Wednesday, October 17, 2007

What about radio ad sales?

That's the latest lead on a job that I have - though the informer told me it's a hard hustle trying to find merchants who can pay the exorbitant prices for advertising on the radio. I am not looking forward to hustling, but I've got reality checks all over the place that remind me I need an income to live.

My company is folding up their business here in the south. Michael and I are both soon to be hitting the pavement looking for work. Settlement has been hard to find for us. The competitor is probably going to offer us positions, but we hear they are harder to work for, and pay less. It is labor intensive work - but to go down in pay for it - I can't/won't do it. The mate will, though. They should be calling him soon.

Michael just bought a new car last week. His truck had been killing on him while he was driving. Plus, he had to open the hood and manually start it almost every time. I never liked it because the floor board had a hump which elevated my left leg. It was time to replace it. We thought our company signed a contract and would be still here for a year, but the big bosses said, "never mind." I really don't blame them. It's just a funky situation.

Once again, I shall have to be Jupiter's girl and keep the faith that it is all in divine order. The one thing about this job is that it kept me fit. I am strong and healthy. I will count my blessings.

Peace.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Winners and Losers



Julia's volleyball team, which I am assistant coach of, has lost every game - 10 in all. They have won 6 or 7 matches (there's 3 per game - winning two wins the game), and came close more times than I can count - where it was down to getting a second point ahead to win and the games went into overtime as the two teams battled to get that edge. They were all very close. Our girls played their hearts out and did well.

I felt a little sorry for the one girl on our team who was the top player in the whole league. She was the first one I picked in the drafts. She so confidently played and did the most difficult maneuvers and made them look like it was easy for her. She was also very encouraging and generous with team mates. I love her attitude.

I am not going to coach again. I don't know how to tell players how to fix what they are doing wrong. I was asked to be the assistant by Julia's friend's Mom who needed a backup when the office called the day before drafts and asked if she'd coach. Neither one of us had experience.

We were up against some very experienced coaches - one of whom yells. I think he is a good coach because he teaches the girls how to play. Julia thinks he has anger management issues and she wants me to tell him not to pick her next drafts. I've asked him to. I understand why he yells at the girls. I want to yell too. Instead, I tell them to "shake it off" when they make a mistake.

I know it isn't supposed to be about winning, but how you play, but still... I wonder why we never won a game.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Changes in and around

I felt like having a new template for this blog. It forewarned me that I'd lose stuff in the process. I'll have to put in some sidebar comments when I get the chance. And now, for the links...

I have a hard enough time with coding. I can't believe that I ever entertained thoughts of becoming a computer programmer. I have a certificate from an 18 month program at a vo-tech training school sending me in that direction. I did flow charts, and wrote code in BASIC, RPGII, and Cobol.

With vo-tech diploma in hand, I got a job in the N.O. CBD - operating a WANG mainframe. The CPU, and reel-to-reel tape drives had a big room of their own. I was responsible for giving people logons and simple putting out the small fire programming tasks. It's all I could handle of programming. My boss expected more, and had to settle for less.

Other details of my operations job (a one person operation), printing and distributing copious amounts of reports, keeping track of data as it cycled through three different offsite storage facilities (in case of disaster striking any area, backups were spread out), and retrieving data for lading it back onto the system for programmers and end-users of the large insurance corporation I worked for.

It was a little reminiscent of "Office"; cubicle city. Depending on your job title and importance in the hierarchy, the height of your cubicle and the view you had was a reward - window views were the most sought after.

I did backups daily, and took care of the mainframe which was always acting up. I had to very frequently have the technicians out, or work on it myself in tandem with remote WANG fixers in another state.

If that wasn't enough technical responsibility for an actress/astrologer type, I was also in charge of maintaining and fixing peripherals; 3 different types of printers. I was capable.

I am far away from that field, and in the land of groceries now. Oy.

I have had some very different jobs, but I still marvel that I ever was in the computer industry. That is so NOT me. At least, it's not the me I am now. I am Jupiter's Girl. Forget details. Let the Virgo/Geminis handle the details and be perfect about it. What's the bigger picture?