The best laid plans of mice and men....

I had such high hopes for October...as far as this blog went, but now it looks like I've posted the least this month.

Anyway, the FAEH has major budget problems, so it looks like the only real hope for me is seasonal work. I assume I'm still up for the job I was fingerprinted for, but everything else is out.

A couple of jobs have opened up at my grad school alma mater. We'll see.

Applied for a non-accounting job that may turn into something or may be a scam.
Some of my anti-scam Spidey senses were triggered by it, but others were not.
If they're interested I will try to find out more. Hard to say, really. Might be nice to just give up on accounting for the time being.

Happy Halloween, Imaginary Reader.

A quiz:

What would you do if you were at a casino and won a little over $4000 playing keno?

A) Quit gambling or at least move to the penny slots for the rest of the weekend.
B) Keep playing keno, blowing around a grand, because "that's just how much it costs to play keno."

Guess which one my father-in-law did.

Another setback.

I got my results for the online assessment for the slightly less desirable job for the Federal Agency Everyone Hates [FAEH], and they were not good. They have 3 categories, A, B, and C, and as you can guess, A is good, B is not as good, etc. I ended up getting a C.

Why I got that, I don't know. Perhaps what they are looking for is different than with the other jobs I've applied for in the past [where I always got an A.] I obviously didn't do as well as I thought.

Anyway, I'm about to take another assessment for a different job, we will see how it goes.

The C is moot anyway, because apparently now the FAEH is having budget problems and hiring for that job has been delayed. But as a Category C, I have no chance at it anyway.

At this point, I am really hoping for the seasonal position to work out. I don't want to move away. I'm also trying to look at factories in the area that might have openings. I will do whatever I can.

Just finished another tier of unemployment benefits, I should move on to the next tier with no problem. After that, things get dicey.

The Father-in-Law is off on another gambling trip. Driving through the snow, getting very little in the way of comps, just for the privilege of losing hundreds of dollars. And also complaining that the several hundred dollars he has to spend on gambling isn't enough.

Gotta go do my assessment. It will be interesting to see if much has changed from when I did it nearly two years ago.

One hundred.

I know I should have some kind of commemorative post, but I really do not have much to say, but feel compelled to post anyway.

I had a fingerprint session today for the Federal Agency Everyone Hates. It's just a preliminary step, it doesn't mean I'm going to be hired or anything. It's for seasonal positions which will basically be my insurance policy if I don't get a job by the time my unemployment runs out sometime next year.

If my group of hopefuls was any indication [and it may not be, our group was one of several that have been going through this over this past month] I may have a good shot at this. Most of the time, the only advice I would give to others is, "Don't do what I did." However, I do think I have one other tidbit of helpful information:

If you read and follow directions and are prepared for things, you generally will start out ahead of at least a third of your competition. Sometimes more.

We were sent an e-mail that told us what to bring and what to do before our fingerprint session [basically bring sufficient ID to fill out the I-9 form and have all the forms printed and completed.] I'd say very few of the people who were with me had done these things. Some only had their driver's license and ended up having to reschedule. Others had not completed the forms. Still others had not even brought the forms and had to fill them out from a booklet. I'm guessing they must really need employees, which hopefully will work in my favor. Guess we will see, although I'm still hoping I can find other employment.

I will say it is an easy self esteem boost for me since I feel more with-it and qualified for this. I guess another key to success is....lower your sights. Aim for something where you have more qualifications than most. Of course, most places disqualify the overqualified [heh heh, I like that phrase] but the government doesn't, so this might be an opportunity for me to shine. At any rate, it beats applying for things where I'm missing key qualities, which is the case when I apply for jobs that are more a fit for my educational level.

I'm just dreading it if I do end up having to take one of these seasonal jobs and have to reveal to people that I have a graduate degree and am a CPA, but am having to take a job that only requires a HS diploma. But I've had to do it before. And as I think I've mentioned before, the last time I did something like that, it ended up being a seven year career which to date has been my most successful work experience.

That may be a sticking point. Not that I worked for the Quasi-Federal Corporation Known for Workplace Violence, but because I ended up walking off the job on my last day in order to go see AMERICAN SPLENDOR. Will they report that? Is there even anyone left who could report that? Supervisors usually only spent a year in a work area before moving on, and I think my old job may not even be located in that facility anymore. Who knows? Oh well, if this doesn't work out, something else will.

Talk about turnaround time....

Had the interview today, I thought it went well. Actually, I know it did, we had a good rapport, but when I sent the thank you e-mail this afternoon [very important to do this] they responded and said that one of the applicants already had this type of audit experience [it's a pretty specific area] so they went with that candidate. They were already starting busy season and had to hire someone quickly because they had just fired an auditor who wasn't working out. The interviewer said they both thought I had a lot of potential, but since it was busy season and they wouldn't have time to train, they thought it best to go with someone who already had this type of experience [and they mentioned that they rarely run into experienced candidates.] Fine. The job had a lot of travel and a lot of time spent cramped in rooms with co-workers, so it might not have been the best fit anyway.

Anyway, I think this is some kind of record, basically from interview to rejection in less than six hours. I certainly wouldn't mind working with these people, though, if things don't work out with this new hire. They seemed nice and I really appreciate them letting me know right away instead of not responding for weeks.

I got a rejection last week for a job that I'd forgotten about [some lower level accounting position with a county agency.] Oh well, hopefully I can find a couple more things to apply to this week. When I heard how much travel was involved I started to worry that I would get the job, so it's probably best that it worked out like this.

Happy to be wrong.

I *will* have an interview this month after all. A firm had an ad in the paper last Sunday. I mailed my resume/cover letter to a newspaper mail drop box and got an e-mail today wanting me to confirm for an interview next week.

It's an audit position, which will be new for me. They said they have a lot of interviews to conduct, so my odds are probably not good, but they did decide to interview me which makes me think I could possibly have a shot. You never know about these things. They want someone ASAP and they are already starting their busy season.

The best thing about it would be it would provide the governmental auditing experience that has been tripping me up on these interviews, I would mainly be working on those type of audits.

I'm sure they will find someone else. I am going to conduct an experiment, I am going to be open about my experience with the Big Firm, basically saying that I was a "poor fit," although I may consult with my wife about it first.

I also have a fingerprinting session for one of the peon jobs with the Agency Everyone Hates. So at least there is something going on this month.

More giving up

Over the last couple of months I've been reading THE HISTORIAN on and off. The premise is interesting, that Vlad Dracula is still around ["alive" seems to be the wrong word] and his existence is kept a secret. The problem is that it's taken nearly 200 pages for the "story" to truly start, and there is a switching back and forth between first person narrators [I think] to where I can't really tell who is telling the story at any given time and when. I'm sure if I went back I could figure it out, but it would be easier if at the very least the author could have had each chapter saying whose point of view it was and when. This by itself I could muddle through, but
the slowness of the proceedings causes me to put THE HISTORIAN on the back burner, maybe I'll wait till I hit a dry period for books then pick it up again.

I occasionally do have books where I read them when I get the time, and am able to drop them for long periods and then return to them and still enjoy them. OLDEST LIVING CONFEDERATE WIDOW TELLS ALL has been that way, it's been my companion for nearly four months now. I've read it while waiting on my wife during our various trips together, never reading it at home or any other time. I am now in its final 60-70 pages, and of course need to finish it at home at this point since there is too little left for me to fill up the two to three hours I usually have when waiting.
I enjoy the book and its narrator. Allan Gurganus really had something going, I can imagine the character's voice just taking over. Surprising how young he was when he wrote the novel, he was only in his early 40s when it was released [so he was probably around my age when he was writing it.] I'm reaching the age now where I'm older than a lot of the writers I'm reading. Still not most of them, but a lot of them. I need to really make something happen with my writing. Not in a "time is ticking away" sense, but just because I think it's the only thing I can really do well.

Fall

It's finally autumn. It was over 100 degrees a week ago, but today it's cloudy and overcast, in the low 70s. Hope it lasts. Good day to watch old movies.

I had an interesting situation with a book, the novel SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY. I got about 180 pages in it, and decided to give up on it. Not because it was a bad book or poorly written, but because the world of the book [the not-so-distant future where it is a post-literate, superficial America and most people communicate in tweets, chat-speak, and texts] was just so repulsive to me that I didn't want to experience it any longer. It is written like a series of blog posts from the various characters.

Can a book be too good at bringing you someplace you don't want to be, to where you don't want to read it? I see the world heading into that direction, even though I don't believe the book is meant to be any kind of cautionary tale. I think it is more of a personal reaction. Although the Internet has been a major force for change in my life, and most of that has been positive, I think a lot of things about it have had a negative impact for society. I will have to think more about it later.