Business
Friday, April 04, 2008
Jay: Birthday and Many Things
So yesterday was my birthday. And that of a lot of other people, now up to a total of seven on that day in my calendar. That may be the largest number on one day. (Pauses to check, because he’s such a geek, finds that it’s tied with July 28, but no other day has more than five so far.)
It would have pretty much sucked - well, it did - apart from getting a car, and a substantial donation.
My left knee, and to some degree my thigh, have been killing me beyond all reason. It may or may not be connected to gout, which had been quiet recently until today, when I seem to have a minor touch of it in my right foot. Nothing like it was. The knees have bothered me before, over the years, and can be sort of twisted easily, or hurt by kneeling on a hard surface, or standing in place too long (I tend to need to sit, or move around extensively, after sufficiently long food prep, for instance). This has been unusual, and tough to keep away because of the kids and the need for activity that stresses it.
Ironically, sitting in this chair tends to bother it, while taking a walk tends to help it. Stairs? Excruciating, once it’s flared up, bordering on impossible.
That was making me extra cranky. Part of today it was better, but we have kids and stuff. They are pretty much a guarantee I can’t take it easy on the thing, and Valerie managed to add a bit of back to the mix yesterday by doing a backward somersault off my lap and being prevented from landing on her head.
Speaking of Valerie, she needs to learn to tell us when she’s bleeding, rather than being fascinated by the artistic possibilities. Keeping a bandage on would be good, too, once Dr. Dad has ruined her fun.
So yeah, a car. My aunt got this silver/gray 1994 Buick Century with 86k miles on it in 2003 at a good price. She drove it to 174k miles, replaced it yesterday, and brought it to us.
She seriously downplayed its condition and overstated its degree of foibles, I think. It’s beautiful, body looking at least as good as he one on the ill-fated van of the same model year. The foibles are things like a fan blade on the AC being broken, so you have to turn it off and back on strategically. I seldom use AC, even in a vehicle that has it. The trunk apparently can leak some in heavy rain. There can be a little trick to opening the rear doors. There are rear doors! And room for three carseats, of which they left an extra, a spare of my mother’s, in the car. It uses a quart between oil changes, and she keeps it to 65 on the highway. We’d mainly use it on local roads, very limited driving to places we’d need to go together.
The trick now is to be able to afford to register it. That’s a tough one. My aunt is getting the form to declare it a gift and save us the sales tax, so that will help.
I’ve always been particularly fond of my mother’s sister, who is only 17 years older than me, but this is just amazing and a huge surprise.
Anyway, I parked it where we’d been parking the truck, moving the truck up into the main part of the driveway. We’d been using two spots deep in the driveway, then hogging a third, spare spot with the Sentra. That wasn’t considered a favorable spot due to the mulberries, and really neither is at least one of the others.
Today I got home from dropping off a trickle of rent to the landlord, ran into the gal upstairs, and she had moved her car so we could have our other space back, having seen that we got a second car. The very same day, they swapped his truck for something better, very nice. Funny how things synchronize that way.
I was amazed, as I figured we’d lost that spot fair and square. The spot we’d hogged with the old Sentra has a trailer in it now, which works out perfectly. They can be funny sometimes, in their youthfulness, but once again, the people upstairs are great.
What else?
I ended up doing a lot of dishes and cleaning. I took Valerie on errands with me, to the post office, Benny’s, the bank, and Stop & Shop, where her bladder almost made it through the entire lengthy trek. I was threatening to make myself birthday brownies, with a mix on hand, but never did get around to it.
That would have been no fun for Deb. On the off chance stuff bad for the baby translates into breast milk, she’s been off the likely suspects, bringing them back until it’s just eggs and dairy. She ate a single egg, in a sandwich with ham. He got rashy the next day. It’s back off eggs long enough to let him clear up and test it again. It could have been random environmental, or something stray he ate courtesy of the girls. He also tried pear, and while there’s room to wonder, that’s one of the least likely problem foods. I’ll give him more this weekend and see, maybe.
I did splurge on flour tortillas, so we had chicken burritos for supper. That was popular. He’s had seasoned chicken since we started reintroducing stuff, but I cooked a little chicken by itself for Henry, just salt and a little pepper. He loves chicken.
For that I pulled out a tiny frying pan I never use, big enough to fry a single egg, and now I want to use it again and own more like it. It’s stainless steel with a thick copper bottom. Yeah, I needed more oil than I am used to using, because the second I turned on the burner, it seemed, the pan was sizzling hot and the meat wanted to stick to it. But oh, it cooked so nice. I think I’m in love.
And hey, the non-stick pans are starting to lose their mojo. They end up with a spot in the center, where the heat focuses, that the coating loses its ungrip. Once that gets serious, you may as well have a traditional pan. The really bad one is Deb’s deep frying pan with a glass cover, which gets used constantly. I wouldn’t mind having more than one of those, including a larger version, if I were outfitting the kitchen more completely.
What else?
Today was better. Overnight was weird, in that I was up most of the night, but during that time the knee was better, after a couple hours of sleep. The very best thing for it is to lay down a certain way on the bed. I can coddle it some laying on, say, the floor, but the bed is better, and then sleeping while it rests is better still. It got worse again as the day progressed, but it does that. While it may be nauseating at times today, last night I experienced a revelation of understanding how someone can pass out in response to pain.
Ibuprofen is shooting up the “must buy some” list.
I have an interview Tuesday in Needham. That’s a Good Thing. Same former colleague who landed me the main interview Monday got me another, but this time it’s his own employer, for a 2 - 3 month contract supporting a new software rollout. Beyond that there hasn’t been much activity, besides a ton of additions in LinkedIn and correspondence stemming from that, including with my last manager from VB support, who was awesome.
I did up the root of elhide.com to be a resume links and simple supporting text page, to give it the shortest possible URL without setting up a new domain. Plus elhide.com is more memorable than, say, gphmo.com. Which stems from when I was going to setup a new business as “Geek Practitioners.” The HMO in this case, besides a play on the medical theme, stood for “home, mobile, office.”
Still have to do a blogging-oriented resume. Still have to retrofit the blogs with “hire me” sidebar sections prominent. Still working on the odds and ends side work, but that’s going a little slower than expected.
Anyway, off to bed, I guess. Wanted to do a post for the day and talk about the birthday and the car and such. Got delayed and now it’s after midnight, but oh well.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Jay: Apparently
I hit just the right food combinations yesterday for the kids.
First, I had bought 3 Bartlett pears on sale, sneaking them into a “can’t get everything I need and must keep it under $10, preferably under $7 in case the debit card doesn’t work and I have to use cash” grocery order, and the girls split one like they were discovering fruit for the first time. It was especially good, perfectly ripe.
Shortly after, at their request, we had grilled cheese and red soup. The latter being what they call tomato soup. Which was Wal-Mart’s house brand, and quite good. They each devoured completely half of a grilled cheese, made with colby jack, cheap bread and cheap margarine. Since we can’t afford cheese, but still have to buy some, and are using it slower while Deb avoids dairy, and I’m nervous about my beloved cheddar after the allergy incident in which it’s about 80% probable the specific batch of cheese plus pre-sensitization were to blame (I didn’t know cheddar could be loaded with histamines) and I reacted to it or something too, we’ve settled on that kind. Wal-Mart’s is good, and it makes great grilled cheese. One devoured all and the other most of a third or more of the can of soup. I gave each of them at least as much of it as I had.
Then when I was at a total loss for supper, Deb remembered I’d mentioned blueberry pancakes the night before. We still had part of a bag of frozen blueberries my father had gotten for Sadie, knowing her love of blueberries. Most of it went into an astonishingly good blueberry cake a while back, which oddly enough left the kids indifferent.
There was exactly a cup of Bisquick remaining, enough for half a standard batch, without stretching it or making scratch. I made that up for them, figuring they might not eat it all and that would be part of what I had. Using an eight cup measure to scoop relatively uniform pancakes, I made 12 of them, heavy on blueberries, ate one myself, and between them they ate all of the other 11. Sadie ate 5 2/3 and Valerie at 5 1/3 of them, with plenty of cheap fake syrup.
That’s just nuts, compared to their normal, or at least recent, eating, especially Sadie’s. She’s been doing a lot of living on moonbeams. And afterward she pleaded still hungry, at least enough for several jelly beans.
In between, they each got a green apple lollipop from the post office when we walked there. You may remember we have books for sale, and there was an order for one to go priority, rather than the usual media mail. Not only did the guy at the post office give out lollipops, he had me stuff the original package into one of the “if it fits, it ships” priority folders, to make it $4.60 instead of $7.50.
Too bad having a full belly didn’t prevent a total meltdown by Sadie, for no apparent reason, late last night. She did make the breakthrough of calming herself enough to be coherent, so that’s good.
And speaking of cheap bread, we fell in love with Stop & Shop’s cheap bread, in 3-packs for $2.69, so it’s the best price as well as quality. I went in there the other day, read the package and found it has no milk or egg, so bought that rather than making more dairy-free bread myself just now. But… it went up sixty cents, to $3.29, just like that. Wow! If bread everywhere else, in single loaves, stayed that same, that makes them comparable. I have to assume there was probably a generalized increase. But 22%?? That’s going to mean the cheapest breads start to approach $1.50 a loaf. Perhaps it’s not generalized. I’ll have to look, just to find out.
My next mission will be to persuade the kids that soup is still soup and can still be eaten even if it’s not tomato. I have three cans of chicken noodle, which they ought to like, if I carefully promote it and make sure they know what it is. There are some other cans that the three of us can eat.
Speaking of allergies, we tried reintroducing eggs to Deb starting last night. The two of us had fried egg and ham sandwiches. Eggs come out odd on non-stick with no source of grease, but it was still good. Within a few days we should be clear that it’s okay for her to have them, which will leave only dairy, which makes it not too bad.
Henry can now eat oatmeal, rice, butternut, apple, chicken, and carrots. I really need to hit the store with money enough to buy chicken this week, as it’s on amazing sale, and hello, he can eat it and it’s a nice boost from the veggie kingdom. I was thinking of trying the pears next, but I doubt they’ll last long enough. They’re a safe bet, anyway. We still have sweet potatoes he could try next, and that’ll cover the major orange food group.
Oh, peanut butter and raisins appear to be safe for him, too. He has sisters. Apparently the main reason not to give him peanut butter is ability to eat it without choking, because he’s managed to get some twice.
One of his biggest problems seems to be my printed shirts. Part of it’s an abrasion factor, on the heavier, rougher prints, but the ink can also contain stuff that can bother some people. Given that we know he is bothered severely by bananas, and that probably means a latex allergy, the ink thing would be no surprise.
I’m rambling. Need to get more coffee, and at least make it so the girls will wake sooner rather than later. Last night I was threatening them with an earlier bed time, starting with waking them early today. I didn’t, but it’s about time even for not so early.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Jay: Perhaps I Can Sneak In a Post
People are eating or occupied. I managed to spill blood and have to bandage my foot last time I started actually doing something away from the computer or without a kid on me. We need to resolve the kid on one of us problem, but I fear that’s a matter of waiting it out for a couple more months.
Or not.
Okay, done with Valerie and talking.
I was going to tell about the whole interview thing, in some detail, if not in a single post. Let’s do the short version, even though I closed my door, since I closed the door to do work, and 2/3 of the kids can open it anyway. (Okay, maybe not such a short version, ultimately.)
Train arrived on time. I was hopelessly confused about where to go, even on foot, even with good directions, because it’s the city. It was cold and sleeting, which didn’t help. I managed to find the building and then had to call when I was on the right floor, because I had the wrong company name. He’d never said, but I found him online under the name of the business before he merged with a larger firm. I still almost made it by the tentative time of 11:00.
We talked apparently for close to an hour. I figure it’s possible but not likely I will get the job. If I do, it may start as a 1099 trial basis, or be because of what he hears from references. He’s mulling it over a few days. The biggest problem is lack of focus. Ideally there’s a label he could apply, where I’d be the X expert - setting up servers, deploying desktops, programming, whatever. That’s a matter both of my skills and my preferences, and my preferences, weak in the first place, don’t fit well with what there’d be demand for at their size. On the other hand, my location is good for where they are starting to expand - most work being from home to clients, rarely involving the office (though many clients are in Boston).
Frankly, I could see being called in on a temp basis to help on projects, if I were continuing to otherwise freelance, and I might suggest keeping me in mind for that in any event.
It did go reasonably well and I liked the guy. We had a fairly animated discussion. I was embarrassed at how poorly we did focusing and marketing XTreme, and how little client base we had, but the whole thing was weird and I was there so long mainly out of stubborn inertia and sense of obligation to the one big client. I tend to downplay myself, so it was interesting near the end when I talked about having setup SBS (Small Business Server) 2003 for a client, from scratch, with e-mail and so forth, and he was impressed because he considers that hard and requiring comprehensive knowledge.
Look for post(s) soon where I muse aloud about focus and what I want to be when I grow up.
When I left there, I was only mildly confused getting to my other destination. I’d noticed funky cherry pickers with bright lights shining on a building at High and Oliver Streets, but thought nothing of it. Even asked a couple of guys manning one of them for directions, thinking they were construction, and they pleaded having just come in from out of town. On my way out, at that corner a crowd of people were watching the windows a few floors up, where the lights were directed, chattering about Sandra Bullock filming there. I saw her on my first look up there, then once more after a while, but I saw a lot of an unfamiliar actor. They were filming something called The Proposal, which is apparently shooting mainly in Gloucester, according to IMDB.
That gave me an excuse to stand around less obtrusively, pecking at the Blackberry and being amused by the crowd and the situation. Having gotten my bearings, I headed off to the building where Rob Sama works. I met a friend of Rob’s on one floor, to discuss a possible two week temp gig covering a vacation. We immediately concluded that he needed someone more up on the latest stuff and able to hit the ground as an advanced admin, but it was great to meet him, and he went up with me to see Rob. Then I hung out with Rob for a while, talking about this and that, until I thought I needed to move it to get the train. It was great to meet Rob in person after “knowing” him since 2003, early in my blogging.
Turned out it was closer and faster than I thought, getting back to South Station, but that’s not a bad place to hang out.
I’d been thinking it’d be fun for the kids to ride the train sometime, but it made little sense without a destination. Turns out the Children’s Museum is right near the station, so there you go. Eventually. If we can keep a roof over our heads and everyone fed in the meantime.
Other takeaways, besides the focus thing, included the need to do the blogging version of the resume ASAP, the need to push the side work, and a heightened perception of the side work as being potentially more than side work. That and an appreciation of my former colleagues, and good turns apparently coming around. The resume got to my interviewer via a guy I used to go out of my way to give rides to work, back in 1994. Wow.
Okay, enough writing and resting the gouged foot, on with the day.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Jay: Dreams Are Weird
I haven’t seen my stepsister in years, yet she was in dreams two nights in a row. Night before last, there was a mishmash of stuff that included one of my father’s houses, the dream version of it, which in the dream she’d ended up buying. Last night’s dreams included a scene in which I was telling my stepsister about the dream I’d had the night before. Very meta, self-referential, or whatever you want to call it.
The seemingly lengthy end part of the dreams last night involved being somewhere to the north, like NH, ME or VT - the highway I drove down was a generic stretch of what looks like northern New England highway that seems to recycle in dreams where it’s needed - and there being a giant snow storm. I needed to get home, apparently for work, and was trying and trying to get through it, leaving when I shouldn’t have, getting in shoveling scenarios, trying to bash through a snowbank a few feet taller than the car, that sort of thing. Eventually I gave up and stayed in a motel, though even that was a matter of getting a room, then continuing to try to flee.
In the motel, which seemed to double as one of those side of the highway tourist rest stops and the offices of some business (for that matter, in part it looked like a miniature section of some airport terminal, in rustic), there was the challenge of getting something to eat. People were strangely open, but not open, at a lunch counter and small store. I found my way into the dining area, where someone had just been served a sandwich, but most people were just hanging out, and was told they would be serving starting at a specific time. An odd time, though I forget when. It was at the motel where I ran into my stepsister, as I recall.
Fast forward and I am driving down the highway in the morning, bright, sunny, and not a speck of snow, immediately south of where I had stayed. I was fuming at having had to spend the money and time to stay over. I was also alone, but then I wasn’t, because Deb and a kid, presumably Sadie as a baby, were with me. This would fit with the blizzard when we had to stay an extra night at the Park Plaza for Arisia, when Sadie was less than 4 months old. On the way, we discussed the state of the credit cards, and which one I’d used for the stay, and how it sucked to have needed to do that because we so couldn’t afford the $40.
Next thing I know, pressed for time, I was driving straight to work with family in tow, which is odd in that we’d gotten almost home when I got onto the highway going north from here. In reality, I’d have had to pass work on the way there, then changed my mind and not spent an extra 10 minutes dropping them home. Then there was a bit of fuss about where Deb and the kid would hang out at the office, which was a cross between my former large client, a larger business, and the motel I’d stayed at in the dream.
That was about it. I woke up, amused at the whole thing, and started coffee brewing. I certainly hope we don’t get any snow, and that dreaming about my stepsister has no prescient bad significance. However, this wasn’t like one of those “dreams that happen” dreams, or like when I flashed “this could be the last time I talk to her” out of the blue and sat to converse with my grandmother at length less than 36 hours before she died.
Being Friday and not having had it early enough to mail it, I have to make arrangements to drop money to the landlord. We may look like we’re sitting around watching soaps and playing with the kids, but each week we have to come up with $250 or $300 toward rent to defer eviction proceedings. The drop-ins by people who are bringing food donations and don’t care what the house looks like at any random time are welcome but are still disruptions. Visits that are just visits on a couple hours notice tend to get “well, this is really a bad day” pretty uniformly. Friday is especially bad with the actual rent delivery, but today I need to make a post office run - a small contribution to our finances a couple weeks hence because someone bought a book, I need to go to Wal-Mart and figure out how to stretch $30 beyond all recognition - including a couple bucks for yarn for a custom order to help our finances in a week or two, stop at my mother’s for a special crib mattress cover a cousin got us for Henry not to be allergic to the crib anymore (she’s allergic to everything herself, apparently), reply to the person who is offering temp work that’ll be great if the interview Monday doesn’t work out, figure out whether I need $8 or $16 for the train Monday and walking directions from South Station to my destination, help unbury and select clothes sealed in the leaky closet for the winter, continue my office organizing project, make banana bread, figure out what’s for supper and start it ahead of time if needed, and probably some things I’ve forgotten. Like e-mailing someone who might want me to do a computer cleanup Sunday, or Monday evening, and might have others who could use that, if she’s recovered enough from surgery. A few of those and it’s close to another rent week.
And I still haven’t worked on the giant “we’re back” fundraiser edition of Carnival of the Capitalists, but I should, because that could contribute to groceries or to the rent on the 11th. Or gas for the truck, because even if you take six weeks to use a tank, eventually you need more.
And with that, off I go, because the day is getting no younger.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Jay: Speaking of “Famous”
It’s kind of cool to see myself in this item currently on the front page of Web Worker Daily.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Jay: Today
My grandmother would have been 97, had she not done the actuarially correct thing for social security and died just after turning 65, as so many once did when social security and 65 as a retirement age were conceived. That used to be ancient. Now it’s still relatively prime for many, who will increasingly go on to collect for 20, 30 years and beyond, expecting that not merely to be supplemental, but to be primary and in some kind of style. Meanwhile, if you take the logic behind it to be the children supporting parents in retirement - since remember, what you pay in goes to support current retirees, not into a fund, not into an investment vehicle that garners market-based returns - then it all falls apart when you have retirees and their children both over retirement age, collecting from the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the original generation. Historically, there will have been almost a century of fiscal pig-in-snake, with an explosion coming on the far end. None of which means I don’t appreciate having my grandmother and parents around, but the whole thing is alarming on the larger scale.
I had a crazy dream in which Fred Thompson had died. He had been dating some obscure cousin of ours, a fictitious person for the sake of the dream, and she was annoyed that being merely his girlfriend, she would get no inheritance. Apparently, my grandmother had died as well, so the obscure cousin instead maneuvered to take control of my grandmother’s estate instead, trying to steal it out from under the proper heirs. This created quite the sense of alarm.
Also in the same dream sequence I had returned to college for some classes. The parts I recall are my worry that I wouldn’t be able to handle how different it was using computers for accounting classes, and riding a bicycle to get to school. I was with a bunch of other students and a professor, all on bikes, riding down route 106 in an area of Halifax I can’t specify. As we rode along, the professor or whoever it was lectured on political matters and sent away anyone who disagreed. It was far worse than anything that was happening back when I was in college.
Anyway, I guess today I have to continue the close and office cleaning and organizing I started over the weekend, which will be useful in that it makes things more efficient. It’s distracting to go and discover things I forgot existed, pausing to be excited or amused in the process. That and all the time it takes to relocate or repack things. The closet space was not being used efficiently.
The problem was it’s where toys go away on vacation, and the kids are hard to keep out of the office, even with the door closed. It’s also where toys they haven’t been given yet live. Thus there are a couple of magnetized doodle pads, a couple bottles of bubble stuff, three little cars, a couple packs of modeling clay, some crayons, and whatever else.
We were thinking of putting a bookcase in there, against the window. Yes, there’s a window in the closet. It’s smaller than a true walk-in, but large as closets go. In fact, apart from the ceiling being stair-shaped in one of them, it’s about the dimensions of two closets in the cellar, where our bedrooms were in the house where I grew up. One was under the stairs, along a hallway front to back, and the other was back to back with it, opening into what was originally the master bedroom. In fact, as I recall, you could go through one closet and come out the other, hidden passage style, subject to the amount of stuff in the way. Trouble is, the bookcase would eliminate, it appears, the large shelving unit. But it would make way for hanging shelves and some other flexibility.
I also need to run to the store today. I’d say I was trying to figure out how to make $5 buy peanut butter, bear jelly, yeast, sugar, apples, some veggies, a few pounds or so of meat of some kind, some baby food, and whatever else I’m forgetting, but we’re expecting my nephew to stop by and give me $20 for a spare power supply. That puts it closer to reality.
I was probably going to say something else, but can’t remember, so off to the shower and on with the day…
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Jay: Randomness and Resume Repost
I think I’m going to spend part of the day cleaning the office before I get back into job hunting. Well, that and I need to run to the store for milk and peanut butter at some point. And I may toss a chicken in the oven from the freezer, with low heat to thaw and cook it slowly and warm the house, though the next two days are supposed to be colder. I seem to be having a problem with having lost warming fat with all that weight, because in what should not be uncomfortable conditions, I am bundled up and still cold. If I don’t do the chicken, I might get yeast and try bread without milk. The recipe I’d been using calls for milk, but that’s not universal. We’re putting back the wheat for Deb before we put back the milk.
Anyway, the point of this random post, going up here because I don’t have any birthdays to be filler, is to post my resume again, partly in case there is any traffic from Mediacasters.tv. I’ll maybe also link the resume near the top of the sidebar.
This is what I’d call a general technical and managerial resume. I need to create one (well, a new and improved one) oriented toward online content, editing, writing, etc., for those prospective options, which really don’t overlap much with the ones where mentioning blogging new media can be detrimental, or at least not helpful.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Jay: Mediacasters.tv
Aw, I got mentioned on video. Other geeks polished it up, but I hosted and got rolling the setup of Mediacasters.tv, which is making a big splash at Startup Weekend. Pretty cool. Fun, too, if you’re me.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Jay: Obligatory Post
Actually, I didn’t have a birthday until I saw one mentioned elsewhere, so I’d planned this to be something for a “no birthdays” morning post.
I was sad but not surprised Amanda Overmeyer was executed last night. Kristy Lee Cook is one lucky country-twanged long-legged hot blond in a short dress. I might prefer to see Amanda to her if I were attending one of the concerts, but I won’t be, it’s not that strong a preference, and this means, as I noted, Kristy needs the performance of her life next week. Though a couple others flopping sufficiently might be enough, if she’s adequate and being cute.
I was shocked that Carly was in the bottom three. She was too good for that, so there has to be some combination of the controversy sucking away votes, people thinking she’s safe, her support not being as strong as I might have thought, or David Archuletta’s lopsided vote totals sucking the oxygen out of the room and making funny things happen with the rest of the totals. Face it, unless there’s enough controversy, backlash, or something, Achoo is the winner and this is a race for second through fourth now.
Today I have to call the nice lady at the hospital whose sole job is to line people up with insurance if they lack it. Because this Republican Socialism thing, it won’t add bureaucracy at all. Probably about the time we’re squared away with free insurance for the poor, I’ll land a job that includes it.
I’ve been meaning to do a giant fundraising edition of Carnival of the Capitalists. It might be worth a few hours of that to fetch a little grocery money or even an additional week of rent and make me think people actually appreciated my efforts all these years. Which I know they did, and not just the few who have expressed an interest in still seeing it or helping. I’ve been told I should emphasize it and look for business development work, or something like that. That may be gotten to soon, before it becomes moot. I’ve been accumulating links for it.
And yeah, fundraiser notwithstanding, you are always welcome to use the PayPal tipjar button, now more than ever. Or use the address for Deb’s, which is actually better, deb at neatlytangled dot com.
It’s so cute. Valerie has taken to putting a mitten on a foot, like a very heavy sock. She just had me put a shoe on the other foot. She loves to change clothes and play dress-up.
Speaking of money, there’s nothing like going to the store with $16 available, needing diapers and groceries, and being focused on eliminating certain things from the diet.
Although we think we have a good idea what is going on with Henry, and what the allergic reaction was about. That and the idea that food proteins consumed by the mother survice intact in breast milk appears to be bogus, if you research it sufficiently.
Still, the discovery that corn, usually corn syrup, is in almost everything was rather startling and something we’d like to start avoiding. It’s also shocking that companies would put known likely allergens in some of the earliest foods one would feed a baby, thinks you buy because they are safe. I’m also wondering about my own levels of food sensitivities, which are not the same as allergies, for which I once tested negative.
I am not only down 29 lbs from my high plateau and 39 lbs from my absolute high (and annoyed it hasn’t budged further for a few days), but also thinner than the current weight would imply. I went from 42 required to falling off to 40 fitting comfortably to 40 wanting to fall off. Which means some of the tighter pants in that size I have somewhere should fit.
This was supposed to be quick.
The job hunting proceeds apace, subject to excitement and interruption and confusion and mild sickness and such. I have to make a list and follow it today. I’ve been doing a lot of networking-related activity.
Okay, I can’t remember anything else I might have intended to say. I need to get to the actual stuff to be done, starting with an announcement about CotC and link to the resume over at Bizosphere.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Jay: Big Cuba Begets Big Sugar Begets Big Corn
Since we unofficially had added corn to the list of possible allergy suspects and Deb was initially supposed to be avoiding the allergen possibilities, that led to some label reading and the dismay at almost everything being made of corn syrup. As I said, ADM must be proud.
What doesn’t have corn mostly has wheat. The baby’s oatmeal that’s an introductory food that’s supposed to be utterly pure and safe contains wheat. It didn’t used to, which was partly why that was our preferred brand, but apparently that came with the fancy new packaging.
What I pointed out to Deb, in our discussion of Big Corn, and their having the ethanol farce now so they could dispense with the corn syrup nonsense, is that the corn syrup thing is partly a reaction to Big Sugar. Most people don’t realize the extent of sugar protectionism in this country.
In turn, what’s a huge sugar producer? Cuba. Who are some of the domestic sugar producers? Cuban ex-pats. How did all the Castro administrations and associated congresses respond to Cuba being a gulag and to the vote buying of the Cuban-Americans? By fruitlessly restraining trade, topping it off with extra protection for domestic sugar.
Why shouldn’t Big Corn step in and profit from it?
Idiocy.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Jay: I Was Planning
To post a what I plan to do today list-like post, despite having a birthday post as obligatory filler, but I ended up just doing instead.
I’ve sent my more or less complete resume to well over 100 people, and already have possibilities to look at, as well as some surprisingly detailed advice on improving it further. In doing the e-mails, I finally got tripped up enough by the failings of my address book to do something about it. The WAB file is over 7 MB in size. Or was, since now there’s a new one that’s empty. I had everything divided into multiple folders, which is fine most of the time. The secondary folders won’t export, so I copied and pasted back into the main folder. That meant sitting here clicking OK almost 1000 times as it prompted for each one.
The result is 1599 addresses exported to a CSV file, now being edited in Excel to remove known obsolete ones, bounces from resumes I sent out, and duplicates. Also editing to put names in some that lack them, and may segregate out ones that are not likely to be used. I’ll combined testing or asking about suspect addresses with my further resume sending.
Then there’s posting the resume online. I am figuring it for a today and over the weekend thing to get the resume everywhere, tweaked as it seems needed, collect and ponder the possible opening or “call such a recruiter” responses I get, and attack hard Monday, as far as talking to people about specific jobs that rise to the top and so forth.
I also need to run to the store for real today.
Add to that I’d like to hurry with a writing/blogging version of the resume, and still want to do a big double fundraiser issue of CotC, which was supposed to have been timed to help ensure we had enough money for drop dead payments next week, and it’s a hugely busy few days.
Have I mentioned it’s nice to be down to one in diapers?
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Jay: New Resume
I finally got my new technical-oriented resume completed, for “it’ll undoubtedly still get fiddled with” values of completed. I have it online in both PDF and Word document formats., so feel free to have a look and distribute it. This version lacks the street address to avoid putting that out there in the world. Plus, who needs that anymore? It’s not the days of mailing a resume and then getting a postcard or form letter back, also via mail, saying no thanks.
Here’s the resume in Word.
Here’s the resume in PDF
This minimizes writing and blogging almost completely, so I will want to do an improved version emphasizing that, for the very real possibility of relevant positions - writing, editing, managing blogs/online content - being an option.
The one linked here suggests a more managerial or technical position, with an emphasis on how good I am with people (which is inexplicably true even if to my mind I’d sometimes prefer to hide in a cave and deal with nobody at all, so the baby’s demeanor isn’t as unexpected as it might seem). I’m afraid I don’t have a defined “here is what I am looking for” to whip out and regale you with. I’m just not that fixated on one thing, and there’s an big range of possibilities.
Jay: Good Morning
I haven’t weighed naked yet, but I appear to be 2 pounds from being down into the next “decade,” and am down about 37 from my peak high and 27 from my plateau high. I have dropped a pant size, at least with respect to the pair I tried, but that wasn’t even close. I am within very little of my weight when we got married. Don’t remember what that was exactly, but I think it was between this and 6 pounds below this.
My big problem is remembering to drink enough water. It helps the gout and the swollen foot, just for starters.
Besides watching Henry get on knees and elbows a couple three days ago, trying to crawl despite his apparent plan to skip that part, yesterday I watching him kneel and try to pull himself standing on the side of a wooden file cabinet. Which is, I recently realized, the only furniture that has lived everywhere from the anonymous town I grew up in through here, moving 11 times. He seems almost frighteningly bright, and way too capable of functioning on limited sleep. He beckons you here, waves, gives kisses, has a wicked sense of humor, understand alarmingly much of what we say, plays games, is fascinated with books, has absurd hand-eye dexterity, handles accidentally getting his head under the water confidently, busts out with understandable words a surprising amount, is subtly manipulative, and craves interaction to a frustrating degree.
The current resume variant is almost done. I am stubbornly holding off my CotC/fundraiser until that is so. I have to look at bullet points, making sure they sound okay and are in the right order under each position, and seeing what might need to be added to offset the minimalist summary of each position.
I finally got bread to come out right. It was a silly way to avoid running to the store, which I will still need to do today, ideally, but it was good. The girls liked it, pulling up a small chair and bucket, grabbing a long knife from what should have been out of reach and systematically prying off and eating almost half the top crust and a layer below it before being discovered. It was one of those moments when you applaud their cleverness and are horrified that they could have sliced themselves badly.
The American Idol results were no surprise, from who was bottom 3 to who left. I predicted the other way, but this was a close second alternative. Kristy was better this time, and was cute to apologize that we had to hear it again. She’s going to have to pull a Chikezie next week, though, and hope someone else is both demographically and fan base week and performs poorly enough to go. Not sure I like the idea of a second Beatles week. The call-in thing was stupid and contrived. I didn’t think McPhee was as bad as Deb did, though she still didn’t strike me as “almost the winner” material. Then again, I’d have to include the last 4 winners and runners up in that. The group sing wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but the fascinating thing is catching who sings how then. It added appreciation for Chikezie, for instance, but Carly sounded inexplicably bad, and Michael not good enough for the focus they placed on him. Kristy sounded quite good when she was solo and singing straight. She’s been needing to bring that to her performances that matter.
Okay, I need to get to work. I’m thinking read what I have, shower and think, then look at it again and write/edit as needed. And some is needed, it’s not quite at the “aw, just start using it” stage. Just so close I can taste it.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Jay: Banging Away
At the resume summary/intro that proved preferred but still unloved in its modified form. Pasted it into its own document and just started playing with words in hopes of inspired yet complete brevity strikes.
I rilly rilly need for this thing to be done enough and out the door today, at least to a first wave of recipients. Then I need to be able to work on the double CotC and fundraiser before the day is out, even if it’s after the top 12 Idols mangle Lennon and McCartney, and even if it proceeds into the morning.
I think Deb will be doing post office and store runs today, though that could yet be me. Easier for her to get select business supplies than to have me get them, though, and she could stand to get out of here for a while.
Now let’s see if writing has inspired writing…
Jay: Speaking of Dropping
There was a knock on the door at 10:00 last night. Kind of late for that, and we weren’t sure what to think. The timing put some of the scarier possibilities at the top of the list. Could have been just the neighbors.
It was my mother, dropping off Easter candy for the kids, on her way from something she’d been doing nearby.
When seeing you is a relief and you come bearing gifts, it’s harder to be annoyed. The kids had stayed up late, partly a DST artifact, and I was reading them Mother Goose and winding them down. For a change, Sadie peeked out to see what was up, then got in bed, intent of going to sleep. Valerie was wired and thrilled to see Grandma. Henry is having stranger anxiety.
I really need to grab another coffee and work on “tweaking” my resume the rest of the way. Or adjusting the user experience, if you prefer. It’s essentially there and I slept on it (for too small values of sleep) to finish this morning and toss to the winds.
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