A rhetorical question:
okay, let's say I have an amazon gift card at home, and an amazon order ready to go at the moment. Do I a) wait until home to add the card and submit the order or b) admit that my spending pattern suggests I will order from amazon again in the near future and just pay for the damn things myself and save the card for later?

Yeah, I went with option B. Three more CDs (Nada Surf, Jack Johnson, and Dan Wilson), and Hot Shots Part 1 and 2. (I nearly caved and bought the Naked Gun threepack as well, but managed to resist so far.).

---

I would like a Ravelry for needlework. Someone needs to hop to it, or I'll have to do it myself. (seriously, I WANT.)

---

There is various possibly good stuff happening jobwise--mostly just interviews and phone interviews. But still, more than I've had in a while.

Tags: happiness is a new cd, job hunt
Current Music: Nada Surf - See These Bones

Phone pre-interview went well enough, though it's always impossible to tell with these things. Also, I would like to express my extreme dislike of these things. I hate job hunting enough, but now we're talking a screening phone call, and then a hiring manager phone call, and then maybe an interview with the group I'd be working with, and then even more waiting. HATE.

So, I shall find 3-5 more jobs to apply for, and then either nap or eat dinner.

Also, I still love this song.

Tags: job hunt
Current Music: The Main Drag - Love During Wartime

you'd think that on the submissions page, where they list the times till you can expect a response, they could say, "Oh, by the way, when you query because it's been more than X months, use this address, not the submission one." Just a little bitter here. Particularly since the answer to the query was eventually "we don't seem to have it, resend and we'll get to it in the next two months."

On the plus side, I have Fantasy Moneys! I mean, real moneys, but from Fantasy! Now. What to do with them. If I had a place to stay at wiscon, I could buy a membership...

Also, today I got three recruiter emails from Monster, including one for the same job I have now. (I thought it sounded similar, so I did a quick check on a key phrase and pulled up another posting here.) I also got a second email for phone pre-interview sort of thing with a job I'd applied for a couple of days ago, so I sent them back possible times. So, we'll see.

Tags: job hunt, writing

This one:

• breaking things (ie, QA, but usually of programs/software applications)
• troubleshooting problems/broken things
• Problem solving
• working with the software developers
• facilitating meetings (particularly tech/non tech meetings where 'translation' is needed.)
• my coworkers
• learning new skills (XML, project management, people management.)
• having multiple sorts of tasks--ie, not always the same thing all day, every day.
• web fixes--not building the whole site, but I like knowing I can fix most bugs easily.
• managing projects, which here ends up including a lot of the above things
• writing up documentation for processes and programs.

The last one (ESSI):

• Layout
• Copy editing
• proofreading/final check QA
• variety
• knowing how the office worked (a very nice side effect of 9 months as an admin assistant.)
• working with *smart* people. Oddly enough, not so noticable here.

Things I'm good at, even when I don't love doing them:

• remembering details
• managing others
• teaching others
• running meetings effectively
• interacting with clients (I do lean towards the 'less formal' side of interactions, but I've never been complained about, and both here and at ESSI the clients (editorial here, NCES at ESSI) have loved me.)

Things I've hated about my jobs:

• not being trained for very important new tasks
• not having my salary follow my change in roles
• watching my coworkers leave because of the way they were treated.
• not feeling like there's a corporate safety net? The idea that the company wants you to do well and get better and stay with the company--ESSI had this very much, HM is not so good at that, at least in this group.
• having to lie/mislead (mostly when I was admin assistant and had to tell people my boss was unavailable, but my boss now dislikes my levels of honesty with our 'client')

I'm posting this now, but probably coming back to it in the future. I'm hoping to find a pattern, and maybe an idea what I should be looking for as a job, if I write enough things down. (Feel free to suggest additional skills or job ideas if any occur to you.)

Tags: job hunt
Current Music: Doveman - Chasing Clouds