10:46 AM

12.06.2006

As of 10:46 this morning, I am officially unemployed. As those that have been following the blog know, this wasn't an unexpected occurence. Since finding out that the government contract I was working on was not being completely funded for this fiscal year, I've been hitting the want ads looking for that special place that needs a cocky web guy.

This has turned out to be my week for interviews, so after the pre-Thanksgiving draught my hopes that the lack of call backs were due to bad timing on the holidays and not my skill set are bearing a little fruit. I had an interview Monday for a job that for which I think I'm about 70% qualified - they're looking for someone with experience developing .NET web components, and while I know what a web component is I've never actually made one. Today I had an interview for a .NET web developer job that for which I'm about 110% qualified. They're looking for a person to take over web development, from tools and design to ecommerce. That one is so me. I'm really hoping to hear back from this one soon, although it will probably be after the first of the year before they start their second round of interviews. Tomorrow I have an interview in Decatur for a temp/contract job. I'm not sure what to expect, but at the very least it should be interesting.

As today marks the beginning of my unemployment, I promptly went online and applied for unemployment compensation. I've filed twice before, spending the whole day each time in the unemployment office filling out paperwork, watching "how to get a job" videos, and more than anything else: waiting. Thanks to the interweb, it took all of 5 minutes to fill out the needed form. I love the interweb. With any luck I'll collect 1 unemployment check and then I'll have a super cool web development gig.

Do people still have gigs? Can a website be a gig? I may have to Google a gig to find out.

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Virtual Dreamscapes Revisited

11.30.2006

I've spoken before about a city that's managed to stay fairly persistent in my dreams for quite a few years now. There are certain areas that pop up consistently - a long hill leading to a bridge to a peninsula that I want to think is Guntersville. An amalgam of buildings that are, in my dream, Birmingham-Southern College. These buildings are connected underground by an catacomb of air ducts and crawl spaces that somehow only I have ever discovered, plus I can fit! There is a residential section along a steep hill which causes car engines to whine and almost stall before reaching the top. There is the home of my first job, Humana Hospital, with the elevator supported by heavy gauge chain that starts to snap every time I get on the elevator.

It's been a while since I had a dream take place in my little persistent dream world - which thanks to Jer I've taken to calling New Vertiform City. It's been nice to not dream of that place. For many years I was stuck getting on the elevator at the hospital and having to jump off at the last minute before the bottom of the elevator snapped loose from the chains holding it. I would also be stuck in the catacombs of the buildings at BSC trying to get to a part of the library that was inaccessible through any other path. Who would design a library that way? It may have been stress that would induce a dream here, because the dreams were always stressful. Maybe that means the past few years have been less stressful?

Last night I had a dream, a vivid dream. In my dream, I was in front of the house of a couple of friends who had just gotten a new 2-seater convertible sports car - it's not a car I would recognize now that I'm awake, so just imagine a generic 2 seater convertible. The friends aren't anyone I would recognize, other than a husband and wife (that I don't really know). I saw the car and said "Wow, a convertible! I love convertibles! You've got to let me drive!" At this point the 3 of us comfortably got into the front 2 seats of the 2-seater convertible sports car. I backed out of the driveway, and it started raining.

Through the magic of dreamtime, the top was instantly back up on the car. Since it was a 2-seater, and there were 3 of us in the car, I found that my upper torso and head were sticking out of the drivers side window. But that was ok, I could still drive. And evidently we were all still comfortable. The rain had become an intermittent sprinkle, so I continued to drive down the street.

At the end of the street there was a stop sign, and the street intersected with another street. As I stopped I saw 2 women in summer dresses crossing the street, but both were holding their arms across their bodies as if they were naked and trying to cover everything up. While stopped at the stop sign I noticed that both women were drenched, probably from the rain that had made me put the top up on the car. I bet they're covering themselves because the rain has made their dresses cling to them like a wet t-shirt contest! Being me, I hung a left at the stop sign and started following the 2 women.

We had nary travelled a block before I was reminded that were weren't supposed to be going down this street, we were supposed to turn left. In my dream, this made perfect sense,so I turned left. I suddenly found myself faced with a steep hill in a residential section. I remembered this place! It was the residential section on the hill! Evidently I knew where we were going. My dream then skipped to us pulling in front of a house in a row at the top of the hill - I guess once I knew where we were I could skip the part on how to get there. We walked into a house that had a huge, garage type opening for a front door smack dab in the middle of the front of the house. as we went in, 2 skateboarders came out, doing tricks, flipping their skateboards up and riding along the wall. As we went back toward the back of the house, I saw the people huddled about (which is all I remember now) and thought "we don't need to be here". At this point I turned a corner and saw a room with a large fire door bolted shut, with a "do not enter" sign attached. I looked at the door and suddenly realized that this was on of the doors into the catacombs and passageways of BSC that led to the library. I knew where I was, plus how to get somewhere else! I never knew these 2 places were connected.

With this realization I woke up. I woke up and laughed. Somehow I've managed to connect the geography of my dreams. I really hope this is something that sane people do.

Permalink dreams

Still Alive

11.27.2006

Since I skipped any entries last week:

Mom! I'm still alive!

Part of my lack of blogging is due to my cable service (and thus my cable modem) going out every once in a while. For the past 2 Sundays it's been off. This isn't neccessarily a bad thing - it forces me to do the things I put off when I want to watch TV or surf the net. I finally got the old portable DVD player set up with the treadmill in the garage, so now I can't use boredom as an excuse for not walking on it.

It is a little frustrating for the cable to keep going out. Makes it hard to do my independant web development while looking for jobs.

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Vinnie Mac: The Boss?

11.14.2006

I applied for a PHP programming job with WWE. I got back a standard automated reply:

Thank you for inquiring about career opportunities with World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. If your qualifications match our current staffing needs, we will contact you directly. We welcome you to apply for other openings as they become available.

Please make sure to return to our web site and update your profile periodically to ensure that we have your most current information.

Best regards,

World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Human Resources

This is one of those jobs I think I have a 1% chance of getting, mainly because it's in Stamford, CT. Commuting is out of the question - according to Google it's 997 miles from my house to the WWE offices. Nobody pays relocation expenses anymore. For the cost of living difference between Athens and Stamford, I would have to get a 81% raise just ot break even.

But....

In that 1% I could get a call and be just the person they're looking for. In the modern age, telecommuting isn't impossible. I've seen the job listed for the past 3 weeks and it looks like it hasn't been filled yet. I could work for Vince!

1%...

I'm calling this one Plan Z.

Permalink programming/interweb random

My Series of Unfortunate Events

11.10.2006

The past few days have been frustrating. Most days go by without inc1dent, which I've come to accept as the norm. If a problem does pop up, it's usually nothing that I can't fix without too much thought or discomfort. This week I was thrown a couple of curves that managed to throw my week off kilter.

Wednesday evening I got a call from Mom out of the blue. It seems we had each been thinking of the other and it had been a while since we had gotten together to chat. We could chat on the phone, but every once ina while you just need a face-to-face with your Mom. Nashville is pretty much the halfway point between us, so we agreed to meet there. It was 4:45, so I was hoping that I would miss the rush hour traffic by spending most of my quality time on I-65.

15 miles from home, 1 mile south of the Tennessee line, 87 miles from Nashville, traffic going north on I-65 stopped. I had just passed the last exit on the Alabama side - actually I had managed to come to a stop past the off-ramp but before the overpass. Over the next hour I moved 12 car lengths. Thanks to the advent of cellular technology Mom and I kept talking off and on while I was stuck and she decided to turn south once she got to Nashville and kept on coming. We ended up meeting at the Shady Lawn Truck Stop in Elkton (better known as the home of the World Famous Boobie Bungalow Club). Mom and I got our talk in while having some fine dining at the Shady Lawn. I even got home in time to watch the news and found out my delay on the interstate was due to 2 18-wheelers sideswiping each other causing all types of vehicular carnage. Everybody was ok, though.

Yesterday was going to be a good day. I woke up refreshed and focused. I had things to do on my to do list and I was raring to go. All was going well until 4:45 (I'm starting to see a pattern). I was ftp'ing files to my webserver for testing when the phone rang. It was a recruiter for one of the job postings I had sent my resume off for, and he needed a cover letter. He was going to email me some details and I should incorporate them into my cover letter. No problemo. I turn back to the computer and it's locked up. Odd. I reboot the computer and it waits.

And waits.

And waits.

I try booting into safe mode and it never starts up. I try booting into the verbose, message ridden safe mode and see that it's getting hung up on the MUP.SYS file (I later found out this is used when running multiple operating systems - WHICH I'M NOT!). The file must have gotten corrupted somehow. I'll just stick in the XP disk and have it load the file back. So I load the XP disk....

... and it can't recognize the hard drive, probably due to it being 2 drives with a RAID 0. A software RAID 0 managed by the BIOS. That's important, I would find out. All the XP disk sees is a big, unpartitioned, unusable drive. Crap.

I then remember all the rage of Knoppix - a flavor of Linux that can run on a bootable cd. Thanks to my handy dandy laptop from work, I'm not completely cut off from the world. I manage to download a copy of Knoppix! Thanks to a little coaching from Jer, I burn my very first iso image to a disk and now have a bootable disk and I can boot up the computer! Once I'm in Knoppix, it even shows my big honkin' 800G Disk.

Except it can't open the drive.

I search the net, trying to dust off my Linux skills. I remember something about having to mount drives. Oh, here's an article on the net about setting a raidtab so Knoppix can set a raid partition. I type all of this stuff in and it does no good. Then I come across a little tidbit on a message board that makes my heart drop. Linux can't read Windows raid partitions (and vice versa). My raid partition is a software partition created for Windows, so that must be the reason that I can't open up the drive.

Welcome to Screwedburg, population me.

After hours of fighting with the computer, I went to bed at 2:00 in the morning hoping I would come up with another plan (I had run out of letters for naming plans long ago). I woke up and thought I would try booting in safe mode one more time. I went through the steps and saw it get hung up on the MUP.SYS file again. Dejected, I just left the computer and ate some breakfast. I came back half an hour later and found the normal Windows desktop waiting for me. I could do stuff! I could rescue files! I could replace the seemingly corrupt MUP.SYS! So I did all that. I rebooted and the computer got hung up again. I rebooted again and the computer started right back up without a problem.

So I've resigned myself to the fact that there's something wrong. The only thing I can think of to fix it is to rebuild everything and get rid of the RAID drive. I've got all my data backed up thanks to 2 external hard drives along with a web server I hide stuff. But I really hate doing that. The computer always ends up fighting me whenever I attempt something like this.

Permalink mom random