——— Other business ———
I’m looking for a job. The two people that know about this blog and work in my building both already know that, and I’ve told my boss, although it’s not yet public knowledge, for both mine and my boss’s reasons. Speaking of which, Bossman wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation, which is available upon request. Highlight of the letter: “He brings professionalism to the work environment.” *ROFL* I can’t read that with a straight face. He must not have caught me throwing paper airplanes, or seen my five inch deep pile of airplanes, or paid attention to my ongoing retirement count (11,000-ish days to go), or noticed that half of my draft documents are red-rubber-stamped “STUPID” instead of “DRAFT” (or both)…
I have a ‘recruiter‘, a lady named Carol, who is supposed to find me a job. She’s not very good at this. She got me an interview for a company that’s in the process of being bought by another company (future status of any positions there unknown), but there was never any specific job title or description for which I was interviewing. So that was interesting. I didn’t get that job, even though the dude told me he liked me and wasn’t “blowing smoke up my ass.” But, I got a free trip to KrisDi, as I probably mentioned a bajillion years ago when I posted last. Then she got my hopes up with another company, and crushed them, then told me about another company to interview with, but hasn’t gotten back to me. *L* I don’t like her. But, I’ll let her do her thing. Makes no difference to me, and if she finds me interviews, great. Even if they don’t lead anywhere, it’s good to practice interviewing and it’s great to visit KrisDi for free.
I had a non-Carol related phone interview for a “Senior Electrical Engineer” position for Precor, a fitness equipment company. It sounded like a great job. It’s exactly what I want to do (aside from the whole robotics thing), and of course, I have no doubt of my ability to excel there. But I didn’t get it. *sigh* I must have applied for around 75 jobs or more by now.
Randomly, yesterday I heard back from two government jobs I didn’t expect to hear from. I applied for one of them mid-December, and now I have a phone interview on Monday. Sounds boring as all hell, and I’m not genuinely qualified (although my supreme [and ridiculous] level of confidence tells me there’s no job in or near my field I can’t perform admirably), but it’s a government job. Seriously now. How hard can it be? The other actually wrote me a letter. I didn’t know anyone wrote letters anymore. I have the feeling that they have someone in particular in mind, since the job was only listed for four days, over a weekend, and I just got lucky and happened to find it. But, it’s within the same Department, Command, and Center where I currently work, and my experience should line up remarkably well. “If my background matches what the manager is looking for, I may be called in for an interview.” So that sounds great.
But we’re rapidly approaching the point of no return. My lease ends with April, and I’m going to move regardless of job status. That’s five-ish weeks. And I’ll take the last week to move, and I want to take a week to pull my wisdom teeth out if I can schedule a way to do that without interrupting any interviews. At this point I have no confidence that any government job would be able to get their act together quickly enough for me to leave earlier, and if I don’t hear back from non-government jobs saying they want to hire me immediately, chances are my plans aren’t changing and I’m moving on my own money and becoming a kept man, at least for a little while. Thanks, KrisDi! It’s a good thing for me that the girl loves me. For a lot of reasons.
Speaking of KrisDi again, I gave her a *really* early birthday present today (84 days to go!). I gave her MLB.TV, so she can watch White Sox games on a computer. I got her that (instead of the Digital Cable package that I assume exists) so she can watch it on any computer on the internet. Hopefully, that means she can watch it at work. Certainly, it means she can watch the games at home, which she wouldn’t have normally been able to do because the ubiquitous WGN is not shown in the Seattle area. In fact, she can watch it on her laptop while she’s cooking, or exercising, or sitting on the couch watching TV.
Oh yeah, and three more photoshop entries: One, two, three. I got kicked out of #2 because of #2, and I entered twice in #3.
——— Books & Such ———
Wizard and Glass, by Stephen King. Book 4 of the Dark Tower series. I felt like I was trudging through this. 99% of the book was flashback. Great, explore the characters more, but Christ, let’s advance the plot, shall we?
Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. This movie wasn’t very good. It had a couple funny parts, but I wouldn’t say it was worth the time it took to watch it.