goblinbox

In which there are two good things.

Good thing the first is that yesterday I signed an NDA and a contractor’s agreement and filled out a W9, and Monday I start breaking software for money. Yay! I know no details at all about the project’s expected longevity, but who knows – I might get lucky!

Good thing the second is that today is the Bronze Blues & Brews festival in Joseph, OR. The festival ends at ten, and Coyote Kings (featuring: me!) will be the only band playing in town tonight. We’ve already invited tons of the musicians who are booked at the festival, and it should turn out to be the Best Jam Ever.

In which there might suddenly and unexpectedly be EMPLOYMENT.

Right now, I’m literally doing nothing but waiting for school to start in five weeks. I’m drawing EB, and my worker retraining application was approved so I’m not even job hunting, and I applied at WWCC and for financial aid months ago so I don’t even have that to keep me occupied.

At school, I’m slated to take a 1-year curriculum, custom-tailored to help me sit for a bunch of basic tech certifications, like A+, CCNA, and the MSCE. I lit upon this path not out of any great desire to collect paper but because the job market is still in the crapper and I’m pretty certain that the last two jobs I didn’t get were because the workforce is overqualified and the other applicants had certifications I lacked (even though very, very few can match my experience). I figured the community college would be a good way to keep myself off the market for another year of economic recovery while simultaneously making myself more hire-able.

Now a good friend of mine has threatened me with employment. He’s just started a new job at a VoIP software company and needs to build his QA team, stat. He told me today that work might start as early as Monday, and in point of fact he’s off in a meeting right this minute finding out if he has a budget for contract help yet.

As a contractor I wouldn’t receive benefits, but the pay is adequate for having to file a stupid Schedule C. Since the dev team is in another state, I’d be working from home. Hours are what are euphemistically called “start-up hours,” meaning well over 40 per week. (I’ll probably have to redesign my computer area to incorporate a chair, since not even I can sit on the floor that much without having my feet go to sleep.) Software testing should not only be interesting and engaging work – halleluia! – but here’s the icing on the cake: no dealing with end-users! None! I’d be testing and reporting and logging all day! No idiotic support calls, no billing, no metrics!

If the work proved to be permanent, I’d have to pay back the UI money I’ve received since June 20th, drop out of school, and close my financial aid application. But you know what? That would be fine with me! In fact, the only way this could suck would be if the work proved to be contract-only and temporary, and ended only after I stopped filing my weekly UI certifications. (I should be able to keep my claim open for months if I have to, as long as I’m not officially offered a permanent position as an employee.)

Anyway, if you know of any employment deities, could you please take a moment and send up a thought for me? I’d sure appreciate it!

In which I complain about living in a state with a 9.1% unemployment rate.

I just read a job listing at WorkSource. The job is called PT ORDER ENTRY SPECIALIST II.

The description says, and I quote verbatim, The FT Order Entry Specialist II will check accuracy of and enter orders for equipment and parts, balance daily order reports, request closing reports and acknowledgments daily, provide various bookings and shipments reports, maintain integrity of open and closed sales orders. Review initial sales orders for completeness and accuracy and input into log book. Perform file maintenance, update sales orders, balance the “shipment to customer” with accounting daily. Track and verify customer purchase orders for each piece of equipment ordered. Produce weekly order and shipment reports for both business units. Monthly, generate and mail verification of bookings totals and reports to appropriate personnel. Provide support for product specialists and field sales as required.

Yeah. It’s glorified data entry and report-running. Anybody could do it.

What’s fucked up is the part where they list the necessary qualifications to be considered for the job: Two year Associates degree (A.A.) accounting degree, plus four years business accounting experience.

A fucking associate’s in accounting? To enter sales orders? Are you fucking kidding me? Four years’ BUSINESS ACCOUNTING experience? Really? With that kind of qualification, you’re a fucking ACCOUNTANT, not an order entry specialist. Jeez.

~+~+~
I was idly looking at job postings because I haven’t received my EUC (emergency unemployment compensation) ruling yet, it’ll take the EB (extended benefits) people two days to call me back, I’m totally broke, I haven’t been awarded any financial aid for school yet, and:

The EUC program expired on June 2, 2010. The U.S. House passed legislation to extend the dates people can apply for and receive EUC benefits, but the bill is currently stalled in the Senate. The Senate is not expected to take the bill up again until July 12, 2010 or later.

If the bill becomes law people will be able to apply for EUC until November 2010 and receive benefits until May 2011.

Long story short, I don’t know yet but I might not be able to do the school thing if I don’t get EUC and/or a financial aid award.

Which would suck, because I was really looking forward to a year in community college, taking computer science classes with twenty-year-old geeks.

~+~+~
I haven’t paid my rent, I’m a month and a half behind on paying my settlement company, I need new glasses, I want new books, I need to pay my dentist, and my dog’s eating shitty grocery store brand kibbles.

My debit card is ten dollars overdrawn, I’m about to disable my Netflix and eMusic accounts, and the only reason I can drive anywhere is because there’s still half a tank of gas in the truck from when dad was here and filled it up. (I don’t drive much.)

G’ma lets me eat her eggs and bread and has offered to buy me groceries when I run out of my own, but I Do Not Want to cost her money. I’m stalled on my little data entry project for NLW because the Amazon Seller’s Desktop application isn’t working and their ticketing system is backed up. My next paying gig isn’t until August.

Long story short, I was surfing WorkSource because a part-time job right now would be freakin’ excellent, and data entry is my bitch.

Now please excuse me while I figure out the best way to spend my last $20 at the grocery store. I’m thinking tofu, ramen, and beans. Maybe some lentils, too; they’re cheap protein.

Hopefully poverty will help me dominate next week’s competitive diet stats!

In which it is July the 7th and I haven’t left the house all damned day.

Okay, first of all, NLW hired me to do some data entry for her AND the Ritzville blues festival gig is this weekend, so I’ll be able to buy foodz, like refried beans and tortillas and stuff, which is A Very Good Thing. Not to mention that my rent and bills are all late.

Second of all, I have a lunch date tomorrow with a local woman I met on Twitter who needs a web site built. That one will be for charity, but it’s not like I a.) don’t know how to build web sites and b.) HAVE SEVERAL METRIC FUCKTONS OF FREE TIME.

Third of all, the boys over at Cocky & Rude totally nagged me into doing an online group weight loss thing so now I have to drink a lot less alcohol because god hates me and filled alcohol with EMPTY CALORIES OMG WHAT WILL I DO WITH ALL OF THESE EMOTIONS?!?!

I woke up yesterday morning from a dream about a shapeshifter who was embedded (as a cow, of all things) in some off-world ranch operated by bad guys. It was there to shift into bipedal form and then help an agent escape. The shapeshifter’s real form was this awesome bizarro giant shrimp thing. AND it was a romance, although how you’d Do It with a giant shrimp escapes me. The cow was REALLY WEIRD LOOKING. This is why it’s better that I rarely remember my dreams.

So far today I’ve only had 550 calories and I’m star. Ving. Excuse me while I go hork down a couple tacos and half my physical volume in lettuce.

In which I’ve completed phase one of the Back To School project.

A week ago I went to a training benefits meeting at WorkSource, and they gave me an application to fill out.

In the last week I did just that, then attached about 17 pages of appendices, applied to WWCC and for financial aid, met with an advisor, and requested transcripts from my former schools. It was a pain in the ass, really.

Today I went and submitted my completed application. The soft answer – I won’t have the hard one until Friday – is that I’ll probably get CAT (commissioner-approved training), but not EB (extended benefits).

The yes-to-CAT response means I’ll be able to continue getting UI benefits (without having to do the work search part) while enrolled in school. The no-to-EB part means I won’t be getting an extra 20 weeks of benefits.

It’s lucky, then, that I changed my mind and applied for a 1-year certification course instead of the 2-year AAAS I’d been more interested in, because this answer means I wouldn’t have had enough benefits to pay my bills while in school.

If I am approved for EUC (a Federally-funded additional 52 weeks of benefits) next month, I’ll have enough time to finish those three quarters of school and find job before I run entirely out of benefits altogether.

The weird thing about the application process was that I submitted my 25-page application on paper to a guy who typed it all into an e-version and submitted it. “Why didn’t you just give us that version?” I asked, pointing at his computer screen.

“We’re in a pilot program,” he answered. “They used to fax the applications in, and it could take up to three months to get a response. Now it takes 48 hours.”

Oh, well. At least they’re getting somewhere, albeit slowly.

Hopefully I’ll get an official yes for CAT on Friday. If I do, and get financial aid for tuition, I’ll officially be a student!

In which I tell you about my weekend. And the crazy fluctuations in my state of mind. (Seriously, watching your mind do whatever it does is EVER an exercise in weird.)

Friday night I went out and got drunk for no good reason. I hadn’t intended to get drunk, but I was sitting at the bar having a really nice conversation with one of the regulars and Amy kept pouring the way she does, and, well: shit happens. Saturday I had to get up about three hours earlier than I usually do and if it was a little rough, well, that was my own damn fault, wasn’t it!

Curt & Shelly came and picked me up and they gave me an egg biscuit and hash browns from McDonald’s the very minute I sat down in their ride (and OMG I srsly LOVE THEM for that). The drive to the Benton Franklin County fairgrounds was uneventful; we didn’t need to be there early because it turned out there wasn’t going to be a sound check after all. I was, hangover-style, a little agro that I’d had to get up when I did. We milled around aimlessly instead. Steve bought me a coffee. I love him, too.

At noon, Romagossa Blu kicked off the festival with a bang, and then Vaughn Jensen went up and smoked. Coyote Kings went on at 1:30 and three songs later I went up and joined them.

Playing festivals is great. The stages are huge, the crowd is way into what you’re doing, and there are actual professional sound people at the board. Monitors! Lights! No schlepping!

There was a wedding on stage directly after our set. I got to sing ‘At Last’ for the happy couple, then bluesman Billy Stoops officiated the marriage of (our friends and fans) Nancy and Steve right there in front of everybody. It was cute.

After the set I changed into comfy clothes and promptly started drinking the free beer from the craft services tent. I spent most of the day backstage because I could (UnTapped doesn’t take your VIP pass away after you finish playing, like other festivals sometimes do) but I did wander around enough to have seen absolutely everything. UnTapped has tons of beer and wine makers and lots of food and a scattering of other vendors. It’s a really cool festival.

A few of the NW players I met told me they’d heard of me, which was, as you can imagine, immensely gratifying. I was encouraged to move to Portland; I was encouraged to start my own band. In short, I got a lot of ego stroking, but – because the mind is a terrible thing – I somehow managed to feel self-pity anyway.

I know, right? WTF, Mush? Fun blues festival, stage time, free beer, beautiful weather, good friends, and my internal dialog is fux0red. This is what happens when one doesn’t deliberately choose the upside.

My (admittedly not accurate) perception was that the musicians got younger as the day went on. In the early afternoon we had guys pushing 60 but the kids in the headliner’s band all looked like they were still on the fresh side of 30. I was having, in the back of my mind, one of those completely negative “since I wasn’t headlining at 26 it follows that I suck” thought processes. Why? It’s stupid, but lemmie tell you what: all that crap about the negative psychological effects of unemployment? Appears to be true. After not getting yet another job, I’m having a glass-is-half-empty crisis in the form of a really insidious “I’m totally mediocre” mental litany.

It doesn’t help that this is my second long-term bout of unemployment in the last five years, either. Stupid job market!

I met a metric ton of musicians, including the superawesome Miriam (of Portland band Miriam’s Well) and her bandmates; Chicago tenor player Eddie Shaw and his son Vaan (who is a really cool dude); trombonist Ed Earley; and the headliner, Hamilton Loomis (who was not only a smokin’ musician but a really, really nice person), to name a few.

Loomis’ set was not at all what I’d call blues; his has been described as a “blues-rock-funk-groove-soul band,” and he did charts that broke down into funky Stevie Wonder grooves, charts that were pure rock, charts that were pure soul. It occurred to me that from here on out, it’s all meta. Every song will contain shades of every genre that’s ever gone before, and descriptors like “R&B” and “pop” and “blues” will go the way of the dinosaur. Listeners will be expected to understand music from a global perspective that spans the whole of recorded music.

In other words, it’s so meta it’s actually like this: I have some cheesy pop in my library that features a raga in the bridge, house with a gypsy violin in it, and funk with a banjo solo. There’s really no reason I can’t do R&B-soul-blues-jazz-rock and still get booked at blues festivals, that’s all I’m saying.

Applying this meta concept to the idea of “work”, I’m realizing that my bad attitude is stupid. I’m online all the time, so I know that very little can truly be monetized. All this free information on the Internet is there because people want to do it. They try and try and try to monetize and the vast majority of them fail; overall they do this shit for the love of it. Free ebooks, free TV series, free how-to videos, free games, free lessons, free recipes: some people manage to be offering the right thing at the right time and they break through to monetization, but most of them don’t. And that’s okay.

I do what I do for the love of it: I sing, I take pictures with old film cameras, I publish thousands of words online per year, I share recipes, I comment on tech. These things are fun, and I don’t need to feel guilty – or mediocre – about not turning them into money.

I have this belief that life is structured like this: there’s this job thing you do, and it pays your bills. You do not love it. You’re very fortunate if you like it. It takes up much but not all of your time, and it subsidizes the other things you do. Some people get paid a lot to play at whatever they play at and they don’t have to do the job thing. They are rare and special, and I am not one of them.

That’s my job meta. I don’t like it, but I don’t think I’m eligible to transcend it because it seems that if I was I already would have. So, I believe that I need a job, and I don’t have one, and it’s messing with my head. Since I can’t through any amount of effort on my part cause a job to exist, I need to do something else meaningful to structure my time.

Tomorrow I’m going to visit the WorkSource office and find out what options are available. I’m ready for some options. I’m a displaced worker, I guess, since there aren’t any ISP support gigs around here and I’m 41. I think I might be eligible for grants and scholarships.

I think I’d really like to go back to school. I’d much rather be in class than on the job market since the endless rejection, poverty, and uncertainty is, um, starting to bug the shit out of me.

I mean, sure: I love having nothing but free time. Who doesn’t? I like eating when I want, sleeping when I want, playing guitar when I want, going out when I want: it’s fun. I read all the time, I can meditate whenever I want, or do push-ups and crunches when the mood strikes rather than when I have to. The freedom is great, but apparently I just can’t stop worrying about what will happen. What will happen when my benefits run out? What will happen ifone of the minimum wage jobs I apply for actually offers me a position I really don’t want?

Anyway. Sorry about the digression. All the pics from the blues festival are here, if you want to check them out.

My next gig isn’t until July, but we’ll be playing The Pastime at the Ritzville Blues Brews & BBQs festival, which should be a total blast.

In which I just got out of a great interview. (And the gig is only a mile from my house! Guess who can walk or ride a bike to work if she gets hired!)

OMG OMG OMG I might soon be gainfully employed! In my industry, even!

The hiring company is called Integratechs; the gig is at Walla Walla Clinic, which specializes in family and pediatric care. (They apparently use a lot of cutting-edge medical technology, which bodes well for a girl to have fun stuff to learn and support.) The Integratech guy who flew in from Utah to do interviews was wonderful; well-spoken and intelligent. The local department head seems both smart and mellow and laughed at all my luser jokes. I could totally work for him.

I’m very glad I went with my instinct to dress more formally than I normally would for an IT interview; my normal slacker geek clothes wouldn’t have been at all appropriate.

I’d been sent a questionnaire to fill out prior to the interview. I toyed with doing short, terse answers but decided instead to be myself and give long, sometimes-amusing answers. Apparently it was the right approach as they said they’d enjoyed going through my answers. During the interview we more or less went over the questionnaire items in more detail, covering things like prioritizing and dealing with end users in a thorough but refreshingly light-hearted manner. (It’s nice to be interviewed by geeks rather than pure HR people. HR people don’t tend to understand what it is to keep the tech working.) (Although I don’t know that SLC guy isn’t an HR person; he focused on people skills, yes, but not in a pure HR kind of way. He was great at giving positive feedback. Anyway.)

At the end of the interview, I gave them my references – SLC guy accepted the list and thanked me “for thinking ahead” – and I was told that they thought I’d be a good fit for the position! Squee! They usually don’t say that if you’re not at least in their top three. I get the impression they’re doing more interviews this afternoon, but I hope they continue to like me best!

The job would be, on average, 40 to 45 hours per week, and there are the normal benefits of health insurance and paid vacation. A little bit of flex time for personal appointments, etc, too. Very little to no likelihood that I’d ever have to work through a gig. Good atmosphere. Decent pay. Fun-sounding stuff to fix.

I’m VERY excited about this!

Since it’s a clinic, do you suppose they’d let me wear purple scrubs?

In which this website would be in fifth grade now, if it were human.

GOBLINBOX.COM is nine years old today.

It’s been on at least seven different servers. It’s been hand-coded, it’s been run on Movabletype and WordPress. It’s had ten different forums. There have been as many as eight different databases at a time. There have been innumerable themes and color schemes and layouts.

It has suffered multiple crashes and some pretty significant data loss. There are sub-folders filled with broken image galleries. I’ve been asked to remove material a half a dozen times by both friends and employers. It’s been hacked twice, it’s been served take-down orders thrice, and it nearly got me sued once.

At its peak, it was getting ten thousand unique hits each month (now it gets about 2k), was spidered, indexed, and botted within an inch of its life, and it used upwards of 90% of the server’s total bandwidth.

It has been the cause of my learning FrontPage, HTML, Dreamweaver, graphic design and slicing, CSS, DNS, PHP, server security, MySQL, legal crap, and a lot of social crap.

I’ve written here about tech, work, sci-fi, gadgets, books, media, death, sex, miscarriage, love, divorce, travel, loss, weather, panic and anxiety, surgery, spirituality, film photography, knitting, and music – and there are even some pretty good recipes.

I’ve learned that some people will bitch at me for writing about them, and that other people will bitch at me for not writing about them. I’ve learned that there’s an awful lot of stuff I can’t write about, but that I can still somehow manage to convey what I need to convey.

Friends and family keep up with me through this website. I’ve made lots of new friends through this website. Some of them are old friends now, some of them dropped off the Internet, some of them I now know in real life.

Many of the blogs I’ve followed over the years are gone now. People are always announcing sabbaticals, or deleting their sites, or drifting away quietly. I’ve never announced a break, and never even felt the desire to do so. I love this website, and I really mean it when I say Here’s to another nine years!

When I’ve needed it most, I’ve received tremendous love and support here, and I truly cherish that. Thank you, all who come to visit, each and every one of you, old or new. I mean it. Even if you don’t comment.

If you want, you can take a trip with me down memory lane and look at the Internet archive entries. Remember when the site was orange? When it was purple? Those crazy Xmas themes I used to build? Hah!

GOBLINBOX.COM is nine years old today. Nine! Nine.

In which I flail around a bit more because apparently I’m a bit of a moron.

When you’re fourteen, you go to high school. That’s just what you do; everybody knows this. When you’re eighteen, you go to college. After college, you go to work and strive to pay off your student loans.

Eventually, you meet someone and form an alliance that involves bodily fluids at the least, and generally laundry and motor vehicle titles as well.

If you’re a breeder, you then proceed to breed. The expectation is so pervasive that you probably take a few stabs at it even if you don’t really want to. It’s just what you do.

After that it’s less clear what’s supposed to happen, or when, until the age of 65, at which point you’re supposed to be able to stop working. Beyond accumulating objects and thickening dramatically about the middle, there really isn’t a very clear action plan for people between, say, 30 and 65.

Hi! My name is Mush, I’m 41, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing!

I’m freaking out because I’m divorced with debt and no assets, and I have no job, no savings, no retirement fund, no car, no belongings, and no health insurance. A quick look at my UI paperwork confirms that I am mere months away from becoming a financial burden on my family/society. I have a lot of debt. I have no great skills or talents beyond a quick mind and a decent singing voice, and neither of those things have ever particularly made me much money.

I guess I’m supposed to be working a day job, engaging in hobbies on the side, and saving money for my old age. Sadly, I am not particularly good at this, and require many and varied vacations to keep me sane.

I am of a generation that thinks it should be happy more than responsible.

Right now, I’m having a crisis. I’m wondering if I should move so that I can find a day job… except that I don’t really want to move. Hell, I don’t even really want a day job – I want income. I have friends who fill my head with talk about doing music for a living. I have the idea that maybe I’m not finding a day job because it’s time for me to make money some other way. I have years and years of exposure to alternative ways of thinking that tell me sometimes it’s important to follow happiness rather than logic. I also live in a culture full of self-indulgent fuck-ups, so I have to consider that maybe the happiness-before-all-else approach lacks depth and creates debt. I also have a heart full of doubts about the kind of person I actually am because it seems to me that if I were the kind of person who lived in the city and gigged a lot, I’d already be doing that and clearly I’m not. I haven’t lived in a city for a looooong time. Honesty compels me to admit that I want to think of myself as a city girl, but I am not, in actual point of fact, able to call myself a city girl. Anyway, blah blah blah, I need to figure out if I’m going to stay here or go somewhere else, and to that end here are some bullet points, because who doesn’t love bullet points?

I should stay here because:

• I can afford to pay off my debt and travel. Well, when I have a job, that is.
• I’m in a good band, with good gigs lined up. I’m gaining recognition.
• I have friends, family, community.
• As the childless spinster in the family, it’s basically my duty to be here for G’ma.
• There’s no good reason to throw out the life I just spent the last three years building.

I should move away because:

• There’s no work here.
• There is greater chance of doing more music in a major metro area.
• Challenge. Pace. Exposure. Art! Culture!
• The life I’ve built here is common and can be duplicated pretty much anywhere, really.

I think that I don’t want to move away, but I can’t tell if I sincerely don’t want to move away or if I’ve convinced myself of the overwhelming difficulty of doing so and/or the likelihood of my failing to accomplish anything but abject poverty and fatigue.

In other words, am I failing to appreciate what I’ve got here? Am I romanticizing city life?

Yes, and yes. I’m playing four blues festivals this summer, and I’m meeting lots of great players as I get around more. I can get any old job if I have to, and it’s not like I’ve ever really been career-oriented anyway – if I was, I’d have a better skill set by now.

In the city I’d be bitching about loneliness, commute times, and constant poverty. Cities are fun when you vacation there; when you live there it’s high rent, late busses, and so much social churn that it takes a great deal of time and effort to meet the right people. You’re working 40 hours a week just to cover rent and utilities and your fucking debt settlement program, and you find that every week you’re a little more tired and a little less likely to go out and meet musicians. (When I lived in San Francisco, everyone I did meet, on those rare occasions when I had the energy to go out, was just trying to save up enough money to move away.) If you lack discipline, you end up buying all that cute shit you see all over the place to pad your nest with, and you never take another vacation again. Five years later, you still have no equity, no savings, and you could have stayed in your grandmother’s attic for $150 a month and at least gotten to play some blues festivals. Your boyfriend is still a stoner because all of your boyfriends are stoners, you’re like a goddamned stoner magnet, and don’t forget that wherever you go there you are.

Or maybe not. Maybe you move to the city, get a job, meet awesome people, and have a gig in a couple of months. Maybe you’re so engaged and challenged and invigorated that you don’t actually just hole up in your apartment when you’re not doing your day job, maybe you finally blossom because you have access to the things you need. Maybe you finally meet a nice vegetarian Hindu boy, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Maybe it’s rural and small town living that makes you so weird, and your gut desire to get back into the city is a real impulse and not a daydream and it’s just a goddamned shame that it’s taken you this long to even be able to seriously consider it.

Being alone means that nothing keeps me anywhere; I could try anything I wanted.

Of course, there’s the question of where. Portland? Seattle? Chicago? DC? New York? And the question of how much: I don’t have any savings right now. I could probably move to Portland on a couple hundred bucks. New York would require, what, fifteen hundred minimum? Not to mention that not all cities are created equal; after you’ve been to Chicago and New York, most left coast cities barely qualify for the description.

Except I don’t think I want to move. I want to go on an extended vacation, but I can’t afford to because I don’t have a goddamned job.

And then there are the things I know about myself: I’m not particularly driven. When I have the time, space, and resources to do stuff, I don’t do it. One can only blame lack of stimulation so much before she has to admit she’s fucking lazy by nature. Right now I’m not getting my CCNA and I’m not working out and I’m not playing guitar and I’m not writing and I’m not meditating. I didn’t do those things when I was a housewife, I didn’t do those things the last time I was unemployed and had free time, and why would I be any different somewhere else?

But there’s no work here and I need a job! I have bills to pay!

Gawd! I am having such a hard time figuring out what I want to do, and where I want to do it. I couldn’t possibly waffle any more than I am. Why do I have to be such a fucking Libra all the time?!

In which it was really exciting there for a minute, but then my hopes were dashed.

I found a job under Tech Support on craigslist. It looked good. I scrolled down to the bottom of the page and clicked the link to apply for it. After I finished the online quiz – five fairly interesting but slightly dated tech questions I answered with the help of my boyfriend, Google – but before I was able to upload my résumé, my netbook halted and I had to reboot. I tried to finish the job application afterward, but the site wouldn’t let me back in nor would it let me start over.

Fast forward a week, and I get the following email:

Your name and email came through on our JobVite system notifying me that you applied for our Solutions Center Engineer position and have passed our initial essay quiz; however, your information is incomplete in our system. If you are still interested in this position can you please complete your profile on our site or send me a copy of your resume?

Oh boy, can I! I get all excited and email my résumé. It’s a telecommuting job; I’d get to work from home. The main company’s in Seattle and I’d have to go there for training, but that’s no biggie. Tech support from home! Talk about an excellent solution to my employment/location issues! Before the day was out I had two phone interviews scheduled for today.

I went and read through the employer’s entire site. I learned they’re solvent and growing and in desperate need of technicians. I even joined their forum and answered a bunch of support queries. For free.

I went to bed early and got up early. By nine o’clock this morning I had dressed, eaten, and even made my bed. I had a mug of tea and I was sitting in front of my computer with my Bluetooth headset on, ready to go.

First thing the caller says is that I need to be in front of a computer, ideally with a headset on, so that I can search for answers. Since I hadn’t been told any of this, I was pretty thrilled with myself for being so insightful. Then he proceeds to start off with a question I don’t know the answer to (“Name at least five ways programs can autostart with Windows, in addition to the Startup folder”), followed by two more (“What does it mean to back up the registry?” and “Are you an expert in msconfig?”) to which I have to answer, “I don’t know,” and “No, I’m currently not.”

There are five ways Windows starts applications? Okay. I didn’t know that. I figured there were two: launch the app at startup, and do not launch the app at startup. I mean, an app’s either in the startup list or it isn’t, right? I told the interviewer that while I was furiously googling “how does Windows launch applications?” and giving great phone (“Typically, when I’m looking something up, I chat with the customer so they don’t have to listen to dead air, but in this context I don’t really have any small talk,” I say. The interviewer says, “We just put them on hold,” which tells me they don’t give a shit about customer service and are probably metric-oriented. Hmm).

I’m not a registry jock; I’ve spent ten years working for ISPs telling people to take their virus-infested shit someplace else for removal. I’m in my own computer’s registry maybe twice a year, and in customers’ registries, like, six times in the entire past decade. Pretty much every employer I’ve ever had has considered registry edits to be a liability nightmare and consequently I haven’t learned much on the topic.

I tell the interviewer all this, admit that I don’t believe that I understand the gist of his last question, and then qualify that I can learn whatever I need to know pretty much right away. He brusquely tells me that I can’t. “There’s a three-day training for this position, and it presupposes a deep knowledge of registry issues,” he says. “To remove viruses that are so new AV apps aren’t defending against them, you need to understand how programs start with Windows and cut them out surgically.”

Ah. It’s a full-time virus removal job. Yuck.

While the job description does say, “Troubleshooting Windows XP platform to registry level,” it doesn’t emphasize that quite enough, IMO: there’s a bunch of other stuff on there that I’m actually really good at. I think it should say, “We do massive quantities of zero-day virus removal and we need registry phreaks. Your apprehension of TCP/IP is pretty much irrelevant to us because people call their ISPs for that shit.”

The interviewer somehow managed to make me feel stupid – I’m not! I p0wn support! – when he said, “Well, we really need people who actually know how Windows works, so I see no reason to continue this evaluation. I thank you for your time–”

“Your job description,” I interrupted, “says that you’re looking for responsible phone techs with networking skills and the ability to set up and troubleshoot LANs and peripherals. But what I’m hearing now is that you actually just do remote virus removal all day? Is this correct?” He affirms. I really don’t want to remove viruses for a living, but I’d been really excited yesterday and now I feel uncomfortable and belittled, like I’m wasting his time when his company called me for an interview. He starts to conclude the conversation again. I childishly interrupt again and invite him to have a nice day. The interview terminates.

Oh, well. At least I don’t have to remove viruses for a living.

In which I drop by briefly on my way to a gig.

The co-op finally emailed Friday afternoon: they thanked me but declined, deciding instead to hire from within.

I am having a full-on romance, complete with poetry and chocolates and necking and stuff. It’s awesome. We’re apart this weekend, though, because we’re both gigging in different towns.

The only work interest I’ve gotten appears to be a recruiter for a 3rd tier support gig. The pay sounds too high to be legit, though, so I suspect it’s crap.

Windows Update killed my netbook; a system restore seems to have solved the problem.

Played the Parkade in Kennewick last night; fun little bar. Tonight we’re at Dax’s in Richland.

Oh, I really need to be in the shower about five minutes ago! Ciao!

In which there’s no new job, but there is a new beau.

The co-op hasn’t called.

My last contact with them was on January 19th; it’s been nearly three weeks. If they were going to hire me, they’d have done so by now.

I’ve been applying for three jobs every week just like I’m supposed to, and I haven’t even gotten a call back. The most encouragement I’ve gotten is the occasional automated “Thank you for your interest” email.

There’s no work in my industry. I’m either going to have to get a secretarial job or move away. Period.

There is some work in the Tricities, but I am not driving two hours a day for work; I utterly and unashamedly lack the commute gene. I’m not interested in moving to the Tricities, either, because the whole point of living around here is family and free rent while I finish paying off my debt settlement program. Living in Pasco would be not only silly, but counter-productive.

I don’t want a bookkeeping job, I don’t want to make nine bucks an hour, and I literally have no office-appropriate clothes. None.

So, yeah: this is beginning to suck.

~+~+~
But then there’s the bass player. (He’s actually more of a guitar player/songwriter, apparently, but I usually see him playing bass.) He’s six feet and change, has long black hair, and wears an AC/DC hat most of the time. I can’t remember how to spell the name of his tribe, but he’s Native (yes, this means virtually no body hair!) and he’s more or less from Alaska though he hasn’t been there in years.

I’ve known him socially for a couple of years, sat in with his band a few times. His number’s been in my phone for the past year; he texts when they’re playing somewhere.

Not too long ago we started texting each other a lot. I don’t remember why; it just happened. Thank yous, jokes, anything-happening-tonight questions, that sort of thing. Then I went to one of his gigs with Curt & Shelley, and he and I talked between sets. Then there was more texting, and a week or two later we ended up in the same room and started talking again. We went to the Green; he kissed me apropos of nothing. Then there was an after hours and he caught a ride with me in the truck…

In the past six days, we’ve spent about seventeen hours making out while parked in his driveway. (For various reasons neither of us can bring people home, so we’re just parking like teenagers.) It’s been epic and awesome and consuming and fantastic, and since I’ve been so busy staying up all night and sleeping all day I’ve been in total denial about the fact that the co-op hasn’t been calling. Yay!

The other morning, moments before dawn, we unclinched to smoke. The windows were fogged. My Zippo wouldn’t light. His Zippos wouldn’t light, and neither would the Bic until we opened a window. Suddenly they all worked. (I have no idea why we had five lighters between us, but it made for excellent testing.) Science! I’m still trying to determine why, if there wasn’t enough oxygen to light a lighter, I didn’t just go ahead and pass out. Maybe it was a pressure or humidity thing? Either way, it was profoundly amusing at the time. “We broke fire! The entire concept of fire, we’ve BROKEN it! NO ONE MAKES OUT LIKE WE DO!”

He explained about his last breakup. I explained that I just don’t want anybody to want anything from me. He said he wasn’t even remotely interested in meeting anybody. I told him I wanted a relationship like I want an ice pick in my eye socket. He told me how his relationships end. I told him how mine end. He squinted at me and asked me if I was going to dump him. I squinted back and said I had no way of knowing that. He hugged me and told me that he’d teach me to play Russian backgammon. I said Russian backgammon could very easily be the secret to longevity.

He introduced me to most of his friends and the entire Feedback entourage. I told my friends about him. He came to my gig last Saturday. I met his mom. We’ve been holding hands in public.

Which means I have a fucking BOYFRIEND, people. Me. The one who totally did not want a boyfriend? Yeah.

I’d probably be pissed off about it if it weren’t so freakin’ awesome.