Things are going fairly well. The trip down to Florida was long due to traffic but otherwise went fairly well. My contract has also been extended until Jan 29th, which is a good thing. The dog seems to be enjoying himself. Joyce cooked a remarkably excellent Thanksgiving dinner. The bird and potatoes were just right. Jennifer seems to be enjoying herself immensely.
Looks to be a nice and relaxing vacation, which will engender no complaints from me. :) Last weekend was also moderately uneventful, though I did go to Augusta with Mom and Grandma to help clear Grandma's house. It will take some time but we made a dent in it.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Update
So its been an interesting two weeks. I think the first thing that bears mentioning is that I was on television yesterday. That is not entirely correct. I was taped for television yesterday and it will appear next week. It was on a local cable access show at Clarke University for a show they have called ‘Reel Cinema’. I was invited by J. Weilin (creator of the Sentinel Chronicles) to answer a few questions as Sr. Writer. It is rather fun. I gave him a ride home and we discussed how to flesh out some of the ideas and back story in his universe. Madeline (who was in my short film “Other People’s Musicals”) and Sophia (who is Madeline’s friend and an actor in the SC) were there as well. If I can find the thing broadcast on the internet, I’ll send the link.
The good news is that my current contract has been extended, though only to December 4th. The better news is that I’m getting calls from recruiters at a time of year when I normally never get calls. Now, I’m not entirely sure if it is because I’m getting better at searching, I’m attracting more attention because I’ve got more credentials, or simply because the environment is better. To be honest, what I think it really is is that most companies saw the hand writing on the wall at the beginning of the year and have been in deep storage (“siege”) mode during 2009, and have thus put off ‘optional’ things like Technical Writing and now the work has piled up. The truth is, about half of the jobs in my career have resulted from people piling up the tech writing in the ‘wait’ category until its coming out their ears. It quite often makes a lot more sense in the long run to simply keep one either on contract (as needed) or on staff full time.
However, I am still trying to get out of tech writing and into project management. The good news is that I’ve had recruiters approach me, but the bad news is that most of the things they’re approaching me for require experience. To get the PMP they want 3 years of experience in a project based environment. Yeah, I have one, while I was at Openspan. The others might have used projects but I wasn’t involved in them. So right now I’m drawing up the blue prints for around five projects helping others that at the same time will help myself. Four of them could theoretically earn money and one of them will be for charity. I’ll include more details as they come up. I’m almost tempted to start writing a Project Management blog on linked in, or to continue that “Pulling Teeth Electronically” blog I had to do for my ecommerce class, but …well…here is my list of current blogs and you tell me if that is a wise idea.
This blog (Weekly)
My live journal (As I feel the need to rant)
My Obama blog. (As I feel the need to rant about the media)
My Dailykos blog (As I feel the need to rant about specific things in a targeted way)
Let Me Tell you about my Character (For roleplaying game summaries and the like, about every two weeks)
Tossing Grenades at Windmills (my writing blog)
Memes of my Father (my strange/quirky things blog or where I put memetic answers)
I have an Opinion About Almost Everything (my review blog)
State of the Anvil (The Red Anvil Productions blog, as needed plus the monthly podcast plus updating the website)
So that is…9. Yeah, as tempting as it is to make an even 10, I think I’ll pass. Plus I should have something to write about in this. I mean, I put links to reviews I write, but I don’t put political stuff, roleplaying stuff, reviews, writing updates, product updates or the like here…then again, most of that would probably bore you to tears anyway so its probably just as well that I do so…
Plus one of the ways I get away with juggling so many different things is fooling myself into thinking its not really that much…breaking it into small chunks which I do here.
We celebrated Grandma’s birthday last night. Mom, Skip, myself, Jennifer, Grandma and Mom’s friend Daniel were there. We watched Up. Did I mention that it is an awesome movie? Jennifer and I gave Grandama a copy of Redwall (which is about a talking Mouse) which I am quite sure she’ll love.
This past weekend, Jennifer and I went out to eat a rather nice Persian restaurant. The food was fairly cheap. It had to be since we’re watching what we spend. Many of our gifts will be hand crafted this year (though not all of them of course). But I’ve discovered that I LIKE Persian Food and Thai food as much as I like Mexican and Italian. To be honest, most far Asian stuff or Mediteraian just doesn’t do it for me. Its not that I dislike it, its just that I have to carefully navigate to find what I like. Not so with Thai or Persian. I have to go out of my way to find something I don’t.
The good news is that my current contract has been extended, though only to December 4th. The better news is that I’m getting calls from recruiters at a time of year when I normally never get calls. Now, I’m not entirely sure if it is because I’m getting better at searching, I’m attracting more attention because I’ve got more credentials, or simply because the environment is better. To be honest, what I think it really is is that most companies saw the hand writing on the wall at the beginning of the year and have been in deep storage (“siege”) mode during 2009, and have thus put off ‘optional’ things like Technical Writing and now the work has piled up. The truth is, about half of the jobs in my career have resulted from people piling up the tech writing in the ‘wait’ category until its coming out their ears. It quite often makes a lot more sense in the long run to simply keep one either on contract (as needed) or on staff full time.
However, I am still trying to get out of tech writing and into project management. The good news is that I’ve had recruiters approach me, but the bad news is that most of the things they’re approaching me for require experience. To get the PMP they want 3 years of experience in a project based environment. Yeah, I have one, while I was at Openspan. The others might have used projects but I wasn’t involved in them. So right now I’m drawing up the blue prints for around five projects helping others that at the same time will help myself. Four of them could theoretically earn money and one of them will be for charity. I’ll include more details as they come up. I’m almost tempted to start writing a Project Management blog on linked in, or to continue that “Pulling Teeth Electronically” blog I had to do for my ecommerce class, but …well…here is my list of current blogs and you tell me if that is a wise idea.
This blog (Weekly)
My live journal (As I feel the need to rant)
My Obama blog. (As I feel the need to rant about the media)
My Dailykos blog (As I feel the need to rant about specific things in a targeted way)
Let Me Tell you about my Character (For roleplaying game summaries and the like, about every two weeks)
Tossing Grenades at Windmills (my writing blog)
Memes of my Father (my strange/quirky things blog or where I put memetic answers)
I have an Opinion About Almost Everything (my review blog)
State of the Anvil (The Red Anvil Productions blog, as needed plus the monthly podcast plus updating the website)
So that is…9. Yeah, as tempting as it is to make an even 10, I think I’ll pass. Plus I should have something to write about in this. I mean, I put links to reviews I write, but I don’t put political stuff, roleplaying stuff, reviews, writing updates, product updates or the like here…then again, most of that would probably bore you to tears anyway so its probably just as well that I do so…
Plus one of the ways I get away with juggling so many different things is fooling myself into thinking its not really that much…breaking it into small chunks which I do here.
We celebrated Grandma’s birthday last night. Mom, Skip, myself, Jennifer, Grandma and Mom’s friend Daniel were there. We watched Up. Did I mention that it is an awesome movie? Jennifer and I gave Grandama a copy of Redwall (which is about a talking Mouse) which I am quite sure she’ll love.
This past weekend, Jennifer and I went out to eat a rather nice Persian restaurant. The food was fairly cheap. It had to be since we’re watching what we spend. Many of our gifts will be hand crafted this year (though not all of them of course). But I’ve discovered that I LIKE Persian Food and Thai food as much as I like Mexican and Italian. To be honest, most far Asian stuff or Mediteraian just doesn’t do it for me. Its not that I dislike it, its just that I have to carefully navigate to find what I like. Not so with Thai or Persian. I have to go out of my way to find something I don’t.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
This week
Well it has been quite a week. I think the most shocking thing was the death of my paternal grandmother. Most of Wednesday was a scramble to find a way to pay for a ticket. Unfortunately, I’m currently in a very short term contract which meant that I had to watch the numbers very carefully. Finally, it became apparent that it just wasn’t going to happy. The even greater irony was that my maternal grandmother was willing to pay for the ticket, but I didn’t find out about that until Thursday, which meant that my ability to make up the lost hours during the week was effectively shot. I was willing to have her pay for the ticket given the circumstances (although reluctantly since having helped Grandma with her house situation I know that wasn’t an easy sacrifice for her to make) but I was not going to have her do that AND pay to make up the hours I would lose if I flew in on Friday.
Which meant that we pretty much kept up plans as usual on Saturday. I mean, on the one hand, it was fun going to two Halloween parties. And they were good parties. On the other hand, it was kind of surreal going and celebrating a relatively minor (and certainly not to me Spiritual (though I know it is to others)) holiday and at the same time my extended family is gathered on the other side of the country mourning and celebrating my grandmother’s life. I tried to do the ‘I’m enjoying life to celebrate her death’ thing but that’s kind of hard since, while Grandma certainly enjoyed her life, she was not exactly what I might call a “Carpe Dium” kind of woman, at least not in her later years where I knew her. They certainly traveled a lot, which was fascinating to hear the anecdotes from.
The most interesting thing to come out of the two parties we did attend was seeing the first episode of the Sentinel Chronicles’s second season. Jay is very talented, as are many of the people that work with him, but you can SEE the differences between Season 1 and Season 2. By Jay’s own admission, he spent over 250 hours in post production. Granted, this was mainly from special effects of things like Shell Casings, but the thing is, that ironically they’re mostly things you take for granted or that slip into the background. Case (no pun intended) in point…the shell casings from the guns? CGI. Also, sometimes the scenes flash by so fast that you don’t realize that one of the two sides fighting are CLONES, which means that he had to literally imprint the same actor three times onto the screen. Then again, the best special effects, particularly CGI effects makes the special effects flow into the background so the story itself can be paramount.
The second party, a white wolf international Camarilla event, had an amazing floor show. It also had an extremely celebratory atmosphere and I admit I did enjoy dancing with Jennifer while we were there. I dressed as a Mad Scientist and Jennifer dressed as Nyx, Greek goddess of the night. I still need to get a picture of her costume on here.
Currently Reading : Conversations with God, The Clocks of Iruz
Currently Watching: Supernatural Season 3
Which meant that we pretty much kept up plans as usual on Saturday. I mean, on the one hand, it was fun going to two Halloween parties. And they were good parties. On the other hand, it was kind of surreal going and celebrating a relatively minor (and certainly not to me Spiritual (though I know it is to others)) holiday and at the same time my extended family is gathered on the other side of the country mourning and celebrating my grandmother’s life. I tried to do the ‘I’m enjoying life to celebrate her death’ thing but that’s kind of hard since, while Grandma certainly enjoyed her life, she was not exactly what I might call a “Carpe Dium” kind of woman, at least not in her later years where I knew her. They certainly traveled a lot, which was fascinating to hear the anecdotes from.
The most interesting thing to come out of the two parties we did attend was seeing the first episode of the Sentinel Chronicles’s second season. Jay is very talented, as are many of the people that work with him, but you can SEE the differences between Season 1 and Season 2. By Jay’s own admission, he spent over 250 hours in post production. Granted, this was mainly from special effects of things like Shell Casings, but the thing is, that ironically they’re mostly things you take for granted or that slip into the background. Case (no pun intended) in point…the shell casings from the guns? CGI. Also, sometimes the scenes flash by so fast that you don’t realize that one of the two sides fighting are CLONES, which means that he had to literally imprint the same actor three times onto the screen. Then again, the best special effects, particularly CGI effects makes the special effects flow into the background so the story itself can be paramount.
The second party, a white wolf international Camarilla event, had an amazing floor show. It also had an extremely celebratory atmosphere and I admit I did enjoy dancing with Jennifer while we were there. I dressed as a Mad Scientist and Jennifer dressed as Nyx, Greek goddess of the night. I still need to get a picture of her costume on here.
Currently Reading : Conversations with God, The Clocks of Iruz
Currently Watching: Supernatural Season 3
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