With the Media proclaimed National Primary (Though how national can it be if most of the states aren't even voting today, I fear the media can't count) going down, I thought I ponder a few alternate primary solutions.  First of all I believe the current primacy of New Hampshire and Iowa to be unfair and unearned.  These states are small, rural and not very representative of the nation as a whole, but through accidents of history have become overly important.

Primary Options

• National Primary:  This is rather self explanatory, every in the country votes on the same day, not only the 22 and half special states of Super Tuesday. This seems to be fair since ideally we'd be back in the relm of one man one vote. However,The states will no longer have any choice in when and how to conduct their delegate selections and would also make it difficult for all but the best funded candidates to compete.  
  
• Delaware plan  divides the states into four groups voting a month apart starting in March. Membership in the groups would be determined by the number of delegates a state would appoint with the smallest states voting in the first group and the largest states voting last.  Theoretically this would still allow small states to have a say and potentially allow more variety of candidates.  This plan is probably best for small states, since the media will get really worked up about the happenings in whatever states vote first.  I think this is a decent plan, but it still has the potential to force all but one contender to quite before the big states.  Also, since the small states tend to be pretty spread out, this adds to campain costs and travel times. This plan was rejected by the Republican Party in 2000.
• California/American plan:  Similar to the Delaware plan except there would be 10.  Again it would arrange things so it moves from smaller states to larger states.  The oddity is that there are different numbers of states in each group and it seems that it has been gamed to keep Iowa and New Hampshire to be the entirety of the first group.  FairVote.org explains, "In the first interval, states with a combined total of eight congressional districts would hold their primaries, caucuses, or conventions. This is approximately equal to the total number of congressional districts in Iowa (5) and New Hampshire (2)".  Later they grow the allowed number of districts that would solidify a round, but to me it seems like and orderly but just as arbitrary version of the current system.  The primacy of Iawa and New Hampshire's a deal killer for me but the ops-Alaska version doesn't seem to have this pitfall and even a large state such as Ohio could potentially vote in the third round.  This is an interesting plan, but the determination of state order seams more complex than it ought to be. 
• Regional Primary: Divide the country into four geographical regions and randomize the order so no region is first or last in one or another election.  This is nice and simple, but it shares the drawback of the Deleware plan that it might make it to difficult to mount a campaign across that many states. such larg regions.  The Wikipedia version also keep Iowa and New Hampshire first which is exceeding lame.  Some regions tend to lean ideologically "right or "left" and this could effect the types of candidates that might be chosen if that region goes first which is why there's an alternate plan that splits up the south and North east to balance the region ideologically.  I wonder if just subdividing this into 8-10 regions if this wouldn't a simpler and less complicated version of the America Plan.  Then candidates could concentrate on a geographic area which would save on costs and no one set of states would always have undo influence. 
  
• I'm not particully satisfied with any of these plans, perhapse something more sane will work it self out in the next election.  I can only hope, just as I vainly hope that there will still be a point in showing up to vote on Ohio's "late" March 5 primary. 

I managed to replace a button that popped off my shirt today. It actually wasn't too difficult and I found a nice how to video naturally titled How To Sew On A Button. The downside of video is it's snobby English accent and queer foreign measurements. I used about a foot of string for my button and it seemed to work fine and avoided the foolishness of measuring in centimeters.

and a happy New Year! 

I failed Microsoft's 70-536 Exam today.  I'm extremly frustrated since I received a 675 score which appears to have been one question short of a passing. (700 is a passing score). I used the standard Traning Kit book as well as Trancender Preparation exams and I even attended a training course provided by my work.  Although I'd be the first admit the training class was completely useless since we just went through the book,(far to slowly),  In fact I can't recall the last time the class actually met... I've been working on my own and I felt I'd covered the book quite well.  Still when the test is seemly independent of the book what can you do.

The test itself was filled with far too many questions about AppDomains, COM (is this a .Net exam?) and CAS questions, stuff that I'm highly unlikely to ever use and am very week on.  If there had been even one more question on Generics or Collections or Cryptography or Serialization or Mail or even Graphics (my strong points) I'd have passed.  I know there are different tests, and the C Trancender test I took seemed slightly similar at least in general content (a truly godless amount of App Domains questions).  I always found that test to be the most difficult of the three pre-set test exams, so there's a little hope that the retake will be easier...

Another irritation is the result sheet which breaks down the test generally by a very general section( such as drawing, Globalization, and Text Manipulation)  as a bars running across the page.  On the left is Needs improvement and on the right is Strong.  Naturally you have no idea how many questions are in each category, or even if Microsoft weighs each sections equally. All I'm left with is an apparently arbitrary score since I don't even know how many I got wrong. Is this test scored out of 1000? 900? 950? Who knows.

I'm taking these stupid tests since it's required by my company and I'd like to get a raise this year, but my time is running out.  It would be nice if I could take the test again next week but the next opening at the Test Center isn't until November!!! It would be much easier if Microsoft was still offering Test through Vue, it would double the number of places I could go and maybe I'd get a test in on time.  I'd actually hoped to spend more time studying but today was the only opening at the Test Center this month.   thus there not much chance of passing two tests this year, but the only ray of hope is that I really only have to pass one.

Create your own personalized map of the USA Sadly my map is pitiful, but I did at least visit a city in each of these states, even though for Kentucky, it was only Newport, which more like a part of Cincinnati. I've driven through corners of New York and West Virginia, but I don't count that as an actual visit. Likewise I was in the Memphis airport for 20 minuets once. I'm not very traveled, which must be why I can sit around and post lame things on the internet.

Well, it looks like my interview on Friday went well enough that I received a job offer. I admit I was hoping for more in the way of a salary, however, they're willing to give me training and have promised me that there is room for me to move up if I do well. I'm certainly sick of job searching and I'm think the company is a good place to work. So, after sleeping on it, I'll have to get back to Leo and tell him yes. :) And now I can finally tell some of these other people they can go. Particularly those who make phone appointment and then don't keep them!

I had a long job interview on Friday that went better than most.  It involved four people each of whom concentrated on four aspects of what the company looks for in people. I did best with the Technical guys and less well with the management guys.... I suppose that's because I've had plenty of Technically focused interviews and less experience with the management peoples.  It looks like it would be a good company to work for and I'd likely take the job if the offered it too me. One part of me sayeth that they'll make me an offer since the job I applied for is entry level, and they seemed to be happy with my technical skillz and I did decent to well on 3 out of the four interviews..., however, 3 out of four rarely good enough in a job interview, but on the mysteriously floating third hand, if the job markets tightened up enough, 3 out of four might be good enough for an entry level technical position.  It's not as if I was applying for a managerial or sales position. I suppose in a few days this little question will be answered.

In other happenings, I've been trying to find some new anime to watch, starting with Boogiepop Phantom, however I couldn't deal with all the hand washing in the first episode.  It seemed to be rather uninteresting, and the Heroine's lack of character isn't particularly appealing either, it was giving me flash back of Lain wich is rarely a good thing. So instead of strangely humming wires, I saw lots of scenes of washing hands and lavatories, not things that make me want to move on to the next episode. It's good that I can still get my my Kanon fix on Fridays .

Yay, it must be St. Valentine's Day, so winter may be ending soon! Then again the 14 inches of snow outside my tiny flat seem to be rooting for a new ice age. I will admit the snow has added a bit of spice to this dreary and cold February.

My job hunting has become rather annoying, but at least my phone isn't ringing off the hook with scary staffing firms anymore. The consulting company finally got a hold of me, stating that they just haven't been able to get people together for an interview, but they seem to be somewhat interested. That Chris guy from the Placement firm finally got back to me about the place in Twinsburg, and it seems that even though the guy was really interested in me when we talked two weeks ago, they don't even want to see me now. I don't know what's going on there, but Chris implied that they were talking Robert Half and that something funny went down.  

That was almost as strange as the Akron place that claimed to know all of EIS former employees and would have contacted if they were interested, but obviously wanted nothing to do with me.  The message I fear was little garbled since I heard it through a recruiter.  All I know for sure is that this person was aquainted with the late owner of EIS and they seem to think I was lying about working there.  If this character is going to convict me without even hearing me out, I don't want work under him.  

  Then there's the trucking company which can't seem to call me on time, they called me yesterday when I was cleaning seven inches of snow off my car, so naturally I was unable to speak to them, and then guy said he'd call today at twelve. Naturally he didn't call until one, when I'd given up on him and gone hunting for supplies (Food = good, Scary trucking guys = bad). I don't know about these people, why can't they set a time and stick to it! Still I suppose there's not much point in ranting here about it.

In a vain attempt to lighten my mood I created another demotivator

This last week has been rather exiting although I only had one true interview week and one phone interview.  My real interview was with a company that does both consulting and has an educational application that allow parents & students to check their grades on line. It seemed like a nice enough place to work, but it was a VB shop and I'm not entirely thrilled at dealing with VB all the time.  Now the phone interview was for a company that is strictly consulting, so I figure I have the chance to work with quite a few different things and wouldn't need to deal with vb (or just one app for that matter) day in and day out. I'm really interested in these people and they are going to get back to me on Monday to set up a time for a a true interview. The down sides are naturally that consulting will involve some travel and also some unpaid overtime, but hopefully that won't be too bad.

In other news I've been doing some work in my copious free time for Frank on a couple different websites so I'll have a little bit of extra cash coming my way.  Also I got in touch with the alpaca guy and he wants to give me something $1000 advance, to do more work on his website. Which sounds to be quite excellent, particully since my car's radiator need a lot of work.

I suppose I'll end this post by summing up my situation as still in a state of limbo, but things are looking up. My website is still lame though.

I have no officially been unemployed for a month. As with all meaningless milestones this must be met with much fanfare. So far plenty of calls but I haven't found a job yet.  Unfortunetly my cell plan has only 200 minutes so sprint will be making a killing off me this month and my phone bill already pushing $150 due to all the Placement agencies + phone screenings.  :(  I gues its better than no calls, I just wish I had more quality and less quantity.  

I am however doing some random contract work on the side for Frank, which has amounted to a whole $70 (before taxes) so far. It would be good get a job this month, if only some of the leads I found last week pay off. In other news I've now been blogging rather badly for a little over three months now and it appears that my most popular post was the (de)motivator post.