I'm looking under rocks now

This job search process is an exercise in futility at this point. If I wasn't depressed most of the time anyway, I'd be looking for high ledges with no guardrails about now. The cool thing about depression is, the longer you live with it (and I'm going on 21 years, so I know what I'm talking about), the better you learn to not only tolerate it, but actually make it work for you. Of course, that's on the good days, when things are going well. Not days like these.
When you're an atheist dealing with depression, every day can either be another pain in the butt to be dealt with as quickly and easily as possible, or a day when maybe, just maybe, the pieces will finally fall into place and the anxiety will disappear. No big-guy-in-the-sky is going to come down and make it all better. No motivation out of fear of eternal damnation...I'm getting a pretty good dose of that here. No reason to comb the yard for a four-leaf clover. Just me and the abilities that life has given me to face the big ugly monster of reality.
And the reality is, I need to find a job or in a very few months I'll be out there in your town with my laptop under my arm, Bob the cat trailing along behind...looking for an unoccupied freeway overpass.

Evil software

I've just spent nearly twelve hours spread over two days trying to get an AOL-DSL system back on its feet and Norton Internet Security 2004 loaded on the same system. I don't really know which is worse, AOL or Norton, but they both have top slots on my to-be-avoided-at-all-costs list.
At the beginning, the computer, running 98SE, had 126 viruses and 3 trojans to be dealt with. Protection amounted to a copy of Norton AV 2001whose latest virus definition was from February of this year. OK, only about two hours to get the AV updated and the viruses wiped out. The trojans took another hour or so. Meanwhile, the owner of this electronic waste dump had wandered off to attend to other matters, as unconcerned about what it was taking to repair all this damage as he was when doing the damage in the first place. Alone now, I decided to delete a few programs and see if I could somehow reclaim a bit more than the current 20% free disk space. I also deleted the outdated Norton. Cool, I'm up to 30% free space, run a quick defrag and I'm ready to install the new Norton. 45 minutes later and I'm still looking at only 40% defragmented. The sun is setting, the day is disappearing, my life is wasting away.
To hell with it. Cancel the defrag and start the Norton install. After the first install, I couldn't get online, all the desktop icons were dead and the system froze. All right, delete and reinstall. I have a rule of threes...installs and rebuilds will only work right after the 3rd attempt. Sure enough, the second install doesn't "take" either. Third install, nothing. Fourth, fifth and sixth the same. Screw this, it's staying uninstalled and I warn him not to go online until I figure this out.
Today I actually got Norton to install on the first attempt (of the day, anyway). Finally, AV is all in place and AOL actually goes online. I hate Norton. I hate AOL.

For all this I didn't get thanked or paid, but I did get to listen to the owner bitch about how frustrating all this was for him. (?)

Oh, did I mention this guy is family?

New friends

The other night the WebSanDiego bloggers had a meetup, and for the first time since becoming aware of the group, I was able to attend. Only 6 people showed up and we had a good time sharing our URLs with one another and discussing blogging in general. Perhaps the best part of the evening was making a new friend. Ali just moved here from Toronto, and originally hails from Persia. Ali is a very interesting man, with a great many interests and a profound knowledge of his home country's political and social issues. Talking to him for an hour or two was very enjoyable. I hope he can come to future meetings and I can learn more from him. If you read Persian, be sure to go by his blog and check it out. Even if you can't, you may enjoy the beauty of the Persian language as it's presented on his site.

Back in that sad hole, again

My apologies to Gene Autry and Ray Whitley.
So tomorrow is the last day of class. Set up Windows Server 2000 and a local network, a final exam...then it's all over, fini, done. Friday becomes another weekend day, then Monday I return to my latest occupation, professional resume submitter. At some point this weekend I'd like to get my resume posted to my website (www.jeber.net) so all you kind folk who are good enough to come by for a laugh or two can tell all your friends about my numerous talents and abilities and help me find gainful employment in this new arena I'm trying to enter, PC help desk or an entry level IT department. After years of management in the music, and before that, grocery industry...I'm eager to turn my passion for computers and the internet into a career. It's not an easy transition for me to make. I don't make a habit of jumping from job to job. My last two jobs lasted 8 and 13 years. so this is the first time in 9 years I've gone searching, and only the second time in 21 years. Obviously, I want to find the right job right away. Yet I know that in reality that's not likely to happen. As a former manager, I have a bit better idea of how companies function, and what elements of a job are the most important than many applicants. That might come in handy during future interviews. Humility aside, I really am a hard working, dedicated employee. And my time with both the forums I moderate and administer will give me an advantage when it comes to knowing what to expect from a customer service environment.
One way or the other, come Monday, I'll begin to get an idea of how well my hopes will be met. Wish me and all my fellow graduates good luck, won't you? 8-)

New Blogging tools and IM

Blogger is getting pretty fancy for a free publishing site. I have to give them a lot of credit for not restricting the new features to premium members only. Now you can write in bold letters, italics, color, add links within the body of your blog, adjust the layout, add bullets and blockquotes...just like a real word processor. They even offer a "remove formatting" tool. I'm truly impressed. Let's see if MT follows their lead.

It's too bad I don't have a lot to say tonight that would give me the chance to use all those goodies. But it's late and I'm pooped. We've been enjoying (?) a mini-heatwave here in Southern California, and there's nothing like moist heat to sap the energy right out of you.

One app I've been having fun with again the last couple of nights is instant messenging. I deleted every IM app from my computer over a year ago because that obnoxious little window would pop, up with a pointless conversation from someone I didn't really want to talk to anyway, at the most inconvenient times. It became such a distraction, I just eliminated the thing. Then recently, I began meeting people I really wanted to keep in touch with, and the easiest way turned out to be IM. But this time around I'm being more selective as to who can reach me. And another difference is that now I have Gaim, a great open source, cross-platform app. Last night I was chatting in real time with England on one tab, Illinois on another, and a friend about 8 blocks from here on a third. Tonight it was California, Illinois and Virginia. Ten years ago this either wouldn't have been possible, or would have racked up huge long distance bills. I've been rereading "Small Pieces Loosely Joined" by David Weinberger (highly recommended), and agree with him that at the core of the web is the hyperlink. But another worthy use is IM, if done politely and with content. This truly is a wired world, and communication has taken on a whole new meaning and dynamic. And I embrace it all.

Back to blogging

In my other blog today I quoted Kevin Marks' comments on what makes for an interesting blog, and as an editor at Technorati he should know. I also confessed that this blog doesn't meet the criteria of what even I would consider a worthwhile blog. Yet I persist in adding content to it, while refraining from recommending it as reading to anyone but my friends and family...and not even all of them.

At heart I am a writer. In high school I managed, until caught, to publish the first, and as far as I know only, underground newspaper ever distributed on that campus. I mimeographed copies of it in the teacher's lounge during lunch, passing them out freely the next day. In college I wrote both poetry and television screenplays. I'm the kind of guy who writes letters to the editors of local papers and gets them published. It's in my blood. The only thing I haven't tried is writing my elected representatives or the president. I like to know my writing, however poorly executed, will at least be seen. Writing to "The Hill" is an exercise in futility. I really don't need a machine-signed form-letter reply from the pres to hang on my wall, knowing damn well he never came within a mile of the computer screen my missive appeared on for its 5 seconds of life.

So I'll keep adding the occasional entry here, detailing my feelings about the oddities of life as I encounter them.

Obliged to blog?

Today at school we had one of those days that left me not even really wanting to get online once I got home. We were installing Windows NT then finding and downloading service packs and drivers then fdisking the rest of the drive in order to dual boot it with XP. NT was never the easiest OS to install, and today, with 12 other people all trying to accomplish the task with various degrees of success and frustration...just burned me out on anything to do with computers, at least for the day.
Yet, like a junkie, as soon as I had something to eat and a cup of coffee beside me, I couldn't resist the urge to log in and see what was happening. I found out...not much. So now I don't feel as bad as I type this out and prepare to power down and go read a book.
Ireally enjoy computing. I really enjoy Linux. But not every day. Not today.

My aim for this blog

My intention from this point on is to make this blog my more personal blog, while my other blog (http://jeberjabber.typepad.com) will be more geared toward comments on the news, ravings, and general jabberings. If by some chance I end up suffering from multiple personality disorder, I'll add more blogs as necessary.

Lack of Affection

One of those realizations that came to me only after getting a bit older is that I had a lot of misconceptions as a younger man. Among them was the notion that I just couldn't survive without sex. (Don't panic, I'm not going into details here.) When I was in my 20's, I couldn't imagine going for more than a week without having sex. I was sure I would never be able to live without it. Boy, was I wrong. And in being wrong, I learned a valuable lesson. It's not the sex you miss, it's the affection. Affection is an often ignored but vital part of our lives. While having a partner is perhaps the best source of affection, you can give and receive affection from almost everything around you. It's a state of mind that produces an emotion. An affectionate state of mind is one that appreciates the love and joy in life. It produces gentleness, kindness, peace of mind and caring. Not being affectionate makes a person mean, unhappy and unpleasant to be around. You can give affection to and receive affection from other people, animals, books, music, your job (believe it or not), a multitude of situations in your daily life.
So while I might be missing the sex I enjoyed as a youngster, I make sure that affection is present in every moment of my life. I was wrong about not being able to survive without sex, but I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy life half as much as I do without affection. It's something I don't want to do without.

Crises? What crises?

Even though I present this blog as thoughts on a cyber and real world mid-life crises, having reached the unplanned for age of 50 on my last birthday...it's even more the results of a life in turmoil. For the last 21 years, I've had two jobs (13 then 8 years) and lived in two places (Burley, ID and San Diego, CA). Now, for the first time in 21 years, I'm unemployed with no immediate prospects of another job in a city that's far too expensive to consider staying in unless something stable and well-paying comes along soon. A lot of the decisions I face these days are those I wouldn't be worrying about were I still employed. So it's less my age and more my economic situation that's causing me so much grief these days.

Add to that the fact I haven't been on a date, let alone enjoyed a solid relationship, in over 20 years, and you can understand why I keep my hair so short. I'd have pulled it all out by now otherwise. I used to say I was alone but not lonely. Well, screw that...now I'm lonely. Unfortunately, at the present time, I have little beyond my charming personality and my talent for imitating cartoon voices to recommend me. Oh well...life's been worse, and I'm sure it will be better. I just have to muddle through the present with high hopes for the future.