Seems like everybody’s talking about the "08/08/08" calendar conjunction moreso than other years that I remember; somehow it’s supposed to be lucky or something. (I can’t remember; is there a name for this sort of numerical calendar occurrence?) Of course, it’s also a Friday, and you’re never supposed to start a trip on a Friday (or do a slew of other things), so maybe they cancel each other out.

Meanwhile, UFOs are being sighted in the area. You can follow the links and even see the captured video, though it mostly looks like a shiny dot. It was a little late for the Project Blue Book Festival, too—maybe next year!

(Yes, those last two links are blatant pointers back to my Hack Bend blog. If you got it, flaunt it.)

The best tie-in to "08/08/08" I know of is Stone Brewing’s 08.08.08 Vertical Epic Ale. Each year, from 01.01.01 through 12.12.12, they are releasing a limited-edition beer. You can drink it right away, or save it up for an epic "vertical tasting" of all the beers together in 2012 (or later).

Stone Brewing is awesome.

The job hunt is still ongoing. I have some strong leads but nothing definitive yet.

…if only someone would pay me a ton of money to write on my blogs full time. That would rock.

We saw "The Dark Knight" a little over a week ago, and bottom line, it’s not only the best movie I’ve seen this year, it’s also the best Batman movie ever made.

Without spoilers, here are some of the pluses:

• No origin story for the Joker. I’ve said before, these things work when not bogged out with origin stories. By presenting the Joker as "an absolute" (the filmmakers’ words), just there, it’s perfect.
• Speaking of the Joker, Heather Ledger’s interpretation: yeah, amazing.
• The way they handled Harvey Dent was really, really, really well done. I won’t say more because of spoiler issues, but if you know the source material, well…
• Like "Batman Begins," they keep everything (more or less) grounded in reality, which is such a breath of fresh air after the horrible, horrible Joel Schumacher Batman films.
• It’s freaking awesome.

One of the reasons it’s the best Batman movie ever made, I think, is that they treat the material seriously and have devotional respect to the character—and they assume an intelligent audience, rather than a theater full of nitwits who want to see nipples on the Batsuit.

Now I just wish someone would come along a reboot the Superman movie franchise and make it as good as Batman. (No, I haven’t seen "Superman Returns", nor do I want to.)

That secret being: I’ve been "officially" unemployed since mid-June.

I use "officially" in quotes because the Dire Employment Situation began earlier than that, but it wasn’t until June that I was entirely laid off.

What happened was, well, I was working for a builder, and we all know how the local economy has been treating home builders and real estate, right? Anyway, I guess it was in March when I found out that my hours were going to be cut back to half-time at some point in the near future, and then that happened in April. (I think; my timeline on this is a bit fuzzy.)

Thus, I became a part time employee for a couple of months. I started searching the local job scene but avoided blogging about any of it at the time, because

1. the status of my current job was still unclear, and I didn’t want to rock the boat unduly one way or another; and
2. I didn’t want to tip off potential future employers with something that could potentially be interpreted the wrong way—i.e., it was something I’d rather discuss in person, if needed.

Then June came, and the official layoff came to pass. (It was myself and two other employees from a small-ish sized staff, to give you an idea of the scope.) In some ways it made everything easier—with the kids out of school, I could be home with them, I could devote my time fully to the job search, etc.—but of course this kind of thing is never easy.

Several people have asked why I didn’t blog about getting laid off sooner, and use the blog as a networking tool. Good question.

Here’s one reason: I screwed up my application for unemployment compensation and didn’t manage to get that resolved until just last week, so I didn’t want to somehow compound the problems I was having by blogging something inadvertent until it was fixed.

That’s a true answer; I really did screw up the unemployment and I really was a bit paranoid about blogging it—but it’s not "the" answer. Not that I can give you an alternate reason, other than I just wasn’t ready to write anything about it.

Anyway. For the past month and a half we’ve been watching our budget closely, I’ve been seeking employment (I’ve had a few interviews, too—two as far away as Portland and Lincoln City), and ideally I’m doing some freelance web development work to make ends meet while job searching.

I’d like to say that I took the extra time to really focus on my writing and blogging and trying to turn them into viable revenue generators, but, well…

So. I’m currently unemployed, and if anyone should have any leads on a computer- or internet-related job (I specialize in PHP and MySQL web development, don’t ya know), I’m available.

(I don’t do Bar Mitzvahs.)