Work work.

It's been a while since I updated, huh? My bad. Seems once or twice a month is all I can manage. At least my constant griping about unemployment will be coming to an end. I have a job.

Early last month I broke down and got a car. The next day I drove up to Princeton and put in an application to Barnes and Noble (something like my fifth), and the day after I was in for an interview. I was hired along with a small army of seasonal temps, but put my best foot forward and made gentle reminders to my managers that I was looking for a permanent position, and so now I'm full time part-time. About 25 hours a week. Not enough to move out of home with, really, but enough to whittle away the debt and keep me from being a total leech on my family. And, most importantly, I'm finally getting book selling experience and a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

The commute is 30 minutes, so either I develop a tolerance for the radio or get a mp3 adapter for the car asap.

In a bout of ambition, I also wrote a list of 'resolutions', which looks almost exactly like the sorts of resolutions I always write at various times throughout the year when I suddenly have an urge to get off my but and do something. A book a week, 100 words a day, 3 meals a day (which is now a lot easier, what with having a schedule and all), draw once a month (I guess I haven't failed that one yet. Soon) Etc...

The book a week is going to be a minor challenge because I'm stuck in the middle of Les Mis, which is not the sort of thing to be consumed in a week. I figure it will take the rest of the month to finish. As far as writing is concerned, I figured 100 words is small enough to not feel daunting, but may spur me into more writing. However, this is the most I've written since the new year, and as of this sentence I'm at over 300... I guess I'll refine it all as the year goes on. No reason to give up in January.

Cool Links

Hitting gear cap in WoW has been a good thing. Suddenly I'm spending time doing something else, like trolling the internet.

Some cool stuff:

http://birdbook.org/
The site is awful but the birds are amazing.

http://v1kram.posterous.com/liu-bolinthe-invisible-man
Illusionist+Artist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY3wmWT-sb8&feature=related
Lipizzaner Stallions. We went to see them a few weekends back.

On the job front I FINALLY got a call back from Barnes and Noble. The position is seasonal so there's a chance I'll be done with it by January, but I can use the money, and an excuse to get out of the house.

NaNo was a bit of a bust, but not entirely. I neglected it for the entire month of November, and on the 30th decided to make a go for it. I ended at 18k words, not nearly enough for me to win, but impressive considering that they were all written in about two days. The story itself started picking up too, so I may actually have something.

I can't run a business because subtraction gives me hives.

Last Sunday I finally managed to drag myself out of bed and scrounge the area garage sales for books. I figured while I was looking for a job I might as well occupy myself by seeing if reselling for fun and profit is a possibility. So far it's been fun (found a number of fantasy titles, including some obscure Tolkien paperbacks) but there's no telling whether or not it will be profitable. Thanks to the internet I have a better chance of selling, but no thanks to the internet everything is cheaper now that it is all more available.

None the less I received my first order via Amazon for a near new copy of Green Eggs and Ham, have packed it up, and am all set to ship it tomorrow. I bought the book for 75c, charged one dollar (There were 50 some listings for the same book, the uncontested mean of which was 1 buck) and am hoping that Amazon's packing credit will help me break even. In other words I don't think I'm making any money out of this book at all. But I'm not surprised. I figure I'll test the waters, get a feel for what moves and what doesn't, and if I think I can make a profit of any sort out of it I'll keep going. The used book business is a business of high volume and spotty return if my research is correct, so having only 5 or 6 titles available means that the likeliness of my seeing any real activity is very low indeed. I could buy up the tons of romance crap that seems to litter flea markets, but I don't know the market, don't care to, and have a feeling that most of those books are worthless simply due to the fact that they have over saturated the market.

Ideally I'd like to work at (or own!) a store something like Between Books in Delaware, where there is a focus on Fantasy and Sci-Fi titles. That is, if I end up in the bulk used book business and not in antiquarian books or archival etc...

And while all this is going on I'm still waiting to hear back from the office job, and still hemming and hawing about whether or not I want to forgo a very good salary and a decent position to pursue a much less lucrative but much more fun profession... or just go to graduate school.

Decisions decisions.

@#%@$!@$

Turns out the graduate open house I had signed up for was yesterday and not tomorrow as I had thought.

Fuck.

Whatever. I think I am going to just go for the graduate degree. I had an interview for one job that paid a decent salary but it's office work turning over applications for ESL students and I'd be a dick if I took a job that required training and left six months later to go to school.

So I guess it's time to take the GRE and send in some applications.

Of course I don't know if I'd get in to the schools I'd apply to either so this may just be a huge effort for no return.

Basically what I'm saying is that I'm ROYALLY PISSED at missing that open house, particularly since I've been thinking about it since the month started, and I am currently in 'oh god I'm so worthless I have no redeeming qualities and will live the rest of my life on minimum wage and in complete defeat' mode.

I'm also doing horribly at NaNo.

I need a tub of ice cream.

Moving

Today so far has been a productive day. I woke up around 8, had my clothes hemmed for the big interview tomorrow, tore up a ton of paper that's been piling up for months, and now am going to make yet another attempt at cleaning my room. For motivation I'm taking a picture of it every half hour to see if there are any changes.

I think the only reason I'm being productive is because I'm avoiding my Nano, but I figure I'll run with it.

Here's a before picture, let's see if there's any difference in a few hours.

Movement

Things are looking up for me, maybe.

I was offered a job in Arkansas, but because it was minimum wage and in Arkansas I decided to decline. I'm in the process of being screened for the exact same job an hours drive away but don't know if I'm going to accept that one either. Location is pretty big for me.

I have an interview with another company, one that might pay me like I have a BA, this Monday. The only problem with that one is that they want a fluent Japanese speaker and I have not been a fluent Japanese speaker for almost three years now. I've been hitting the books to keep from making a total fool of myself.

This morning I finally got off my ass and trolled around the various garage sales in the area looking for resellable books. The idea is that I might be able to make a small bit of income from dealing in used book of a focused genre, most probably fantasy/sci-fi and travel/language books. I spent the better half of today figuring out Amazon and eBay, and if this first haul turns a profit, I may serious consider devoting my time to acquiring stock and setting up an online store.

My Nano is lagging, but it has started, and I plan on finishing.

Since coming back from Florida I has spent a minimum of time on WoW, and am hoping for that trend to continue. I think I'm comfortably at a point now where I can do a few dailies, raid, vend, and log out without hours and hours of badge farming or whatever. That means more time to reaquaint myself with coding, writing, etc. Good deal.

I am struggling through Frank Norris' The Octopus. Damn thing is so wordy. And I have 3 or 4 books that I still need to review and note as finished. 52 books this year is probably impossible now. I'm at something like 20.

Guess what this post is about!

Employment!

For the last week I've sent in one submission a day. Hell I don't even remember where I submitted the last few days. Barnes and Noble (I ALWAYS write it Nobel), The Strand, Labyrinth Books, Oxford University Press, etc. The over/under qualified issue is still a big one. I either have to be a student or I have to have 4 years experience. Someone should have told me I'd need to be working full time as a student to get a job I was qualified for once I graduated. But whatever, I'm just going to keep applying. I cleaned my room a little more and am starting to consider selling off my high school manga. The ones I really liked I can keep, but for a spell there I was buying every title on the shelves. It got me a place as a columnest and bagged me preview swag, but not it's all taking up space and will never be reread. I figure I can try out the online book selling circut with my overstock (which, true to its name, is overflowing in this house)

So today I was doing my usual trolling for jobs and checked the Seattle Library system and suddenly there's a job availiable that pays 16-22hr and only requires a GED or higher. There were only two problems, it was a technical position that wanted previous experience troubleshooting electronics, which I only had informally, and the deadline for applications was in three hours.

So it turned out I was underqualified again, but this time in a different area, but with only three hours to decide if I was going to apply anyway I applied anyway.

There's really nothing hard about troubleshooting networks, and almost all of the hard crap about it has to do with the fact that computers are like babies, and the hard part about fixing them is figuring out what's wrong with them in the first place. I don't have formal experience with teaching people how to use computers, but I have a ton of informal experience? Doesn't that count for something?

I suppose I'll find out if it does in a few weeks. If I do get the job I'm moving to seattle and applying to to the MLIS program there. If I don't I just keep sending out my resume.