Sign of the economic times

I'm still getting rejection letters from job I applied to in January or even earlier. Most say "sorry, we picked somebody else" but some say "sorry, our funding went away" or similar.

I think this means companies are either being very picky (because of the long delay, not because they didn't pick me :-) or are dealing with intermittent hiring freezes.

Cancelled directv

Pulled the satellite and serial cables so DTV couldn't send anyone down the line. Then called up and Precious walked me through the process with little fanfare. She did try to do the Retention Schtick: $50/mo instead of my current $72-something.

Nope. I did note, while I was online, that my service hasn't changed but the cost went up 12.5% (from $64 to $72) in the last 12mons alone. Nice.

To keep the DTivo from recording blankness and confusing the Now Playing screen, I cleared all the Wishlist and Season Pass entries. Turned off Suggestions and it clobbered all recorded Suggestions. Note to onlookers: if you want to keep your Suggestions, don't turn them off until you are done with them. No big loss, but interesting.

soft shoe

Sorry for the long time away. Been handling stuff on the home front.

After months of "no thanks" letters (and a kerbillion applications that went into the Great Beyond with no response at all) I have four job interviews within a 7-day period.

I don't know if this a fluke or businesses forecasting an increase in demand. Either way, I'll take the interviews. If nothing else it's an opportunity to put on the song-and-dance in front of an employer. Gotta be grateful for small things.

None of these jobs are in education (in any normal sense); even before the recent ISD Budget Apocalypse the writing was on the wall for me. The planned massive layoffs made me face the fact there is almost zero chance for an new alt-cert social studies teacher to gain a foothold. Could I still get a teaching position? Yeah. And I might win the lottery, and monkeys might fly out my butt. It's time to plan for a future outside the classroom.

In the Real World my family has to eat and we have to pay to live somewhere. I have been applying to positions all along, but I took each of the ISD snow days and spent 8hrs/day applying to non-teaching positions. Thus the non-teaching interviews.

Life goes on.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Texas shortfalls and my reality

The shortfalls in the Texas budget directly affects all ISDs, which directly affects those of us doing our best to secure our first teaching jobs.

I haven't given up, but at some point a man has to start thinking in terms of an exit strategy. Maybe IT in an ISD? Since I'm already fingerprinted/backgrounded and employed by a couple of districts I'm hoping that makes me an easier hire than average Joe off the street.

Churchmouse indicator: magazine subscriptions

Victims of the the macro (and my micro) downturn -- magazine subscriptions not renewed:

The Week - spectacularly good meta-magazine.
Cycle World
Motorcylist
Motor Cycle News
Handguns
Zymurgy
Brew Your Own
Autoweek
and another one I can't remember right now. Got them all on cheap eBay subs a few years back. Most were $5-7/yr.

The Richardson library has mags for 25c each, and I've been picking some up that way. I particularly like the Economist when I can get them that way. Mags were 10c at the RPL a couple of years ago.

Headhunter calls as leading economic indicator

I have had my resume posted online for about 15yrs, so I get a certain amount of headhunter traffic on my phone and email.

Headhunter calls seem to be a leading indicator of what's to come economically. According to my highly unscientific sample it seems that the call volume and quality lead actual conditions by 6-12 months. I am happy to report that headhunter calls have started slowly picking up again this month after about a year of zero contacts.

If past performance is any clue, maybe the the economy will pick up mid- or late-2010. I sure hope so.

Now, if I could just get any of those headhunters to call about a teaching job rather than *nix administration...