Ptocheia.net » employment

Happy Late Pi Day and Early St. Patrick’s Day!

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:53:03 +0000

So Thursday we’re having highs in the 60s, then Friday it’s snowing. Makes no sense! Then again, I prefer that to the alternative of “grey and drizzly”.

So I have a job. Or rather, in a month, I will have a temporary job. I got hired as an enumerator for the Census. It’s full-time, and the position lasts up to two months. Which is unfortunate in that I’d like a less temporary position, but is good in that it pays rather well considering the work, and will help me gain charisma levels as I will be working with the public and all. That plagues me – that I might look great on paper, but get me into an interview and I’m awful at reading people, or knowing what they’re looking for, or I’ve read too many conflicting articles on how to act in interviews and I can’t combine all the info into a perfect demeanor depending on who I’m interviewing with. Anyhow, work is good.

I’m redoing my professional site, which is almost but not quite done. Had another website that I’d built disappear altogether from the internet, which is unfortunate as I really needed a decent screenshot of it. It’s all built in OsCommerce too, meaning I can’t just open my saved version of the site. So I cheated and used a screenshot from the PDF file where I designed the site in the first place.

On a completely unrelated note, I can’t decide if I should go ahead and stop watching The Office. See, it’s been on a downhill slide since Season 5, and it makes me sad. There is that trope of “TV show goes downhill when the romantic tension is resolved” thing, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case here, which makes it all the sadder. The first episode I ever watched was an early Season 4 one, so I knew from the start that Pam and Jim got together anyway.

Here’s the problems as I see them: First of all, the actress who played Holly left the show unexpectedly to pursue other things, and I’m pretty sure they’d planned out a bunch of episodes with her in them. Meaning the writers didn’t have much time to hash together a new plot direction. However, I still don’t understand why they brought Toby back. I mean, when Toby left, he was pretty clear about not coming back. But they brought him back anyway, and just didn’t give a strong reasoning for having his happen. Same thing with Ryan, in fact. It just made no sense that he would come back happily as a temp again. If I could, I would just erase the whole first chunk of Season 5, and start with the Charles Major arc.

The Charles Major arc was pretty much the best thing about Season 5. There’s a new interesting character, with all the new dynamics that go with such things. Plus, Michael left and started his own company. The show is more interesting when everyone isn’t in the same position they’ve been in for the past several years – office environments naturally evolve, people get promoted or move around, part of why it was so interesting in Season 3 to have Jim in a new office, or why Season 4 was fun with Ryan promoted above Michael’s head. Anyhow, Michael’s new company brought Ryan back into the story in a much more realistic fashion then the beginning of the season’s attempt to do so: I don’t think Ryan would happily return to being a temp from his previous status as a higher-up in management, but working as a salesman in Michael’s company is pretty appealing compared to working at a bowling alley. I was also happy to see Vicram again, as he was a fun character.

Incidentally I’m not too happy with Ryan’s character in Season 6. Apparently he went all indie/arty with no good explanation. I like the Sabre storyline, but I can’t help but feel like it’s too little too late. Also – I hate all the schmaltz surrounding everything Jim and Pam do. Like the wedding episode, completely unnecessary sentimentality! Made me greatly miss Phyllis’s wedding. Also, the recent baby episodes, too mushy. Not overtly mushy, but the mushiness was definitely still there.

I’ll probably still keep watching, just because I’ve been watching for so long. Now that Darryl is upstairs, maybe there will be some interesting interactions there. I’ve felt the lack of warehouse interactions ever since Roy disappeared, and especially since Kelly stopped dating Darryl. I’d like to see more episodes where Kelly and Kevin have stronger roles, as they are both ridiculous and fabulous. This seems to be the problem with TV shows in general, though, there are the lead actors and there are the supporting actors. Too bad that sometimes the supporting actors are more interesting then the lead actors!

Delicious items, my social life, and other ramblings

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:07:45 +0000

First off, I’m mostly all about taking a ride on disco sticks. Also, the huge squids! I feel that baboons and raccoon must be the most fantabulous things around, as they feel much the same way I do about hedgehogs. Once in a while, when the sausage gods have smiled upon me, I will partake of copious amounts of octopi.

Andrew just hijacked this post, but I’m leaving it there for posterity.

Anyhow, I made sushi the other night. It was awesome. If you are interested in such things, go read about it and see pictures here! I also made mesir wat, which is essentially a giant vat of lentils. It’s really good and really cheap and lasts forever (and makes you regular to boot!) No pictures up for that, yet.

So I’m back to square one for social time. We’ve been moved in here a total of two months now. The first bit of that was occupied with the basics of unpacking and locating furniture. Then came the need of “need to be social!”, so I signed up for approximately one gazillion Meetup groups. Went to two different hiking meetups, and while the hiking was fun and the people were nice, the groups seemed a.) mostly of people a bit older then us, b.) mostly of people who were far more interested in expensive equipment and less so in “I just wanna walk up this mountain for awhile”, and c.) caused my car to get rear-ended. In an ideal world, none of these should be an issue. But, in any case, I think we might need to seek out people with more parallel interests then just the shared one of enjoying wandering up large hills. Especially since winter encroaches, meaning my car is much more likely to go sliding off a hill into a ditch whereupon I freeze to death.

November was convenient for social time, because of Nanowrimo. There were writeins everywhere, and did one every Thurs. at the library near us as well as every Sat, at random locations around Denver. Number of common interests was definitely much higher then the hiking meetups, but now Nano is over, along with the writeins. Mind you, I could still certainly use them, as the book I’m working on is far from done. Anyhow, I suppose it’s back to Meetups. Debating going to a Drupal users group. Or maybe a Harry Potter fan meetup, could be exciting. Gainful employment would also help things along as well, but then again my OWP experience, where there were lots of neat people, is not exactly representative of all of my employment experiences. In any case, I suspect this is a common experience for anyone that moves to a new location, and I’m confidant that time + getting settled in with help expand social opportunities.

As for job stuff? Still in the air. Have spent last week rooting around in Drupal. I need to learn how to make patches, as Ubercart is littered with inline CSS, which is simply not appropriate for anyone that wishes to design the checkout process without hacking up code they really shouldn’t have to hack up. I’d heard that Drupal was better for developers then for designers, this might be why. Of course, first I need to learn how to use CVS, in order to check out files to make changes to be able to make a patch. Which is good, in that I shall learn things and can put things on a resume, but still, it can be a bit aggravating when I have a simple little change in mind and I have to plow through 23489389423 processes to make that change happen. However, it would be super cool to be a Drupal contributor, so plow I must.

Oh yeah, Job stuff. Meeting tomorrow with a cousin (the relation is more complicated, but cousin works for now) to build a few University health websites. We’ll see how that goes. I may or may not be hired by someone in North Boulder, but the communication hasn’t been steady so we’ll see. That would involve some commuting and some working from home. Pay is a bit less then I could hope for, but definitely more then I was afraid I’d have to settle for. Anyhow, I’ll just see how things go. The router site is coming along, still some bugs but it all seems manageable enough at this point.

Oh yeah, $3.50 theatre nearby. Gonna go see Zombieland (finally) sometime this week. Yay!

Update on the state of things

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:53:15 +0000

Drew and I ventured over to Manitou Springs today, which is this really neat town on the edge of Pike’s Peak. Much barbecue and chocolate were consumed.

I’m trying to do a fair bit of biking, because a.) The weather is fabulous: sunny, rather warm, and when I sweat it immediately dissipitates, b.) it’s an excellent way to get to know the area, c.) We’re currently located on the edge of suburbia, right beside fields and country with horsies and such and it’s really pretty, d.) the suburbia is a lot more bike-aware then Richmond’s suburbia ever was, and e.) If I continue to eat copious amount of barbecue and chocolate, the biking will be highly necessary to ensure that I don’t have to go spend entirely too much money on new bras. It’s interesting, the suburbia here is so much friendlier then what I’m used to. Mind you, it’s still rather inconvenient if you’re trying to walk to the grocery store, and there is excessive use of strip mall-age. We’re in an area where there’s a lot of newer housing, and it’s nice looking smaller houses. I’m used to seeing either new giant McMansion type buildings, or cheap and crappy new buildings. There’s a lot of nicer looking 2-3 bedroom houses, with interesting architecture and rock gardens and such. Mind you, the architecture might just be related to the fact that I’m used to seeing colonials and whatever else they use all over the Mid-Atlantic, and here everything has more of a western feel. Also, there’s sidewalks! Lots of sidewalks!

Jobwise, there is slight advancement. My resume is being submitted by a recruiter for a position doing web stuff with Barclay Card. It would be working with table-less design (and hand-coding at that, yay) and trying to make all their websites standards-compliant, which I’m decent at, so the job itself sounds interesting. I need to go look at YUI and see if it’s in any way similar to Jquery, and either way I should try to learn some, as they’re interested in having that as well. One downside is that it’s located in Colorado Springs, and I was really stoked about being in Denver. However, I’ve explored next to none of the area, and I’m pretty sure I’d be fine staying in CS for awhile for a decent job. I’m just a sucker for giant cities with nightlife and such. I am also a sucker for mountains and paths that allow me to climb all over said mountains, so either location should work just fine for that.

I will now end this with two excellent pictures of Andrew. The first one shows him gliding majestically up a hillside:

The second shows him being, uh, less majestic:

Interviews and moving and such

admin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:14:49 +0000

So I’ve now managed to secure two interviews, one on the 6th and one on the 7th, both with recruiter-types, and both for Colorado Springs positions. Admittedly, my target area was more for Denver, but I’m just looking forward to being employed at a place that gives me dollars which is in Colorado. I really do want someplace as bike-friendly and non strip mall/big box store as possible, we shall see how things go. At least there seem to be positions springing up for my sorts of skills, which is a good thing.

Zinc status: no cramps so far. We’ll see if this lasts.