Mad Interviewing Skillz

I posted this in 2006. I have no idea what company it was with.

Just got back from a meeting with HR woman at X company. Evidently, this will be a LOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGGG drawn-out process--if I even do get the job. If I go to the next level, I'll probably meet with more people: one at a time so I have to keep going back wearing different outfits.

Then, it will be put on hold for awhile.

The HR woman just kept stressing how bad it was that I'd moved around so much. I was more confident with my answers this time than I was on the phone. At the end, I think I "moved" her a bit so I hope she goes to bat for me with the higher ups.

I was honest without being brutally honest: I told her about my one-two punch of the dot-com bust and then 9/11 where I lost two jobs within a year of each other. I told her I basically temped outside my field the whole time I was in California (for "family" reasons).

Well, it's God's plan not mine. All I can do is row: he's the one steering.

Unemployment

I'm unemployed and it sucks. It sucks because I've had a lot of job turnover. I can see employers' eyes shut down as I try to shuck and jive my way into his or her good graces.

I want to go back to bed. I want my friend to buy me muffins and pat my back while I cry into my coffee.

I'm sure they're sick of listening to me.

Your Trip To Thailand

Don't try to fool me with your love for the cuisine and sights.

David Blaine Wants You To Read A Book

David Blaine, the d-bag, d-list "celebrity", wants you to read a book this summer.

There was no one else that the New York Public Library could get to help endorse this cause? No Norman Mailer? Not even a James Frey?

Somewhere, Kaavya Viswanathan is crying softly into her hands.

Why I Love New York City Reason #062306

Tonight, while walking back to the West 4th street station, I asked the friend I was with, "How much do you want to get back home?"

"Not too much? Why?"

I asked him if he'd like to take a walk around the village and he said sure. So we walked down West 3rd street until we got to the Comedy Village (nee Boston Comedy Club).

An old comedy buddy of mine was standing out front. After saying our hellos, he snuck me and my friend in to the club for free.

Who should be up next? Dave Atell.

I love New York City so much.

I Hate This Blog

It's like a whiney little baby. "What are you going to write about today?"

NOTHING MUTHERF*CKER!!

Computers Make Me Mental

My itunes has stopped recognizing my ipod about 50% of the time. I now have to re-start my computer if I want to to recognize it and then it's iffy. Thanks to the new Microsoft operating system, it's not supposed to crash anymore. I never have to re-start my computer.

I've re-started my computer at least five times in the last two days. I hate this shit. It all happens at once.

Here's some other bothersome things:

My avant browser will not accept a new homepage other than the dumb Hewlett Packard one. No matter how many times I re-program it in options and preferences, it thinks for a second and then says, "Um...no." So I programmed it to just go to a blank page: which is bothersome but not as much.

When I go to adjust time/date it doesn't find the New York Eastern time zone. I've clicked everything in the vicinity: no dice. I have to manually do it. I hate manually doing things. I should just be able to click on the time zone and have it take care of everything. No, I'm not just a dumb girl: something is wrong and no one will help me with this!

My screensaver will not turn on. I have a lot of photographs and my photo screensaver in XP won't start. My computer just sits there like a mentally challenged youth; churning away and happy as can be. Doesn't get bored; doesn't shut off. I've changed the desktop preferences thousands of times. Once again, no dice.

I Hate Melon

I've never been a very healthy eater but I've been eating atrociously here in New York for the past two weeks. I'm really trying to watch my pennies so I eat off value menus a lot. I'd never eaten fast food before I moved to middle America, where that's all I ate. I got to know the menus of Taco Bell and Burger King really well. When I watched commercials, I thought to myself, "I have to get that the next time I go there!"

In the mornings, I go to my local deli and get an egg on a bagel. It comes with a free cup of coffee for $1.75. That's good. That's better than a breakfast value meal at McDonald's.

For lunch, it's value menu time again. So far, I've only gone to Wendy's and McDonald's. In San Francisco, a double cheeseburger was $1.09. Here in Manhattan, it's $1.63--no longer on the value menu. Some stores don't even have the value menu. I've been getting the chicken sandwich or the regular cheese burger.

If I go to Wendy's, which has larger value menu, I get the junior bacon cheese burger (with unmelted cheese), cup of chili (surprisingly hot both temperature wise and spicy-wise), and a frosty drink (which is so thick I can barely pull it up through the straw).

I also have been getting a lot of pizza slices. The lowest price I've paid was at Halal Bakery on Eighth Avenue: $1.75. In 2001, they charged a dollar a slice. That's some mighty inflation. Most of the other slices I've been buying, however, are in the $2.25 range.

For dinner, it's back to the Value menus. More burgers, more frosty drinks, more cookies.

This morning, while waiting for my bagel at the Smiler's Deli on Seventh Avenue, I saw all the healthy things they offered too. They had cold, gleaming trays full of fresh fruit, lettuce, spinach and hard-boiled eggs. They had ice stands brimming with plastic containers full of melon slices.

These containers were at least $3.99 apiece.

One egg and bagel bomb and free cup of coffee that will last at least four hours in the stomach versus half a cantaloupe that will last thirty seconds. Where's the concentration booth?

Not only that: I hate melon.

Compare and Despair

Going up to visit an old childhood friend tomorrow: She met her now-husband her first week at Yale and they have two kids and a pool in Irvington, New York.

I'll try not to compare and despair but it will be difficult telling her about my plans to temp while she motions to the maid for more iced-tea and cucumber sandwiches.

For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Résumé

This depresses me to no end. I just re-checked this blog to make sure it's apartment and job-hunting okay. Although maybe five people read my blog, I'd like to keep the post about earplugs (see below). I'm sure to get the promotion with that masterpiece of modern literature!

June 11, 2006
For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Résumé
By ALAN FINDER
When a small consulting company in Chicago was looking to hire a summer intern this month, the company's president went online to check on a promising candidate who had just graduated from the University of Illinois.

At Facebook, a popular social networking site, the executive found the candidate's Web page with this description of his interests: "smokin' blunts" (cigars hollowed out and stuffed with marijuana), shooting people and obsessive sex, all described in vivid slang.

It did not matter that the student was clearly posturing. He was done.

"A lot of it makes me think, what kind of judgment does this person have?" said the company's president, Brad Karsh. "Why are you allowing this to be viewed publicly, effectively, or semipublicly?"

Many companies that recruit on college campuses have been using search engines like Google and Yahoo to conduct background checks on seniors looking for their first job. But now, college career counselors and other experts say, some recruiters are looking up applicants on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Xanga and Friendster, where college students often post risqué or teasing photographs and provocative comments about drinking, recreational drug use and sexual exploits in what some mistakenly believe is relative privacy.

When viewed by corporate recruiters or admissions officials at graduate and professional schools, such pages can make students look immature and unprofessional, at best.

Get Earplugs

Just got of the phone with my mother; it's her and my father's anniversary. They're helping my sister at her house all day and then are spending the night there. I hope my sister has some industrial-strength earplugs.

I'm Stuck With You?

I'm back in New York city after two years of trying to fall in love with California. It just didn't take and I had to come screaming back to my first love: New York.

But this time, it's different. Now I know I can't live anywhere else. Before, when I was living in New York, I thought I could go on to other places and be happy. I thought I could live anywhere. Now I know that's not true; I'm a prisoner of New York City. For how long, I do not know.

I've never been married, but this is what I feel: resentment. Like the day after the wedding, I look at my spouse who I'm supposed to love above all others and who I've chosen to be with for the rest of my life and I think, "I'm stuck with you?"

New York is not perfect. It's cramped and dirty and expensive and competitive and there isn't a straight or right angle on the whole isle of Manhattan. I knew all these things when I was a care-free fiancee, but now that I'm married, all these flaws are glaring and difficult to swallow.

Just for today, I will love New York as it deserves to be loved. Because I dated his ugly, safe brother with a good job--Sacramento--and that sh*t just ain't happening.

Times Square

No matter where I go on the Isle of Manhattan, it seems I always have to return through Times Square. It was cool the first 26,357 times I walked through it.

UPDATE: Tonight, I tried to be real smart by taking Eighth Avenue, but no dice. Every stinking theater was letting out just as I was walking up past 42nd. Never have I hated humanity so.

27,457 Steps

I walked 27,457 steps today. My dogs is barkin!

Update: my pedometer died the next day. I wonder if I did in fact walk all those steps or whether my pedometer was just counting every movement in a last grasp at life.

I'm Here! I'm Tired!

Was so excited last night I could barely sleep; at 8:00 a.m. this morning, a car alarm went off TWICE right outside my window. Back to New York City! I'm in this building: I wish I had a picture. I took some pictures but I can't get them off my phone.

It's cold here; WTF? I thought I left this weather in San Francisco but no it's cold and foggy and drizzly here in New York City. I'm in tourist-ville in West Midtown; just north of Times Square. Starbucks is twenty cents a cup more here. That blows. Can't wait for my coffee maker to arrive so I don't have to waste my entire savings on coffee. Last night, I asked for a decaf but I don't think I got one. I was way keyed up at 2:00.

I Hate Packing!

I hate packing so much!!! I'd rather do anything than pack!! I wish I had these two to help me; I'm sure they don't just throw everything in a box haphazardly and hope for the best.

First Kisses

Does anyone have dreamy first kisses like this one? The one where the girl has a big crush on the hottie surf instructor and he's really mature for an 18-year-old and touches her neck and slllllowwwwwwwwly, delicately, artfully swoops in for the kiss: light at first and then grows stronger and stronger and it fades out.

All my highschool kisses were awkward drunken affairs where nine times out of ten I instigated it and the boy never called me again. Hollywood lies to us.

Being Unemployed

Being unemployed is just like being on vacation. It's so delightful, I think, "Why can't I always live like this?" There was a time in the late nineties early aughts when I was unemployed and it was one of the best times of my life.

After the first initial shock and anxiety (of being laid off), I eased into it and enjoyed the hell out of it. Got up late, took naps, and did whatever I wanted as long as it didn't cost more than five dollars. I've been fired/laid off twice: The first time was 1998 and I had to go downtown with all my paperwork and stand in line and watch a video. The second time, I only had to phone them, give my social security number and they had all my tax returns on the computer. They knew everything about me and all my employment history. It rocked. Then, I just got checks in the mail.

I'm a relatively frugal person and my rent was only $425 a month for a room on the Lower East Side (dear reader: there are tears streaming down my cheeks as I write this). I milked this lifestyle for a long time. If you can live on hotdogs and read library books, you might want to look into unemployment.

I'm now "between jobs" as I just quit my job on Friday and am going to rely on savings until I feel like getting around to putting a few resumes out there. I'm thirty something and I still don't know what I want to do with my life, but I'm pretty flexible and happy doing a lot of things.

I'm not particularly anal retentive when it comes to work. The things I require from a job: healthy paycheck, responsibility, no yelling or high drama, 9-5 hours fixed. I can't deal with a job where I gotta pull all nighters and luckily I've never had to do that: ever. To all those in publishing, this can be done. I worked for a trade publication where we were in charge of five publications and the LATEST I ever stayed was 5:30 once because I was waiting for a fax approval.

These past couple days it's seemed like an eternal weekend. My alarm still goes off, but I let those NPR assholes talk and talk away and they don't wake me up. I stay up later playing video games. It doesn't matter if I have caffeine in the afternoon because it doesn't matter how I sleep. I can go on field trips and go shopping where the crowds are relatively nonexistant.

Now, I have to take a shower and get dressed. I'm walking to downtown San Francisco where my father will buy me a steak lunch at his favorite businessman's bistro. TOUGH LIFE HUH?!!! I'm a regular Paris Hilton.