chico

This is my last week in Chico. I've run out of money and I'm going back to Modesto to live with my parents until I finally land a job.

The job that I thought I had didn't work out. It turns out that the company hired an employee referral instead of going through the staffing agency.

Friday I headed to a different interview for a company that needed help doing a Win2K conversion, so halfway there I got a phone call from the contracting agency saying the interview got cancelled. The company direct hired 2 former employees instead of going through the contracting agency.

So yeah, Saturday I will be packing up and moving out. So v8gtang.com will be down till I land a job again and move somewhere with DSL.

Last week, I had a total of 3 interviews in the bay area. Monday I had an interview at a place called MMC Technology. It's a network administrator position that would be a graveyard shift, 3 days a week position. I would basically babysit the servers and users for 36 hours a week, and have 4 day weekend every week. Sounds like a great job.
The second interview was at a place called Uptilt. They make spam. My job would be to help create the spam. Basically I would be fixing HTML code all day. No thanks. They emailed me today and said someone else got the job. No biggie.
Wednesday I went in for a second interview with the hiring manager at MMC Technology. He liked me, said the other manager liked me from the 1st interview, and that he thinks I would work out. He shook my hand, showed me the place, introduced me to the other techs there, and the other manager said they had one more person to check out. Well, Friday I still had no final word. Monday I had no final word (well, I was outta town all day, but no calls on my cell phone from the staffing agency...)

so today me and Megan went up to Whiskeytown Lake. It's up by Redding, CA. Way up there. Anyways, we drove around and walked around and took lots of pictures and stuffs, so here.

Looks like I might have actually gotten a job. I'm still waiting for the final thumbs up from the company I interviewed at. They sounded very happy with me, and had one more candidate to check out. The IT manager spoke highly of me, and the hiring manager and I got along very well.

So now I'm just waiting... If all goes well, next week I'll be living in Millbrae and working. The job is a Network Administrator position, 3 days a week, graveyard shift: 6pm-6am. Pay is decent, and since I will only work 3 days a week, I can work another job too and take home 2 semi-full-time salaries and make almost twice as much. So I can finally say bye-bye debt and hello faster Mustang :)

Well the other day as I was sifting through things to sell on eBay, I came across my cheapo neck I bought for my strat. It was pretty bad, warped and all. Well I was taking pictures of it, and as I was taking pics of it, I noticed that it DID in fact have a truss rod. it was on the other end of the guitar, so I was like 'wtf', you can't effectively adjust the truss rod without taking the neck off, which totally defeats the purpose of the truss rod.

For those that don't know, a truss rod is a curved rod that goes through the middle of a guitar neck to compensate for the pull of the strings, weather, whatever, so when your neck bows slightly, a quick turn of the truss rod and you have a straight neck again.

it was nice. me and megan grabbed some chinese food and just chilled for a couple hours.

The job was a technical support position at EA Games in Redwood City. Technical Support as in 'my game sucks and my computer doesnt like it, so make me work' call center technical support.

Now I already knew that I didn't really want the job, but I decided to go anyways, since I might have regretted not going.

Well, was it worth the 400 mile round trip?

Hell fucking no.

So they sit me down, give me the lowdown on the job.
"Do you have any questions?"
"Is there any room to advance in this job?"
"No. It is a 3 month contract with no benefits. Pay is $9.50 an hour."
"See, I'm a desktop support tech, this kind of job really isn't my thing. I was brought in under the impression that there would be some sort of desktop support position, is there anything like that available right now?"

Sunday night I headed over to Millbrae, because the next day I had 2 job interview type thingys. The first one was at 9AM at the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco. I WANT THAT JOB! It's awesome, right across the street from the Embacadero center thingy, and there's a BART station right in front of it. There's a BART station right around 6 miles down 280 from where my new place is, and Millbrae is even getting their own BART station in a couple months. Sure beats driving and paying for parking and fighting traffic.

They said they will give me a call on Wednesday to let me know how I did, I was among 3 other candidates chosen for an interview. Considering the amount of unemployed tech support people applying for jobs in the bay, being 1 of 4 made me feel pretty proud of myself. I hope I get it, it's exactly what I am good at and exactly what I want in a job.

Started out fine, you know, grab your shiz, throw it in the cart, tailgate the slowpokes who like to take up the whole aisle, ya know... no big deal. The problems started when I hit the checkout aisles. Oooh the checkout aisles.

Now, I'm sure you've been in this situation many a time, and I admit, I suck at it, I always pick the slowest line with the most incompetent shoppers. But oh man, this one was special.

I had the following choices:
1. Express lane, 20 items or less. I had 22 items.
2. Aisles with 4-5 people in line with medium to small loads in their carts.
3. Aisles with 1 person with a heap of groceries.

So yesterday I had an interview in San Jose. I think it went well, not sure if I'm gonna get it or not. I hope I do, I checked out the house I'm moving into yesterday. It's awesome. It has an incredible view of the bay.

Now I'm sick, I have some nasty cold or allergy type thing, so I've been miserable all day. My DayQuil stuff I took after dinner are finally starting to kick in, so now my brain isn't pounding and my sinuses are somewhat clear.

Anyways, I'm still applying for jobs left and right, and I hope to land a few more interviews, as I'd prefer to work in San Francisco instead of San Jose since it's closer to where I'm moving, although I have more friends in the south bay, so I can occasionally meet up with them for lunch or whatever and not have to drive 30 miles to do so...