Getting My Name Out There

After the recent job craziness, I'm trying to make a conscious effort to improve my networking. Now, I'm not very good at chit-chat with random strangers ... that's really more of a Mrs. The Jim talent ... but I still need to get a few people in town to actually know who I am.

Many of you probably already know about LinkedIn. Instead of "social" networking, this is a site dedicated strictly to professional networking and contacts. I won't go into the details of the thing (I barely know them myself), but it's something I started using during the job search thing.

Well, one of the elements of the site is that you can upload a picture to go with your name, job history, résumé, etc.. This, I would think, helps you to stand out, as well as making you more memorable.

So, I've been looking through some of my options for a picture. Here's a few:

#1) The Grinning Buffoon:


This was a picture my last employer took to possibly use for marketing materials. Needless to say, they went with a different head shot. I don't know why, but I have an extremely difficult time looking natural when trying to smile for photos. That fact, though, doesn't excuse whatever I'm doing with my eyes.

#2) The Big Shot:


Smoke makes me gag and wheeze like an idiot, and yet I decided it would be a good idea to smoke a Cuban cigar in Mexico during by bachelor party. This shot looks ridiculous in its own right, but it's even better when you consider I couldn't breathe for about 10 minutes after it was taken.

#3) The Seersucker Pimp:


If I was more secure in myself professionally, or if I thought engineering companies had a sense of humor, I'd put this out in a second. Alas, I don't think this will cut it. (Side note: This picture is currently serving as the logo for my painfully mediocre fantasy football team. Yes, I am exactly THAT geeky.)

#4) Soldier of Fortune:


This is a personal favorite of a reader, so I felt obliged to include it. Everyone has an embarrassing photo from their high school days. What sets me apart ... this is one of the LEAST embarrassing pictures of me from that time. Seriously, I actually think that's not that bad, considering some of the other horrors I've unearthed.

#5) The Relief Pitcher:


Really, I could have gone with any of the photos from The Beard Experiment, but this shot has at least one or two fans. I can't imagine anything more damaging professionally than using this picture as my "Business Jim" face.

After looking through my large image collection, it's painfully obvious that I don't really take good pictures. Maybe I should go get a Glamor Shot done. They still do those, right?

Until next time,
The Jim

Haiku Wednesday XXVII: The Inevitable

Amid the chaos,
Shrieks of grief resound for miles.
My winning streak ends!

Since the college football season has started, I've been in the mode to play some video football. I restarted my college football seasons on the Wii, and have played almost 4 seasons with fake Texas A&M.

I had gradually ratcheted up the difficulty on the competition and after some early stumbles, I just kept winning. I had a 39-game winning streak going into tonight. Alas, it finally ended.

It was a crazy game, with 15 combined turnovers, and with me almost coming back from a 31-0 deficit. True, it's extraordinarily meaningless, but it still pissed me off to finally see it all end.

Of course, what all of this really means is that my wife is staying in Fort Worth for 4 straight days due to school responsibilities, and I'm really, really bored.

Until next time,
The Jim

Post #100: What a Way to Wrap up Four Years of Employment!

It's Post #100, and it's a doozy. Clearly I've slacked off writing recently, but it's been about the craziest few weeks I've ever had.

First of all, I left my interview on Thursday, and headed to Austin. (The interview went about how I expected. I was not right for the job, I felt very uncomfortable the whole time, and I've yet to hear from them ... probably not going to get that one.) On our way down south, I got a phone call from my Austin contact who informed me that our tickets had been stolen. My big elaborate birthday gift had apparently been lifted by an internet hacker or a disgruntled roommate, and there wasn't anything we could really do about it. Man, I've really been on a roll lately.

While I had recently been told that I no longer had a job, we had some money put away in savings, so I decided to suck it up and go buy another set of tickets from scalpers. We ended up paying an extra $50 a piece, and missing the early part of Friday’s show. Damn you, Ticket Thief!! Damn you to Hell!!

ACL was fun, and we saw some great acts. Probably the top shows ended up being Phoenix, the B52s, !!!, Kings of Leon, The Knux, and Flogging Molly. Saturday, though, the rain really started to come down, and that's when we learned a little fun fact about Zilker Park in Austin. Apparently, the city recently needed to resod the entire park due to the wear and tear from numerous festivals. When they put down all that new grass, however, some good topsoil material was needed. Their solution - a mixture of soil, composted plant materials, untreated lake water, and ANIMAL WASTE. Well, when you add a ton of rain and the pressure of 200,000 feet onto freshly placed sod, all of that "stuff" bubbles to the top. Yep, that's right ... almost the entire park became a giant puddle of poo!

For some reason, I found that sight to be an apt metaphor for my recent endeavors.

After we got back, I finally got the full details of my layoff. My last day was to be the Oct. 15. Bear in mind I discovered this fact roughly 7 days before that, so it was just a smidge abrupt. During this unfortunate process, my boss had always indicated that the company understood that this was tough, and they would do what they could to make this easy so that I could find a new job. Well, I also found out that "making things easy" was to give me ONE EXTRA PAYCHECK.

My former employer, the one that always told everyone that it was "like a family" and "they were a different, caring company" apparently decided to treat me with all the caring and compassion of the Corleone family - and I was Fredo! Apparently, a couple of weeks extra pay is all I should need to find a job in the worst U.S. economy in decades. This also ignores the fact that the main reason I've been laid off is because NONE of my superiors actually did their jobs and marketed this area. Moreover, I actually received a negative performance review last year because I had the audacity to try to start marketing when no one else would. How DARE I try to do things outside of my job description!

To this day, no one from my former firm has called or written to say they were sorry to let me go, or that it was a shame, or that they were glad to have me there for 4 years, or to really even wish me good luck. Not the owner who liked to act like it was all a happy family. Certainly not the duplicitous, racist boss who loved to tell people how we were such a "Christian organization" while dropping the N-word left and right in front of employees. Somewhat surprisingly, I haven't even heard from any of my former coworkers back in Louisiana with whom I had a good relationship. Part of me wonders if they were even told how quickly all this was going down. It really was so bad, Mrs. The Jim wondered if I had actually been fired instead of laid off.

I called my boss whenever I found out about the miniscule package, and he was shocked that I was shocked! My fearless leader seemed quite sure that he had clearly explained all of these details. The fact that I was so clueless about everything didn't seem to sway his position that he had been sufficiently clear. Oh, well ... guess I was too stupid to get it.

This turn of events freaked me out! My former boss had all but assured me that I was guaranteed a job with the firm across the hall. After this, though I had the realization that I couldn't trust anything this guy said. What if this new job was a bunch of crap as well? The potential employer had been out of town for the first part of the week, so I still hadn't been able to set up an interview.

I was scrambling! I contacted everyone I had ever known about potential job openings. I applied for anything I could find (which wasn't much). I started looking at random things, like a posting for a call center operator. That's right, I was ready to start answering customer service calls for the Toll Road Authority. I had no idea what I was going to do.

And then the next day ... I had an interview that lasted roughly 15 minutes. The new employer wanted to give me $5,000 more a year, an opportunity to work on some huge projects, and a chance to do structural design on bridges, which I've been trying to do for years. In fact, he wants to eventually evolve into doing structural building design, and have me be his lead guy in that. That's a type of design I've been trying to do since college.

Needless to say, I took the job.

Now, this new employer isn't a giant firm. It's a little disorganized at times, and they certainly don’t have the structure and resources of a mega-firm. What this place does, however, is get work, and lots of it. Not only that, the owner brings in the kind of work I want to do. Maybe this is short-term, maybe it isn’t – but it’s definitely a much better opportunity for Professional The Jim.

Maybe things are turning around.

Until next time,
The Jim