The Jim's Month-O-Fun

So, I took off about a month from writing on The Machine. It's been a ridiculous month, and it's been shamefully difficult to find time to keep my miniscule audience up to date on all my latest dealings.

First of all, Mrs. The Jim started school, but we had difficulty securing funding. Apparently, the stupid fools who kept buying houses they couldn't afford managed to not only destroy the housing market and the economy in general. No, the devastation has trickled down to the student loan market, as we couldn't find sufficient loans. It took us a while to figure out how to pay for her education, but we eventually pieced something together. Strangely enough, we managed to secure a loan after the fact, but that whole little drama took up a week of my attention.

Then, I spent over a week dealing with my pain-in-the-butt computer problems. After several completely failed attempts at saving my machine, I determined that it was a lost cause and would need to be formatted. Unfortunately, this was a computer I received from my dad, and I didn't really have licensed copies of Windows or much of my other software. After I did a little research, the amount I'd have to spend on software exceeded the cost of a basic, run-of-the-mill laptop. So ... that's what I did. I went out, bought a new laptop, set it up, and made sure both of our machines were completely protected and backed up. That little escapade took up another 1.5 weeks.

Over the past 2 weeks, I've had a ton of work to do at the office. Our branch doesn't have a bunch of projects (well, to be honest, there's not a ton of projects at the company's HQ either). Anyway, I've been putting in a lot of busy work from the other office, just to make sure we looked billable and valuable. The busy work, however, completely ate into my free time.

Just recently, my boss came over from the company HQ. He took my co-worker and me to lunch and told us about the long-term plans for the office. Just to sum up ... those long-term plans didn't exactly fill me with confidence. Apparently, the home office may or may not decide to get rid of my branch. Even if they don't, it may take years before this place is generating a bunch of work, and no one can seem to figure out how to go out and generate work in a new market.

Honestly, I've been ready to move on to something else for months now. My job search, however, had been relatively passive. I had talked to recruiters (a complete waste of time), and I had applied to some on-line postings that ended up going away. Of course, the current economy hasn't exactly made job hunting all too easy. My lunch meeting, however, emphasized a need to take a more proactive approach.

Of late, I've been doing a ton of research and trying to contact people at local firms who may be able to help. As you can imagine, this effort managed to occupy the rest of my time of late. I've managed to develop quite a few promising leads, but nothing concrete to date.

I'm happy to report, though, that my time has started to become less congested. My job search is now more systematic and less time consuming. The busy work for the office has dried up, so I don't have that over my head either. For the first time in a long while, I finally feel like I have enough free time available to begin my regular on-line blather again.

As you can imagine, there are a few things I've wanted to chronicle recently, but they've been stuck on the back burner. I still want to detail some of my thoughts from our San Antonio trip. I also have some cool pictures from the wedding we recently attended, and I had some more movie reviews. I've worked out a tentative schedule for my upcoming trip to ACL and my college football team finally won a game. Of course, I'll need to keep everyone posted as the job search progresses. Most importantly, though, it's about time America's favorite weekly poetry output gets back into gear.

So, faithful reader, we begin again. Next time, I'll put on my Siskel-and-Ebert hat, and give you the kind of hard-hitting film criticism you've come to expect.

Until next time,
The Jim