I wonder what would happen if I started this blog anew? I wonder if anyone would read it, what with it having been defunct for a while? I wonder if anyone would notice? I wonder if it matters?

Cows with Guns.

So the latest warz movie is out, 300. My housemates apparently saw it over the weekend. They weren't thrilled, as best as I can tell. I've heard mostly luke-warm to poor reviews of the movie. I have also heard (and seen a few short vids confirming) that it is a total manmeat fest, which I suppose is nice to hear since there are so many womenmeat movies. Still, found an interesting reference in a friends livejournal today...

The 300 Workout

Supposidly the very workout used by the actors to become huge manmeat.

So...

I did not get hired at [school district I wanted to work for]. I was quite distraught by this. I worked very hard for them and I was very good at the work they did there. My immediate supervisor was... actually... still is rather pissed off that I was not hired. Not his decision and he's not happy about it, but... *shrug* not my decision.

I was very depressed and frustrated for about a week. Then I got 2 calls from 2 different team managers at Daimler Chrysler's Research Lab in Palo Alto.  I had 2 phone interviews (one with each of them) and then visited the lab for about 1/2 a day.  I now work for them.

This has granted me sufficient liberty to move back to Santa Cruz.  I am extremely happy with this turn of events.

Originally posted at Consumerist

's about time I updated this thing, yes?

When last we saw our hero iwishiwasinsc he was headed for his interview as a User Support Technician. Well, dear readers, there's a funny story about that and I'll get to telling it, but I just wanted to kick this thing back into gear by saying "I'm back!" This journal will now be updated regularly once again. For starters, however, I would just like to point out that the livejournal user iwishiwasinsc is now g_f_brown. I live in SC now.

More to come as I update.

Today I had my job interview for the permanent User Support Technician at . This is the job I have chosen to do. This is the job I want.

The interview went reasonably well. I cannot, of course, determine the outcome until I know if I made the cut (got the job) or not, but it felt like it went acceptably. I have my thank you cards now that I wrote up this evening; panel members will get them tomorrow. I've done all I can, now I just have to trust and wait. Why is that always the hardest part.

Also: I cannot even explain how bizarre it was going through my regular work day watching several other interviewees sitting outside my bosses office all interviewing for the same job I am. It was surreal, but it happened and it felt weird and now it is over. I find out the result some time next week.

[friend in Santa Cruz] invited me to accompany the Twilight Knights to the Genoa Renaissance faire this weekend. This was, sadly, not tops on my priority list, since I have started dating a wonderful young lady and had not really gone out with her since before PSI 7. In trying to resolve this conundrum the answer was obvious: invite [young lady] to participate in the faire. This I did and this we did. The weekend proceeded to be concocted out of 100% pure awesome sauce. Was a bit of a risk inviting [young lady] to the faire (camping out, weird faire people, meeting the Knights, etc), but everything worked out and I had one of the best weekends of my life. Risk roxorz.

I have returned from the PSI 7 day course. I feel great. Not only that, but several wonderful things have happened while I was away, including School District opening several temp positions and the User Support Manager emailing me saying he wanted to hire me into one of them. Life is good.

I would like to hereby note that fruit can, most definitely, be masserated in honey as an alternative to refined white sugar. You all may now rejoice in the pleasure of refined-sugar-free fruit dishes.

As a follow up to my prior post, some ruminations.

In my twisty, winding road to social competence I have picked up many tricks. One of them is that you always follow up an interview with a "Thank You" card. This is just a courtesy that "is done" (and I know for a fact that some people have lost out on a position specifically because they did not demonstrate this "common" courtesy). Knowing this, I long ago purchased some ink-jet printable "Note Card"s from Avery. Today I finally busted them out of the box they came in and played with Word templates and such to make 2 nice thank you cards for the two guys I've had sit-down conversations with at The School District. They went out in the mail today. Even though neither of these were formally Interviews (capitol "I" on purpose), I am proud of having taken the time to do this and I hope that it continues to foster a positive impression of me among these people I would so very much like to work for.

I'm afraid I'll jinx it, but I'm just to damn happy to not go "squee!" I just got back from the school district I want to work for (in their IT department). This was my 3rd visit. I have visited them almost every week since I got back from PSI Basic. I may have just gotten a job there. The user group manager that I spoke with today revealed that (just as I expected) they are right now discussing opening a new permanent position. By state law, this position will be open to a competitive application process, but I'm pretty confident that I have already made a solid, positive impression at this place. Additionally they are going to open 4 to 5 temp positions doing some IT grunt work (working with the DNS servers, I gather). As the manager put it: "I don't know if you'd be interested. It's not interesting work..." to which I replied: "I am excited about the opportunity to show you what I can do. I don't expect a high level position to start," which I think went over very well. So... even if this perm. position is not created, or even if I don't competitively "win" that position (yeah, right), it would seem that I will absolutely have the opportunity to show them what I can do and what kind of person I am. I think that counts for a lot and I really appreciate (and said so, as well) that this guy was willing to give me that chance. So, baring really unforseen potential obstacles in the near future, I believe my experiment has proven to be a strong success. I may very well have a job soon with the school district I want. YAY!!

Oh, and SQUEEEEE!!

I have no words...

other than: Hahahahahaha!!!!

BTW, for people who are interested in the ongoing jobhunt: I visited Grant Joint Union again today. I want to work for these people. I met a nice man who'ss name I will keep private, but who informed me that the guy I really want to talk to will be in on Mon. morning. I shall return again on Mon..

The goal? They shall know my face. They shall know my name. When I walk in they will know who I am and why I am there and will think nothing of it until I am just another member of the group. And the next time they have a position open up I will be right at the front of their frontal lobe and I will be interviewed and hired. They will be unable to forget about me because I will regularly be there, physically.

At least, that is the theory. It's an experiment, see. I am a scientist, don't cha know?

Yuuup. There I go again. Bringing the wank to my sister's livejournal again. *Sigh* Dunno how she puts up with me. *grin*

I would like to reference a previous post here

A couple of people (ok, exactly two people, and that count includes me) were rather concerned by what I had written there. This is, I believe, completely understandable. Unfortunately the answer offered was simply: see a psychologist, to which my answer was: screw that; been there, done that, got the T-shirt, still have the issues.

So the question asked then, which I will be rephrasing now, still stood:

In life one has experences, some good, some bad. The bad ones tend to cause us pain of varying amounts and most of us, myself included, start to build habits in order to avoid that kind of pain in the future. Rational on the surface, but those new habits become old habits and you find that some of them, while perhaps doing the job you intended, have some rather unfortunate side-effects in preventing you from doing or being what you want to do or be. The question is: how does one defeat one's old, internalized habits in order to liberate yourself and get what you want?

And while I don't have the answer, and maybe nobody does or ever will, I think I am getting some good tools to help right now in the seminar I'm taking.

I think that makes the time and money worth it.

Back to work at CTB (doing some test grading). Ugh, I got stuck with an absolutely awful supervisor who has the attention span of a sparrow on crack. I'm hoping this will be not so much an issue once training is over with, but having to listen to all his digressions about the Computer Science courses he is taking (gods help the person that trusts this man with their computer or computer network - better yet: don't; let them learn what an incompetent with paper will do to their organization so maybe they will give me a chance), who is son(s) are and what they do for a living, what his interests are, his wife's menstrual cycle (no, I'm not kidding), and, most of all, just exactly how neurotic and anal he is and how much medication he has had to take because of it. All of this, dear readers, not just to me, but to a team of almost 40 people he is trying to train, approximately 1/2 of which I will be in charge of when training is over and done with (can you say middle-man?). I was gripping my highlighter so hard by the end of the night I thought it was going to scream in agony. And to put the cherry on the top of the cake now he is complaining that training didn't wrap up as fast as he would like. Fucking whiner. Look motherfucker: if you had bothered to do your job and prepare your training materials in advance instead of trying to do it on the fly (which your personality type is obviously extremely poor at) and if you hadn't wasted several hours of our lives by talking about all kinds of TMI from your personal life, we'd be done with training, qualified, and doing our jobs by now. This is the kind of off-topic digressional bullshit that got beatten out of me my 1st month of teaching. May this man never enter a classroom at any level.

How this man is employed in his position is beyond me. Even the dilbert principal fails, because he can't have even been a competent reader, must less a Team Leader (my position), so he must have been at his highest level of incompetence a long time before he reached this position.

In other news: when I got home I was approached by a very tipsy (I did not catch on to this immediately, I initially just thought he was "special") male russian who wanted to know about my car. My 2nd thought was that he was casing my car to steal later, but he invited me to join him and his buddies for some beer. First off: I'd never met this guy before in my life. 2nd: creepy! 3rd: Gods: when I said I need to improve my social life this was not what I had in mind and you fucking knew that so don't pretend you didn't!. Naturally I made an excuse of just getting home from work and I wanted to get some rest. He was kind enough to inquire if their music was too loud (not only did I say "no, I'll be fine," but I was actually telling the truth; they are, at least, a very noise acceptable party) and I got to duck out gracefully.

That's all from insanityland tonight. I hope you are all having more boring evenings, friends.