Pilot's Log

Earlier tonight/Tuesday I decided my morale was too low and the odds were too long for me to bother with going into Knoxville to the Job Fair today/Wednesday. After last Fall's misadventure with Tech School and retraining, I wonder if I'm qualified to do ANYTHING that is marketable. With fewer than forty companies promised at this fair, and probably thousands of other applicants coming, I doubt it's worth my time and effort.

No need to respond to this, I'm just venting because I'm tired and frustrated and sick of living in this fashion.

More than a decade ago, between the year I left college and the year I left Florida, I was perpetually searching for work and failing miserably. (Sound familiar?) So one day my mother found an advertisement for a company that was hiring "branch managers" and she thought my combination of skills from college and youth would help me get a position. They were having a meeting that evening in a strip mall near where we were. So I went and looked them up and listened to what they had to say.

And my "internal instrument panel" lit up like a Republican's Christmas tree.

Their sales pitch was full of hype and feel-good language and left no room for silly things like facts and details.

Their business plan looked overly optimistic and didn't seem to be couched in the laws of supply and demand or market reality.

Their math didn't add up.

Their brochures were flashy but uninformative...other than the fact that the current "doing business as..." name had been put on stickers that were pasted over the previous "doing business as..." name.

I realized before the speeches had ended that I had no hope of success with these guys and it was more likely they would take ME for a ride as well as their expected customers. So I said "no".

Today I was going through my paperwork from college and came upon a scrap sheet with the information about the company I had visited so long ago. On a whim, I looked them up just now. Two Years Ago The Feds Shut Them Down For Running A Ponzi Scheme. So I feel justified in walking away.

The main downside to knowing when to say "no" is that it's no help in figuring out who to say "yes" to. Or, finding the luck to have that opportunity come your way.

Hey.

Did a job fair in Knoxville around noontime. Only found one company that I thought I could work for. More on that later.

Because of the weather, I had to stay indoors a lot in town today. At West Town Mall, I was walking around and this teenage girl came right at me, her camera phone trained on me. She paid more attention to her phone and her friend on the other side than she did to me...treating me as if I had just arrived from another planet. Didn't say "Hi". Didn't tell me why she thought I was interesting. After the fact I realized it must have been the Caribbean Soul seaplane shirt I was wearing. But really, that behavior was incredibly rude and frightful. If there are pictures now (or video) on Facebook or Myspace (or YouTube) of an aghast-looking guy in a hunter-camouflage cap, a blue raincoat, a seaplane t-shirt and black trousers, then that man is me and if you find HER let me know so I can scold her properly.

My brother is moving this weekend (from his rented house to the house of a friend's) so I have to scrounge boxes for him. The manager of a store is letting me come over Thursday night to pick up as many as Moonshine can carry.

My mother just "sold" another book. Cricket's Moon will follow That Special Someone in publication. More details as they become available.

Found a great source for those Pirates game cards I want. Now all I need is the money to BUY them.

FP

I'm sort of considering starting up my want list for Xmas/My Birthday (they are so close together that often times I'll get just one gift for both occasions from various loved ones/close relations).

The problem is that if I had a good paying job I'd probably just buy most of it myself. My priorities and my desires aren't anywhere near the same page.

FP

Spent most of the day off-line in the hopes of getting a phone call about a job. No call by dinnertime, so after dinner I went out and shopped in Sevierville. My haul: two DVDs from Big Lots, one of them mecha anime (FLAG Volume 1).

May do a meme before bedtime.

FP

(Mostly) Wasted trip to Asheville today. Reason for the trip was a job interview; interview was postponed at about the time I arrived in town. Will try again in the coming week.

Visited my brother at his job in a shopping mall kiosk. We chatted for a while about this and that.

On the way out I went through the mall's Dillard's (clothier) and saw a piece that ties into yesterday's entry. They had hats on sale and there was a cap that looked like a WW2/Cold War vintage Air Corps/Air Force cap of the kind ground crew wore in the tropics. The insignia patch was based on the 5th Air Force symbol, but with the numeral 5 replaced with the letter R. I asked myself "What is THAT supposed to mean?" and picked up the hat to look at the backside. It was a Ralph Lauren. I guess they were trying to one-up Tommy Hilfiger! I didn't know whether to be intrigued or insulted. Then again, I might have bought it if the letter were a B, an S or an F!

On the way out of Asheville I tuned in a local radio station and my problem about that was I never heard a DJ. So I don't know what station it was. And since they have duplicate transmitters in the mountains, the frequency is no help either. They were playing a stretch of rock that started out rather typical Southern Rock, in the Skynyrd/Allman vein, but after a while the stuff seemed to veer into Zappa-esque territory. It seemed to come from a single album or concert, with no discernable breaks. The first song had no vocals, just an instrumental jam. The second was minimal vocals. The third was a kind of spoken-word thing with background music, done live in front of an audience. It was very weird stuff, and I hate that I can't find out who was doing this or even which station I was listening it from. I lost the station before the third song was finished, because of the interference from the mountains as I was getting downrange.

FP

Okay, my Monster.com resume has the following warning/disclaimer:
I have neither the talent nor the necessary personality traits for sales positions. Insurance, Door-to-door and Retail companies need not contact me.

So who contacts me first? AFLAC. For a SALES position.

I think the headhunters just scan the resumes for keywords and don't bother to actually READ them. AARGH!

FP

* Bro visited early and we all had breakfast together. He's working three jobs, two with the Asheville city parks service (maintenance of the sports facilities and umping/reffing sporting events) and selling phones at a U.S.Cellular branch. His finances are still very dicey and I don't know what we can do for him if I don't get the job he arranged for me.

* Went to the Job Fair in Knoxville and only left my resume with the News Sentinel paper. There were about 50 participating companies, but 10 were schools and a good number of the rest were things I can't do. Supermarkets. Fast food. Factory work. Telemarketing. Medicine.

* Sent a little gift to Ted Nomura (manga artist, creator of the Families of Altered Wars series). More about it once he receives it.

FP

I called my brother last night and 1) still no word on whether I got the job; 2) he's no longer employed at the place where he had me apply for said job. This has radically tightened his financial situation and I'm feeling depressed because I can't help him out in any meaningful way. He still has his other job, but he'd been counting on me getting the other job and moving in with him so we can share expenses.

Three eggs in the incubator and it doesn't look like any of them want to hatch. There might not even be yolks to make breakfast out of. Sheesh.

...As I've just returned to the Ruby Rather Manor after an 18-hour day trip to Asheville for a job interview, which went well. Slept on the floor of my brother's apartment overnight. Before that, dinner at a sports bar--where they had the absolute worst coffee I've ever had to drink. Before that, we saw the Doctor Who 2007 Christmas Special, which was pretty darned good.

I'm at the howling-at-the-moon stage of my cycle. I'm probably going to collapse in the living room sofa and vegetate in a little while.

FP