Wanderings

Anything you dream is fiction,
and anything you accomplish is science,
the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction.
- Ray Bradbury
February 22nd, 2007

I need a Vacation

I occasionally dip my left big toe in the job pool to test the water. I have resumes at Monster and a few other job sites. I make a separate email address for each one so I can track where my job offers come from. In the last few months, I have been receiving spam and Nigerian scams at the Careerbuilder.com email. They have sold (or someone has sold) my personal data and I am receiving these bogus work-at-home offers where I am asked to give up my checking account number. They know my name and address.

I also get calls at my home number from very aggressive recruiters, who want me to relocate or work for peanuts. These come from CareerBuilder, as well.

I killed my CareerBuilder account, but the damage is done. Careerbuilder seems to be casual about who gets my information.

If you want to find a job, use InDeed.com. This is an aggregater, that goes out to several job sites and scrapes off the data. I specify jobs within 20 miles of my home and I get dozens of good job listings when I check it. The other places to check are Craigslist.org and http://www.usajobs.opm.gov (this is where I apply for NASA jobs – not even a nibble so far).

By the way, yesterday I got a nibble on my left big toe. I dreamt all night about a job where I could actually take a paid vacation again. It’s a long shot, though. I am not a good match and the tech interview was about .NET, which is not my area of expertise. I tried to convey that I am a decent programmer, no matter what the language, but I am not sure that I came across as competent for the job. Still, I wasn’t entirely bummed by the interview and I have some slim hope. Perhaps in a year, I can take a week or two off with pay – what a concept. I haven’t had a vacation (other than down time between gigs) since 1999.