I'm haunted by that Gary Owen

Today was a first for the job search. We received a response to one of the applications I've made in the past week. It was a rejection (basically, "Boy, are you way too over skilled for this job, but thanks for thinking of us"). So, yeah, at least someone out there is actually looking at my resume. Oh, and I can do the work. You'd be surprised at how good I am at work I'm over qualified for and how I'm able to find enjoyment elsewhere. And maybe the benefits that position supplied were worth more than the actual pay (help paying for coursework, good medical).

Oh, and really damn tired of scrolling through the reposted job listings (hey, JobFox, stop it) and the "work at home" listings. And again, I'm trying to brainstorm a better way to search through large amounts of data online to find something interesting when you don't know what it is you're looking for.

And the last point today about the job search. I'm really tired of job posting sites that require (or constantly sell) paid memberships to access data. There's something slimbally about that practice and so far I've run into three of them. And they also tend to have "exclusive" listings, which are behind the "pay me now" firewall. Yeah, see, I'm out of work and you want me to pay you $30 a month to access listings you've charged the other company $300+ for their listing? That's what we kindly think of as a scam. No, really, scummy. Exactly the same business model as "we'll publish you as long as you buy 1000 books." And the whole, "if you become a paid member we'll expedite you resume/advocate for you" sales push only makes be want to shove bamboo spikes under your routers. Including the "your resume might be part of the problem, and we'll help you fix it for only $300," sales pitch. Wrap it up and roll over. Real slimeball tactics there.

Finished rewriting the first 50 pages of the novel in time for submission to the group critique. So we also have an updated word count total, 74437. The problem with going forward is that I haven't rewritten any of the rest of the novel, and I have no notes from someone else looking at it. It's (obviously) not impossible, just harder and slower. However, this set of rewrites when much faster than I expected. I'm hoping that means I'm getting better at this.

Here's hoping the magic continues.