🚀 go-pugleaf

Lou wrote:
> "A dude" <adudeinne@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:pdSdnZBunsAwPqXeRVn-vg@speakeasy.net...
> > And if your job is 40 miles away, and there is no jobs in your area?
> > Doesn't make sense to me.  This is the government who fucked up the
> > employment situation.
>
> Getting to work is not "non-essential" travel in my book - I don't care if
> you live across the street from where you work, or 100 miles away (I myself
> have a 45 - 60 mile one-way commute, the exact distance depends on the route
> I take, which in turn depends on traffic).

Thats why I like living in the city where I work. I can crawl in on my
hands and knees, or even get carried in on a stretcher by a trusted
"confidant" yet I am somehow essential because the genius leasing a
beemer can't make it into work because of traffic or gas shortages. The
imbalance between driving cost and cost of living cease to exist.


 It seems worthwhile to me to try
> to cut commuting expenses by carpooling if that's possible (I do that and it
> saves $70-$80 a week) and such a course of action almost automatically
> conserves fuel (my carpool saves anywhere from 10 to 20 gallons of gas a
> week).  If you can make such arrangements and don't, it's you who have to
> accept the consequences.  I have to admit my motives in carpooling aren't
> noble, patriotic, or altruistic - I do it out of pure and simple immediate
> self interest, to save money.
>

Same here. I usually only carpool if I have wandered too far from home
or I can convince someone there is more money to make elsewhere.


> A popular weekend passtime when I was younger was to go out for a drive - no
> particular destination in mind, no activity planned, just wander around the
> countryside.

Me and my cousin used to do this in his car. It was tedious, yet fun
and fulfilling in a way that seems antiquated by 21st Century
standards. He had a a big caddy that sucked a lot of gas, yet there was
room for whoever we found at the curb who needed to get from that spot
to somewhere else. No matter how much gas cost, having a car always
worked to our advantage.

>I don't know if that's still popular with certain segments of
> the population, but if it is, I'd suggest that such travel is non-essential.

Depends on what you feel are essential needs that can always be
satisfied by a drive with no essential destination in mind.

> The biggest parking lot in my town is around the local high school - it's
> for the students to park their cars.  Considering that there's taxpayer
> supported bus service almost from their front doors to the door of the
> school,

Not when I went to school. But I was bused to school miles away at
gunpoint, it wasn't efficient because I had my own car that took less
time to get from here to there but the School District made the final
decision.


>I'm a little hard put to consider most of that student driving
> "essential".  I'm sure that you can come up with a few examples of your own.
>

The school in my hood had an agriculture class, so I drove a tractor to
school. My teacher wasn't amused. He always thought he was smarter than
me, but he couldn't drive a tractor. I even tried to tell him so but it
just got me expelled. Who the hell you knew couldnt drive a tractor in
this city if you werent old enough to drive a car yet twelve year olds
could drive tractors all over the world if they didn't go to school.


> And the employment situation is, as you put it, less than ideal - I've been
> trying to hire nine clinical programmers who are proficient in SAS for a
> year now at salaries from 50k to 95k depending on experience (the 50k is for
> zero experience other than a six month classroom training course).  After a
> year, I've managed to find six.  Collegues in the office have had similar
> problems finding data managers, project managers, data mappers and the like.
> It's not like the company was located at the tail end of nowhere - we're in
> the urban area of the fifth largest city in the US.

If I teach you how to drive a tractor can you show me how to get a job
even for 50k playing with a computer? I mostly do it for free but think
I should get paid for it.


>
> I have to point out that "the government" doesn't make you live any
> particular place or prescribe your line of work - if there are no jobs in
> your area or no jobs in your field, why, in the name of anything you hold
> dear, wouldn't you change either or both?

Then if I was happy in the San Fernando Valley driving a tractor why
the hell did they bus me clear across the city? I thought it was stupid
but apparently the city knows better than I did. Thats why they always
the best jobs that I cant seem to get, or I do get the job I end up
having to cool my heels a few months without getting any job at hall.


> (Some of the people I've hired
> come from half a world away - legal immigrants from Eurasia who have become
> citizens of the US - next to that, what's 40 miles?)  If you want the
> government to give you a job, perhaps you might consider joining the armed
> services, I hear they're having recruiting difficulties.


Yet I never got a single bonus for all the illegals I have taken to the
recruiting office. What the hell is this world coming to>