jobhunt

Geek Chic

I decided to take a different tack on the job hunt this evening, and look one-by-one at each business that’s located in the business development where I currently work. I’m a big fan of the location, being that a.) it’s a fifteen-minute drive from home, and b.) there’s a fantastic wooded walking path through the middle of the area. So, I sat down with a list of (most of) the businesses in the park, and went to all of their websites, and determined whether their industry is something I’d be interested in pursuing, and looked for job postings.

I found a few that sounded vaguely interesting, and a few that I’d already known about — but I found one business that finally sparked my interest enough to get the job-hunt juices flowing again. It’s a national firm, an IT services and solutions provider, and I’m only vaguely familiar with most of their offerings. All of it made the geek girl in me drool, though.

Only a computer nerd would look through a list of technology solutions and think, “Ooh, HP Storage Area Network. I’ve never heard of that! Sounds cool!” Lots of the names like Altiris and Veritas and Citrix, and lots of the buzzwords like Web Content Filtering and Business Continuity Planning, all sounded familiar to me, but not enough so that I’d even be able to talk for two minutes straight about a given one.

The only section of their services where I know I can shine is Web Development, including website design and development and website management services. That I can do. The other stuff… it harks back to a day when I went around with Kirkum and installed new network cards in pizza-box Macs. Or imaged computers in the labs. Or installed a right-angle adapter in my own legacy Mac so I could install an ethernet card.

At any rate, I got fired up enough (and undepressed enough) that I worked on my Personal Marketing Plan like the nice outsourcing lady told me to. I have a list of about a dozen companies that may or may not be hiring, but that it would be pretty cool to work for. You can all expect that, once I have my Marketing Plan done and ready for prime time, I’ll be sharing it with you and asking you, “Do you know anyone who works for…?”

weight loss 4 Comments

Diet Do-Over

I was listening to the Reasonable Diet’s Six Minutes of Sanity podcast recently, when Sandra Ahten talked about her I-Week diet. The idea is to eat for one week in a way that reduces cravings. I listened to her talk about the brown rice and lean protein and fruits and veggies that are allowed on this one-week retraining of sorts, and the sugar and flour and processed foods that aren’t, and I thought, “I can do that!” After all, it’s not *that* much different from how I eat anyway, and I really don’t have that many cravings. Right?

Wrong.

The I-Week diet is turning into the “I weak” diet for me so far. Monday’s diet log was marred only by imitation crab, a processed food that really should not have been my midnight snack. Tuesday saw some sugar-free preserves, another processed food, but the major departure came when I started craving sweets after dinner. I tried Sandra’s Sweet Spiced Rice recipe, which wasn’t bad… but what was really calling my name was the Rocky Road light ice cream bars in the freezer. Yes, I caved. And then I ate more imitation crab before bed.

Today was on its way to being my comeback, until a surprise pizza party was announced — and who can resist a pizza party? Not me, not anymore. Three or four years ago, in the throes of Atkins, when I thought that any inflated amount of carbs would take me back to 250 lbs (do not pass Go, do not collect $200), I would have eaten what I brought for lunch and the pizza would not have even been a temptation. Now that my attitude has changed, though — one day of being bad won’t kill me — I find it harder and harder to resist yummy evilness. So, I pitched in my two bucks and am eagerly awaiting some BBQ chicken pizza.

Tomorrow is a building-wide informal banquet, and I’m not sure what the Fun Team™ is planning for that. I’m guessing that whole wheat products and lean protein are not on the menu, though. But I’m still going to partake. Friday evening, I’ll be heading down to BG to meet some friends from work. Friday is most people’s last day, plus there are several birthdays being celebrated, so I’ve been planning to join the normal weekly celebration for once.

So, basically, this week is practice. I’m following the Scott Smith rule of “be more gooder than you are badder,” and that’s keeping me from feeling like a total flop.

(Incidentally? I unsubscribed from the Motivation to Move podcast when I started feeling like there were more commercials for the Premium Membership than there was real content. Even the listener e-mails were thinly-veiled commercials for the other products he offers. Once I stopped being motivated and started being annoyed, I unsubscribed. I’m sure he’s doing well enough that one less subscriber to his free feed certainly won’t be noticed.)

While I am proud of myself for maintaining my weight for some time now (within five pounds of 200 for about the past year, after re-losing ten pounds that crept up on me), I’m ready to get down below being on the verge of obesity.

Or am I? Apparently, I’m not ready enough.

humor

Quotable: James Fox, 8/17/06

I was going through my purse, throwing out the random scraps of paper I thought would be important someday, when I came across this gem from last year:

“The only time I listen to my gut is when I’m hungry.”

James, you just said a cotton-pickin’ mouthful.

ruminations 9 Comments

Self-Confidence and Job-Hunting

I realize that potential employers may Google me to learn more about me and my background. Despite this, I’m going to post what’s on my mind, rather than putting a front forward about how confident I feel about my job search.

I’m pretty proud of myself, sure. I joined one other co-worker to create a relational Access database that currently has over 150,000 records in its main table, with 20 users, and has only completely crashed and burned once in a year and a half of operation. I’ve recently redesigned two websites from the ground up (buzzword: full development lifecycle) using PHP and a custom database backend for content management.

But am I confident about my skills? That’s a deeper question…
Continue reading →

health & fitness

What Goes Around

Early this week, I got whatever bug Aaron got last week. Throat is sore, stomach is unsettled, eyes are dry, sinuses are draining. Backwards. I’m tired and lethargic, but my brain knows there are SO many things I should be doing. Mainly revolving around my job hunt. Personal marketing plan, portfolio tweaks, posting to more job sites, that sort of thing.

There’s also other stuff cropping up that I should be dealing with, non-job-related… but I’m really seriously drained. Anything that’s not super urgent is just going to have to wait while I sit out my cold.