JediWright.com

While seemingly inevitable, it still sucks to face the facts and have to lay yourself off from your own company.

This is exactly what I’ve had to do this week to keep operations going at Distinctivefabric.com. So I’ve filed unemployment in California, though with their budget issues, my chances of getting unemployment income looks bleak.

Here’s what my resume looks like on the CalJOBS board:

My CalJOBS resume

And on the job hunt front, my options there seem equally dispairing as:

1. I don’t have my own vehicle and since I live in the rural country, public transit is not an option.
2. I have horrible credit and many low-end paying jobs (which are really probably my only option) do credit checks. I know because I’ve been refused a job countless times due to this issue.
3. The economy. Duh.

Oh what a great time to begin fatherhood. Moving here was one of my life’s biggest mistakes yet. A rebound from this would be a miracle.

It’s sickening to read that the U.S. gov is awarding $900 million in aid to Gaza. It’s even more disgusting to read that $558 million was awarded to Colombia in 2006 for drug abatement (even if that isn’t the official reason or amount, I’m sure both aren’t far from the truth). Sicker still is this, from Recycled Minds:

“These days in the U.S., there is at least a general knowledge of migrant farmworkers, who, although often illegal immigrants, harvest much of the bounty of Big Agriculture. Most don’t realize that the utilization of these workers serves to keep food prices artificially low at the grocery store. Even fewer know about the horrid conditions that most of these workers endure so that food for the masses remains inexpensive. The conditions are not just bad, they are often modern day examples of slavery.”

More on this later, after I’ve calmed down a bit.

At the Breakfast Hut in Mt. Penn with Tristan.

Sometime last week I started resurrecting the old outdoor adventure company, well at least its services anyway.

I started working at what had been called Schuylkill River Canoe & Tube, then Valley Forge Outdoors, then Hidden River Adventures, and what was to become Rivertribe, at the age of 16, in the summer of 1995. I progressed from in my 6+ years there from the new guy handling equipment at the beach/dock, to serving as one of its general managers. After the company closed its doors in the fall of 2001, I headed west to California, where I spent close to 7-years.

Now back in PA where it all began nearly 15-years later, I’ve found my long-lived hope of returning to the river business as a way of life reemerging stronger and clearer than ever before. I’d been hedging around my interest in doing this with the previous company owner and was getting a lukewarm response. So I decided to step things up a bit and started throwing a website together at my previously registered domain, Rivertribe.org.

I simultaneously emailed a bunch of former employees from the old river days and some new potential teammates while building out the site and renewing my discussions with the old boss. So far feedback has been good and the owner is more cooperative than before.

I’ve also partnered up with an old friend Cory, who has really taken to the Rivertribe concept and so we’ve been hammering away at all the details over the last week. It’s starting to get pretty intense, what with my other efforts at starting up the SolarHoster and maintaining my work with the fabric company, not to mention the still new tasks the baby has brought with his birthing.

Needless to say my time has been nearly completely devoured these last few weeks and I’ve been posting here less frequently than my previous goal, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.

Be sure to check Rivertribe.org and as always, can be found streaming bits away on Twitter.

While admittedly today’s intention has largely become just another commercial opportunity, it still requires some attention for most women; @tristanedwards is no exception.

So I threw this little arrangement together so we could celebrate each other this afternoon.

Yay for love!

Tristan and I are out for our 1st wknd outing today w/Lee. I picked up his 1st Curious George’s book and tried out one of the baby slings.

We’re still definitely adjusting to parenthood and won’t be out much longer.

The rate at which Google’s Gmail continues to roll out new labs has been holding nice and steady in recent days/weeks.

Today saw the roll-out of Multiple Inboxes, by far one of my top three favorite features, from one of their software engineer’s Octavian “Vivi” Costache. Here’s a little of what he said in his post:

“I started implementing a Labs feature in my 20% time that would help me (and you!) spend less time monitoring important messages that may end up getting filtered away. Starting today, you can try Multiple Inboxes, a Labs experiment which makes it possible to have more than one ‘inbox’ in your default Gmail view.”

I’ll be even happier to see this evolve to include a drag-and-drop feature, hopefully sooner than later. In fact, I’m surprised it wasn’t included with the first release since that kind of functionality is so common and expected these days.

No matter though, it’s still a step in the right direction. Many thanks to “Vivi” for this feature!