DURLANDO!

Hey folks--so after a long and annoying search, I have accepted a new job at IconNicholson here in New York. They have a liberal blog policy, so I expect to be able to continue both with this blog and the other one. Thanks for your support.

So for the last several weeks I have been looking to go full-time again. I set up a bunch of feeds, from Jobster, SimplyHired, and craigslist. There is a great deal of crossover, as is to be expected, because Jobster and SimplyHired both aggrgate from the same rough set of major sites. The odd man out is craigslist; smaller companies and individuals use that site more often. Of course, what this often means is that I get a bunch of undesirable jobs, along with job spam, from craigslist.

The good news is that I have gotten two good interviews through the aggregator sites--I have never gotten an interview cold before, it's always been by knowing someone at the company. So I think I can take a bit of pride in that. Hopefully I'll be hearing from one or both of these companies shortly.

The bad news is that it's really depressing how spam and scams have infected so many aspects of the online world. Because my email address can be viewed by basically anyone looking through the job sites, I now receive even more spam than before--something like 300 spam messages a day. And there are "job spam" messages that go through the proprietary systems of the major job boards. Typically these are straight-out obvious scams, like offers to be a "payment coordinator" for some offshore operation in which you deposit fake cashier's checks and send most of the money somewhere else. But some are for some semi-legit sales positions, that may or may not have to do with MLM schemes.

I feel bad for the desparate people who might be falling for this job spam and paying through the nose for it. These sites should really screen employer messages a bit better.

So, Shannon and I went to our friend Jason's girlfriend's birthday party on Saturday (my photos here). She's a wine person and we drank wonderful stuff. Also she is a fan of Momofuku Ssam Bar's pork (reviews from the Times and Jason Kottke), and had a bunch delivered, so we got a nice helping of that too. In fact, they had a lot left over, and we were among the last to leave, so we got a big portion to take home as well.

In any case, I got the sick, sick, horribly wonderful idea to use some of this pork for a variation on the classic Cubano sandwich, which we had tonight, using also some great Emmenthaler cheese and prosciutto cotto from Murray's. We pressed the sandwiches with the panini press Sha had the foresight to get me for Christmas.

I feel like a criminal. It was way, way too good. And way too easy, given the way the stars had aligned in favor of this sandwich. We have enough to have several more sandwiches. I will post pictures of this depravity when it happens.

Here's what I visit:

Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo
The American Prospect
Kevin Drum's blog for Washington Monthly
Matthew Yglesias
Ezra Klein
[edited to add:] Spencer Ackerman

Sites I look at sometimes but kind of dislike sometimes:
The New Republic
Andrew Sullivan (crazy, but has repented and wants to be a conservative you can talk to)

Sites that I really can't stand and don't want to link to:
The Corner
Instapundit
Drudge
Little Green Footballs (We're anti-Arab racists! Join the party!)
Anything by Anyone Who Has Ever Written Anything for the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page (Great paper, but the editorial board is certifiable)

Ever run for office?  (School, club, organization, politics, etc.)  Did you get elected?

Yes, indeed. I ran for class president in 8th grade. At the time, I was quite the little socialist, and ran on the platform that the formation of student clubs should be decided upon by the students, rather than just what the teachers happened to be interested in. As it happened, this platform lent itself well to a Khruschev-like speech that constrasted itself nicely with the "we'll have a great dance this year blah-blah-blah" speeches of my opponents. It was greeted with a standing ovation, and I am told by my mole in the vote-counting group that I won with over ninety percent of the vote.

Of course, I quickly learned that student government didn't really govern much, and the best that I might be able to do would be to make the dance really nice. Still, it was nice to get that reaction to my shoe-banging speech.

I learned that year that I had gotten a spot at the better magnet school in town, and quickly decided to make the switch. Still, I loved the electoral process and served as campaign manager to a couple of friends of mine. They lost miserably,probably mostly due to my own incompetence but at least partially because they didn't want to say or do anything interesting.

I have noticed ways that this both mirrors and contrasts with our national politics.

What is one of your favorite poems?

Submitted by marvel is my pen name.

This Is Just To Say

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

    -- William Carlos Williams

And here's a pretty dark parody of it by Kenneth Koch.

How do you beat writer's block? 
Submitted by marvel is my pen name.

By writing stuff. Bad stuff.

As a news junkie, I was pleased to see that there's a new DC insidery politics site out there, founded by a couple of Washington Post reporters. Then I took a look at the thing. What a goofy design! I am really surprised that they would put together a site that forces you to scroll sideways on a 1024 by 768 display and that has a video ad and large banner (really, two banners) taking up so much space above the fold. Just weird. The content seems decent enough, but I don't think either it or the design are quite ready for prime time.

UPDATE: Just noticed that the stories have "Digg" buttons. Come on.

I was kind of weirdly pleased to see a city design for Nashville, so for the moment that's my design.

UPDATE: No, doesn't work. Back to NYC for now.