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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Life

  • Bizarre Coincidence, Wot?

    This week marks the 17th anniversary of my arrival in Portland. I moved here from Concrete, WA when I was 17 years old, so I’ve made the Rose City my home for an entire half of my life now. Before Concrete (the town in which I spent my senior year) I spent a brief time in Anacortes, WA preceeded by another brief stint in Des Moines, WA. Oddly enough, my girlfriend currently lives in Des Moines, albeit not on a small boat like I did. My junior year (and my absolute favorite year of school, ever) was spent in Bellevue, WA and my sophomore year took place in Kent, WA.

    We moved to Kent from Hillsboro, OR after Mom hooked up with her newest husband at the time. Now, here’s where it gets weird. I attended Poynter Middle School, located just off Cornell Road. Our apartment was right across Cornell from the school’s athletic field. (I used to watch Robotech in the morning until the moment the credits rolled, at which point I’d grab my things and scamper at high speed so as not to be late for school.)

    Yesterday I started work at Resource One, which is located… well, let’s just say it’s incredibly close. Check this out:


    (Image courtesy of Google Maps, with minor edits by Yours Truly)

    The green arrow is my current workplace. The blue arrow marks the approximate location (it was a long time ago, so maybe I got the wrong building) of the apartment that Mom, Sis and I lived in… about twenty years ago. The purple arrow indicates the middle school I attended at that time. (For reference, if you could “scroll” the image above so you could see what’s just off to the right, you’d find the Hillsboro airport.)

    Consider that I’ve barely set foot in Hillsboro more than a couple of times since I moved away, and then consider that I’m now working a figurative stone’s throw from where I used to live. Freaky, isn’t it?

  • Employed!

    No more “unenjoyment” for this little grey duck! I just received and accepted a job offer, and I will probably start work Wednesday morning. I’ll go into more detail about the gig itself when (and if) I’m sure it’s appropriate to do so, but suffice to say that it’s an in-the-office job managing servers and systems from an administrative and troubleshooting standpoint, and serving as a “first contact” support mechanism for clients. The pay is comfortable, the job will be challenging (in terms of both initial adjustment and long-term activities) and I get to set the standard (and develop the processes) for what amounts to a new kind of job position within the company.

    I have some experience with that sort of thing. This time around I know what to look for right from the get-go, however. For instance, I’m already thinking about how I’m going to document… everything. (You think I’m kidding. Hah!)

    Maybe my overall stress levels won’t go down very much in the immediate future, but at least it’s a positive kind of stress, the “do I really think I can do this?” kind instead of the “I’m doomed I’m doomed I’m doomed” kind. Three and a half months of “I’m doomed” really took the joy out of life. I want my joy back.

    (Hey, maybe in a few weeks I’ll be able to afford more RAM for this webserver. Cool.)

    Bye bye, job hunting. Hello, new challenge!

  • Can’t write. Too hot.

    I have stuff to post. I certainly do. There’s some geeky humor, an online toy to tinker with, thoughts to convey about recent family events, and an update on how life’s treating me.

    But not today. Today I spent downstairs, hiding from my furnace-like bedroom and (thus) the computer(s), which I left turned off for 95% of the time. (I had to check mail and at least glance at the nonexistent job listings. I have responsibilities, dammit.)

    I hate 100-degree heat. Hell, I hate anything above 90, but having 100 degrees sprung on me all of a sudden is just plain cruelty on the part of the universe. Mind you, “I take great comfort in the general unfairness and hostility of the universe.”

    Maybe I’ll write something more interesting tomorrow. Or the day after. Hang in there, and stay cool. Drink lots of fluids. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

    Stupid heat.

  • On second thought, I’ll stay home.

    After planning my week around it, at the last minute I decided not to attend the Pacific NW Tech Career Fair. Why, you ask?

    Because I finally looked closely at the list of represented companies and what jobs they’re offering. It’s not pretty, folks, not for an all-purpose computer geek like myself. Almost all of the companies represented are “high-tech,” meaning they’re looking for engineers and programmers and such. I’m not a silicon wafer designer, for instance. Of the non-“tech” companies represented, I’ve already spoken to one and put in an application with another. That leaves the FBI and another couple of outfits I’m either not suited for or wholly uninterested in. Primping, preening, printing out resumes and taking a two hour commute each direction only to talk to (maybe) one recruiter seems like an awful waste of resources, especially when one isn’t entirely certain said recruiter is offering the kind of job that one would actually want.

    I want to work, yes. I also don’t want to waste an entire day of my own time, let alone most of an hour of someone else’s. It’s for the best, truly.

    This gives me more time to prepare for the weekend’s festivities which I just found out are starting sooner than I expected. As in, “I leave for Albany tomorrow afternoon.” The family (or such of it as can and will assemble) is throwing a kind of wake for Grandpa Gene; I’m riding down with Sis and her baby. I’ll be home some time Sunday. Wish me luck, or some-such.

  • Look out, Weird Al.

    For the record I’d like to state that I have not recently listened to the song in question. Hell, I don’t own the CD nor do I have it on MP3 anywhere. And yet, while pondering a certain inevitable chore for the day, this is what just ran through my mind:

    “Iiiiiii’m out of duds, so I’d better get this laundry started!”

    Sorry, Pink.

  • Money laundering, what?

    I should’ve known better than to get my hopes up at the “job offer” email I received yesterday.

    We have found your resume at www.monster.com.

    Sigh. Apparently the only people who’ve done so up to this point are weasels.

    And We would like to suggest you a position at our company – the Transfer Manager.

    And I would like to suggest that you jump off a cliff, or possibly go play in traffic.

    The task of the Transfer Manager is to process payments between our clients and our company via checks, bank wire transfers,Money Orders.

    Oh, this doesn’t sound even remotely suspicious, does it? This is the sentence that set off the rest of my mental alarms. You’re hiring a bunch of people (you say there are 5 positions open) to perform transactions? Aren’t there, you know, professional and secure financial services and what-not for this kind of thing? What’s wrong with using those? And what sort of people are willing to do business with you in this fashion? Do I not even want to know?

    Maybe I’m just paranoid. It’s possible that I’m reading too much into this. Maybe.

    The job is related to remote Internet operations.

    I’m not entirely certain that this sentence even parses.

    Every payment order will be accompanied with detailed instructions.

    I should hope so.

    It’s a commission based position. You will get about 8% of each processed payment.

    I shudder to think what your markup is, then, if you can afford to shrug off that much of a given payment.

    There’s more, but I won’t bore my readership. Suffice to say that it’s a “work at home” position that will supposedly grant me “financial independence” and “high self-esteem” even though “prior customer service experience is a good benefit, but not a must.”

    Don’t call me, folks. I’ll call forget you.

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