have many expenses.

Seek, and ye shall find. Ask Jordon, and he shall answer you.

Justin: In your opinion, how is the world going to end?

There’s probably some celestial body big enough to pulverize the earth into small bits, but a run-in with such a rock isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. If the earth manages to survive intact until the end of the universe, then it’s just a matter of how the universe ends. Or it’s possible that the universe will not end at all. Nobody really knows.

Laura: Who or what gave you the idea to start your own website, and how did you go about starting it?

Well, my first site was a Pokémon fan site, so I had had an idea of what it was like to run a full-fledged web site before starting The World of Stuff. To put it simply, TWoS basically came into existence when I brought together some various pages that I had been maintaining, and the blog grew out of it later. See also: About the Site.

“Weird Al” Yankovic is offering a track from his new album for free on the Internet. Appropriately enough, it’s titled “Don’t Download This Song,” and it’s a send-up of the charity single genre. Be sure to check out the music video as well.

One year ago: “I had never eaten such a delicious school lunch!”
Three years ago: “I didn’t realize it until today, but it’s probably because central Florida is being hit by Tropical Depression Henri.”

Applying

Mon Sep 04, 2006 17:01 (UTC -5)

The following post is a rant. It reflects my emotionally charged opinions on serious topics. It will probably be funny to you, and it will probably be funny to me in a few decades, but it is serious to me now. So don’t laugh.

Started applying to the University of Florida a little while ago. I looked at a college application one time, and it didn’t seem to be that bad. This one has many of the same questions and it is bad. Bad, I say.

There are lots of very personal questions. I don’t know if I should put my race (it’s optional) because I don’t want to be discriminated against for being white. That is, I don’t want to be denied in favor of an equally good (or not as good) student who is of another race. Quotas! Let the best students get in. The main reason I say this is because my own future is at stake. If that means that I’m a selfish, heartless bastard, so be it.

I also have to put how much money my parents make. I don’t know the answer that question. I asked recently because it was asked (optionally) when I was signing up for the ACT. They wouldn’t say, so they must not make very much. CEOs who live on golf courses don’t shy away from the subject, after all.

The question that distresses me the most basically amounts to, “Have you ever gotten in trouble at school?” And if you have, you have to say so and describe it, unless it’s been expunged from your record. How am I supposed to know what’s on my record if I’ve never seen it? Unlike my perfect sister, I got three detentions in grade school, mostly for trivial things, and mostly when I was very young. The most trivial was for flicking a tiny ball of paper off my desk. That was in third grade. The teacher thought it could have poked an eye out or something, even though it just fell to the ground. Yes, I’m talking to you, Ms. Phyllis Martin. I swear it’s true. I got a detention for that. I shouldn’t have confessed to it because now it’s about to French Connection United Kingdom up my life. I’m more worried about the more serious ones, though. Those isolated incidents that took place long ago will shade colleges’ perception of how I will be in the future. Damn it!

I wanted to apply Early Admission or something like that, meaning that if they accepted me, they would let me know in December and I would be contractually obliged to go to their school. I like the knowing in December part, but I read the fine print, and you have to pay the first year’s tuition within 30 days of being notified of your acceptance. Seeing as the Bright Futures scholarship, which hopefully will get me all the way through college, only starts taking applications in December, I don’t know if I could do it. What the heck?!

Never mind that I haven’t written the essay(s) I need to submit. I need to write about how I’ll be a valuable asset to the school. I can’t do that today. I’ll do it on Friday. I guess I need to do some other stuff first, like figure out what the heck is up with this application. Advice, anyone? As in, my friends?

Why college? Why school in general? I know these problems may seem trivial, but they’re part of a bigger thing: why such a big hassle in order to make money? Why make money to be happy? Sometimes I wish I could just run away and live in the woods by a pond like Thoreau. Or maybe join a commune or something. You know.

In other news, if you haven’t heard about it already, Steve Irwin (the “Crocodile Hunter”) was killed today by a stingray. Hard to believe. He was only 44, and he had a wife and two kids.

Three years ago: “Oh well. I used to hum a lot too. And then I turned five.”

I’m back or something

Sun Sep 03, 2006 21:29 (UTC -5)

I came. Well, I left. I saw. I didn’t conquer, but that’s fine by me.

Anyway, I’m back from my aunt’s house near Gainesville. We left early Friday morning, and got there about five hours later. The first thing we did as we got into Gainesville was eat lunch at Burrito Brothers. You could tell we were in a college town on the weekend of a big game. First of all, there was no parking anywhere. Burrito Brothers’s old location was really small, and it’s nice that their new place has tables so you can eat, but they only have three parking spaces. Don’t even think of parking at another business, because every flat surface for blocks around is a tow-away zone. Besides that, the city was swarming with young-type persons.

After that, we went right to the University of Florida to do what we came to do: take a tour of the place. Parking there was a disaster also, but at least they had a parking garage. First we watched a video about how great UF is, and then someone talked about the application process and things like that. After that, a couple of guys — one a senior, the other a recent graduate — led our group on a walking tour of the campus. Who would have thought that there was a lot of walking involved? It’s a big campus, and so there were lots of things for the tour guides to explain: plazas, monuments, dormitories, offices, art installations, the building where Gatorade was invented, and so on. Consequently, I learned a lot. It all fits together, you see.

What I remember most is their talking about campus life. Here are some things I learned about that.

• There are different kinds of dorms, most of which are reserved for freshmen. The earlier you apply, the more of a choice you have!
• There’s free T3 Wi-Fi or something like that!
• There are “Free Speech Zones” where you can engage in open debate with fellow students. Why aren’t they everywhere? I don’t know!
• There are 750 clubs and such things on campus!
• There’s also a lot of businesses and things. It’s like a little town!
• Every day or week or something, the Hare Krishnas offer a free breakfast or lunch or something for a mandatory donation of $3!
• There’s free city bus service, so you might not even need to own a car at all!
• You can get ticketed for speeding on your bike.
• Um, that’s it.

Judging by those morsels of information and some more that I might have forgotten, my overall impression is that there’s a strong sense of community and that it may not even be that bad to go there as a young freshman plucked out of his home of 18 years. I’d have a lot of support, I mean. I wouldn’t need to find a cheap car or anything, and depending on what kind of dorm I go for, I could make a lot of friends. Yay for making friends!

The tour guides were very informative and funny. Between stops they would chat it up with some of the people in the group. Inevitably, I got singled out somewhere along the line.

“Hey man, what are you interested in studying?” he asked. I always feel uneasy when someone addresses me so casually because it’s not like I’m going to say “man” back to them.

“Oh… I don’t know,” I said after a moment.

“You’re undecided?”

“Yeah.”

“You know,” he said, “here at UF, you don’t have to declare a major until your junior year.”

“Oh, that’s good.” I’ve been under the impression that most colleges require you to declare your major at the end of your sophomore year, so I’d have at least a little extra time to pigeonhole the remainder of my formal education.

“We call them ‘exploratory students,’” he said matter-of-factly. (I hate that word, but it is useful.)

“That sounds much better.” (It’s like the PC version of “undecided.”)

“It isn’t,” he said, and walked along.

I didn’t fall in love with UF like some people seem to do when they go to certain colleges, but the place has potential to grow on me. For what it’s worth, I think it’s going to be my top pick, and having family in the area could be a nice perk. I’m going to apply to UF soon, maybe even tomorrow. Maybe it’s not the best place, but due to the family link and my familiarity with the area, it does stand out among the hundreds of other nameless, faceless colleges out there. It’s nice to have an idea of where you want to go to college, anyway.

After the tour, we met up with my aunt and had dinner at Satchel’s Pizza, a really quirky restaurant with a junk shop in the back (actually, the middle). The design was eclectic. The music was eclectic. Hell, even the plates were eclectic. Outside, they had an old Volkswagen Bus with a table in it. You could eat in there. Oh, and the food was good if not great. Would I go again? Yes I would.

The next day, after some idle browsing in cheap stores, we went to a country restaurant for breakfast. After that we went to Poe Springs Park to enjoy Poe Springs. Thanks to my aunt’s connections, we had a free pass, and thanks to her even better connections, we didn’t need to use it. (Seriously, everywhere we go, she runs into someone she knows.) I wasn’t sure if we had ever been to Poe Springs — there are a lot of springs in the area — but I remembered this one right when I saw it. When I was younger, I went there with goggles and stuck my head under the icy, clear spring water to get a spectacular underwater view. But seriously — that water is cold. I decided to spend most of my time kayaking instead of standing in the shallow parts.

As I was kayaking with my aunt, we came across a spring that she had never noticed before. It was easy to miss — it was just a small, faint burble coming up near the riverbank a short distance away. I spontaneously christened it “Poe Jr.” It was a beautiful thing, really. I felt like I was witnessing the birth of a life-giving fountain. Well, I guess I was. Give it a few thousand or million years to mature, and it may rival Poe. All great springs start as little cracks in the ground. Well, maybe some of them start with large, catastrophic events, but it sure sounded good, right?

After that, we went to Floyd’s Diner, the local hot spot in my aunt’s small Gainesville-area town. Upon getting home, I had to go right to sleep because I wake up around 8:00 like clockwork, in spite of my continuous efforts to the contrary. Sure enough, I woke up right around then this morning, and after eating breakfast, we went on our way, and arrived home late this afternoon after taking the so-called scenic route.

Used FAQs is a blog that collects weird and wonderful frequently asked questions from around the web.

One year ago: “I just noticed that this is the ninth post in a row that has a two-word title.”
Two years ago: “If the power goes out, we’ll probably have enough candles to last two years.”
Three years ago: “I can hear you whining. Stop it.”