fontosaurus

First, lemme thank all of you who have been so supportive of me in my quest for the new job. It's meant a lot to me. I owe all of you for the good karma, encouragement, good thoughts, etc. I'm not sure how I'll repay the kindnesses, but I'm sure I will...

Anyway, for those that don't have all the details yet... I have a position that's an 8 to 12 week contract, fulltime, with the potential to go full-time after the contract is up. It's with the Carlson Leisure Group -- one of the Carlson companies. Schwanky facilities over by where 494 and 394 join up. $26 per hour. I am going to go in there, kick ass, and take names. I'll be doing some intranet development and design, and doing some stuff with their travel bonus site. Should be pretty fun. I'll be doing a lot of front-end user-interface stuff, and some light ASP and ColdFusion dev... I'm totally looking forward to it.

Friday evening I hauled ass down to Mankato to hang out with Carolyn...we were going to go out and get hammered, but by the time I got there, I was pretty tired. We played a bit of Chez Geek, then went down to the bars. I didn't feel like crowds, so we went over to Mexican Village, and had a tequila shot and a beer. Then to bed.

Saturday, we came up here and helped Dave shop for a new Macintosh system. He, as usual, was very methodical about what he should buy. In the end, he got a new G4 desktop. 933 MHz, 768MB RAM, 60GB internal drive, and then an additional 120GB external drive, a new digital camera, a router (which I have to help him configure once his cable service is back online), and some other miscellany. Oh yeah, and a 17" flatscreen. Beautiful system -- I'm mucho jealouso.

Anyway, after setup fun and getting him hooked up with a bunch of the important software, and then Carolyn, myself, Dave, and Kristin went over to Calhoun and went rollerblading. Quite fun. Kristin and Carolyn called it time for a rest after the first lap, and Dave and I did a faster second lap while they sucked down Powerade and kibbitzed.

Carolyn and I went and cleaned up and then had dinner at the Something Original Roadhouse Grill Something Something, which was good. They seem to be an Americanized knock-off of the Outback Steakhouse...their Bloomin' Onion equivelent wasn't very good. The steak and garlic mashed potatoes were awesome, however. Once I got us to 169, she drove the rest of the way -- I was so tired, I fell asleep almost immediate, woke up briefly in LeSueur, and then woke up again in Mankato. Crashed out.

This morning, we went and had a healthy (yeah, right) McDonald's breakfast, then went and saw Lilo and Stitch. Normally, I have a love-hate relationship with Disney. You can never fault the art, music, etc., it's just sometimes a little to saccharine for my tastes. This one isn't the typical Disney fare -- it's got a lot of juvenile humor and a lot of non-whitebread/suburban characters. It managed to make me laugh like hell, and even had me a little choked up at a couple of points. Does that make me a wuss? So be it.

Anyway, I also hit Old Navy -- mom was nice enough to float me $100 for some biz casual clothes, and lo and behold, they had polo shirts on sale, so I grabbed a trio of them. I'm going to hit a few other places tomorrow for more. Variety good. Variety very good.

I guess working in biz clothes is the last step in growing up eh? I can't say I won't miss the jeans-and-t-shirt jobs, but I miss money more than I'll ever miss that.

So I got there hella early. I spent about an hour in the car going over my Cold Fusion book, and quickly skimmed ASP in a Nutshell, just to make sure I'm on top of everything. Went in at 9:35, for my interview at 10. I was early, but Sonja was downstairs and took me up to meet with Lanny (the tech director). We kibbitzed for about 20 minutes...went over my work summary, etc., and I asked a ton of questions. No less than three times, he slipped and said "when" we bring you aboard, as opposed to "if"...and corrected himself each time. I get the feeling he's leaning toward hiring me.

Anyway, it only lasted about 20 minutes. We discussed cycling (he rides triathlons), too, which was good. Always good to have something in common with your interviewer.

I have a good feeling about this. Maybe giving the homeless guy at the Lake Street exit from 35W yesterday all the change I had in my cupholder ($10-$15 worth) padded my karma a bit. There was also a large toad on our front step last night -- Carolyn tells me that's supposed to be lucky.

All in all, I feel pretty good. I'm munching on some Cheez-Its, downing some Mt. Dew, and grinning like an idiot.

How's everyone else? Keeping your fingers crossed? YOU BETTER BE. :-)

Okay, I'm up. I'm up. Actually, I've been half-awake since about 4:30AM. I just figured it would be good to lay here and rest until it was time to get up.

I'm going to kick ass today. 10AM interview. I'm up against the guy who couldn't make it yesterday.

Congrats to snocat for finally getting around to reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. (Hey, Josh, you do know there's a fourth book, right?)

I must hunt, kill, and devour a bowl of cereal and my vitamins. (Have I mentioned that I think skim milk is the light beer of the milk world? Blech.)

I'm back there for a second-round interview tomorrow morning. I got the call from the recruiter in the middle of 'blading around Calhoun. Cool beans. So I'm back there at 10AM. ARRRGH! NERVOUS!

Anyway, I need to get cleaned up here and get some shit done.

Well, the good news is, I?ll know later today or early tomorrow, as I would be starting first thing Monday morning. Better news ? they?re not sure if they?re going with ASP or ColdFusion and I?m the only candidate that knew both. Best news ? I was the last person that they interviewed and I always do well on batting mop-up.

KEEP THOSE FINGERS CROSSED! :-)

I am off to my interview. Wish me luck and stuff.

Guess who has an interview Thursday morning? That's right, baby! Me! ME! YEAH! WOO!

It's for an 8-week contract, fulltime, $25-30 an hour.

*shakes his groove thang*

This is going to be thrilling.

Friday: Going to hook the Win(D'OH!)s machine back up so I can access this database I'm working on for writergroups.com. Want to get that site working in some capacity tonight, with a full-blown launch in the next 4-5 days. Whee. Also doing some work on steamlocomotives.info. Do I sound excited? I shouldn't. It's Friday and I'm sitting at home playing web geek. Panic over lack of job and imminent cessation of unemployment benefits.

Saturday: Rollerblading with the guys @ Lake Calhoun...leaving from Burnsville at 10am. Charge! Going to be there a few hours. Come home...more web work. Start sending out résumés for jobs I'm not even remotely qualified for. Finish font work for Chank. Supposed to go to a movie Saturday afternoon, too. Panic over lack of job and imminent cessation of unemployment benefits.

Sunday: Put together at least one new free font for Fontosaurus.com. Been too long since my last font update. Have a good potential candidate for a "grunge" font. Think about a new design for my whiteymustpay.com site. Maybe I'll sell t-shirts through CafePress or something. Who knows? Any extra revenue stream would be helpful at this point. Panic over lack of job and imminent cessation of unemployment benefits.

New Job Ideas:

1. Sanitation Engineer. Pros: Union job, probably has decent wages; the movie Men at Work made me laugh my ass off. Cons: smell like garbage, have to get up an unholy hours of the morning, brain-dead all day like.

2. Cat Burglar. Pros: Might get to see chicks nekkid, could finally score than Playstation 2 I've been lusting after, feel all proud like I'm Robin Hood or something. Cons: illegal as hell, I'm scared of heights, I'm too clumsy to stay quiet.

3. Superhero. Pros: Feel good about self, save world, kill Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, X-ray vision significantly improves "the scenery" at Lake Calhoun. Cons: I don't have X-ray vision, my one superpower seems to be stretching my money, scrawny cyclist's upper-body would look goofy in Spandex, that Wolverine guy could kick my ass.

4. Pimp. Pros: surrounded by women all day long, make lots of money, get to say "bitch where's mah money?". Cons: feel guilty about taking womens' money, can't bring myself to do mean stuff to people, no health insurance plan.

5. Professional Skee-ball Player. Pros: life of total slack, entertaining, pro skee-ballers now allowed in Olympics. Cons: beer belly, no groupies, "skee-ball elbow", shitty income, endorsement deals hard to come by,

Resolutions:

• I WILL GET A FUCKING JOB. SOON.


• No reading of the 4th Harry Potter book until I have a job.


• No more computer games until I have a job.


• No more masturbat--dammit, who am I kidding with that one?


• No more looking at pornogra--dammit, that won't work either.


• I WILL GET A FUCKING JOB. SOON

Job. After sending my agent a "if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all" email, asking her to keep her eyes peeled, she called about 30 minutes later with another potential position. Keep your fingers crossed.

Cat. My cat Mooch's birthday is tomorrow. She wants someone to send her a 10-gigabyte iPod. It is available on my Amazon.com Wishlist (see below).

Bored. Someone wanna give me a nice surprise and send me something from my Amazon.com Wishlist?

I lied. There's 4 things. I'm going to my mom's to fix her $%#@ing VCR. Who uses VCR's anymore? They're SOOOO 1994...

MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMN SONOFABITCH!!!!

So how is it that one hears "they're really impressed with you" in the morning and then gets a "they've decided to go with another candidate" in the afternoon?

THIS SUCKS MY WHITE ASS!

U.S. Army, here I come. *sigh*

Well, I went to with mso to her friend AJ's football game in Wisconsin on Saturday. I love football. I was watching SportsCenter last night, and Randy Moss was helping out with the Plays of the Week...and I was all stoked for this season to start. (Does anyone but me remember that the Rams and Patriots were 5-and-11 the year before they won their Superbowls?)

Also...do slam dunks really need to be considered plays of the day/week now that they're de riguere for the game?

Good news -- an employment agency I've been working with called me and have a position that I fit in with very VERY well. Even better is that it is with a company in the area that my stepmom used to work for, and she's good friends with the guy that might become my supervisor... Keep your goddamn fingers crossed! :-)

So my day has been an interesting one. I sent out a bunch more résumés, made some follow-up calls (yay for voicemail..*sigh*), and did a lot of cleaning and laundry. Excitement abounds.

The good news, sorta, is that my flight physical has to be rescheduled. I was supposed to take that today and today started with an early phone call of them telling me it had been pushed back to a "to be determined" date. *sigh*

So I decided to be productive. I did take short breaks for IRC and to talk to digitech on AIM. She wants me. I can sense the disturbance in the Force.

I'm supposed to go rollerblading later this evening, but I have not heard back from my friends. I am not feeling the love. This makes me sad.

Talked to my ex-girlfriend Heather (who lives in Philly) for awhile today. She's kinda bummed out lately, which means she is in roughly the same boat I was before she broke up with me. At least she has a job, and a stable one at that. More power to her, I bear no ill will.

Hmmm. What else? My stepmom, in a fit of juvenility (is that a word?), decided to take a plastic bag full of soda bottles that I, admittedly, should have dumped into the recycle bin instead of the trash, and hang it from the bike rack on my truck. Wouldn't it have been easier to just a.) ask me to rectify the situation, or b.) just fucking move the bottles the few feet to the recycle bin? Yeah, that's what I thought. I'm still annoyed by that one. I nearly emptied the bottles out in the back of my dad's Jeep Landfill, er, Cherokee -- no one would have ever noticed the difference in that shitheap.

Ah, life, you cruel fucker. Can I have a job so that I can move out of this pesthole and into a pesthole of my own? Thanks!

At this point, I have decided that I can take a low-50's salary and pick up a part-time job and do some freelancing to pick up the slack. In a way, that's good. All that work will keep me out of trouble.

Since this web thing isn't exactly panning out, here's some alternatives I have considered:

1. Apache pilot. Pros: be the Angel of Death; marketable skill on leaving the Army. Cons: 6 year term of enlistment; have you seen the skanky women around military bases? NOTE: I am already looking into doing this. I meet the qualifications. Not thrilled about the idea, though.

2. Homelessness. Pros: low rent, low cost-of-living. Cons: cardboard and newpaper are poor insulation; no Internet connection.

3. Musician. Pros: creativity involved; chicks dig musicians. Cons: don't play any musical instrument; can't sing for shit.

4. Writer. Pros: creativity involved; chicks dig writers; like to write. Cons: inconsistent source of income, which I needed as of yesterday.

5. Professional Killer. Pros: steady source of income, big paychecks; lots of free time between gigs. Cons: guilt complex; guys like me get gang-raped in prison; illegal as all hell.

Man, you guys need to start posting. I am soooo fucking bored again today. I know, I know, I should be making follow-up calls today, and I will. But you guys need to post stuff. Seriously.

I haven't gotten to the experiment with ViaVoice yet. Should be interesting, though...I have really vivid dreams (at least, lately I do), so it wouldn't surprise me if I talk during them. On the computer subject, though, I need to burn all these MP3's and warez off to a couple of CDs. Hard drive is getting full. Very full. So what am I doing? Downloading the soundtrack to American Pie 2. Scratch that, it's finished...on to Coldplay's "Parachutes" album.

Anyway, my project to code a replacement for Fontographer is looking more and more feasible. And something that could be done relatively quickly -- in code terms that means a matter of a few months. Today, I am going to start scribbling my ideas and notes on paper and see if I can't come up with something totally kewl. I need ideas for a name, too, if anyone has any suggestions. This is going to be a Mac OS X-only program, and if you don't like it, you can lump it. Objective-C (Cocoa) is the way of the future, my friend.

Ideas for font design program name: FonteX, Fontonomicon. Anyone? Bueller?

I would like a garlic bagel with cream cheese for breakfast today. But I don't think Bruegger's would give me one for free. Fuckers. Did you know that Greg LeMond (the first American to win the Tour de France and all-around good guy) owns a large chunk of that company?

Playboy has an article on the obvious. And this guy needs to find himself a meek/quiet dolphin. Anyway, I think that generally speaking, that the article is pretty much dead-on-the-money, even given my personal experience.

Hey Minneapolis-ites -- do they still hold Ribfest in July? Wanna come downtown and help me harass the PETA freaks? Yum! Beef!

So, anyway, I've got some solid leads that I am going to follow-up on this morning. It's that or the Army, and a warrant officer doesn't make shit compared to a web developer. :-P

I'm really working myself into a panic here...maybe it'll make me more productive. I just fear having that sound of desperation in my voice, y'know?

First things first though -- quick shower and then I'm going to get some doughnuts, baby. Yeah.

Well, I picked Kristin up at a bit after 4pm. We got to the Mall of America, got her blades, I returned my Vikings license plate frames (they covered the registration stickers, dammit) and got a Vikes car flag and a window sticker. We grabbed some Subway and met Dave over at Lake Calhoun. We ate our subs sitting by the lake, watched a cute girl's micro-dog cop attitude with a giant Doberman (or something), and, of course, commented on its bravery.

This was Kristin's first time on blades, and she was obviously hindered by inexperience. She did manage to biff it pretty hard, once...and had a couple minor dings along the way. It took us over an hour to circumnavigate the lake once. She took my keys and sat in the XTerra and read my copy of Harry Potter (the first one), while Dave and I blazed through a lap in 22 minutes. Not a speed record, but still fun. We did agree that we're all running the Twin Cities Marathon next year (2003), which should be great fun...I haven't done a marathon since 1993, when I was stationed at Ft. Bragg.

Sweaty and gross we blazed from Uptown down to Apple Valley to see Ultimate X on the IMAX screen -- my third time seeing it, D & K's first. They were incredibly impressed by the photography, which is to be expected. Filled up the tank -- despite depositing a large unemployment check today they refused my cash card. Bastards. Dave was nice enough to cover for me. We stopped by my parents' place and they finally met my two cats after dozens of missed opportunities in the past two years. Dropped them off at home after that, came back here, chatted with mso for a bit regarding the birthday plans for tomorrow, and now I am going to get a shower and go to sleep. Yay me!

These are only books that I am physically in posession of:

• Full House - Stephen Jay Gould. Mmmm...science.

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling. I'm finally biting the bullet and reading the damn thing.

• Learning Perl - O'Reilly's. 'Bout time I learned this.

• Learning Cocoa - O'Reilly's. Mmmmm...Objective-C. Mac OS X.

• Core ColdFusion 5 - Hewitt. I get a hernia just lifting this thing. 962 pages of fun. Guess what's last on the list?

Other things I want to read -- Sam the Cat by Matthew Klam, and Band of Brothers. Those are both on my Amazon.com Wishlist. You could help an unemployed brutha out. Heh.

So not long ago, I had an interview with a design firm. Prior to being downsized, I made $70K per year. This place in mid-interview offered me $24K and made it sound like they were doing me some huge favor. That's the first time I've ever said "fuck off" in an interview. I walked. I just got a phone call from them offering me the "grandiose" (their words) salary of $32K. Hello...I was making $70K, my skills are worth that...for you to think that I am going to come aboard and work my ass off for you for less than half of what I was making a year ago indicates you are either a.) delusional or b.) a fucking parasite. Either way, get stuffed.

I guess the best thing about being unemployed is that I've managed to keep busy. I just got home from Dave and Kristin's place -- played some Chez Geek and some Scrabble. Discussed Dave's upcoming Mac system. Lots of bad jokes, as always.

Got to pick mso at the airport tomorrow. Also going to try to get over to Calhoun for some rollerblading.

I'm so happy with Apple's handling of my iBook repairs -- to fix the flickering screen, they replaced the battery/power sub-unit, and not only did it resolve that, but my battery life is much-improved. After an experience like this, I'm so pleased, I'd take a bullet for Steve Jobs.

Anyway, it's been a long day. I finally figured out what book I wanted to buy -- two hours after B&N closed. I'm going to pick up a copy of Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose. Yes, the book the HBO miniseries was based on.

But, I'm sleepy, so it's off to bed for me. G'nite.