"Depressed"

Well maybe that's over-exaggerating a little. I don't know that I'm really that depressed. My ego isn't exactly in a state I would describe as healthy but I don't think I'm that depressed.

I found out that I did not get the job I interviewed for yesterday. I was actually feeling a little confident, I had some feeling of a glimmer of hope on some level. A hope that maybe this long, long trek of unemployment and indistinguishable day after day would soon be coming to an end. And wham I'm cut back down to size quite efficiently, aren't I?

But on the some-what better level I am receiving a quite regular flow of calls and emails from staffing services about open positions. In fact today I had a meeting scheduled for 10am with a staffing service. Unfortunately I never looked closely at my dry-erase board nor did I switch the TV to computer monitor mode in time so I just forgot to go. The poor recruiter just calls me and says "we're supposed to be meeting right now". I then remember I had the stupid meeting and apologize profusely for forgetting. We re-scheduled for 2:00pm instead.

I thought it was a mostly  good meeting but then I thought my interview went "mostly good" as well.

Actually on the interview I thought my hands-on was about the best part of the whole thing for me and the feedback the recruiter got was that I was too slow. Had I realized I was supposed to be fast rather than thurough I would have finished in five seconds instead of being methodical like I was. But the guy didn't see do it as fast as possible he just said to troubleshoot it and walk him through my logic so that is what I did. I wish these people would just make up their minds on the stupid rules and stick to them.

I think I actually do know what I did wrong though. I asked this one question, I knew it was a stupid question even as I asked it, and I just get this feeling that question just lost me the job, didn't it? and now I think that was probably the correct assessment.

As usual I also did not get enough sleep. I always have trouble sleeping the night before an interview for whatever reason. I don't know what the deal is with that. Even writing some stuff out in the blog didn't really help.

I was also a little less than fully prepared. I didn't go and look up vPRO and AMT or North/South bridge to make myself intimately aware of the whole history and all the functionality and what each part does. Which I obviously should have done. More than obviously.

So any combination of those things is what really cost me the job. The comment about being too slow on the hands-on portion though really still bothers me. I mean what the fuck. Isn't thoroughness important? I mean if you wanted me to go as fast as possible why not just say that. Seriously. What...the...fuck..

Ok, fine, whatever. Lets move on to something slightly more light-hearted: namely that I just bought two new books after that 2:00 meeting. I don't even think I should have bought one but I bought two. This was because they both discuss more or less the same thing but in varying degrees of detail. Namely the "document object model" as it related directly to manipulating XML documents.

The one book discusses the DOM in great detail and in a very well written way. But doesn't really go into XML specifically. The other touches on the DOM relatively lightly but goes into using the DOM to manipulate XML documents quite extensively. I really really wish I could have one book that covered both of these subjects with the detail of the respective books. Since that wasn't an option I just bought both books. Probably not necessary but i think I they will come in handy at some point in the future. At least I hope so considering the money I spent on the respective books. I mean I have to utlize them now. Jeeze they were expensive.

I also for some reason took my car in to the place that both sold me my tires and usually changes my oil on account of I lost the sticker that tells me when my next oil change is due as well as my two front tires seemed to be going flat rather quickly.

So the guy tells me I've got another 1,000 miles left before I need a change and then he checks the tires. Then, 45 minutes later, he finally mentions the chrome on my wheels is digging into my tires (something like that) and causing them to leak. He showed me how the damaged wheel and how the chrome was flaking (or whatever).

So then I had to order four new wheels, which along with labor was like $730. So great, on top of that giant cost of my new PC I now have this. I also put this on my credit card.

Actually I left mid-way through this entry well partially to make dinner and partially because I got a call from a lady who was possibly in India about another job. She wanted me to make some modifications to my resume as well as get something fax to her. I guess it seemed out of the realm of possibility that I wouldn't have a fax on account of no land line. And no scanner either. So I drove around a few places trying to find a fax machine I could use but everybody was either closed or didn't have a fax any longer or whatever. And for some reason the same job came in within minutes of each other from two different people at the same staffing place. You'd think they'd have some kind of system to prevent that kind of doubling-up on solicitations. But I guess not.

Well I'm sure there was something else I was going to write about but I think I'm tried of this blog so I'm moving on to my next thing for tonight.