I’ve got a personal economic indicator that is telling me that things are looking up. This indicator is the number of callbacks resulting from all the resume’s I’ve sent out over the last few months. As I stated below, this past week saw me interviewing and being offered a job that I accepted on Monday, a phone interview with another company prior to my interview with the company that I’m now employed by and, since then, several e-mails requesting more information and another couple of companies wanting to interview me.

Now, my getting a lot of interests in my resumes isn’t much in itself but considering the types of nibbles and hard bites I’ve received this is telling me something. One of the companies I interviewed with is a distributor for automation equipment and software. The job they were hiring to fill was a customer support type position that also required developing prototypes for customers to use to know if what they were wanting to do is possible. This tells me they see their customers gearing up to implement new processes and upgrade older ones.

Another company that wanted to interview me but I had already accepted the job with my current employer is looking to upgrade their plant and they wanted to hire people to enable them to do this in house, something you just don’t do unless you are looking at a the project becoming an ongoing job. The company makes mats for industrial work areas, kitchens, etc., the kind that covers concrete floors to give the workers a little cushion under their feet. If this type of business is ramping up what does that tell you about manufacturing?

Yet another company that I interviewed with was seeking a service tech for automated chicken processing equipment. They are looking at their sales expanding and want to make sure that they have people available to resolve service issues with their equipment.

The company that hired me is an electrical engineering company that is getting more work than their current staff can easily handle. Their customers are manufacturers looking to improve productivity or are starting up new lines. Most of their customers are domestic and located throughout the US but I was told I needed to have my passport in order in case I needed to travel overseas unexpectedly.

In July there were no jobs out there and over the nine months since my previous employer closed their Atlanta office I have managed to pick up only a handful of short term projects. Starting in August some jobs started appearing and this month I’m seeing new postings daily and getting people calling me daily. This is not just my job search skills getting better, jobs are appearing and the types of jobs are indication of more jobs opening up on down the pike for manufacturing.

Anyway, that’s my indicator. If you see any flaws in my reasoning please point them out to me but I believe we are looking at unemployment numbers starting to drop in the near future. At least I’m hoping that’s the case.

I told Gerri that when I went back to work I’d take her to a local Country and Western night club for a night out. As luck would have it, Terri Clark was playing at Wild Bill’s last night, the first Friday night after finding regular employment.

It was fun. Terri is now my favorite guitarist. I knew she played but I didn’t realize how good she was until seeing her performance. I was amazed at her picking prowess.

She did a selection’s of the songs she played at the Orchid Lounge in Nashville when she first started out which included about four John Anderson songs that she did in John’s voice. The girl has a knack for comedy. If you get a chance to see one of her shows it’s well worth it. She’s not only country, she rocks, too.

Aside from the concert, Wild Bill’s was also a great place to do people watching. I hadn’t been out to a night club like this in quite some time, like ten years or longer, and things really hadn’t changed so much. I enjoyed watching the lounge lizards in cowboy hats getting shot down in flames and not being a bit deterred by that and going on to their next victim, occassionally having success. I enjoyed watching the girls who came there just to dance, with anyone, dancing to the dance floor and dancing back off again. I enjoyed watching the people wearing what they really shouldn’t have been wearing until they had spent a few years at the gym. A totally entertaining evening.

Oh, they had a mechanical bull, too. It was right next to our table.

Move the Crowd pointed to PVRBlog telling about NBCs antics with their scheduling. It seems that NBC is trying to screw up the ability of recording some shows on CBS along with their shows in different time slots by causing scheduling conflicts. For example, CSI runs from 9pm-10pm on CBS on Thursday nights while ER normally runs from 10pm-11pm. In order to bump CSI out of being recorded and then ER being recorded ER is now scheduled to run from 10:59pm-11pm. If ER is set at the higher priority then CSI doesn’t record because of a scheduling conflict and vice-versa. Not that any of this reall bothers me, I rarely watch TV, except for Monster Garage and American Chopper, and I don’t own a PVR. I will occassionally watch CSI but I don’t believe I’ve ever watched an entire episode of ER and I can’t stand the rest of the shows in NBCs lineup.

Well, the interview this morning went well. So well that I received a job offer that was very generous at 5:30 this afternoon. I accepted their offer a couple of hours ago. I guess that bridge I mentioned crossing Saturday morning is upon me. I’ll let the major electronics retailer know in the morning what happened and see how mad the folks there are at me.

I had a feeling something like this would happen. I’ve been unemployed since December of last year and while I’ve been looking for employment I’ve been more serious about looking for work for myself. It’s only been in the last month that I’ve come to grips with the fact that self-employment just isn’t working for me and gotten real serious with my job search.

The results are now coming in. This morning I had a phone interview with a poutry processing equipment company, just before I left for the interview with the company I accepted the job with. When I got back I had a recruiter wanting me to resubmit my resume to them with my salary requirements. When it rains it pours. I don’t know if it’s the economy improving or just my getting serious in the way I write my cover letters and the custom resumes I’m sending out.

Yesterday I accepted a job doing something I’ve never done before. Sometime next week I will begin working for a major national electronics retailer. I’ll be selling digital cameras and camcorders. I’ve never held a job in retail before.

I’ve got mixed emotions about this. The job will be paying me significantly less than I’m accustomed to be making but it will get me back out around people and that’s something that I sorely miss. Also the job market is looking up in my field. I’ve had two interviews with engineering companies lately with a second interview at on of them this coming Monday and confirmation that I’m still under consideration at the other. I definately don’t want to leave my new employer in a lurch if either of those two places make me an offer.

Still, what am I to do? I may not receive an offer from either place and unemployment won’t last forever. What I’d like to happen is to continue working for my new employer on a weekend and evenings schedule and take the other job too.

I was asked by all three people who interviewed me, the department manager, the sales manager and the store manager, what I’d do if a job came open in my field. I told them I’d ask for a reduction in my hours. They seemed agreeable to that but I have no idea how either perspective employer might feel about my holding down a second job.

I guess I’ll cross that bridge if I get to it.

For a little over the last twenty-four hours this site has been down due to a little security problem my webhost was recovering from. I knew he was having some problems so I waited until this morning to call to get a few things ironed out. I got permissions straightened out and my cron jobs reinstalled now so things should be back to normal. At least that’s what I’m hoping.

For a high volume barbeque joint Sonny’s isn’t bad at all. In fact, I eat there from time to time. They have an all you can eat barbeque special on their menu that really packs people in. I guess that explains the need for this truck.

AVWeb is reporting that an Air Force Thunderbird went down Sunday afternoon around 3:15pm at an airshow in Idaho. The pilot successfully ejected.

While crashes like this are rare I’m afraid it won’t be long before safety concerns ground aerobatic displays like this altogether. That would be a loss to everyone.

I’ve mentioned several times that instead of sueing their customers and crying to congress for new laws that the recording artists need to move on to a business model that works with the current technology. What I haven’t done is suggest a new model to replace the old one. I think that in order to maintain any credibility on this subject I ought to point out one that I believe could work.

ASCAP is an organization that collects royalties for public, non-dramatic performances of their members works. These royalties are collected in the form of a license that gives the holder the right to "any or all of the millions of musical works in the ASCAP repertory." Why not extend a similar license to individual downloaders? Similar licenses are available from BMI for many artists who are not represented by ASCAP.

Why couldn’t these organizations offer a download site that allows one to pay a fixd price per month and download as much music as they like for as long as they hold a license? It would be much cleaner and easier than sueing the customer. Wouldn’t it?

I have a need for religion. It’s something that I have to have in my life to feel complete. That doesn’t mean that I always believe, just that I always come back to believing.

Because of my sometimes disbelief I’ve felt a little reluctant to volunteer for certain roles in my church. I have a problem with lying, especially to children, so teaching Bible stories to young children in a traditional sense makes me nervous. Children take things so literally and ask hard questions because of this, especially about allegorical stories. What if I give an answer that isn’t along the lines of what mommy or daddy has told them? Religous purity is important stuff in some families.

I’m telling you this to help you understand how refreshing it was to me to find Real Live Preacher though a reference on Flutterby. Here’s a preacher who seems to have the same tendency that I have in struggling with belief but always finding himself coming back to believing, or ,more accurately, always being faithful. And he has the same idea that I do that there are no bad words just badly used words. Imagine that.

Because I was raised in a Southern Baptist church I was especially touched by his story about his friend, Tom. There are many other gems on his site and I look forward to finding time to browse through his archives.

I finally bought a decent digital camera, a Nikon CoolPix 3100, so I’ve got to try it out. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go on a photo expedition and bring back some decent pictures but for now I’ll introduce you to my cat, Boots. She’s about four years old and we got her from a lady who had three pregnant cats abandoned on her property. The cats gave birth within a week of each other so she ended up with a total of twenty-two cats.

This entry is just me playing with some Perl scripts and SOAP. It’s here because I’m also curious about it working through RSS in a news aggregator.

Zack sees some similarities between President Woodrow Wilson and a present day politician. Can you tell who he is talking about?

I had to take Nick to the doctor today. He had a mild case of strep throat. This is the first trip he’s had to the doctor since we moved here from Chattanooga so that meant getting his insurance information straight with the doctor’s business office.

Our health insurance issues a card for each family member and you have to declare a primary care physician for each member of the family. That family member can only be treated by that physician or by a physician that the primary care physician has referred you to if you want the insurance company to pay the bill. I didn’t have Nick’s card.

I did have my card, my dental card and my eye care card but not his card and I didn’t know his number that was postfixed to our insurance ID number. I also have a different primary care physician than he has. I had to call the insurance company.

While I was on the phone I got this idea about a single super user card that I could carry around with me that would be my driver’s license, my hunting and fishing license, my library card, my Blockbuster Movie rental card, my Kroger Plus card and all my insurance cards all wrapped into one. I suggested my idea to the lady on the phone. She wasn’t very receptive to the idea.

“It can’t be done,” she said to me.

“Why not,” I asked?

“Our system just doesn’t work that way,” she replied. “We can’t just change our whole system to accomodate just one customer,” she continued.

I could tell right then that she didn’t really grasp the concept that I was going for. I asked her if there was anyone there I could bounce my idea off of and see if we could come up with something and she told me no. Evidently I was talking to the person with all the answers for my insurance company. She seemed pretty confident in her self, but she was nice enough so I didn’t push anything… this time.

I took Nick home and headed to the drugstore to get his perscription filled. He wasn’t in their files yet so they needed my insurance card or they were going to charge me full price for the drugs. I didn’t have a perscription card in my pocket. I use to have one but I have no idea where it got off to. They were able to get the information they needed from my record that they had on file but this gave me the opportunity to count the number of cards I was carrying while going through them looking for my perscription card.

I carry just my essentials in a front pocket wallet and everything else in my checkbook. I only carry my checkbook about half the time. In my front pocket wallet I carry seven cards. In my checkbook I carry twenty two cards. In a box at home I have another seventeen cards that I’ll probably need one day and not have.

Imagine sitting on these forty-six cards while you are driving around town.

Now you understand why I want my one super card. The current system is a literal pain in the ass.

In their Gwinnett section the Atlanta Journal Constitution has a column called Law and Order. These are actual police report filed by my neigbors. I’m constantly amazed at the antics of these people that live close to me… and a little embarrassed also. Still, I thought I’d share their antics with you. Follow the link for a chuckle.