Went to Vacaville to visit the family for Christmas. I just got back to Santa Cruz yesterday. As you may or may not have noticed, I didn’t post anything. That’s because I was really on vacation. No blogging and ranting either. (Part of this is because there’s only dial-up at Mom's house, so there’s not much point to be on the internet anyway.)
The family is well. I got a little tired of Kerry telling me five times a day, “I’m getting married!” (because she’s getting married; like the gossips at Bethany University haven’t told you by now). I got an espresso machine, which I’m happy about. I broke my iPod’s screen, which I’m not happy about. The nephews and niece and niece-on-the-way are all getting bigger. Vacaville got flooded on Xmas Eve, so that annoyed a lot of the locals (especially those who were told by the city that they didn’t live in flood zones, so they didn’t have flood insurance, so now they want the city to pay for the property damage). And I got to spend a little time in South Lake Tahoe because of the family’s now-annual pilgrimage to the snow, where I managed to get some books read. ’Twas fun.
Now I’m back, and there’s a whole slew of things I have to get done for the new year.
None of them are resolutions, because I don’t make resolutions for the new year. I make them throughout the year. I find it easier to stick to them that way. No, the new things for the new year are the result of my not going back to school this Spring, so that means I need to acquire two very important things:
- An income.
- Shelter.
Shelter will be available Thursday. I just need to find the income to cover it.
I spent all the live-long morning poking around the internet for jobs. Job hunting is not fun, especially since I haven’t gone job hunting since 1994 and I have to get back into “sell-your-qualifications mode.” Nearly all of my previous jobs have been the result of knowing someone who had a job available; God bless networking and nepotism. But now I have to go get one cold.
The internet sucks for job hunts. There are too many companies that list jobs, and you have to go to every single one of them because not every company can afford to list jobs on every single one of them. (Plus, there are a lot of companies that figure posting job offers on their own websites is plenty of publicity.) All of them charge to post jobs; some of them charge to post résumés; and all of them offer tons of jobs in San José, but very little in Santa Cruz.
Exactly what’s the point of putting together a résumé anymore when nobody actually wants it? Everyone has an application form, and you have to fill that out—frequently with data from your résumé, but they don’t actually want your résumé. They want their form. I hate filling out forms. But such is the job hunt.
If anyone in the Santa Cruz area is hiring, let me know. My résumé is on Monster.com, among other places. I won’t do piracy, porn, or jobs that require a uniform; and if you don’t have to wear a tie to work, that’d be nice.