Clearly I’m currently frustrated.

I have an issue with arguing. It’s not that I’m not good at it or that I don’t like confrontation (I don’t but I do feel that I can handle it), but rather the feeling of a need to research and learn before debating my side.

The reason I’ve decided to take this political for this post is more to find out if this suggestion for the unemployment issue has been discussed before. During the past two elections we’ve heard congressmen talking about parts of it but not in full. Below I list the steps (and reasons for them) that I feel would not only be a huge help in controlling benefits and their payouts, but also could potentially help reduce debt and create jobs. All of this came about while discussing an MSNBC article on the recent extension to 99 weeks:

1. Regulate – Regulation of unemployment benefits has always been, arguably, the biggest problem with the system as it currently stands. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t agree that those who have been hurt by a bad economy deserve to be helped out as they try to recover. The issue is that in order to receive the benefits you have to be currently looking for work, something that can’t easily be policed. Living in an age of technology though, this should have been fixed by now.

A. Unemployment Email - This would be the first step in fixing the problem. Once you apply for unemployment benefits you will receive a unique email address that is tied to their database. The emails can be monitored by the agency overlooking the situation as a whole and the user would be instructed to only use it for their job hunt and for no other reason. All resumes should be sent through this account. Set a specific limit of X resumes going out per week.

B. Unemployment Job Board - This could work hand in hand with the email system or could be another way of setting an alternative system up. Make it username based and customizable. This can be easily done as the government has done it with their USA Jobs website. This job board would be for civilian jobs and could be accessed either by only those receiving unemployment or by everyone, with those receiving unemployment getting a designated status for tracking benefit payouts.

2. Incentive - If you turn on any cable news station discussing the economic improvements, you’ll consistently hear that there’s no incentive to hire right now. Even if the economy suddenly sky rockets, demand will always drive incentive…but so could tax credits. There were two legislators running for office (one was from Alabama I believe) that wanted to offer incentives for companies to hire people off of the unemployment list. Hiring a certain number of people would give your company a tax credit.

3. Distribution - Another major issue is the use of unemployment benefits. If you are receiving them then they should go strictly to the essentials. If it’s not something you NEED then it should not be paid for by the government. Companies large and small manage their in house purchases by saving the receipts and sending them in for reimbursement. Why this hasn’t been implemented yet is beyond me. Set a list of items that are permissible and items that are not. Utilities, rent/mortgage (depending on house size), and essential groceries get reimbursed in full. Cell phone, internet, television, car payment, and other variable assets get a dollar amount placed on them. If you’re unemployed and can’t afford it, you don’t need an iPhone….a prepaid phone does just as well for making calls about jobs and texting on them is even free in most cases. On variable items, you get reimbursed to a certain amount; purchasing over your allotted amount is placed in your hands and is your decision to keep or get rid of. This section sounds harsh but as the system currently sits, in some cases people are being paid more than they would actually be earning working at a livable salary doing retail work that is “below them.”

Keep in mind under distribution that it was much shorter to simply not list the items that would be included. Obviously items like children’s clothes should be included. It’s hard to expect a 10 year old to purchase his own pair of back to school jeans.

The most important section of the above is obviously incentive. It doesn’t matter what you implement if you don’t offer a reason to have the controlling factor to give way. Demand must increase to a point where extra workers are necessary if there are no tax cuts. What the current administration is doing is actually harming the process as it raises the cost to run a business. If a company can get 5 workers to produce 50 shirts per day and aren’t REALLY needing to push out 60 (as in their average orders are 54 for example) then there is absolutely no drive to hire anyone else….the process to send a shirt to a supplier will simply take a day longer…a reasonable exception.

These implementations would drive companies to hire and take people off of unemployment lists, helping to decrease the amount of benefits paid out overall. In addition to getting workers back on their feet, it would employ at least a small number in the system developers to create an email network (? not sure the proper term…system seemed redundant), a job board, software to scan receipts and distribute reimbursement checks among other positions.

And with the prevalence of public access to computers and internet (libraries and colleges are everywhere and I’m sure you could probably get access in a high school after hours if you really tried), there’s no sense in arguing that this puts the impoverished at a complete disadvantage.

Bottom line? We can’t blame the worker for being unable to find water in a desert…but we can’t expect them to necessarily try if they’re not thirsty. (cliche? corny? Misplace? I don’t care…it made me feel creative so I used it. That’s why it’s my blog, so i can make those kinds of decisions! haha)

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It comes as no surprise that, in this day and age, knowing another language (or even two) is not only beneficial but also highly desired. I posted a question on Twitter after basically all of my followers were sleeping but wanted to post it here as well:

If you could or had to learn any two languages besides English, which would you choose and why?

Personally, I would have to choose Spanish and Portuguese. Spanish is obvious and probably pretty common among those that would or will respond to this. Projections show that America as a whole is gaining in Hispanic population and many speak at least Spanish and English if not only Spanish. My choice of Portuguese is a bit off target though.

For a second (outside of English/Spanish) language I’m sure many would pick things like French or German….other world powers. I choose Portuguese though since it is the chief language of Brazil, one of the fastest rising countries in the world along with Russia, India and China. Out of the four though it is likely the easiest to learn.

The point of this post is kind of to put my plan out in the open. I feel bad about breaking plans when others know about them so I guess this is a way to hopefully keep myself in check. My original goal during my time of unemployment was to get consistent with my gym and workout routine, something I have kept up for two months now. Along with beginning to write (or update my blog) regularly, my new goal is more long term and goes along with what I wish to study and focus on during at least the next four months and  possibly the next three years. My goal is to learn two more languages within the next three years.

I am not saying that I wish to master them….that comes with basic use after you grasp the concepts and basic foundation. My goal is to be able to get by without an extreme amount of trouble with them. Ultimately, at the end of three years, I would like to add Spanish and Portuguese to my current native tongue of English. Additionally, I would like to brush up on German (I took four years of it in high school) and possibly expand on what I already know.

The reason I am giving myself three years is because by then, I will be either in the working world dealing with international issues and agencies, or finishing up grad school and about to embark on a job in that general area. I feel it would be a great advantage to me as a person as well as my resume.

This site doesn’t get visited by very many people (at least not right now) but if you’ve happened to stumble upon it, comment below with what languages you’d like to learn as well as why.

I was admittedly a little bit tired still so I wasn’t sure exactly what I was reading but eventually I came to a spot that somewhat got under my skin. Below is the direct quote from Mashable’s article so I’m not quite sure how accurate it is….but if this is really what Zuckerberg shared, then I fear for future generations and the existence of patience:

Zuckerberg recounted conversations with high schoolers where youngsters told him e-mail is too slow and that they prefer SMS and Facebook to sending e-mails.

E-mail is too SLOW? When did INSTANT become too slow? I’m assuming they mean emails with large attachments, but that can’t be the case considering that they’re using SMS and Facebook because they’re faster. SMS is just as slow or slower than email when sending a large picture…and Facebook can’t send more than a link which requires hosting of some sort and, thus, takes longer than email.

I’m unsure about if Zuckerberg was misquoted because the comment simply doesn’t make ANY sense to me. The only way you could contrive this as a correct statement makes the terminology used incorrect. Facebook is not any faster than email in my experience(unless your provider is having some sort of hiccup which is just as possible and, in most casses, as common as with Facebook) but our high schoolers are on Facebook many times more (in terms of minutes and hours) in comparison to email. I can’t quite think of the terminology that would best fit this type of thinking, but I don’t believe that the case is email being slower, but rather that Facebook is perceived as faster due to the subject being logged in and actively viewing the website for what is likely 5, 10, or even 15 times (if not more in some cases) more than the alternative.

I think it’d be interesting to test the theory though. Is Facebook really faster than email? Using simple text with no images, links, etc., I’d like to race the two. I don’t have the resources to do so myself but I think the result would be interesting. It would have to be done with Gmail since it’s probably the most common free email service and undoubtedly what high schoolers are using the most.

I have no problem with Facebook and I really never have. The constant drastic redesigns get annoying to me just as they do to everyone, but I don’t feel as if my privacy has ever been violated or that they’re “helping the man to get me” like some super paranoid folks do. I don’t understand the point in this new system and I doubt I’ll use it very often and that was far from the basis of my post.

I guess my biggest problem is just the thought of “what is slow.” These day, smart phones are becoming more common and emails are being delivered anywhere from instantaneously to within 30 minutes of sending — barring flaws in the system such as signal strength, data coverage, and data outages. Seeing something that is, to me, instantaneous getting called slow is just incredible to me.

Louis C.K. had a bit come out in the past year or two talking about life and how it’s changed since he was a child. One of the funniest parts (to me) of the bit is when he talks about the youth of America and their impatience. “It’s too slowwww.” “IT’S SENDING A MESSAGE TO SPACE!!”

This video is currently trending on YouTube and to be honest it’s kind of cool. I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan — I stopped reading the books around halfway through number 6 and don’t think I saw the 5th movie) but would’ve still loved to have seen this live. The video is of Voldemort and the Death Eaters acting out a huge ordeal of some sort in New York’s Grand Central Station.

The video was posted by dblock1126, here’s a link to the video on YouTube. [YouTube]

Overall, the turn around time was from Monday at noon (from Atlanta, Ga) to Friday at around 6:oo PM. Most of this time was spent in transit and for that I have to rave about UPS as well. On the way out it left Atlanta on Tuesday to drive 13 hours and be delivered at iResQ’s door on Wednesday morning. It left Kansas/Missouri (where iResQ is located) on Thursday and was at my doorstep on Friday. Below is the final product.

I could probably take better pictures of parts that have “noticeable” (although minor and only cosmetic) damage if I had an actual camera; however, during the move home from Virginia Tech my camera disappeared…now all I have is my Motorola Droid which will have to make due until I move to DC in January. (notice the program flyer at the top of the picture for where I’ll be going in DC).

Before:

For what it’s worth, I’m looking to do Global Business and Econ or International Business and Trade (Both the same from what I was told, just different names)…something I didn’t even come close to majoring in during my undergrad.

Don’t worry, it’ll be awesome, we’ll get tax breaks and rather than having to tolerate each other’s dumb habits from afar we can tolerate them from 25 feet away at all times!

I’m not sure I can do this on my own in the future. Without taking into account cleaning and maintenance (yard and inside), there’s just way too much for one person to remember 24/7. I remembered to lock all four doors that I need to keep track of and for the most part remembered all of the lights. Tonight I realized I didn’t clean the pool out and then realized that the dehumidifier had been needing to be emptied all day. I’m pretty sure my brother’s parakeet has been awake for the past 36 hours due to the light in his room being on since they left and I was surprised it wasn’t dead and laying on the bottom of the cage when I went to turn off the light just now.

I’m lucky they didn’t leave the dog here while I’m gone…we’d both be lucky to survive the four days if that had happened.

Side note: I’m gonna use this essentially like a tumblr for the time being. I can rant here, post random junk, and more. This whole time I’ve been looking at “Blogging” more too much as me needing to talk about something and write a lot about it (funny or otherwise) and not like it should be on an unspecific site…just random junk. I’m going to leave the previous stuff since it’s now going to all be random but I’m also going to leave the resume pinned to the top….because who knows, maybe someone will want to give me a shot at writing for them. After all, I basically wrote non stop to get my degree.