Still jobless, Baby sleeping better

Well, I sure am rotten at this regular-posting thing, don't I?

I'm kicking this job search thing into a much higher gear than I thought I was capable of. It's not the "50 to 100 a week" that the somewhat arrogantly entrepreneurial founder of Rapleaf endorses, but it's much better than I was doing. And no, despite initial attraction, this passionate language-design, open-source-contributing, distributed-IR veteran developer will not be applying for work there; Mr. Hoffman's selection techniques are really quite effective. Meh.

The downside, of course, to all this company-surfing and cover letter writing is the occasional brush with, as my spouse likes to say, SRSLY SKEEVY recruiter types -- the sort that latches-onto your résumé and won't stop representing you to companies until you issue a cease-and-desist letter. I understand that the world at large does not universally share my conception of professionalism, nor should I expect it to. This doesn't mean I have to like it, though. Why can't these people understand that I have good reasons for selecting specific companies -- benefits and HRC Corporate Equality Index scores being big ones -- that I do not intend either to justify or even to share? Seriously, people. "Skeevy" is right.

The good news is that I'm starting to get over some of my fear and loathing of interviews. Well, not really. I still hate them. But I'm dealing. I seem to be better at writing cover letters than I had expected, too, which is heartening. And now, back to the grueling self-promotion.

booooring / good news / whinyriffic

So. Attractive Job Prospect apparently wants me to go and visit them to interview some more, and is still interested. I appear to be unable to read these things. *sigh*.

Well, anyhow, thank goodness. The mechanics are charging us two paychecks. Feh. At least the baby had a wonderful time at daycare.

Looking at pretty much all of my posts tagged "interviewing" or "grumbling", I am forced to conclude that it is impossible, at this point, even to pretend to an air of stoic grace. Honestly, I didn't know I could be this whiny at this age and stage. It's a little disheartening. And hey, there I go again.

Hey, wait, isn't this supposed to be a transition blog?

more than 140 chars of banal

Today's accomplishments:

1. I shipped the baby off to daycare for his first time EVAR
2. I surrendered our car to the mechanics (who will undoubtedly charge us about a paycheck)
3. I will shortly begin prostituting myself to recruiters. Yay me.

It might be fair to clarify #3: I don't have any official feedback from the Potential Employer of Great Desirability, but things look highly doubtful. This is demoralizing, but hey, might as well get used to it. So I'm not spending the days with the baby anymore, at least until I've secured employment (and then, well, not then either). I miss him. I'm sure he's having a marvelous time, and I know his sister is having the best day at daycare ever. Moreover, I've got complete freedom from his amazing powers of distraction for the entire afternoon.

It's still crummy. I miss my sweet baby. God, I'm such a mother hen.

Meanwhile, in what appears to be an attempt to procrastinate and avoid contacting recruiters, I'm getting all literate and stuff, tweeting, catching-up on blogs, all that nonsense. In an IM exchange with my wife, I came up with this:

[me] am drinking San Benedetto "Naturale" water.
[me] they were out of San Pellegrino "What I Normally Drink For Sparkly Waterz" water.
[me] and it turns-out that "Naturale" is San Benedettese not for "is an acceptably overpriced, attractively-bottled, Italian sparkling water beverage product for consumption when our local beverage purveyor's San Pellegrino supply has been terminally depleted," as I had originally surmised, but rather for "totally flat, non-sparkling water thing without bubbles or fizz. or carbonation. of any sort."
[me] boooo.

From the above, of course, you can deduce primarily that, when unemployed, I become much more whiny and infatuated with my own [attempts at] wit. I need a job.

So. I'm interviewing for a senior engineering position with a major multinational, one that has super-dreamy benefits, trans-friendliness, cool co-workers, interesting work, great location: in short, a whole can o' aw3sum. I'm also a basket case over this. There's a lot of panic, there's a lot of "what if I blow it all?" ... there's a lot of second-guessing, a lot of internal drama, and a lot of time to kill as I move from stage to stage in the process. I guess this is all normal. That doesn't really help, though.

AUUUUUUUGHH

I hate interviewing.

Here's an interesting observation: The baby just lunged at my chest and barfed all over the pajamas I happen to still be wearing at 6:30pm. And you know what first springs to mind?

I think I like wearing sour baby barf more than I like interviewing.

tweetish

I think -- at least until I'm once again gainfully employed and no longer filling weekday afternoons with baby urp, naps, clicking on things and cursing iTunes (SO. MUCH. H8.) (I still love my iPhone, though) -- that perhaps Rachel should get a twitter account. Because, you see, pretty much everything I think of to post, during the daytime, is one-liner tidbits of context-setting banality. nice-ish, and necessary, but kinda tedious to build an interesting blog out of.

Of course, that's even sillier, really, when one considers that I'd have, oh, zero followers. Oh well.

Getting things done?

Well, let's see. I just finished securing a developer key for my XO, and am about to set-up an Xubuntu image for it. I also just replied to a nice lady from A Very Large And Attractive Company about securing employment therein. Technically, following-up on that lead was "the one thing I wanted to accomplish" yesterday. Better late than never, I suppose.

I'm not entirely certain why, but modern electro-pop-trance-dance music has been quite intricately bound-up in my memory of this past year of transition preparation (pre-transition? transition preamble? I wish I had a more precise and descriptive phrase ...). Nothing much more to say, there, right now, but it bears saying.