Abecedarian's Post

My name is Andrew. (Hi Andrew.) And it's been 2 weeks since my last post. (Mild clapping ensues.) Lately I've been really getting the urge to post daily, sometimes more than once a day, but I've stayed strong, held off the hounds of hellish social media and networking. (Oohs and aahs ensue, briefly.) Lately, I've just been doing the job hunt thing again, supplemented nicely by a healthy dose of grocery shopping for 6 on the weekends, meal planning for 6 on Saturdays, a college Bible study group Sunday nights, and some geocaching thrown in for good measure when time and transportation present themselves. Regarding the job search, mostly my efforts have remained fruitless, though I have received some calls from "marketing" companies searching for people to promote who-knows-what for minimum wage through telemarketing. Not my thing. I've never been one for just cold-calling sales. Put me on a floor somewhere, with knowledge of products and specs, and I can sell products just fine, but over the phone, I'm not good. I also got a phone call today from a security guard company needing security staff for some event coming up, but I would have needed a "guard card" which I do not have. Might be something to look into getting, though, if those types of opportunities come up more often. On Monday, I did turn in an application to Mesa Public Schools to be a substitute teacher for the district. That quite literally almost made me want to go postal on quite a few people. Quick rundown of the day: 9am - Andrew calls AZDOE to get info on getting a sub certification license and is told it is obtained at MPS headquarters. 10:30am - Andrew arrives at MPS only to be told he has to go to the AZ Dept. of Education to pick up his license, over 20 miles away. 11:15am - Andrew arrives at AZ DOE offices, is told he needs a $60 personal check, cashier's check, or money order to process his application for the license for the MPS application. (AARGH!) 12:00pm - Andrew arrives at Bank of America, takes $60 out of the ATM after spending 15 minutes trying to find out how to park in downtown Phoenix, and is told that because BOA isn't HIS bank, he can't be helped there. 12:30pm - Andrew arrives at a park in Phoenix somewhere (only God knows where exactly), kicks a few trees in anger, and calls Dad to have him look up where the nearest Compass Bank location is. 1:45pm - Andrew arrives at Compass Bank, gets his cashier's check, and gets back into the car. By this point, having expended so much energy on frustration with the system, Andrew decides to go to nearby IHOP for pancakes. 3:00pm - Andrew arrives BACK at DOE offices, obtains license. 3:30pm - Andrew arrives BACK at MPS offices, turns in completed application. Is told that he cannot be eligible for substitute teaching until taking an orientation class for MPS -- ON MARCH 25th! 4:15pm - Andrew decides to go home and go to bed because the day really, really, really couldn't get any more obtuse. Epic, I know. In lighter news, the whole meal-planning, shopping, cooking trifecta (I just wanted to use "trifecta") is going well. I like most of the things I've tried to make. Earlier in the week it was a sour cream chicken enchilada dish with onions and red bell peppers in a sour cream-jalapeno sauce. Really delicious. Two nights ago I made pork chops with an apple-caramelized onion topping, which was probably me second favorite dish. I also tried a veggie casserole side dish which was so-so, but not everyone enjoyed it. I'm not sure what it was, but the topping didn't set like it was supposed to.... Oy vey. Tonight we're either having a turkey chili or bowtie pasta with bell peppers and sausage in a tomato-garlic sauce. We'll see. The Bible study has also been enlightening. It's a group of college-aged under-30 people on Sunday nights at the church I've begun to attend. Since it's been so long since I was last "attending" church regularly, I wasn't certain of what to expect, but the people are great - there are even a few politically-minded people there who make for great conversationalists, and even one other geocacher, which was slightly surprising. Currently, the group is studying the Book of Revelation, so though it's extremely interesting, I sometimes feel like I'm beginning my own study of the Bible at the end of the book. Tribulation, Death, destruction, God's wrath poured out upon the world. Things you really wouldn't expect from a conventional reading of almost any other part of the Bible; least of all those passages talking about Jesus Christ or God Himself. Frankly, I'm still not entirely sure of what I believe. I'd like to believe in God and put my faith in Him, but it's still a little unsettling to feel like I'm giving up control over a part of myself to a being whom I cannot see, touch, or converse with. My journey has begun though, so I am anxious to see where it leads. Finally, geocaching. I had good luck last weekend, finding 14 caches in or within a mile of Skyline Park out in East Mesa. I intend to go back this weekend to find the 3 I didn't try for on Saturday. One is apparently rather difficult and requires tools to access it. I think I know what I need, now I just need to see the site for myself and have at it. I also found a couple on Monday on my way back from MPS, just as a mechanism to calm me down after the stress of the day. So I'm at a grand total of 40 found thus far, and I might try to hike Usury Mountain to the Wind Cave to find the 5 caches up there this coming Saturday. (Scott, Ryan, Chad, you are welcome to join me if you so choose!) Anyway, that's life up 'til now. Time to go do some more dishes and pretend to not be bored until I go to bed. I look forward to writing more often in the near future!

Updates Soon

So, I'm now back from Florida and I wanted to make sure to get up a new post soon, but I've been busy, not to mention tired from the weekend. Suffice it to say for now that it was a GREAT trip! I'll post more details on what my dad and I did in Tampa probably tomorrow. Stay tuned, sports fans!

A Little Thing Called Energy

Throughout much of today, C-SPAN has been running the floor debate in the House of Representatives on House Resolution 6899, the Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act. This bill would, if passed by the House and Senate and signed by the President, commit the United States

to advance the national security interests of the United States by reducing its dependency on oil through renewable and clean, alternative fuel technologies while building a bridge to the future through expanded access to Federal oil and natural gas resources, revising the relationship between the oil and gas industry and the consumers who own those resources and deserve a fair return from the development of publicly owned oil and gas, ending tax subsidies for large oil and gas companies, and facilitating energy efficiencies in the building, housing, and transportation sectors, and for other purposes.

In other words, it provides for expanded alternative energy research and use, including in wind, solar, and biofuel technologies in the effort to move the United States from its current comsumption of foreign oil energy sources (about 70% of out current oil comes from overseas, half of which comes from "unstable" countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia). However, and this is a big problem, the bill does little to address the near term needs of consumers. It provides for expansion of offshore drilling, but only in places where little oil is to be gained anyway. Most of American oil sources are located within 50 miles of the Gulf Coast or up in the near-barren slopes of Alaska. HR 6899 only allows drilling between 50 and 100 miles off the Gulf Coast, and not at all within Alaska. Furthermore, while the bill allows each state to opt into drilling off their coast, those states which will pay for the cost of drilling do not get to participate in something known as revenue sharing, which would help alleviate the costs off the (already overtaxed) states. The bill also allows for environmentalists to sue to stop each drilling site by not providing for a moratorium on frivolous lawsuits with respect to drilling, even 100 miles away from shore. According to Congressman Shadegg (R-AZ03), of the last 100 or so plans for drilling for American oil as allowed by law, every single one has been tied up in the courts for decades with appeals and stall tactics. That means that not one BTU of energy has come from lawful drilling activities in those areas. HR 6899 does not put any emphasis on other alternative energies like "clean coal," oil shale exploration, or nuclear power. Coal has always been America's major natural resource; nowhere else on Earth is coal found in such abundance as here, yet the Democrat bill doesn't choose to include its eco-friendly brother, clean coal, to supplant foreign oil dependence. Nuclear power, which is helping the United Arab Emirates, China, India, and other countries around the world achieve energy independence (I think the statistic was that India is building 17 power plants, China 34, and Dubai is getting one in the UAE), is being shunned by the Democratic majority Congress. They seem to be unaware in 21st century technologies which are allowing for the reprocessing and reuse of previously "spent" nuclear fuel rods, advances in safety at nuclear plants, and the simple fact that nuclear energy is a huge source of power. One chart I saw showed that 25% of the world's tower cranes are stationed on the Arabian peninsula in the Middle East building brand new superstructures. That's all infrastructure that the United States is missing out on! Unfortunately, the people in Congress don't want to compromise on this issue. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic caucus introduced HR 6899 - a 290 page monster of a bill - at 9:45 pm last night and told the Congress that they would be voting on it 24 hours later. There was no thought to asking the Republicans to help write the bill, no time given for the legislation to be looked at by any member of Congress or their staffs, and in the process, the Democrats forced through a piece of legislation that not only disincentivizes states from WANTING to produce energy, it opens up production of energy and natural resources to a slew of frivolous lawsuits which will only postpone getting our dependence off foreign energy, and it completely ignores some very good sources of energy that we, ourselves, can produce right here at home. This is my mini-rant of the day. Feel free to provide your own perspectives on energy policy!

Stymied By Bureaucracy

I had every intention of going and getting all my substitute teaching paperwork turned in today, getting registered, and just having to wait on the fingerprint clearance from the Department of Public Safety, but alas, I was stymied this afternoon when I was told that in order to turn in all the paperwork, I first needed a substitute teaching certificate from the Arizona Department of Education. However, in order to get the substitute teaching certificate, I must first have the fingerprint clearance card from the Department of Public Safety/Federal Bureau of Investigation. And in order to receive the fingerprint clearance card, I first had to drive all over downtown Mesa this afternoon to find the fingerprinting place, get my fingerprints taken, and then wait 15-180 days to have the background checks completed and receive my clearance card in the mail. It was a rather epic journey, beginning with waking up at 8 am this morning only to find out that my little brother had, in an epic display of FAIL, forgotten again to leave me the only key to my morning mode of travel. This effectively stranded me at home until he got out of school at noon. When he got home, I took the car to downtown Mesa and spent 20 minutes trying to find the Department of Public Safety, which Mesa had, in its infinite wisdom, decided to tuck behind the storefronts and the Department of Information Technology. But I found it - only to be told that my fingerprints couldn't be taken at the central station (as DPS had told me). I needed to go out to the fingerprint clearance card Information Processing Center to which Mesa Police Department had outsourced all non-court mandated fingerprinting. After another 20 minutes of wandering the streets of downtown, I finally found the podunk hole-in-the-wall place, staffed by two women who definitely looked like they could kick my ass (and I'm no little guy). I filled out some paperwork and was ushered into a back room where they inked me up until my fingers were sooty black, fingerprinted me, and let me wash up with some Uber-industrial superdetergent hand cleaner. Upon leaving, I inquired as to where Mesa Public Schools was headquartered, and was told "somewhere up around the corner." Easy enough. Except for the fact that no one told me there were no signs for MPS, which happens to be in the same building as Mesa Bank, a nine-story behemoth of a building in which MPS occupies the second through fourth floors. It took another 20 minutes of circling around before I figured this out. So finally, my hard work paying off, I entered the Substitute Services Department of MPS, paperwork in hand, official transcripts, immunization records, W-2's all filled out properly, and - BOOM! Stymied by the fact that I couldn't get registered as a sub because I didn't have the certificate, which I didn't have because I didn't have the fingerprint clearance card, which I didn't have because it takes 15-180 days to get that in the mail from the time the fingerprinting is done. So, long story short, in between two weeks and six months, I could be a substitute teacher for the Mesa Public School District. Not that they need teachers desperately or anything (note: sarcasm). Ah, bureaucracy, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...!