4:30pm on a Wednesday

Unemployment leaves a bitter taste in your mouth when you start paying bills out of that large sum of money you had saved over the last four months because it takes 21 days for the government to start paying the unemployment insurance. In that short period of time from January to April, when I actually had a job, I opened my first ever saving account and put $6000 in it while also paying off my $4000 credit debt, and $2000 HDTV debt.

It felt awesome and all I really did to save all that loot was to stop buying people drinks while going out 5 nights a week. The only downside I've encountered since I stopped being Mr. Irresponsible is that I suddenly come home with a couple spare bills in my wallet....which sometimes leads me to explore the seedy underworld of late night Chinese food using the safe words that my girlfriend taught me to get slightly better/less greasy fare. Oops.

Anyway, that was on my mind a few minutes ago while I sat in my screen porch watching MSNBC and drinking something called a "Gin Buck". Being unemployed leaves me with a few hours a day to do random web searches. For instance, today I search "Buck drinks" (because the only one on my mind more than my girlfriend is me) on Google and found the "Gin Buck". So, "what the hell", I said out loud to the two pugs staring at me.

It's actually not a terrible drink. In fact, I'd say it's pretty good. The piny taste of the gin is extremely mellowed by the snappy ginger overtones.

The job search in three words:

Fun as hell.

I have absolutely no trouble talking to people... I have no trouble communicating to lots of different people. In my years at school, I tried to fight the sometimes too easy to accept "Robot Engineer" yoke. Lots of really great engineers are nothing more than robots under that fleshy outside. Some of the smartest sold their personalities to the engineering devil in exchange for a slightly enlarged left brain hemisphere. I did the opposite. I just sold my soul for rock and roll...or whatever.

The benefits of not succumbing to the urge to be the smartest, most wedgied engineer at school are that now, in my mid-twenties, I am given a lot of freedom to communicate cross-group and embrace projects that truly need multi-functional players.

Job interviews have become nothing more than a business presentation in which the product I'm selling and explaining is "me". It's so simple it's scary. Don't lie about who you are and what you do, and don't be afraid to tell the people exactly WHO you are and WHAT you do. I spent the last two interviews talking about the places that I could use growth and where I would like to better my professional career. Honesty, from declaring yourself the dude who farted on the T to telling a potential employer that you sometimes need to take a step back to reorganize yourself to ensure streamlined process development, is the best policy.

Ok, I've run through two Gin Bucks now and I know I'm rambling, so here's a picture of a random coil...