Go East middle aged man...

[fbhjr]

Normally when I take my walks around town I go west, to where the bank and pharmacy are, or north to where the post office is.
But, today I decided on East to go to the “Olde Shrewsbury Village” shopping area.

As I said the other day, the west route lacks sidewalks for about 1/3 of the walk.
East there aren’t any for the whole way. Normally there is a fairly wide breakdown lane.


But, there are a few places I’d like my stunt person to walk into the road for me.


Although there were a few times I had to wait for cars, for the most part it was OK.

I did see some signs (literally) of how bad things are for business here.


But, some good signs too.


Finally, 2 1/2 miles later, I got there.


My wife loves the Christmas Tree Shops.


I’m not so big on them. I do like the giant marble sphere floating on water they have.


I understand the principles of hydrodynamic bearings, but am still impressed at floating a rock that big.

I had semi-good news on the job front. I’ve been sending out blind letters to companies in the area asking if they need an engineer. I have no idea if these folks do or not. They’re just companies I find in the phone book, in the news, in on line announcements or other things like that. The hope is that for the $0.50 or so each cost me, one day I’ll hit someone who does need an engineer, but hasn’t paid for an add for it.

Today, I heard back from one of those people. He said he isn’t hiring now, but might have some contract work to do in the future if I’m interested. While not perfect, it might let me make some extra money at some point in the future, so I told him to keep my name handy for when those times come up.

It is pretty cool to get an answer at all, so that made me happy.

There is another company I sent one of those blind letters that the week after I sent it started advertising for an engineer like me.
I hope it is a case of “hey, we do need an engineer like this, but we should look for other candidates to fulfill our company policies.” Not “We do need an engineer, but not this guy!”
We’ll see.

Finally I managed to connect with one of my old bosses on Linkedin.com. He was my favorite boss of all the ones I’ve had over the years. And, he used to say very nice things about me in reviews and such. I had trouble linking to him as he is now teaching at a college in Kansas, as linkedin didn’t seem to want to hook me up with him. (I can’t blame them, it didn’t look like we had any connection. We live in different parts of the country, are 25 years apart in age, and listed the company we worked at together differently so it didn’t look like we had worked together.)
So it’s cool to track down someone I really liked working for and respect quite a bit.


Edit: Just after I posted this the company out in Agawam called me about setting up a phone interview. It's not a done deal as they have to bring my information to the person who does the interviews and they have to give it the OK. But, it is still a good sign!

Comments

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! Glad to hear you're getting some tugs on your fishing line, as it were.

You should also send [blind?] resumes to every company listed on that gray directory sign, they all look like companies that might need an engineer.

good luck!

[malterre.livejournal.com]

Oh you *SO* love Christmas Tree, we've gotten some pretty cool stuff from there.

If you'd like to talk about contracting/consulting

[evrgreen.livejournal.com]

and the pluses (and minuses) let me know - maybe you can come up for a visit this month. Granted, I've only been doing this for 3 1/2 years and have only had (3) clients in that time (though 2 of them have kept me busy and working on many things over the past 2.5 years) maybe I can help you with some things to look for (and lookout for)! There are also various ways to go about it - I am sure that MA has some business differences from NH, but much of it should have alot of similarities.

The job with my last client is dragging on somewhat, due to resource issues at the client. So, I am not clocking many hours at the moment, but it does require some weekly effort to keep things moving.

[morgan-lafaye.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad you got a hit, hope it works out for you.