passive job search

I'm slowly approaching the 3 year mark at the car wash. Where does time go? It's a decent job considering the pros outweigh the cons. Pay is fair for the work, and I don't feel pain as much so I am okay with it. I know I need more income and I'm not getting younger, so keeping a stronger eye on the job market has been in the works. Would be nice to have another part-time job to complement my current one, but I have flexibility to take anything interesting since my mom offered to watch the kids if i needed her.

With it being November, I started looking up connections on LinkedIn and seeing what's going on in their circles. Back in the day, I used look at everyone whom I knew and see if I got my profile looked at in return. I don't believe in trying to connect with strangers unless they have something to offer.

There's a hidden job market. Indeed.com searches and stalking job boards have their limits.

Death of a blog?

April 8th is coming.
APRIL EIGHTH IS COMING!

Well, Windows XP will cease to have support from Microsoft in THREE WEEKS, which means that my PC, HAL II, will either need to be tossed, upgraded, converted, or taken offline.

I'm leaning towards the last option. I am an internet junky and could use the break from the distractions of being online 24/7 due to broadband.

Since I have other options to get my online fix via my son's laptop and the family tablet, I am not about to conform to what ever is the MS CEO's expectations with regard to my XP PC.

HAL Sr. was Windows 98 and died sometime after HAL II's arrival. In the end, I only loved HAL for his Rat Poker that I never found elsewhere. I just realized that my pinky healed!

HAL II is getting to be rather slow. I get plugin fails all the time I have multiple tabs open. I moved everything file-wise off of the hard drive on to an external drive just in case HAL II decided to die like he almost did when I was doing the Search Engine Evaluating for Leapforce. He hasn't been the same since January 2012.

I'd been thinking about building a a new PC back when I came across a book at Half Price Books, but the process wasn't free, so I put the matter on hold.

I don't want a new 'puter, for I really only use it for Internet and budget analysis. So I shall probably just take out my wi-fi adapter and use HAL II as a wordprocessor that can do spreadsheets. I have a few programs on HAL II that could be utilized since I'll have all the free time.

One day I imagine J and I will get smart phones, so I'll be able to Tweet and such then, but until then I'll probably go cold turkey.

Meanwhile, I won't be following sports or hunting for non-existent jobs as much.

I may become a better father in the process.

I definitely will be less confused by how asinine one of my senator's endeavors are. Dude tweets stuff he's supporting in the senate, and I find he must think he's pandering to idiots when I read the details. First he was about raising minimum wage while ignoring his own state's minimum wage is higher than that he was slamming, thus making a dubious argument that doesn't represent his actual constitutes. Now he wants to expand EITC to include more adults without children, saying it helps children.

Being trained to be a librarian is a mixed bag. Jobs are few and far between (and don't pay great considering the master's degree needed), while I have research and critical thinking skills that allow me to pursue details of stories beyond the candy coating fluff and get to the poison core to avoid the pitfall of utter surprise when the excrement hits the air conditioning.

Reflecting upon the second Thursday of '13

It's been roughly forty degrees the last couple days or so. Snow on our side of the street has mostly melted away. Supposedly it will hit 60 tomorrow or the weekend.
The sun wasn't out today. Just a drab winter day without snowfall.
The day is a blur in that it's uneventful.
Awoke to get K ready for school as I normally did. B was sleeping on my arm in a ball purring.I think she got up around 6, but was back down until after nine-thirty. I had an hour plus of quiet time, so I read a little and planned a little. cut coupons. Did dishes. Drank coffee and showered. Can't really account for the time between ten and eleven-thirty, but I cut B an apple and made her a bowl of Life Cereal. She mostly played with Legos, but she did watch a princess video.
Started getting chicken and gravy ready for the crock pot before noon. Dropped B off at one-fifteen and had my tires rotated on the Journey. Read Tom Jones as a waited. Applied for a job or two when I got home. I saw an email from my dad saying he was being cheap about taking care of his pain. I called him and told him he's nuts to be cheap when he has money to spend. Read some more of my book before going and getting B. The was a voice mail on the home phone when I got back. I checked and called back for it was for a job interview. Checked my email then I went back to working on dinner.
Dinner was nice. Lost an hour or two cleaning up blog entries. Watched Big Bang. Lost more time online.
Not much happened, so I figure I need to go about my day better. I want things to be different so I got to change the way I do things.

Parallels

There are things beyond my control that will frustrate me until I am able to accept such circumstances and worry about things I can control.
I believe that the Serenity Prayer is a re-occurring theme in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. It's been years since I read the book, but I remember the prayer being written on a locket dangling in the cleavage of the B-movie star. Pictures/drawings makes such images easier to recall, and KV had a way with crude drawings. I didn't know there was such thing as such a prayer until an alcoholic told me that the prayer was said during AA meetings. This makes sense since K's uncle supposedly founded an AA chapter, and K was always intrigued by the artificial extended family element that AA created.
Anyways, given the nature of the Serenity Prayer, one must wonder how much free will is one allowed to fret.
I can pick my friends, but I cannot pick my family.
I can pick my degree of education, but I can't force someone to hire me.
I am frustrated that I cannot get work, so I pursue things outside my typical field in addition to expanding my geographic search. I still meet the same result of going no where, which suggests that I'm still doing the same thing and expecting different results. I'm doing a number of things differently, so I'm thinking I need to scrap everything I've worked towards and start over.
The reality is that I'm not comfortable starting over. I've a skill set and degree that already makes me overqualified for most entry level positions, and I've been passed over because employers don't want to hire someone that will up and leave for greener pastures at first opportunity.
When I was an infant, my mom quit her teaching job. I am not sure of the reasons, but I take it that she wasn't comfortable with childcare arrangements. She never got another full time teaching position until I was in college. She always tried to get another job even while I was a toddler, but the best she could do was be a long term sub. Not sure why, especially considering she was a special ed teacher, but we lived on a single income for the most part when you consider my father is a teacher as well.We could have moved to another job market, but my dad didn't want to lose his seniority.
I don't want to be like my parents and willfully inflicting harm upon my children out of selfishness of being determined to work within my field without moving.

Where does time go?

Has it really been a year? Being unemployed sounds like having a ton of free time, but looking for work is pretty much a full-time job.
This week has been rougher than others. I had an interview for a job I didn't get, but wanted and dreaded at the same time. I wanna work so bad that I'd be willing to do things I would have thought unreasonable a month ago. My strategy isn't working, so I have to seriously think about moving. If I was on my own it wouldn't be a problem. Logistics dictate the variable options I can pursue, and none of them are family friendly. I don't see the possibility of us both landing new jobs and selling the house before moving as too probable.
People change jobs and move all the time, but I didn't grow up in a family where such things were seriously considered. My grandparents lived in the same house my dad grew up in until my Grandma had to be moved into a senior apartment building. Same could be said of my Dad and his brothers. My one uncle died and the other divorced, so they didn't leave their houses by choice. I believe that they all retired with pensions from their employers(only my grandfather worked in the private sector).
With that said, I'm going to change the blog in that this domain will be more focused on subjects not related to sports, fiction, job searching, parenthood or nostalgia.