Both Hand and Dandy

A guide to your state’s inflation.

How much will $100 buy in your state?

1408455156588

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age, The Government is Not Your Friend | Leave a comment

Hooray?

So, I got the job.

And then I didn’t.

And then I did, kind of.

The basics are that I was told by the Personnel Manager that if I could pass their welding test, I should consider myself hired. I went out to the Jeep to grab my hood, boots, gloves and coat, and when I came back was walked in to another office and introduced to the Production Manager who told me that they couldn’t hire me.

Because I have not yet gotten my certification, they couldn’t hire me to be a structural welder. Also, my screwed up school schedule from the latter third of September until the second week of December made it difficult to place me with a crew, even as a fitter. I went to thank him and shake his hand and he asked me to sit down so we could talk. For about 10 minutes I went through a second interview covering a lot of inside baseball welding process questions and questions about my school transcript and 3.8GPA. He was impressed with what I had learned in a year’s time.

After that was over, he told me he wants me to call him around the middle of each month between now and the end of the upcoming quarter to keep up with my progress. Also, to plan on coming in to see them again right after Thanksgiving. He also asked me to not accept any job offers without getting the particulars about their offer first.

So that’s good, right?

The company works almost exclusively with another company that does crane work and piledriving. They fabricate the forms and other equipment for each job. Lots of cages and frames. Lots of MIG and Dual Shield. Lots of work. They can almost keep up, but the other company needs them to get ahead and they need machinists and welder/fabricators who know their shit, in a bad way.

On the way home I stopped by the welding supply store I frequent and dropped off my resume there. I also stopped by the state “Employment Security” office to try and find the procedure to get a 12-15 week extension of benefits.

Tomorrow and Wednesday I plan on dropping a few more resumes off to see if anyone else can work with my schedule for the next 15 weeks.

Thanks for all the help and comments, guys.

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 6 Comments

Lighter Fare

I had multiple entire posts worth of links, but have decided that there is little-to-nothing I can say that hasn’t been said about Ferguson, MO, or the phony-baloney indictment against Governor Rick Perry.

The “gentle giant” Michael Brown is turning out to be a violent thug who absolutely didn’t have his hands up when he was shot. Also, I am beginning to suspect that last night’s breakout of gunfire is someone’s frustration that the victimhood lobby’s case is falling apart.

Also, I expect that in short-order, some leftist prosecutor will charge Rand Paul with a hate-crime for once rolling his eyes in the presence of a black person so that the Democratic Party can just claim that all the 2016 Republican candidates are under indictment for something and discount having to talk about/to them.

In the non-news department, I went through my hard drive and found a resume that I whipped up back in 2008 when I was contemplating quitting my job because of a severe disagreement with my boss at the time. I took what I could from that and wrote up a whole new one to take with me to my job interview today.

Trying to fit your employed life onto one sheet of paper is difficult. The last time I seriously wrote up a resume (1999), employers wanted to know everything about you except your blood type. Nowadays, they seem to want to know very little about you until you get to your second or third interview. Also, from what I can glean from the intarwebz, the M-O these days is to feed your resume into their computer and whomever was clever enough to get the most buzzwords onto the page gets the first once-over to see if they can show up on time.

I’ll be leaving my house 90 minutes before the scheduled interview time to make a 30 minute drive to a place in an industrial park I have driven past numerous times. I’ll be taking my boots, welding hood and heavy cotton shirt with me in case they want to put me through a welding test. I may even smile a few times, so I’ve been practicing.

In other non-news, a serious question: What the hell is it with your early 40’s and listening to the music of your teens? I can’t seem to get out of my 80’s/90’s Rush mix folder for the life of me.

A large number of Rush fans like to pretend that the band put no albums out between 1986 and 2001, but I’ve never been that way, and for the past ten to fourteen days, that is the only folder I can deal with. Before that, it was 80’s BritPop.

And now, in the hope that I can “spread the wealth around”…enjoy

If you don’t know what the Spandau Ballet is, you should go below the fold and learn your new thing for the day.

Also

I chose the moniker “The Analog Kid” for my early days of blogging because the song was a decent fit. “Tom Sawyer” was/is probably a better fit, but with the name also being a major literary character, some folks likely wouldn’t have gotten the Rush fan reference, so I chose the other one.

Continue reading

Posted in Life in the Atomic Age | 3 Comments

Sunday Funnies

Only three this week. Truth in each of them.

na3krj8LQ81rzv6rko1

na4fhewlcP1rzv6rko1

na9flsqdM91rr5t33o1

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

Can KHI….?

Yes, Kadath Heavy Industries CAN up-armor your 963D or 973D Track Loader or any D-Series dozer

1 4JoNg7IH4hNst0miB2Rmrg

We can also create command vehicles from your F250/350, Ram D-Series 2500/3500 or Chevy Silverado HD / GMC Sierra HD trucks.

1 0hIkURJTGU5j2FM3eqd_MQ

Right or left hand drive.

Standard mild steel up to AR 550 steel of any thickness you request.

Don’t wait until ISIL is on your block. Up-Armor now and SAVE BIG!

Posted in Kewel! | 1 Comment

A whole tanker of stupid

Must have been sprayed all over the St. Louis region.

I have been avoiding posting about the riots and crap in Ferguson, MO on purpose because, well I’m 2000 miles away and doubt I have much to add other ask if both sides have to do the exact thing that will exacerbate the situation to the fullest?

At least the left is finally agreeing that the militarization of the suburban police is “a bad thing.” Though I’m a little weirded out that they they think they’re the first to come to this conclusion. They sure didn’t mind SWAT prepped officers at the Bundy Ranch.

I am having extreme difficulty figuring out the MSM’s fascination with the name of the officer who shot the kid. The name is all they want. they don’t care about his side of the story because they’re so smart and have already figured out in their collective mind what happened.

Is it so they can run as many negative stories as possible about the time he farted in line at Popeye’s Chicken in 2005 and used the word “niggardly” to describe the guy who bought a used Camaro from him in 1997?

Or is it because they want to be able to report about how his family is on the run from the New Black Panthers who flew into town promoting violence and demanding a guilty verdict and a death sentence on the trigger pulling cracker the way they did to George Zimmerman’s family.

They sure want to publish a name, any name. Even if it is one Anons put out there. But they don’t seem to care about correcting the record when it is discovered that they got the wrong name.

About the only thing I saw that was intelligent so far this week was the Mayor of Ferguson. He was on one of the MSNBC morning shows yesterday and had to drag the teleprompter reader of the hour kicking and screaming into the Factland because that broad probably couldn’t have spelled her name correctly once the make-up department got done with her that morning. Honestly, he had to correct every question she asked before he could get around to actually answering the question.

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | 4 Comments

He has to know

Last week, Thomas Sowell published a column over at Townhall asking “Is Thinking Obsolete?”

Doesn’t he know that that is why we live in a Representative Republic and not a Democracy? Most people are prone to avoid thinking as it requires them to do something other than focus on what makes them happy. This is the case, no matter what era or span of time you want to talk about.

There is no way you’re going to convince me that he has never read Huxley.

Posted in Color me confused | Leave a comment

Legislating Trutherism

The 9/11 Truthers were able to get an Initiative ready for the ballot and collect the signatures to get it on the ballot.

They call it the High Rise Safety Initiative. It will “demand an investigation into the collapse of WYC Bldg #7″.

NYC is challenging its legality. They’re asking for money at the above link.

Almost 13 years later and the conspiracy theorists can’t put this last straw down.

Btw, I found the link to this on the front page of the hardcore leftist blog, Crooks & Liars whilst I was looking at leftospheric Ferguson coverage. Don’t ever let them tell you they’re more sane than the average right-wing blogger.

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 1 Comment

Nepotism Sucks

But we already knew this.

So the post directly below this one is now null and void.

My future stint as an employee at the school has been cancelled by someone with a big head and a small cranial capacity. On Tuesday afternoon, my instructor got a call from a member of the administrative staff at the college to discuss the employment of myself and one of my fellow students next week. I was walking past his office and heard him snap his fingers at me, so I turned around and poked my head in. He waved me in, put his fingers over his lips to tell me not to talk, while he was on the phone and I caught the last 2/3 of a conversation that went as follows:

She was clearly stating that since my fellow student and I were not eligible for the standard WorkStudy program, that we should not be hired for work this Summer. He stated that he had cleared it with the Dean and everything was worked out to pay us out of the Welding department’s maintenance budget.

She mentioned that that was part of the problem and that the Dean was now on her 3 week vacation and that her decision was being overridden by the Administrative department, but that he could hire one of the people they had on “The List”. One in particular was pointed out because she knew/was related to the person.

He asked if this person or any of the persons on “The List” had welding or fabrication experience. She replied in the negative.

He said that he needed welders and fabricators for the work he needed done. She stated that he could train them to weld in a day or two and do the fabricating himself. He replied in the negative.

She replied that he could hire this person or no one. He asked her if she could hold while he answered another call. She said yes. He instead made a quick call to the Budget office to confirm that he wouldn’t lose the part of the department’s maintenance budget if he hired no one. They confirmed.

He brought her back on line to tell her he was just going to do without.

She said “Fine” and hung up.

This is also the reason I was in no mood to post about anything yesterday.

So instead of working on Monday, I have a job interview at a machining and fabrication shop between my home and the college. I’ll probably try and get in full-time during the four weeks I have off and then either switch to part-time or, depending on the work, maybe their second shift.

I’ll also be dropping off applications and resumes at a couple other local places today and tomorrow.

This what really chaps my hide: I don’t NEED the work. I just wanted to get some hours in and add some bulk to my savings accounts. This was an easy way to do both of these things that benefited everyone involved. Now, if I want to do that, I have to hire on somewhere that will be competing with my schooling and future certifications. My unemployment runs out this week and I don’t like not having incoming funds. Also, this “year off” going to school makes me feel lazy even though I’ve been actually learning and doing and coming home feeling mentally and physically tired.

But, I haven’t had a job interview in 14 (almost 15) years, so I could use the practice. I don’t want to waste this company’s time, and will accept the job if offered. But I’m not going into it with an atlas stone on my shoulders.

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense, Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 9 Comments

Busy Times

Last couple days of in-class schooling currently in play, attempting to get ahead for next quarter and all that. Oh, and also an online Algebra course that ends the 25th. It’s for the degree, otherwise I wouldn’t bother with the torturous nature of it.

In related news, I’ve been hired by the college to work over the Summer break. It’s not full-time work, it’s not great paying work, and it’s not even “every-day-during-the break” work.

But what it is is welding and fabrications work that will yield a job reference from the Dean of Industrial Arts Instruction, AND get my foot in the door to show that I’m worth being an addition to the budget in place of a WorkStudy body during the Fall Quarter.

I told the person who does the hiring for this that it would take away from my studies if I had to get an outside job that would compete with school.

So we’ll see how this goes. I start next Monday.

In other related news, I went sniffing around the job market over the weekend and was glad I did so. I found a half dozen employers who are pretty much constantly hiring. Yesterday I made some phone calls and spoke to a few of their hiring reps, letting them know of my situation and got some feedback about what they’d like to see on a resume.

Forklift training was on four of the five employer’s list of what they wanted. So I’ve signed up for a Forklift Certification class in the Fall.Two Thursday nights and Two Saturday nights, four hours each night, all in October, and the Cert is mine.

The fifth employer I talked to was the one where I’d really like to work. They manufacture and repair surgical devices with the GTAW (TIG) process. It’d be damn near office work conditions and starts around $20 and hour. They wanted 2+ years of welding experience, but I’m going to apply with them in November anyway. I’ll show them the degree, a long list of previous, long-term employment and remind them that I have the skills and knowledge, but not enough that they would have to un-train and then re-train me, and see how it goes.

Posted in Kewel! | 4 Comments