My time at the large financial services company is coming to an end April 4, but my direct employer has another project lined up for me to start immediately after that. I gave this site URL to yet another group of soon-to-be ex-coworkers, and I'll try to update it a little more frequently.

The new project will involve travel, but it sounds like I will lead several other techs which should be good experience for me.

Quite a bit has happened over the past couple of months.

I finally scheduled an insurance inspection for the hail damage from April. In the days before the inspection my car started stalling and got quickly worse so that it had to be started every few seconds to pull it in the inspector's bay, and then it had to be pushed out. The damage assessment was way more than I imagined and totaled the car! Given it's sudden lack of reliability I took the money, let them keep the car and bought a new--well, pre-owned--car. I got a silver 2006 Hyundai Sonata, 36k miles, sunroof, v6, power windows and locks, alloy wheels, etc. I used the money from my old car to pay off my credit cards, so now I have no cc debt but have the car loan at a lower rate.

I moved up a rung on the job ladder. I was working for a contract company for a services company for a client, and now I'm full time with benefits with the services company, so even if the client job were to fall through I should have work available with the services company. The client company has a new senior executive that is cutting costs and restructuring everything, and I lost some peers and some others I had worked with daily. But I'm still there and think my position is safe now.

I have new nephew, born last week, bringing the count to two nephews and a niece. I see them once or twice a week.

I've been in an apartment for a couple of months now. Things are going well, but I'm still catching up from being out of work so long. Family is keeping me busy.

I interviewed Monday, was offered the job Tuesday and started Wednesday. I'm working for a large IT outsourcing firm onsite for a large financial services client.

It's good to be working again!

I'm fairly embarrassed to say that I'm still not working. I've had no less than three situations where I was fairly certain I had the job, but I barely missed out to another candidate on two occasions and was passed over for a lesser candidate on another because the hiring manager was afraid the work was beneath me and that I'd leave after a few months.

The unexpected upside of this is that I have three separate recruiters who've seen that I'm hirable after comments from the client and who are now motivated to place me because of the positive client comments.

I had an interview this afternoon and one scheduled for tomorrow morning. A third recruiter has talked to me about several different jobs and appears to keep changing his mind on which to submit me to, but there is action there.

I feel pretty good about today's interview and hope to do well in the morning, too.

In other news, baseball-sized hail pounded my car Friday making lots of dents and shattering the rear window. I managed to get the rear window replaced today. I'll have to see what my options are on the dents as I haven't made a claim on my comprehensive insurance before. Luckily the tornadoes veered south of me.

Interesting. I just read that my old company is capping traditional pensions. If I interpret this correctly, this means that anyone in the older defined benefit pension plan will be forced into the new defined contribution plan in 2008. I wonder why they gave us a choice a year or two ago if they were going to force hands later, anyway?

Doesn't make a difference to me. If I were to rehire I would only have the option of the new pension, anyway. At least it looks like my old pension is still secure and its main enemy is the ravages of inflation between now and when I retire as it's not cost-of-living adjusted.

Oh, as long as I'm posting I should update.

I'm rather embarrassed to say I'm not working yet. At first it was fun, then there was a lot of family drama, then it was holidays, but I really ran out of excuses in January and I still have no job. I've been looking more and had about 4 jobs I thought I had a really good shot at, including one last week where it was between me and one other guy, but they hired the other guy.

I hear I'm getting rave reviews from my references, so thank you all. For most of the jobs I've missed it seems like my problem was that I wasn't in the first round of interviews. Last week I'm not sure what happened, but it may have been a price issue as I was actually working through two agencies, so the bill rate must've been high and they really wanted a lackey to do menial work while they were handling more urgent matters. But they wanted a lackey who could be productive techically later. I'm guessing the other guy was a lot cheaper.

I had to move away from Dallas for them to hire a real coach, and I had to move away from Indy for them to win a Superbowl.

Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

It's been about 6 weeks since they told me 4-6 weeks on the AFW position, so I called a buddy there and emailed another guy. Even though they've been one person short since August they're saying they'll decide in the next couple of weeks whether to hire internally or externally. I'm surprised they're cutting it this close to peak; they must be confident they'll get someone who's familiar with the operation and can pick up the duties immediately.

Well, that didn't last long. Another date-turned-friend to add to the collection. Two weeks. Was fun, though.

Still, I'm ready for a job and my own place.

My brother is now talking about getting a place together with his girlfriend in the next couple of weeks, so we may soon finally leave Mom with an empty nest. I think she could use the change of routine.

I redid my resume and got it on a couple of job sites. My sister emailed it to her list of recruiters. I got a call yesterday from a recruiter and interviewed with them today. They have a client with a job that sounds right up my alley, so hopefully I'll get an interview on that.

The job boards are certainly much more encouraging than they were when I was out of work in 2000. Back then I saw really no jobs like the one I had. Now I see many jobs that sounds very much like what I did in Indy, and for the same salary range. My brother-in-law also has stories of how tough the 2000-2001 job market was.

My new girl is really cheerleading me on in the job hunt, so I guess I can't slack off anymore. She's trying to be cute and subtle and not overbearing about it, but she's persistent. I can see how she might rather have a guy with a job and a place over a guy with no job staying at his mom's.