Well, it looks like my interview on Friday went well enough that I received a job offer. I admit I was hoping for more in the way of a salary, however, they're willing to give me training and have promised me that there is room for me to move up if I do well. I'm certainly sick of job searching and I'm think the company is a good place to work. So, after sleeping on it, I'll have to get back to Leo and tell him yes. :) And now I can finally tell some of these other people they can go. Particularly those who make phone appointment and then don't keep them!

I had a long job interview on Friday that went better than most.  It involved four people each of whom concentrated on four aspects of what the company looks for in people. I did best with the Technical guys and less well with the management guys.... I suppose that's because I've had plenty of Technically focused interviews and less experience with the management peoples.  It looks like it would be a good company to work for and I'd likely take the job if the offered it too me. One part of me sayeth that they'll make me an offer since the job I applied for is entry level, and they seemed to be happy with my technical skillz and I did decent to well on 3 out of the four interviews..., however, 3 out of four rarely good enough in a job interview, but on the mysteriously floating third hand, if the job markets tightened up enough, 3 out of four might be good enough for an entry level technical position.  It's not as if I was applying for a managerial or sales position. I suppose in a few days this little question will be answered.

In other happenings, I've been trying to find some new anime to watch, starting with Boogiepop Phantom, however I couldn't deal with all the hand washing in the first episode.  It seemed to be rather uninteresting, and the Heroine's lack of character isn't particularly appealing either, it was giving me flash back of Lain wich is rarely a good thing. So instead of strangely humming wires, I saw lots of scenes of washing hands and lavatories, not things that make me want to move on to the next episode. It's good that I can still get my my Kanon fix on Fridays .

Today, while attempting to trouble shoot a website for IE6 I found this a useful tool Multiple IE's from Tredosoft. It allows you to run IE's 4-6 on concurrently with IE 7 so you can make sure your site is viewable for those people who hate new technology.  Unfortunetly as of writing this doesn't work on Visa.

Yay, it must be St. Valentine's Day, so winter may be ending soon! Then again the 14 inches of snow outside my tiny flat seem to be rooting for a new ice age. I will admit the snow has added a bit of spice to this dreary and cold February.

My job hunting has become rather annoying, but at least my phone isn't ringing off the hook with scary staffing firms anymore. The consulting company finally got a hold of me, stating that they just haven't been able to get people together for an interview, but they seem to be somewhat interested. That Chris guy from the Placement firm finally got back to me about the place in Twinsburg, and it seems that even though the guy was really interested in me when we talked two weeks ago, they don't even want to see me now. I don't know what's going on there, but Chris implied that they were talking Robert Half and that something funny went down.  

That was almost as strange as the Akron place that claimed to know all of EIS former employees and would have contacted if they were interested, but obviously wanted nothing to do with me.  The message I fear was little garbled since I heard it through a recruiter.  All I know for sure is that this person was aquainted with the late owner of EIS and they seem to think I was lying about working there.  If this character is going to convict me without even hearing me out, I don't want work under him.  

  Then there's the trucking company which can't seem to call me on time, they called me yesterday when I was cleaning seven inches of snow off my car, so naturally I was unable to speak to them, and then guy said he'd call today at twelve. Naturally he didn't call until one, when I'd given up on him and gone hunting for supplies (Food = good, Scary trucking guys = bad). I don't know about these people, why can't they set a time and stick to it! Still I suppose there's not much point in ranting here about it.

In a vain attempt to lighten my mood I created another demotivator

A hilarious Fan-dub of the fourth episode of Higurashi no naku koro ni as if it was dubbed by 4-kids.

This last week has been rather exiting although I only had one true interview week and one phone interview.  My real interview was with a company that does both consulting and has an educational application that allow parents & students to check their grades on line. It seemed like a nice enough place to work, but it was a VB shop and I'm not entirely thrilled at dealing with VB all the time.  Now the phone interview was for a company that is strictly consulting, so I figure I have the chance to work with quite a few different things and wouldn't need to deal with vb (or just one app for that matter) day in and day out. I'm really interested in these people and they are going to get back to me on Monday to set up a time for a a true interview. The down sides are naturally that consulting will involve some travel and also some unpaid overtime, but hopefully that won't be too bad.

In other news I've been doing some work in my copious free time for Frank on a couple different websites so I'll have a little bit of extra cash coming my way.  Also I got in touch with the alpaca guy and he wants to give me something $1000 advance, to do more work on his website. Which sounds to be quite excellent, particully since my car's radiator need a lot of work.

I suppose I'll end this post by summing up my situation as still in a state of limbo, but things are looking up. My website is still lame though.

I have no officially been unemployed for a month. As with all meaningless milestones this must be met with much fanfare. So far plenty of calls but I haven't found a job yet.  Unfortunetly my cell plan has only 200 minutes so sprint will be making a killing off me this month and my phone bill already pushing $150 due to all the Placement agencies + phone screenings.  :(  I gues its better than no calls, I just wish I had more quality and less quantity.  

I am however doing some random contract work on the side for Frank, which has amounted to a whole $70 (before taxes) so far. It would be good get a job this month, if only some of the leads I found last week pay off. In other news I've now been blogging rather badly for a little over three months now and it appears that my most popular post was the (de)motivator post. 

Now for a break from lame job rants and dry reviews, enjoy this cautionary tale.