Job: Getting Closer

I had a terrific job interview on Monday with, of all places, a financial company. It used to be a financial software company, which then acquired a trading house, and now produces software purely for its own internal use. Despite the industry, the company is business casual, and the three people I met with--two programmers and the testing head--were all relaxed, intelligent, and decent human beings. They kept me there for over two hours, grilling me on my background and skills and asking me logic problems, and seemed mostly impressed by the answers. (One of them was particularly amused when I told him that from what I understand, manhole covers in Redmond, Washington are, in fact, square. I have since decided that this is probably an urban legend.) The position is QA assistance; a step down from my last full-time computer job, but a huge step up from unemployment. I don't know if I'll get it, but it was a good experience anyway.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been in (paid) training for one of the major standardized test prep companies. There were some potential obstacles between me-now and paid-job-then. To qualify, I had to re-take a partial practice SAT, because my actual SAT scores are now more than 20 years old. Also, there are five training sessions, and the trainer can fire any of us after the fourth session if she feels we're not up to snuff. Because of vague and not-so-vague fear of both of these obstacles, I haven't talked about this.

However, both obstacles now seem much less severe. I took the qualifying test yesterday (Tuesday). I didn't have a chance to talk to the Center supervisor for more than ten seconds about my scores; but she told me I passed, and judging from her grin, I think I passed quite well. I was confident about the verbal section; if I didn't completely ace it, I missed at most two questions out of 30. The math section gave me far more trouble, and am convinced that I missed at least one of the 25 questions. All day today I was afraid that I had screwed le pooch on several others and disqualified myself for all time. But I passed, and that's good enough; I'll be interested in seeing what my actual score was. (There wasn't a question on the math portion that I couldn't have answered, given sufficient time, but wow, 30 minutes for 25 questions, especially when they aren't all multiple choice and you haven't taken a math class in 20 years, can be very challenging. Did you know that nearly half of the math section of the SAT is now not standard multiple choice, and one-sixth of it is free response?)

This evening, I had the third training session, and it's clear from my feedback that I am, in fact, Getting It. My confidence that I will pass training is now pretty high. So there's another job that I can do part-time for decent money, especially if I can work my way up to tutor.

Finally, Unplugged Inc continues to gather steam. I haven't been able to do much for them over the last month because of my obligations to Tor and to the test prep place, but work had proceeded without me, and we have a major new game launching this fortnight. As a result, I might actually get a paycheck this month, for the first time in too long. I'm happy not just for myself, but for Unplugged's other employees, who have been without paychecks for at least as long as I have and have been doing this more full-time than I have.

So things are looking up, for a change.

A more-than-usually chaotic infectious post idea

Obviously discordian, in fact.
1. Find the 23rd entry in your Live Journal.
2. Find the 5th line, then copy and paste it in your journal with these instructions.

Not sure what you mean by 'these days.'

(The post is here.)

Virginia is for Haters

neonnurse pointed me to a page on the site of the office of the Governor of Virginia where you can send messages directly to Governor Warner.

Be polite. Spell and punctuate properly. And tell him that until that hateful law is repealed, you will spend no money in Virginia and will inform your friends that they should do the same.

UPDATE: baldanders beat me to the title of this post, and probably so did a hundred thousand other people. But I didn't know that when I wrote it.

Rutherford Bush: Objectively Pro-Abortion

That's the conclusion of this well-reasoned piece from Alas, a Blog:

The Non-Catholic Version: If you're anti-abortion, you should vote for John Kerry
April 28, 2004

If you're sincerely in favor of reducing abortion, as much as possible, as quickly as possible - then you should probably be voting for John Kerry. Objectively, a Kerry presidency will prevent more abortions. Shouldn't that be the bottom line, if you're pro-life?

So Work-Unsafe You Wouldn't Believe It

courtesy (I think that's the proper word) of animegothgirl:

Russian Museum to Exhibit Rasputin's Penis
Created: 28.04.2004 15:42 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 19:31 MSK, 10 hours 19 minutes ago
MosNews

The first Russian museum of erotica is opening in St. Petersburg, Russian Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily reports. The museum is founded by Igor Knyazkin, the chief of the prostate research center of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.
...
There is one exhibit in the museum which makes Knyazkin be especially proud of. This is the 30-centimeter preserved penis of Grigory Rasputin. "Having this exhibit, we can stop envying America, where Napoleon Bonaparte's penis is now kept. " Napoleon's penis is but a small "pod"-- it cannot stand comparison to our organ of 30 centimeters," the head of the museum said.

With picture.

That is the closest I've come to spewing water across my keyboard in, well, pretty much ever.

OMGWTF, I am reduced to typing.