I am pretty pissed that I am not getting paid for work right now.

You know that whole thing about not working for Obama in Ohio, well… the interesting somewhat-dirty side note is that I was actually expecting to pocket some cash from the deal.

My bank account should be a few grand heavier than it currently is.

So I am sitting here without a job, running low on funds, and bored out of my fucking mind. And now I have a few more weeks of absolutely nothing planned until school starts. Beautiful!

Thank god the parents are here to help out a bit, at least to give me enough money to go to the College Democrats of America convention in Denver in a few weeks. Those conventions are always fun.

Alright, here is my prediction:

The Dark Knight will match or exceed the 100 million dollar mark and make it one of the biggest opening weekend of all time

I’ll be there at 12:03 AM. Too bad I couldn’t get IMAX tickets. Although I will probably go see it at IMAX over the next week or so. They are running the thing at the Navy Pier IMAX theater every 3 hours for 72 hours straight (that includes 3AM and 6AM showings Friday, Saturday and Sunday)

Comedy Central had this TV benefit called ‘Night of Too Many Stars’, where a bunch of comedians go on TV to have a phone-a-thon for an autism charity in New York. Pretty cool.

As part of the deal they auctioned off a 2009 Toyota Corolla S model. With leather interior and all the other fixins.

It sold for $17.5k on eBay (this auction won’t stay up long)

The MSRP for that car is over 20k

I believe (don’t quote me on this) you only get a tax credit for the amount of money you spend over the value of the car. So the people who bought this thing didn’t even get any tax benefit from the purchase.

They just got a nice car for well below what they would have otherwise paid for it.

Too bad children with autism won’t end up with more money

I came home today and went through the mail and found a letter addressed to my sister, Samantha. Besides the fact that she almost never goes by Sam, the letter was from an old friend of the blog, Gregory S. Strine, Division Manager from Vector Marketing.

Now I don’t really want to get in to why Mr. Strine’s company is a total scam. I’ve done that before. But I figured I would post that another one came to the house.

There was a commenter on one of the posts that said that this company orders something in the order of 6 million letterheads a year.

Anyways, here is the text of the letter. I just bolded things that were bolded in the letter.

Dear Sam,

Due to our company’s continued growth and expansion, we currently have openings for summer work. We would like to invite you to apply.

- Excellent starting pay (their bold, not mine)
- Full and party time openings with flexible scheduled
- Training provided - no experience necessary
- Valuable resume experience (right… -nick)
- May continue during school in the fall
- Conditions apply (of course)
- All ages 18+
- Opportunity to advance

We are filling oepenings for Milwaukee, Mequon, West Bend, Brookfield, Oconomowoc, Franklin and surrounding areas. You may apply regardless of your major, current work schedule, class schedule or previous work experience.

I look forward to meeting you and explainin the details of the position. To schedule an interview, please contact our receptionist at (414) 359-1980 Monday through Saturday between 9:00am and 6:00pm.

Sincerely,

Gregory S.. Strine
Division Manager

(bottom right)
EM01PR

Ships from zip 47150

You would think they would remove our address from their mailing list, since I keep posting their letters verbatim with the names and phone numbers left on. I would LOVE for them to file a DMCA notice against me… PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Vector, send a C&D/DMCA order so I can post that online too

I am on my way back to Milwaukee again. To get home I have 2 choices (if I decide to go last minute.) There is the $12 (plus $0.50 processing fee) ‘MegaBus’ or the $21 Amtrak ‘Hiawatha’ train service. Both run about the same number of round trips daily. I know the Hiawatha runs 7 round-trips daily, with the early morning one (one leaves Chicago at 6:00 AM and the other one leaves Milwaukee at 6:15) not running on Sundays. That means that at any one time there is one train going to Chicago and one going to Milwaukee. The nice thing about the Hiawatha cars is the wide seats, ample legroom and power plugs at every seat. The nice thing about the MegaBus is that it costs $8.50 less per one way.

Today I took the Hiawatha.

I always wondered why the Hiawatha takes about the same time to get to Milwaukee as the MegaBus does. The Hiawatha runs a good chunk of its trip at 80 miles per hour, and rarely is there traffic on the rails (I believe that they have to yield to freight trains, but I’m not 100% sure.) So I opened up my cell phone and launched Google Maps. It turns out that the train goes out west before it goes east. Sort of like a < shape. It stops in Glenview, Illinois, which is significantly west of the lake.

It isn’t that there is a lack of track from the Amtrak station directly north. Union Pacific owns a line that goes right along the lake that they lease to Metra heavy-rail city-suburb service. And it isn’t that the Hiawatha cannot share Metra track, because for a good amount of the current Illinois Amtrak route already shares track with the Metra. In fact, the Glenview station is also a Metra station. To get to the Sturtevant, WI/Racine stop the train has to turn east again, towards the lake, to continue its route to Milwaukee. Who designed this damn thing?

I know that the line is paid for by funds from both the State of Wisconsin and the State of Illinois, but there are a ton of great stops near the lake in Illinois.

I am a little biased here as the near-lake track is somewhat close to Loyola, but putting that aside… what the hell happened here? You would reduce transit time and saves expensive fuel.

Add to that the fact that it takes freaking forever to get from Loyola to Union Station to pick up this train. Depending on the time of day it can take from an hour to two hours to get to and from Union Station to my apartment via public transit whereas it only takes 2 hours 30 minutes to get from Union Station to Milwaukee. 1/3rd of my entire transit time is getting from downtown to my apartment. Now I can take a cab it costs me $25, which takes a half hour to get to and from Union Station. Not to mention the cost for a cab from Loyola to Union Station is $25 with tip.

I solved this problem today… I think. I took one of the buses that runs ‘express’ down lakeshore drive. I take this bus from time-to-time to get down to Loyola’s water-tower campus as it takes less time to get downtown (even with stops) as it does to wait for a seat on a shuttle that runs every 15 minutes (and has to deal with the same traffic.) With my new solution I get to the water-tower campus (on the magnificent mile right in front of the John Hancock building,) I get off the bus, and flag a taxi. There are taxis all over where the first bus stop is, so flagging one down is super-easy. All of a sudden my transit time goes from an hour with one transfer to 40 minutes with a transfer from a bus to a cab. And costs about $12 less after you take into account the cost of the pass.