BEST THINGS
1. NO SET SCHEDULE:
“Whoops, I stayed up too late tonight watching House reruns. Oh well, good thing I don’t have to be anywhere in the morning~!”
2. NO FEELING BAD ABOUT SPENDING THE DAY ON THE INTERNET:
With a job: “Awww, I wanted to be productive today but I spent the entire day sucked into a link spiral on Wikipedia. I guess there’s always next week.”
Without a job: “I spent the entire day sucked into a link spiral on Wikipedia. AWESOME! Let’s do it again tomorrow!”
3. MORE TIME TO DO ALL THAT CRAP YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO DO BUT NEVER HAD TIME FOR, LIKE REMIX MIDIS OF LADY GAGA SONGS.
…what?
4. SAVING MONEY YOU WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE SPENT ON GAS OR LUNCH AT WORK
Seriously I probably dumped close to $100 a month on lunches/the snack machine alone. And let’s not get into gas money.
5. PLAYING WOW ALL DAY
“Holy crap suddenly I have time to do randoms. On all my characters. OMG. OMG.”
—
WORST THINGS
1. PLAYING WOW ALL DAY
“If I do the Argent Tournament dailies on one more character I’m going to punch a toy kitten.”
2. BEING BROKE
“GUYS GUYS I FOUND A $5 BILL I DIDN’T KNOW I HAD. THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE. I’M GOING TO CELEBRATE BY BUYING ONE MOUNTAIN DEW AND DRINKING IT SLOWLY THROUGHOUT THE DURATION OF THE WEEK.”
3. AWKWARD MOMENTS
Phone Rings
Bill Collector: “Hi uh, your bill for such-and-such is past due.”
Me: “Yeah, I don’t have a job.”
Bill Collector: “Oh.”
*crickets*
Bill Collector: “…well, it’s still due. Just an FYI.”
Me: “Yeah I know.”
Bill Collector: “Are you sure?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Bill Collector: “Okay because I just wanted to make sure you know that your bill is due and–”
*click*
4. CABIN FEVER
“I’m going to go drive around for a few hours.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. But it’s at least slightly more interesting than walking in circles around the house.”
5. GETTING OUT OF SHAPE
“OMG MY FEET ARE SOOOO SORE”
“…um, you were only at Wal-Mart for like ten minutes.”
“SHUT UP I’MA GO LAY DOWN. AND PLAY GAME BOY.”
—
Still job-hunting. Your good vibes: send ’em my way!
I know the feeling you have. I hate not having any money and hearing from friends
“OMG I got this new game, you gotta play it!”
“Oh yeah, I’d love to, except that I can’t install anything, this isn’t my computer, and I can’t afford it. :(”
Good vibes need to come from all, and I wish you nothing but the best out there Pike. It’s a rough market, believe me, I know, but don’t give up!
Server maintenance becomes much more annoying when you can play WoW all day. The number of job applications I would send out spiked on Tuesdays, except when there was only rolling restarts.
I had to pass on the Collector’s Edition of Wrath because I was unemployed at the time — I hope you don’t face the same dilemma.
if you want to move to colorado, we can get you a job 😛
hope you can weld…
It’s been a while since I was in that position but the memory still bites. Hope it gets better soon. At the same time looking forward to lots’n’lots of interesting blog posts 🙂
I have a job and I’m still always broke. You get paid to pay out. Thank god my car only has about $1800 left to pay on it.
Good luck with the job hunt, Pike. Make sure you remember to set tracking to ‘hiring places of employment’ before you head out for moar searching.
Ack I hate job-searching. But you’re bright, intelligent, and have savvy, so I’m sure you’ll find something. Good thoughts are being sent your way!
Seriously, I lol’d pretty hard reading this. You’re the best Pike 😀
Ever consider starting your own side business for some cash? As a Linux junkie, you probably know more about computers than most people. There are TONS of people out there who have molasses-slow computers clogged up with viruses and spyware, but just don’t know how to download the free tools to clean them out themselves.
And the computer repair stores (around here anyways) charge like $80 an hour.
But, if YOU undercut them by charging, say, $40, you could round up the people who can’t afford the $80. It’s really very simple:
a) run an AVG scan.
b) run a Spybot scan
c) run a Malwarebytes scan
if it isn’t clean by then, just back up their personal information and reinstall Winedoze, then hunt up the drivers on the manufacturer’s site. That’s seriously all there is to it. (Or you could try and introduce them to Linux, if you think they’re up for that.)
Sure it takes like 5 hours for those scans to run, but you only need to be present for about 10 minutes of it to hit the prompts.
Here’s your slogan:
Pike’s computers: Service with a smile and a Lady Gaga reference. Gadgetzan certified.
Or, on a different note, if you feel like tarnishing your writing talents with something crass, you could try freelance writing opportunities. Charles Sanders Pierce (there’s a Wikipedia loop for you) did that, and he…well, he was dirt poor… so nevermind. But, he DID run experiments to measure the masses of mountains by standing next to them and measuring the gravitational distortion they produced with a pendulum. With 1930s technology. That’s pretty cool. AND, according to Wikipedia-
“As early as 1886 he saw that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits, an idea used decades later to produce digital computers.”
So, if you did freelance writing, you may not make much money, but you would be in good company.
Just a few suggestions. Good luck!
@ Bamos – You rock. <3
Even lowly customer service jobs are starting to become picky now. It used to be that they hired just about anyone and game then a trial period. It sucks that it is that way now. Also, thank you for this post. It was quite funny.