Throughout most of our lives we exist solely as numbers and nicknames.

We start and live our entire lives with a social security number. People call us Peanut, Pumpkin, Dumplin’, or some other nickname and we begin the long journey through life.

As we grow and adapt to the society around us, we are known by more numbers. These numbers link all of our information in one way or another. Our banks accounts, credit scores, grade point averages, and even our wholesale membership club cards are all linked to our social security numbers.

In this day and age with the Internet we develop an online presence and we choose our own nicknames and usernames to portray ourselves as we want to be seen by the world. Numbers and nicknames become the norm, and we live our lives as monikers and avatars.

Many people try to keep their online world separate from their real lives, but it seldom works. Whether you meet someone online or real life, you are human. You are bound to develop a relationship with other humans, whether you want to or not. We develop online friendships and we get to know each other. True, we may try to believe we are just numbers and nicknames to each other, but we all know there is a human behind that avatar, and we we feel. We feel because we’re supposed to. We’re human.

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Well, that was fun. Today ended up being a day that’s for sure.

If you ever find yourself sitting at the Dept. of Labor at 8:30 in the morning for “orientation” so you can continue to receive your unemployment benefits remember a few things.

(1) Don’t leave anything open to interpretation. If it doesn’t make sense, ask them to rephrase the answer or at the very least repeat it. The person conducting our “class” was left out of the loop on several items that were common knowledge to everyone else in the room and it took quite a while to bring her up to speed on how things work at the DOL.

(2) Don’t forget your green sheet of paper that has your “proof” that you have been job hunting. A couple people forgot their copies and I thought the woman conducting the class was going to come unglued. I don’t want to see a DOL employee come unglued, I hear it’s similar to USPS employees going postal.

(3) Don’t believe everything you hear. We were told today that our country is in a depression, not a recession. All we had to do was look at gas and grocery prices and the sheer number of people out of work to realize she was speaking the truth. Well, that’s what she wanted us to think anyway. Some of us quickly informed her that we are not in a depression, in fact our current recession isn’t any worse than the one back during the late 1970’s. Of course those of us who pointed out that fact were the only ones in the room old enough to remember the late 1970’s.

Once “orientation” ended, I hurried home to finish my exercises.

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Today was a crazy day. I spent some time on a phone interview this afternoon that I hope will turn into some temporary work. The company hiring is doing so on a short term contract basis to fulfill the need for one specific project.

The Director of Technology called promptly at 2:30 and we discussed my experience, their needs, my concerns (short term work), and things went very well. So well that he forwarded on two exercises I need to complete before noon tomorrow.

I will cut this short tonight so I try to knock those out before tomorrow morning. I have an “orientation” workshop at the Department of Labor tomorrow at the crack of dawn, so I need to get to sleep sometime too.

More tomorrow…

I haven’t been on a job interview in over a decade, so you would think I would be nervous as I drove up to Alpharetta on Friday for a meet and greet with the recruiter that called me in. But I wasn’t. Not in the slightest.

You see, I didn’t find this job on any of the job sites. I didn’t apply for this job. The recruiter found me and thought I would be a perfect fit for the job, so they set up the appointment with me. The way I looked at it, this was simply their way of getting to know me, and either way it would be beneficial for both parties. They could meet me face to face and I could get someone working in my corner to help me land the next great web developer job.

I was right. The meet and greet interview went great. I met with the recruiter and her account manager and we discussed all of the aspects of the position they were submitting my resume for. They told me a bit about the company I will hopefully be working for, and they made me feel like I had known them for years. I was only there about 45 minutes, but it was the most productive 45 minutes I have spent in a long, long, time.

Gidget saw an ad in the paper while I was at the interview. Belk was having a sale on suits, and since I haven’t had a suit that fit me since I took a trip to Washington, D.C. in 1988, we figured this was a good time to get one. I can use it for any job interviews and eventually if I need it for the new job. We drove down to Belk and checked out their selection. We found a really nice one on sale for $120.00 (just the right price for a tightwad like me), but they didn’t have my size, so we decided to check out the Belk at our local mall instead.

That was the best decision we could have made.

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It’s been a whirlwind around here since Tuesday. We still havent had a chance to get those trees in the ground. At least their roots are covered with a nice wool blanket and it rained quite a bit yesterday to keep them happy. My muscles are still screaming at me tonight.

On Wednesday I received an email from a headhunter looking to fill a web developer position and I have an interview with them tomorrow afternoon. Finally, an interview. Keep your fingers crossed. Because of the interview, I had to make sure and get my haircut today. It was the first time in several years that I have paid someone to cut my hair. I usually just buzz it myself when it needs cut, but I figured it would be better to show up with a nice neat haircut rather than looking like a chemo patient when I walk through that door for the first time.

The storms came through last night and caused a lot of problems all over the place, but we were lucky. Two of the storms went just south of us and the other one missed us by about 10 miles to the north.

I took some video throughout the day yesterday and here is what I came up with.

That’s all for tonight, I need some sleep so I can prepare tomorrow before my interview.

It’s been a couple days since I posted, and there’s a good reason for my absence.

On Sunday, the wife and kids and I ventured over to my in-laws house to take out ten Bartlett pear trees from their backyard. My mother-in-law had them planted a few years ago, and although they have grown some, they were not doing well where they were and they were (for the most part) to big to try and move them to another location.

I oiled up the chainsaw, made sure it was gassed up, and took a small bow saw with me as well. When we got there I went right to work on the trees. I got five of them cut down before the chainsaw decided to kick the chain and stop working for the day.

We spent the next three hours digging up a few of them to bring home to our yard. The ones we dug out were smaller and much more manageable than the others. It took longer to dig out those three trees and cut down the remaining two by hand, than it did for all of the other work we did that day.

We loaded up two of the trees into the truck and began the adventure of driving home with 8 feet of tree sticking out of the back of the truck.
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