![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabrinageekRachel picked up some movies for her birthday -- one among them being a post-apocalyptic film that I remember from my childhood as -the- movie that scared the living daylights out of me and was probably the catalyst for my morbid fascination with the genre:
"The Day After." It came out in 1983. I may have seen it when it originally aired. I would've been six. Looking back, from a technological standpoint, yes, some of the effects are a tad cheesy, but the story is incredibly powerful, and no matter how cheesy the effects were, the radiation effects (visible skeletons) when the missiles hit stayed in my mind, along with the makeup effects of radiation burns and people losing hair and teeth. So we watched that a couple nights ago.
Tonight we watched something Rachel had Tivo'd. "Oil Storm." A Mock-umentary disaster film thing about a possible oil crisis happening this year beginning with labor day, -IF- a hurricane happens to hit New Orleans dead on.. Admittedly, there were a lot of chained events, and all of the choices represented worst-case scenarios (or more correctly, if every choice made was the worst choice possible every time), but still, it was rather creepy / scary. I follow(ed) the gas/oil situation as part of my job reading newspapers every day, so some of the scenarios are plausible, but again, it would require multiple chained events. However, at one point they mention massive GM layoffs and plant shutdowns..
Which leads me to my next topic -- scary news.
GM has announced 25,000 layoffs. It made the national news on ABC. Apparently it's said that the oldest plants may be shut down, and the oldest in the country is Janesville, WI -- Janesville is about 30 minutes from here. I know people who work at the Janesville plant.
So what does this mean? Well, the local economy is already strained. Although we're possibly on the upswing, we are still strained. Chrysler is expanding their plant and planning on hiring close to 1000 workers, and third party suppliers are also building plants next to the Chrysler plant and are also planning on hiring 500-1000 workers. Rockford needs these jobs. However, if GM has massive layoffs, it wouldn't take much for Janesville workers to decide to commute the same way Rockford people commute to Chicago and the burbs.
So, things on my mind:
1.) People I know in Janesville might lose their jobs.
2.) People in Rockford who need jobs might lose out to "skilled" work coming from Janesville.
3.) With gas prices on the rise, and people scared, the auto market is more unstable than ever before.
4.) 25,000 lost jobs is a very large hit when Bush was touting success in job creation with 150,000 jobs this year.
5.) The jobs lost are most likely higher paying jobs -- at Chrysler, even beginning lineworkers are making $20-25 an hour to start, and from what I understand, most of the jobs "created" this year are part-time, low-wage, or both. (Think Wal-Mart.) That will also create an imbalance in the economy and strain things even more.
6.) Roger & Me -- the Michael Moore documentary. The story of Flint, MI after the loss of their GM plant, and the effects it had on the local economy. Both Janesville, WI and Rockford, IL share characteristics with Flint, MI.
This news of GM is very fear-inducing. The auto industry has always been a bit volatile, and for the past few years before UAW renegotiated their contract with Chrysler, there were fears that the union would strike -- mom and dad had tried to plan for it. With my dad working at Chrysler, I'm worried about how the GM situation will ripple effect the rest of the industry. At the same time, my dad has been trying to get me hired at Chrysler for many years, and had been planning on getting me hired in this year with all the new jobs -- with this GM situation, would I be able to even if I wanted to? What sort of competition would there be? And frankly, do I really want to work in such a volatile industry, even if it means doubling my income?
On the few plus notes -- I got a new(er) laptop on ebay this week for about $50 -- it's the same model as the one I had, but with better specs. I was able to drop in my hard drive and ram and reinstall windows and off we go; I went from a 200mhz pentium with 192mb of ram to a 266mhz PII with 320mb of ram -- now I can watch most video files on my machine without lagging or glitching. And I did it the hacking, cheapass way.
I also found the Cruxshadow's Ethernaut at the used cd store today. First time I've seen Cruxshadows used. I start my new job next Monday. The "Oil Storm" movie has me a bit worried about gas prices again, because now Rachel and I will both be commuting.
Speaking of commuting, I've also planned on getting a new(er) car. As much as I love my car, it has some annoying problems that bother me; namely, no cruise control (I've yet to drive a chrysler with consistently functioning cruise control) and transmission foibles. (Chrysler apparently cannot make an electronic transmission to save itself.) And to top it off, changing just a headlight is a major operation. So I decided to sell my cop car, and my concorde, and take the cash to try and buy a newer used Cavalier outright. I want something smaller, more gas efficient, and simple. I want things to just WORK. I have two friends with cavaliers, and neither seem to have any major problems.
I have more I want to talk about, but Rach and I need to get to bed. Maybe I'll post tomorrow.
"The Day After." It came out in 1983. I may have seen it when it originally aired. I would've been six. Looking back, from a technological standpoint, yes, some of the effects are a tad cheesy, but the story is incredibly powerful, and no matter how cheesy the effects were, the radiation effects (visible skeletons) when the missiles hit stayed in my mind, along with the makeup effects of radiation burns and people losing hair and teeth. So we watched that a couple nights ago.
Tonight we watched something Rachel had Tivo'd. "Oil Storm." A Mock-umentary disaster film thing about a possible oil crisis happening this year beginning with labor day, -IF- a hurricane happens to hit New Orleans dead on.. Admittedly, there were a lot of chained events, and all of the choices represented worst-case scenarios (or more correctly, if every choice made was the worst choice possible every time), but still, it was rather creepy / scary. I follow(ed) the gas/oil situation as part of my job reading newspapers every day, so some of the scenarios are plausible, but again, it would require multiple chained events. However, at one point they mention massive GM layoffs and plant shutdowns..
Which leads me to my next topic -- scary news.
GM has announced 25,000 layoffs. It made the national news on ABC. Apparently it's said that the oldest plants may be shut down, and the oldest in the country is Janesville, WI -- Janesville is about 30 minutes from here. I know people who work at the Janesville plant.
So what does this mean? Well, the local economy is already strained. Although we're possibly on the upswing, we are still strained. Chrysler is expanding their plant and planning on hiring close to 1000 workers, and third party suppliers are also building plants next to the Chrysler plant and are also planning on hiring 500-1000 workers. Rockford needs these jobs. However, if GM has massive layoffs, it wouldn't take much for Janesville workers to decide to commute the same way Rockford people commute to Chicago and the burbs.
So, things on my mind:
1.) People I know in Janesville might lose their jobs.
2.) People in Rockford who need jobs might lose out to "skilled" work coming from Janesville.
3.) With gas prices on the rise, and people scared, the auto market is more unstable than ever before.
4.) 25,000 lost jobs is a very large hit when Bush was touting success in job creation with 150,000 jobs this year.
5.) The jobs lost are most likely higher paying jobs -- at Chrysler, even beginning lineworkers are making $20-25 an hour to start, and from what I understand, most of the jobs "created" this year are part-time, low-wage, or both. (Think Wal-Mart.) That will also create an imbalance in the economy and strain things even more.
6.) Roger & Me -- the Michael Moore documentary. The story of Flint, MI after the loss of their GM plant, and the effects it had on the local economy. Both Janesville, WI and Rockford, IL share characteristics with Flint, MI.
This news of GM is very fear-inducing. The auto industry has always been a bit volatile, and for the past few years before UAW renegotiated their contract with Chrysler, there were fears that the union would strike -- mom and dad had tried to plan for it. With my dad working at Chrysler, I'm worried about how the GM situation will ripple effect the rest of the industry. At the same time, my dad has been trying to get me hired at Chrysler for many years, and had been planning on getting me hired in this year with all the new jobs -- with this GM situation, would I be able to even if I wanted to? What sort of competition would there be? And frankly, do I really want to work in such a volatile industry, even if it means doubling my income?
On the few plus notes -- I got a new(er) laptop on ebay this week for about $50 -- it's the same model as the one I had, but with better specs. I was able to drop in my hard drive and ram and reinstall windows and off we go; I went from a 200mhz pentium with 192mb of ram to a 266mhz PII with 320mb of ram -- now I can watch most video files on my machine without lagging or glitching. And I did it the hacking, cheapass way.
I also found the Cruxshadow's Ethernaut at the used cd store today. First time I've seen Cruxshadows used. I start my new job next Monday. The "Oil Storm" movie has me a bit worried about gas prices again, because now Rachel and I will both be commuting.
Speaking of commuting, I've also planned on getting a new(er) car. As much as I love my car, it has some annoying problems that bother me; namely, no cruise control (I've yet to drive a chrysler with consistently functioning cruise control) and transmission foibles. (Chrysler apparently cannot make an electronic transmission to save itself.) And to top it off, changing just a headlight is a major operation. So I decided to sell my cop car, and my concorde, and take the cash to try and buy a newer used Cavalier outright. I want something smaller, more gas efficient, and simple. I want things to just WORK. I have two friends with cavaliers, and neither seem to have any major problems.
I have more I want to talk about, but Rach and I need to get to bed. Maybe I'll post tomorrow.
