Today, a double dose of content, since yesterday there was none. Though I'm going to try to do it inside the span of 50 minutes, since I'd like to catch the Buffy Season Finale rerun.

Summary of events over the past two days.

Yesterday: Searched the want ads in the morning. It's pretty barren, but I managed to find a few places to call and apply. I even sent my resume to an online porn company, as the skillset they were looking for matched mine almost perfectly. Didn't receive any replies though. Maybe they were turned off by the fact that I lack 5 years professional experience. :(

Worked on buildmeasite in the afternoon. The site builder table stuff really started taking shape. Yea!

Today: Interviewed this morning at the company where my mom works. It might actually be a pretty decent job. If I should receieve an offer, and accept that offer, I would effectively become a big fancy switchboard operator (well, not really, but something like that). Take people's info, redirect them to the appropriate parties, and give them what amounts to level 0 tech support, cept it's dealing with matters of health care.

I spent a good hour + 30 hanging out in the cube of somebody with the same position I'd have, getting an idea of what the job would entail, listening in on their calls. Definitely a change of pace. Not something I'm going to want to do for the rest of my life. But if it's a job, I'll take it at this point.

The pay would be enough that I'd be able to stay where I'm at for a while, eek out a decent living (though not as much as I used to make), and hang at my club on the weekends. I would consider that a Good Thing.

I think I made a good impression on the person who interviewed me, though one can never tell for certain. I guess I'll find out for sure if and when I get an offer or rejection.

A couple other observations / ideas about this position, or my next job in general, even if it turns out to be somewhere else:

1. This time around (whether I get this job or a different one), I'm not making the same mistake I did at my last job. People at work are NOT going to know about this web page, unless they try really hard to find it. It's just a bad idea to mix the two worlds, as a former mentor of mine once taught me.

   By day, I'll go to work, do my job, and be a good little corporate whore. But night, I spread my subsursive propaganda campaign, perpetrate online insanity, and hold Satanic web rituals over the Virtual Vagina of the Holy Virgin Mary if I deem it necessary. My employer and/or coworkers need not know.

2. I'm not going to mention the name of the company I work for in these pages. (I know I've already mentioned names of a few places where I applied. I might make an exception if I don't get the job I interviewd for today, and end up working for a big well-known chain.) Though certain friends will obviously know where I work, I'm not going to put it here for reasons similar to the first item.

   I don't want to have this identity publicly associated with an employer. It's just bad karma if you do, at least when it comes to the bite and scratch corporate world. It may not always appear as vicious at first, but appearances can be deceiving. I'm learning from past mistakes.

Well... here's hoping for success.

This afternoon, I worked some more on buildmeasite. After a bit of conversing with scottgalvin.com, we're going to try to take the builder into beta next week. That means feature freeze (or nearly so) for the rest of this week. There's lots of cool things that could be added, but right now, he just wants to get something out there that would suck less than what his customers currently have (i.e. almost nothing).

So... that's gonna be fun. Cleaning up code, smoothing out rough edges, debugging crap. And finishing up the partial features that are there, but not quite "there".

Long term plans: Bah. What do I know about my long term plans. I don't even know if I'm going to have a job yet! But fingers are crossed.

Long term plans: Assuming I get the job I interviewed for today, and it proves to work out, for the next 6 months, I will lay low, stay in my current apartment, continue to build social connections through the venues I have been attending (mostly shambhala meditation, BLUG, and my club downtown), and pay off debt.

Sometime within the next year, or perhaps two years, I may attempt to return to school at a university setting. If I do so, I consider it highly unlikely that I would continue to major in computer science, though anything is possible. I'm thinking it might be fun to get a bachelor's in something completely unrelated to anything professional. Get a degree in the study of the history of some obscure African tribe. "Hey, it's a degree, right?"

But again, that's way down the road, and still iffy. It's all theoretical mumbo jumbo at this point.

Anyway... lots of dreams. Lots of other ideas.

This article is inspirational, even if I knew most all of the factual info it contains already.

Alright. My time is up. I've said my say. Now I'm gonna chill and watch a little tv.