A rant (AKA my monthly post)

An email I sent to a local radio station that hosted an Election Night party I attended:

--

Hi,

I'd like to offer some thoughts on your Election Night event
at Grand Central Bowling:

First, a little background... before that night, I had never listened to (or, really, even heard about) AM 970 or to the Rick Emerson show. I came to Grand Central as a result of seeing WW ads and deciding that of the parties I knew about, it looked like the biggest. The presence of Rick Emerson, Storm Large, and anybody else was very much secondary to the obvious main event: the election.

My first introduction to your station and to the Rick Emerson show (not including the table with station-branded schwag) was when most of the TVs upstairs suddenly changed from nail-biting (but increasingly celebratory) election coverage, complete with graphics, maps, stats visually displayed. The new view was of a table with a few people I had never seen or heard of before talking to each other.

I'm sure this part was unintentional, but at this point the audio was still coming from CNN. That meant that we could still barely make out CNN audio over the din of the crowd, but all we could see were these random people talking and laughing with each other. After about 5 minutes of this, I waded through the masses to your table
downstairs to let them know "WTF??" They got right on it and soon we were no longer hearing CNN.

What we began to [barely] hear then, were these [still unknown] people talking to each other. Because of the noise of the party, we couldn't hear what they were saying, except to be able to tell that these people were periodically looking at CNN on a screen next to them (which all of us had been perfectly happy watching for ourselves until the picture changed) and telling us what was going on (again, instead of LETTING US WATCH IT OURSELVES). Once again, we couldn't actually hear WTF they were saying, so the net effect of all this was to reduce the information available for the mob of desperate Obama hopefuls down to nearly zero.

I'm sure you must have heard our chants of "C-N-N! C-N-N!" pretty quickly after that. We had come there to WATCH THE ELECTION but now had less information than we would have had if we had just stayed home. Everyone upstairs was looking at each other in disbelief at how poorly planned the decision to put these people on had been. Our indignation and anger (at the only entity we knew of to blame...
the station whose logo was prominently displayed on the screen that we so fiercely wanted to go away) subsided when the channel was turned back to CNN. We assumed that whoever was to blame for such an out-of-touch choice to cut off the flow of information to people who were relying on it like oxygen had wised up.

Despite that initial resounding democratic uprising, though, we found ourselves faced with periodic returns to these people talking, which included each time being unable to hear what they were saying as well as being suddenly and unexpectedly cut off from incoming election news -- the one thing we all needed.

By far worst of all, though, was when your people were yakking unintelligibly at and several minutes beyond the moment when the race was called for Barack Obama. The moment that should have been a massive wave of celebration, the moment probably everyone in the whole building had been waiting for for 8 years was kept from us by (in at least our opinion during those moments) these idiot talking heads and the idiotic radio station that put them there.

I am completely serious when I say that I think that if your people would have continued this mistake, there may have been violence and destruction in Grand Central that night. The annoyance and frustration we had all felt during earlier interruptions quickly began to turn to blinding fury. The mob upstairs was literally ready to come down there and break down the wall if need be to get the people there to shut the hell up and let us see the results so we could celebrate.

Finally, the picture was changed back (since I couldn't hear anything the radio hosts were saying, I still don't know if the channel was changed each time in response to our anger or if the hosts just obliviously finished their spiel as planned). The celebration began, and the rest of the night is history.

But you need to know a couple of things:

1. The wave of celebration that swept the entire planet when Obama was declared the winner was reduced to a trickle in one bowling alley in SE Portland by what felt (and still feels) like an arbitrary restriction of the flow of information. The surge of joy everyone else was able to feel together was for us only the slightest whimper of hope that spread slowly through the bar, and for us this hope quickly turned to rabid anger at the ineptitude of whoever was preventing us from sharing this experience.

Of course I'm not trying to say that you ruined my (or "our") whole night -- the election of Barack Obama as President is the highlight of my political life so far -- but truly your incompetence tarnished the initial moments of the experience for a lot of people.

2. As I mentioned earlier, I had previously had zero exposure to AM 970, and had no opinion of the station. Perhaps you have great shows/hosts/guests or whatever, but after that night (and I think I speak for more people than just myself), all I feel toward your station is resentment. Whoever planned the portions of the night's
event that went so wrong did your brand no favors.

Suggestions:

1. Pick a better location. For what your station apparently wanted to do, I think Grand Central was the wrong place. For the festivities to have successfully involved a live radio show, I think we would have needed to be gathered more centrally in a single room so that we could at the very minimum be prepared for when the attention was going to be directed elsewhere. As it was, every time the channel
went to the radio people, it seemed random, inexplicable, and arbitrary.

2. Be realistic about the crowd. I don't think there was any way you could have interrupted the graphic data displays of the news networks without pissing a bunch of people off, especially considering the fact that the noise level in the bar made it impossible to hear what the radio people were saying. I really think the only way it MIGHT have worked would have been if we could have seen and heard you without
losing our ability to keep an eye on displays of incoming election news.

3. Be more nimble and in-touch with the needs of the crowd when a story is as rapidly developing and emotionally involving as elections are, and especially as this particular election was. This was a situation that required nearly instantaneous reaction to breaking news, and what you provided instead was ponderous, irrelevant, and inaudible. Perhaps the radio hosts are unable to talk and conduct their show while simultaneously keeping tabs on ongoing developments.
If that's so, though, you need to have someone whose responsibility it is to closely monitor for updates and bust in and tell the hosts to STFU when, for example, the news comes out that WE HAVE A NEW PRESIDENT, AND IT'S THE GOOD GUY. That isn't the kind of thing that can wait a few minutes while some radio host finishes his
oh-so-witty-and-erudite point about whatever the hell he's talking about.

Besides the lacking responsiveness to breaking news, the talk show portions could have gone a LONG way toward connecting positively with the crowd if they had a) talked only during commercial breaks or whatever and b) COMMUNICATED that... I dunno, put a damn sign up behind the hosts that says "we'll return to CNN when they return from break" or whatever. Just randomly switching over to something we can't
hear (except to be able to tell that the hosts are reading stuff off of the CNN screen they're reading... talk about adding insult to injury!) is FAR from acceptable.

Okay, I'm done with my rant. I'm not sure what I "want" in response to this email. I guess at minimum it would be nice to be able to know that the people responsible for planning the night have actually read my email. If one of them were to elaborate along the lines of "yeah, we really screwed some things up that night, and we learned some lessons for next time" I could gain a lot of respect back, and would MAYBE even consider going to a future 970 AM-sponsored event. Maybe.

Thanks for your time.
Jason

CPR

Gotta jumpstart this blog again. Sorry for the delay... I hope I haven't driven away my millions of faithful readers.

Anyway, I finished my History of the Old Testament class this summer with a fairly mediocre grade. Enough to pass etc, but I was a little too demotivated by the sun etc to really put my heart into it. It's hard not to feel that the rest of my studies now are just a prelude to "real" school, which won't start until January.

I tried to skate by without buying a textbook (so often in online classes I haven't ever used one), but it would have been very helpful in this case. I ended up getting one in time for the final exam, and that was enough to get me through...

I've begun the fall quarter at MHCC and my last two prerequisites:

- World Religions (Independent study) -- Chris Jackson
- Nutrition (Online) -- Jack Brook

World Religions required an orientation last week. There I found out that the entirety of my grade will be based on three progressive exams and one comprehensive plus some worksheets that I turn in each time that I go in for an exam. This is going to work out really well since MHCC is about 30-45 minutes from my house.
The other cool thing about that class is that everything is self-paced. If I wanted to cram for a few days and go take all my exams next week or something, I could be done with the class next week. I don't think I'll do exactly that, but it's nice to have that kind of freedom.
The instructor, Chris Jackson, heads the philosophy department @ MHCC, and seems like a really cool guy. I would love to take more classes from him...
I have no plans to buy a textbook for the World Religions class.

Taking Nutrition online seems to be working okay too, though I will definitely need the textbook I just ordered on Amazon. There are a few more requirements for this class than for World Religions, but nothing too difficult.
I sure do like the online class system at PCC better than this one at MHCC. The PCC version seems a lot more intuitive and better-organized. Maybe it's just me, though.

I confirmed yesterday that my first day of class @ UP will be January 12. Just a little more than 3 months. It's hard to believe it's coming so soon! It seems like such a short time since I took my first prerequisite, before I even knew for sure that I wanted to go into Nursing. I'm feeling pretty intimidated by the UP Nursing program at this point, so I kind of hope the next two years go by as quickly... :)

Radiohead!

I saw Radiohead play an amazing show at Auburn, WA last night. I have more to write than I'm able to at the moment, but here's the link to some pics I took.

I love you Onion

From The Onion:

"40-Foot American Flag Pin Welded To Statue Of Liberty"

There we go -- it didn't seem quite patriotic enough before...

Why nursing?, Part 1

I have a wide range of interests and aptitudes in more than one area. Of all the options available to me, why did I choose to go into the nursing field? In no particular order, I'm going to talk about some of the factors that led me to my decision.

Job demand:

The Bureau of Health Professions at the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, reports that the US will be short over 1 million RN FTEs by 2020 (scroll down to the bottom of the table for the total), which will mean that projected supply will meet only 64% of 2020's demand.

The picture locally in Oregon is even more stark (see state-by-state breakdowns in the same tables): by 2010, they project that Oregon will be short 5,300 nurses, with 81% of demand filled; in 2015 we'll be down 10,000 nurses at 68% coverage; by 2020, the state will be in need of 15,300 additional nurses and will have only 56% of its needs covered.

This shortage will ensure that for the forseeable future, I shouldn't have any trouble at all with finding a job as an R.N. One downside to this shortage, though, is that it will likely force a larger burden of patient care on nurses that are today often already feeling overworked and underpaid. I imagine this will lead to increasing and increasingly contentious policy confrontations between health care employers and nursing organizations such as unions.
Though these facts do have this negative aspect, overall I'm looking forward to ample job security and the knowledge that with training in such a high-demand field, I will be very valuable to my employer and that I can lend a hand with one of the great health care challenges on the current horizon.

Misspelled tattoos

"The 10 Greatest Misspelled Tattoos"

Funny

This woman found a bunch of old Weight Watchers recipe cards and posted them with commentary. Seriously disturbing/funny...

Coming attractions...

Posts I intend to write within the next day or two:

- Why I chose the nursing field
- Georgia v. Russia in South Ossetia: this one guy's (i.e. my) opinion on what's really going on...
- A review of Casa del Matador (literally, "The House of Del, the Matador"), a tequila bar in NW portland

Welcome myspace peeps

Hey, thanks for clicking on my bulletin link... you rock! No, seriously.

Poke around, check things out. If you have a blog somewhere, leave a comment with the address and I'll have a look. If it meets my strenuous coolness standards, I'll add it to my list in the sidebar. Pretty soon we'll be strong enough to launch a full frontal assault on the blog o'sphere.

While awaiting that glorious future, don't forget to answer the poll question...

Anniversary!

Today is Tiff's and my 3-year wedding anniversary!

Sadly, we can't be together today, since she is in Malaysia at the moment. She went to Penang, Malaysia to paddle in the Club Crew World [Dragon Boat] Championships, and was able to stay an extra week to trek through the jungle in northern Borneo.

I love you Baby and I miss you very much. Come back safe next Sunday, okay?!? I can't wait to hear all about your trip...

More background: personal

A little bit about me:

I'm 31 years old, and have lived most of my life in Oregon, primarily in the Portland area. I love Oregon, and am proud to be a Portlander. Though I've really liked many places I've visited, so far there's no other city I'd rather live in.

I lived most of my childhood on a 40-acre farm in Yamhill County, bucking cows, milking chickens, and slaughtering hay bales. Or something like that...

After attending a few parochial elementary schools for my first few years of education, I was homeschooled for 5th through 8th grades. This experience ranged from a loose structure to outright "unschooling," though I only learned that term a couple of days ago. If my vast, rabid readership is interested in hearing more about that experience, I'll be glad to share.
I attended a parochial boarding school for my freshman year of high school. After that didn't work out, I finished the year and the next two years at my local public high school. About the time I got settled in there, I gave the Christian boarding school idea another go.

I dropped out of high school near the end of my senior year when it became apparent that I wasn't going to pass my classes. I got my GED (I'm pretty sure they told me I got an "Honors GED," whatever that means), and quickly set about to make my mark on the world by becoming homeless.

After a couple of years of that and several years of other twists and turns in my life I decided I wanted to go to college. Also, I had never lived outside the Pacific Northwest, so I randomly decided to attend a school down in Tennessee. Boy was THAT an eye-opening experience... now I'm more glad than ever that I live in Oregon!

I only went there for one semester, and didn't really focus too much on my studies. I passed all my classes, but my main focus was my new romance with Tiffany, a Senior nursing student from WA, who also just happened to be studying in TN. After she graduated, we both moved back here to Portland.

A year later (about two years after we met), Tiff and I were married. :D

This was also the point at which I set the goal of becoming a nurse, and began taking classes at PCC. Strangely enough, having a specific goal and someone to help support has made quite a difference in my scholastic motivation, and at PCC I've accumulated a 3.94 GPA. This has been very strange for me, since prior to now I was used to failing my classes pretty consistently. It's a nice change.

So that's where I am now. I have a really wide range of interests (about which you'll hear more in the future) and like new experiences, many of which I'll review for you so you don't have to bother with experiencing them for yourself. ;)

That's all for now.

Quote

"A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny."

--Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, RIP

Review (Film) - Ne le dis à personne (Tell No One)

Links and info:
IMDB
Rotten Tomatoes -- 92%
Official Site (English)

I saw the 9:20p Monday showing of this at Cinema 21, in NW Portland.

Review:

I went to see this after reading a very positive review in the Willamette Week. My own reaction was just as favorable.
This is a great French suspense thriller that is like a version of "The Fugitive" made by a French Alfred Hitchcock. The movie does a great job of keeping you guessing and revealing surprising plots twists just when you think you have it all figured out. I knew the answers for sure at the end, but it was a great ride along the way.

This is a nearly perfect date movie, with lots to keep all possible genders interested. Though she doesn't know it yet, I'm going to take Tiffany out to another showing before its run ends on August 14.

If you've seen this, let me know in the comments what you thought...

Review (Movie Theater) - Cinema 21

At least until I stop having a life during the UP nursing program (henceforth to be known simply as "The Program"), I'd like to spout my opinion about some of the places I go and the things I do and see while I'm there. Here's the first of these reviews:

--

Links and info:

Official Site
insiderpages.com

Review:

Though I've known about this theater for nearly as long as I can remember (more than a week, anyway), I somehow never made it to a movie there until this last Monday night. After going there, I'm very sorry to have missed it all this time.

I've been going more and more often to small / independent theaters as opposed to the the monster multiplexes. Don't get me wrong, I still love the giant-screen possibilities available at the bigger places, but there's something special about seeing a film in a place that has more of an identity and personality than are generally to be found at the local Movies-At-The-Mall.

Cinema 21 is the perfect example of this. It has one quite large (in "small theater" terms) auditorium and a homey dinginess to the decor. I love it!

Admission was $8.00. Not much cheaper than Regal Cinemas, but I would have gotten a better deal had I realized my ticket would have been a dollar less if I'd shown them my student ID. Next time...

Concessions were standard theater fare, and I didn't buy any. No beer to be found. :(

The crowd that night was fairly small, and I felt like I'd joined a sort of club just by being there. Conversations broke out between several pairs of strangers.

The only negative aspects to the experience both had to do with the seats. The most annoying part was that the seats were VERY squeaky. The other issue was that they were also kind of uncomfortable... which wouldn't have been as much of an issue if I hadn't needed to worry about drowning out the actors with every half-inch butt-position readjustment. I am very seriously considering bringing some WD-40 next time.

Either way, though, I'll definitely be going back.

More background: Work

For a little over four years now (the longest I've ever been with a single employer), I've been working as a web developer for a video rental company. The tiny bit of actual web development that I get to do is fairly interesting and enjoyable, but that actually takes up less than 25% of my time... some weeks even less. The rest of the time consists of muddling through the insanely convoluted layers of bureaucracy and illogical red tape standing in the way of getting anything done, dealing with or avoiding juvenile office politics or incompetent coworkers, or trying to find ways to seem busy when there's nothing for me to do.

It has been a pretty sweet situation for me... I feel really fortunate in a lot of ways. I'm getting paid more than I ever have before, my schedule is fairly flexible, I'm salaried but almost never have to work extra hours or weekends, there's a very casual dress code (e.g. I doubt I will have worn anything on my feet this week besides flip-flops), and, overall, there's really not that much that's required of me to keep my boss happy.

This will all be coming to an end very soon. I have been very clearly warned by several people that I won't be able to work much if at all once I start my nursing education proper. The "several people" includes my friend and fellow nursing student Krista, who is a year ahead of me in the same UP program into which I'll be diving in a few short months, and about whom you'll almost definitely read more in future posts: she has been incredibly helpful by letting me know what to expect based on her experiences there so far. By the time January comes around, I may be the most informed and forewarned new student in the whole cohort based on Krista's info.
Anyway, she has mentioned that most of her fellow students are not working while they're in school, and the ones who are are pretty much hating life right now.

I haven't completely given up the idea of working part-time during my time at UP, but my current employer doesn't really have any part-time positions. Besides, if I am able to work at all, it may have to be a job where I can use downtime to work on homework etc. That wouldn't go over very well here.

So anyway, I'll be quitting this job in less than four months now, and I'm getting more excited by the day. I can't wait to leave the mind-numbing tedium and blood-boiling lunacy of office work to embark on the last and most important leg of my journey toward a career where my actions each day will mean something, even life-or-death, for many people. I'll be saying goodbye to a company I don't care about in an industry that is obsolete (who really thinks people will still be driving to a store to rent a dvd in another decade??) in exchange for a role where I'm truly needed.

That will be a very welcome and long-awaited change...

Some background info

In a few months I will enter the B.S.N. program at University of Portland, where I'll spend five semesters and graduate at the end of the summer in 2010. This comes after about three years of half-time study of prerequisite and "general" subjects, mostly at Portland Community College.

Including the one I'm taking this summer, I only have three more classes to go until I'm done with my prereqs:

Summer:

• History of the Old Testament

Fall:

• World Religions


• Nutrition

Though I mentioned attending PCC, I'm taking these last three prereqs from Mt. Hood Community College. PCC doesn't offer the religion credits UP requires.

Awwww, my first blog. How cute!

Well, here's my first post. What do you think so far?

The idea for this blog is to keep track of my experiences and thoughts as I attend school to become an RN (get it? "murse?" "Male nurse?" get it???). Along the way I'll probably talk about a lot of other, completely unrelated topics. I have a pretty wide range of interests and the attention span of a caffeinated chipmunk, so I may cover a lot of ground.

On the other, more pessimistic, hand, I've never been too good at writing discipline. I've tried keeping journals etc on a number of occasions, but haven't ever gotten very far with it. We'll see how well I do with this...