109 Days

Yep.

Unemployment is officially wearing on me.

I spent big chunks of the past two weeks doing editing and coding evaluations from places from which I still haven't heard back. It's unpaid labor, but at least it was something to do.

Latest sign o' the times: The site that seemed like a good bet for employment decided that rather than go through the trouble of recruiting, interviewing and hiring new people, they'd just buy another company and pick and choose from the people they absorb.

"But they'll probably do another round of hiring in a few months," the relevant creative agent told me, trying hard to sound perky and sort of succeeding.

Right.

I'm hanging in there financially. I'm still out there socially, staying out way too late. I'm devoting some time to properly learning Flash and PHP; they're not really part of what I do, but out-of-their-depth recruiters and HR people like to see those buzzwords on resumes. There are exit polls to analyze. I'm keeping superficially busy. I'm not wallowing, at least not much. I'll live.

But, damn, is it boring.

Great-ish Moments In Adulthood

I have made my last car payment. I now have a pink slip with my name and address on it.

I'd celebrate, but I'm still trying to figure out what other money drains I can plug up so that I can afford the health insurance that I can't afford to be without. So, uh, no one total my car for a while, okay? Especially with me in it.

Another Friendly Note To Recruiters

Hi, gang. Thanks, as always, for your calls over these past few months. I appreciate your taking the time to reach out to me; your time is, of course, incredibly valuable. As is mine. So let's use it wisely, shall we? I've been out of work for three months now, so we're clearly not using it well.

I know that most of you only read the first three lines of my resume when it comes up in a search. That's why I cram all the important stuff into the first three lines, and why you should take a moment to look at the search hit in context.

While I'm flattered that you think I'm some hotshot PHP programmer, if coding were my strong point, I'd bump it up from third to first position. And I'd certainly do something more than hide the PHP in a list of things of which I have "working knowledge".

Also, could you maybe do just a teensy bit of research on the positions you're pitching? I don't ask that you do a site visit or anything strenuous -- just look up terms with which you're unfamiliar, like they taught you in third grade.

Here, I'll make it easy for you. Based on conversations I've had in the past couple of weeks, here's a list of things between which you should review the differences:

CSS vs. CMS
JSP vs. Java vs. JavaScript
XML vs. XHTML vs. DHTML
Content development vs. design vs. coding
Building content management systems vs. managing content
SQL vs. MySQL
Copywriting vs. technical writing
Los Angeles vs. Diamond Bar

There are more, of course, but that should be enough to keep you busy.

'Kay? 'Kay. Yay!