July 2008 – neumatikos

Wiki Power

Since this has been the longest contiguous time that I have spent unemployed, I’ve been a little caught off guard by the amount of record-keeping I’ve had to do as I dug further into the job search process. I mean, I’ve been looking in two different states, in several different sectors, and also contemplating school options. On top of that, my note-keeping skills have never been very good.

Usually, when I’m researching something, I stick to one topic at hand and pursue it until it’s complete. Then I can keep track of the entire thing without taking a single note. This has usually worked so well for me that, when I was writing papers, it was actually counterproductive to take notes. When I sat down to actually do the writing, no matter what notes I actually had to hand, what I wrote would take end up pulling on something else that I had read entirely. I usually had to go back and find my references after I wrote the paper. But with the job search, not so much – I’m going everywhere, and I can’t remember when I applied for what. Plus I have all these leads to follow up on, and it’s hard to keep track of what stage each one is at.

So the toss up has been that, since I started looking for work, my productivity plummeted. It took hours to get started each morning, because I dreaded dredging up in my mind where I was last when I left off. Finally, I gave up. If I’m going to take notes this thoroughly, I need a database. So I tracked down WikiDPad, which Howard Tayler uses.

Basically, it’s a downloadable program which allows you to created interlinking notes using wiki-style formatting. In other words, it’s an offline wiki (very convenient that, since I don’t have any desire to share my snarky job search notes with the whole world via the Internet. The system isn’t perfect. I probably just need some more time learning the hidden tricks for proper formatting, but there is a noticeable lack of style buttons and drag-and-drop linking.

Nevertheless, using a wiki to keep track of research notes has made an amazing difference. It makes it so much easier to treat the job search process just like another job. Now when it’s time to get to work, I can sit down and fiddle with the database for the first hour instead of wasting time trolling CareerBuilder for low-hanging fruit.

Actually, I got so excited about using wikis to produce interlinking documents, that I tried to use WikiDPad to set up that Latin textbook series I’m playing with in the off hours. It didn’t quite work. The formatting issues were just a little beyond me for the complexity of what I’m trying to build there. So for the textbook project, I’m using MediaWiki. You can find it at https://neumatikos.net/ilovelatin. Be warned, though: It is very much a work in progress, and I need serious training in the areas of layout and formatting. But it’s a start!

Winnie-the-Pooh and Job Apps?

Ok, yesterday I mentioned that my NC nurse aide training and testing were not acceptable to the sovereign state of TN. Fine. So I started looking for work that didn’t require certification and found a job open at Fort Sanders Medical (the hospital where I was born) for a non-certified nurse aide. So I clicked on it and started to apply.

After four or five reminders to only send in one application for all the open CNA type positions, I finally got to the application and began to fill it out. Most of the application is rather standard: what facilities would I like ot work at, how do I handle stress, criticism and conflict, have I ever been terminated from a job, what’s my philosophy for working, what are my short and long term career goals, etc. etc. etc. In fact there are a lot of questions to be answered for a positions that requires mostly common sense and compassion. And then I hit the doozie of all questions:

35. If you were a Winnie the Pooh character, who would you be most similar to?

Followed by:

36. What is it about your personality that causes you to reach this conclusion?

My first reaction: Are you kidding me?!? What kind of question is that? What kind of Winnie-ther-Pooh character am I? What in the world does that have to do with anything?!? That question is SO facebooksurveyish.

They are completely serious. The question has drop down menu choices and everything. My first thought was to put down Rabbit because I sure felt like I had Pooh stuck in my front door, but then after consideration and a decent night’s sleep I’m going to go with Kanga since I don’t have to option to be a little black rain cloud or a woozle. Wonders apparently never cease, and I sure hope someone on the other end is not the complete moron they seem to be by asking a question like that. I also hope I get a job offer with all the effort I’m putting in to their fifty million question application.

Job Hunting Frustrations and Irritations

So, I’m applying for CNA jobs at local hospitals and such in Knoxville and I start to thinking about how I might be able to transfer my certification registry from NC to TN. I go hunting on the TN Nurse Aide Registry site and start reading. About halfway down I come across this:

An individual who is currently listed as active with no derogatory or abuse information on another State’s list of certified individuals can apply for reciprocity.

Okay, that sounds like me:

Tennessee accepts reciprocity from all States except Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and North Carolina.

Uh Oh. So what do I need to do?

An individual living in Alabama, Georgia or Illinois must provide verification of their status and apply to challenge the test. An individual living in Florida or North Carolina must retrain and retest in Tennessee in order to become certified as a CNA in this State.

That’s right folks I have to retake a class in common sense and retake a skills test on hand washing. Apparently people in NC and FL don’t know how to wash their hands right.

Catch-all

This is sort of a catch-all of observations on being unemployed. I suppose I could tie it all together into a cohesive essay, but the effort would take a few hours, and those two hours are intimidating enough at the moment to persuade me not even to begin. Thus:

We’ve pretty much decided at this point to move to Knoxville. The reason being that I’m not finding any work here, and that in Knoxville, at least, we can mooch off of relatives rather than testing the eviction laws in the state of North Carolina. The “pretty much” part means that there is still the option of something unexpected happening in the Charlotte area. We’re being strictly mercenary about the whole thing. We go where the money goes. But frankly, in the greater Charlotte metropolitan area, the money has already gone. I think it has something to do with the fact that Charlotte is primarily a banking town. Nearly every company I’ve done any serious research on has been in a perpetual hiring freeze/attrition mode. Quite literally nobody is hiring.

Actually, when looking from outside our situation, the “nobody is hiring meme” is quite humorous. Continue reading “Catch-all”

Girly Job

One of my frustrations, as I’m looking for work, is that the office is still a very sexist place to be. Only now they hide it.

All work is not created equal, nor are positions a likely starting point for career advancement. Ultimately this is why I’m probably about to put everything in my life on hold and rush as much computer certification as possible, because in terms of real work experience and certification, the sort of position I am currently most qualified for is to be an administrative assistant, what was formerly known as a secretary. And the problem with admin work, ultimately, is not that it’s unpleasant work, or even that the pay is too bad. The problem is that they really want you to be a girl.

I don’t know how to describe the admin field without sounding sexist myself, but it’s fairly evident in the job descriptions, particularly if the position is designed to support only one person. They don’t say it out right, but you get the distinct impression that the ideal candidate will probably be *pretty*, or perhaps even more than a little bit *perky*.

For example, a recent posting for admin assistant to the president of a private college: Continue reading “Girly Job”

Car Trouble

My car broke down on the way to a tutoring session this afternoon. (Donations will be accepted via PayPal at my email address.) It was very peculiar. The engine died while driving down the road and wouldn’t restart. The only indication I had as to what was wrong was that the alternator light was on. Except that when the alternator dies, you don’t know about it until the next time you try to start the car. The alternator charges the battery. It doesn’t keep the engine going. When the alternator goes out, your first sign is usually that the battery is dead. But my batter worked fine.

At any rate, I was stuck for about an hour and a half in the parking lot of a local Sprint store with nothing particular to do. So I amused myself by reading an Agatha Christie mystery and by observing and talking to people.

1. First observation: Despite what one may think, apparently cell phone service salesmen make a decent living. There were some very nice cars in that parking lot. One that particularly caught my attention was something from about the fifties, teal, with wings. It was perfectly restored, with immaculate detail work. It also, I noted, idled far better than my poor ’95 Camry.

2. Second observation: No matter where you go, no matter who your service is with, there is no way to break the $70 floor for service for two cell phones. AT&T gives me 450 minutes, with rollover, nights and weekend minutes starting at 9:00 pm. Sprint apparently will give me 700 minutes, no rollover, nights and weekends starting at 7:00, which is a pretty sweet deal. But it still costs $69 and some change. I can add as many bells and whistles as I want for $70, but cutting them all away will not take the price below that floor.

3. Agatha Christie is awesome.

4. I had a hilarious time with my tow service. Continue reading “Car Trouble”

Flickr Mosaic Fun

flickr mosaic

Here’s how you play:

Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr search.
Using only the first page, choose an image. Copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker over at FD’s image maker.

The questions:

What is your first name? Valerie
What is your favorite yarn? Simply Soft
What was the first thing you made with yarn? scarf
What is your favorite color? green
Which crochet or knitting magazine do you like best? Crochet!
Favorite handmade gift you have received? Baby blanket
Dream project? bedroom quilt
Favorite notion? crochet hooks
What will you crochet/ knit next? Baby Christmas outfit for David
What do you love most about yarn? texture
One word to describe your craft. Crochet
Initial inspiration to craft. Biology homework

(HT: Crochet by Faye who rearranged the q’s a bit.)

On Immunizations

What’s the deal with immunizations? One side is dogmatic about giving them and the other is dogmatic about refusing them. I’ve been recently looking at the controversy trying to decide whether to continue with the normal schedule of shots, to slow it down a bit (i.e. space out the shots over a longer period of time), or to discontinue them all together.

On one end of the spectrum I have my SiL who is staunchly against immunizations and has not immunized my two youngest nephews at all. She’s not alone as several young mothers in my church have made the same decision. On the other end of the spectrum is all my training in Public Health most of which can be boiled down into a single statement: an ounce of prevention goes a long way.

But it’s one thing to sit in a classroom and listen to lectures on preventative medicine and quite another to try and make informed decisions that could affect your baby’s whole life. Continue reading “On Immunizations”

Mystic

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m a mystic. But I’ve discovered that word makes some people, particularly non-charismatic evangelicals, nervous, so let me explain. By “mystic” I mean a person whose devotional life is characterized by intensely affecting spiritual experiences. These experiences may be in the realm of simple theological insight, or they may take more literary forms. At times they may cross over into the realm of prophecy; that is, dreams, visions, words, and phrases laden with theological context.

From a natural perspective, mysticism can come from two sources. It can be personal, or social: On the social spectrum, mysticism can be presented as something to aspire to. Some Christian traditions – the Pentecostals, the Orthodox, some revivalist traditions – present mysticism in such a way that it seems to be the only way to have a properly Christian devotional life. At the other extreme, some traditions, particularly the Reformed and Protestants as a whole, seem to perceive mysticism at best as something useless, at worst as something suspiciously unchristian, smacking of Papism, adding to scripture, even beckoning the demonic. On the personal spectrum, a person could be naturally predisposed to have certain kinds of experiences, or they could find themselves completely unable to do so, or they could be somewhere in between. (Please note that, for the sake of simplicity, I’m lumping what a person thinks about these things in with the social scale.)

The difficulty, of course, comes when a person’s natural predisposition doesn’t align very well with the tradition they find themselves in. Continue reading “Mystic”

A Reflection on Parenting (Part 2)

Kyle and I have been having some rather extended conversations about parenting and the direction in which we wish to lead our children (novel concept right?). And we’ve been discussing the fact that we want to instill into our children a forward thinking perspective that looks towards long term goals and benefits. Now Kyle tends to focus mostly on legacy building, but I have been coming back to the need to raise our children in an environment that embraces responsibility at an early age.

In my last post, I talked about the current definition of childhood and how we have culturally glorified it to an untenable position. I would like to further look at this social construct in light of our responsibility as parents to train our children.

In our zeal to appeal to the modern world, we’ve let society dictate to us how we should respond our children’s youthful urges and behaviors. This dictation is undermining Christian principles because it in no way acknowledges a Sovereign God who has given us the duty to mold our children to seek after the paths of righteousness. On the contrary, society would rather have us be our child’s ‘best friend’ and ‘understand what they’re going through’ than to follow our calling to love, admonish and discipline our children. Society would rather we give unconditionally to our children’s desires without thought to their rightful needs.

The desire to give good gifts to our children is not a bad thing and neither is wanting to shield them from worries. But to let society dictate that the best way to do that is to allow them free reign to pursue their desires is decidedly unchristian and detrimental to their ultimate happiness.