Tag: job

Categories
life

Please help Holly & Jeremy get caught up

 We’re Holly and Jeremy. We moved to Columbus last summer for a job Holly had accepted. The job turned out to be awful. She has suffered from mental illness since her early twenties, and would up in the hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown brought on by job-induced stress.

While there, she was fired from her job. She’s since applied (and been approved) for disability, but that requires five months of waiting, without work, before any benefits are paid out. She won’t receive any income until late July.

Since then, Jeremy’s been looking desperately for work, but having no degree in a college town has made it a bit on the difficult side – to put it mildly. He’s submitted hundreds of applications to various places. After a few months, he finally got a job offer for a customer service gig. (He starts the last week in April.)

We’re behind on our rent by a month, and will be behind by two months by the time Jeremy gets his first paycheck. To keep our four dogs fed and our utilities paid, we’ve been selling clothes and assorted things (but that doesn’t stretch very far).

Our rent is $1200 per month, and $100 late fee (capped after $10 per day). Jeremy’s job will pay our rent, and most or all of our utilities, but it won’t leave much else (food, gas, etc.).

So we’re asking for help in getting us caught up. Our next month’s rent is due on the 1st of May, by which time we’ll be two months past due – possibly staring an eviction notice in the face. (If that happens, we have no more savings and nowhere to go.) If we can avoid getting evicted, we can stay in Columbus until Holly gets her first disability check (at the end of July), which will finally allow us to live a normal, non-ramen-based lifestyle again.

Lastly, if you can help us out – even a little – we’d be eternally grateful. (If you can’t afford it, please consider sharing this. That would be every bit as helpful and appreciated.) No one is an island, and the kindness of our friends (and strangers) elicits a gratitude which can barely be adequately expressed. We humbly and sincerely thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.

https://www.gofundme.com/HelpHollyAndJeremy

Categories
life local work

Baffling job listing

hyatt job listing
This is a real job listing. I sure hope that's a typo!

This works out to almost exactly $5 an hour – well below current (legal) minimum wage. No thanks, Hyatt! I am hungry… but not stupid.

Categories
current events internets life Speck work

Not no news

  • Just got back from the Emergeny Veterinary Clinic in Moraine. I had hit Speck full-force in the eye with his latest favorite toy, a Kong tennis-ball dumbbell. He likes daddy to throw it and bounce it off the wall at the top of the stairs so it goes bouncing all the way downstairs. So i threw it hard, but he’d gotten a head start and i popped him right in the eye. No permanent damage, just blunt trauma to the eye – mainly just discomfort. He seems fine now, but we’re out $164 – which digs into our rent, unfortunately. I feel like such an asshole right now.
  • I’ve just started playing Anarchy Online. It’s pretty cool, and you can play the non-expanded version for free. I’m a froobie.
  • I’ve STILL got that damn cough. It’s just not going away. It’s a little better now, though. And when i take my antibiotics, which i’ve been on for a couple of weeks now, i get nauseated and sleepy. I hate this.
  • And i’ve been depressed as hell lately about my life. I’m trying so hard, but i’m going nowhere. I’ve applied at so many places in the last few months that it’s not even funny. I rarely ever seem to get any response. I’ve had a single interview in the last couple of months. It went well, but it looks as if that employer is going to be extending an offer to an earlier candidate.
  • My voter registration has FINALLY been processed. I’m all set to help Obama get elected to the Presidency of the United States.

And, if you haven’t seen it already, check out the Sarah Palin prank call:

Categories
uncategorized

Not no news

Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.

  • Just got back from the Emergeny Veterinary Clinic in Moraine. I had hit Speck full-force in the eye with his latest favorite toy, a Kong tennis-ball dumbbell. He likes daddy to throw it and bounce it off the wall at the top of the stairs so it goes bouncing all the way downstairs. So i threw it hard, but he’d gotten a head start and i popped him right in the eye. No permanent damage, just blunt trauma to the eye – mainly just discomfort. He seems fine now, but we’re out $164 – which digs into our rent, unfortunately. I feel like such an asshole right now.

  • I’ve just started playing Anarchy Online. It’s pretty cool, and you can play the non-expanded version for free. I’m a froobie.

  • I’ve STILL got that damn cough. It’s just not going away. It’s a little better now, though. And when i take my antibiotics, which i’ve been on for a couple of weeks now, i get nauseated and sleepy. I hate this.

  • And i’ve been depressed as hell lately about my life. I’m trying so hard, but i’m going nowhere. I’ve applied at so many places in the last few months that it’s not even funny. I rarely ever seem to get any response. I’ve had a single interview in the last couple of months. It went well, but it looks as if that employer is going to be extending an offer to an earlier candidate.

  • My voter registration has FINALLY been processed. I’m all set to help Obama get elected to the Presidency of the United States.

And, if you haven’t seen it already, check out the Sarah Palin prank call:

Categories
life local web design work

business as unusual

I have never been so busy in all my life – I’m currently writing code for (in no particular order) 1) myself, 2) a client, and 3) a prospective employer, and 4) may be starting with a new client soon. Of course, i’ve put everything else off this past week for projects i was doing for the prospective employer. So why am i completely, utterly broke? At least i know i’ll get a week’s pay for the two projects i did for the P.E. That won’t go far, since i have so much debt right now.

Unfortunately, one of the projects i did for the P.E. didn’t get finished on time, so i (more or less) owe them my time for free. It’s a Drupal theme. It’s terribly difficult to make a Drupal theme in one week, especially when that’s only one of two projects they assigned to me! So now i have to finish that – even though i will probably not be hired now because i wasn’t able to complete it on time.

The upshot of this is that i learned a lot about Drupal in a short time, and reacquainted myself with Flash (actually Swish) and actionscripting.

I have decided that, even though i am impressed by Drupal’s extreme versatility, extensibility, and scalability, and really like the Zen theme base, i do not like the theming system much (at least not in 5.x, which is what i had to use for this project – though maybe the problem is a Zen-theme thing). The problem is that the theme code does not appear to be separated by admin and frontend, at least not obviously. So when i change a page, i also change the admin section, too. Obviously, that’s not great, and has been my stumbling block, keeping me from delivering on time. Thankfully, you can easily separate the homepage from the inner pages, but it seems like you have to code for every single inner page if you want to separate it from the admin section. Maybe i’ll figure out a better way around this, as it just doesn’t seem right. Not by a longshot.

Oh, how i wish i could be working with WordPress instead! WordPress has such a better theming system, though perhaps not as robust as Drupal. (Holly actually found me a two-week-old job listing on Craigslist for a job working with WordPress and Joomla!, but i fear i am much too late for that omg perfect gig. I need to keep up with Craigslist more!) 

One thing’s for sure: i am pushing myself way beyond my physical limits. I’m apparently sick now, my throat feeling like phlegmy gravel and a nasty cough wracking my body every so often. In my over-the-counter coma induced earlier this evening i think i overheard Holly talking to someone about the bags under my eyes. I can almost feel my hair turning gray right now.

So, to sum up: i am putting myself through hell. I need less projects and more pay.

(It seems like right now in Dayton, nobody’s hiring, and everyone wants a massive discount on services, if not an outright free pass. What businesses remain here have that leverage, too, since damn near 8% of the city is now unemployed. An unemployed web designer has gotta do what an unemployed web designer’s gotta do.)

Categories
uncategorized

business as unusual

Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.

I have never been so busy in all my life – I’m currently writing code for (in no particular order) 1) myself, 2) a client, and 3) a prospective employer, and 4) may be starting with a new client soon. Of course, i’ve put everything else off this past week for projects i was doing for the prospective employer. So why am i completely, utterly broke? At least i know i’ll get a week’s pay for the two projects i did for the P.E. That won’t go far, since i have so much debt right now.

Unfortunately, one of the projects i did for the P.E. didn’t get finished on time, so i (more or less) owe them my time for free. It’s a Drupal theme. It’s terribly difficult to make a Drupal theme in one week, especially when that’s only one of two projects they assigned to me! So now i have to finish that – even though i will probably not be hired now because i wasn’t able to complete it on time.

The upshot of this is that i learned a lot about Drupal in a short time, and reacquainted myself with Flash (actually Swish) and actionscripting.

I have decided that, even though i am impressed by Drupal’s extreme versatility, extensibility, and scalability, and really like the Zen theme base, i do not like the theming system much (at least not in 5.x, which is what i had to use for this project – though maybe the problem is a Zen-theme thing). The problem is that the theme code does not appear to be separated by admin and frontend, at least not obviously. So when i change a page, i also change the admin section, too. Obviously, that’s not great, and has been my stumbling block, keeping me from delivering on time. Thankfully, you can easily separate the homepage from the inner pages, but it seems like you have to code for every single inner page if you want to separate it from the admin section. Maybe i’ll figure out a better way around this, as it just doesn’t seem right. Not by a longshot.

Oh, how i wish i could be working with WordPress instead! WordPress has such a better theming system, though perhaps not as robust as Drupal. (Holly actually found me a two-week-old job listing on Craigslist for a job working with WordPress and Joomla!, but i fear i am much too late for that omg perfect gig. I need to keep up with Craigslist more!)

One thing’s for sure: i am pushing myself way beyond my physical limits. I’m apparently sick now, my throat feeling like phlegmy gravel and a nasty cough wracking my body every so often. In my over-the-counter coma induced earlier this evening i think i overheard Holly talking to someone about the bags under my eyes. I can almost feel my hair turning gray right now.

So, to sum up: i am putting myself through hell. I need less projects and more pay.

(It seems like right now in Dayton, nobody’s hiring, and everyone wants a massive discount on services, if not an outright free pass. What businesses remain here have that leverage, too, since damn near 8% of the city is now unemployed. An unemployed web designer has gotta do what an unemployed web designer’s gotta do.)

Categories
family friends life work

What today was like

  1. Our mice have become entirely intolerable. Sometime during the night last night, one (or more) of them have somehow managed to Indiana Jones its way onto the kitchen counter, and ate a big chunk of our bread. Seriously, wtf? This, likely, because we are now even hiding our dog’s food lately, which i’m sure is not a popular decision with our dear little Speck. I have renewed my war with the rodents with vigor and prejudice. Our landlord must rectify this. Conditions are approaching unlivable. Failure: landlord.
  2. Oops, somehow missed a credit card bill. I’m not perfect, but i don’t know how i forgot that one. Failure: mine.
  3. Vectren, our fuel provider, informed us that our incredible $700+ bill was, in fact, incorrect. Due to – ahem – underestimations, it should actually have been more than twice that. Yes – read that again. We owe $1500+ for gas used over the past year, because of underestimations. I should have been suspicious that our water was, in fact, hotter than the surface temperature on Venus, and yet our bill was never unbelievably high. In fact, they had sent out notices a few times over the past several months, requesting an inside read off of the meter, but i, being an online bill-payer, assumed they were paper bills and simply ignored them. Thankfully, we have a year to pay it off in full. Failure: mine, with a little help from Vectren (hey, they had my voice number & e-mail).
  4. Holly’s friend from work called us “idiots.” Holly, apparently for putting up with me; and me for not going out and getting a gas station job months ago (believe me, i’ve been searching, but maybe i set my sites a little too high for this crummy town). Failure: my own. Though her friend’s callousness was a little over-the-top.
  5. Holly’s student loans have come due six months earlier than expected. Failure: apparently the lender, as she was quite clear that they would be due six months after graduation. It’s of course possible there was some nefarious fine print hidden away somewhere in obscure legalese.
  6. Holly is so very exhausted and just completely strung out from all these awful stresses, which of course now also include her newly-diagnosed diabetic neuropathy (her latest round of medical testing is costing around $1200). Failure: again, mine.

Final tally? Don’t even tell me, i already know.

So you can see how i might be feeling a little crappy about myself, and about life in general lately. Things have hit critical mass, so to speak.

Oh, i didn’t mention a few ongoing issues, like the killer mold that is growing in our bedroom, from water leaking in through the windowsill. Those things weren’t specific to today.

On the positive side, i did have [what i think was] a good phone interview for a corporation i’d actually love to work for. I’m really hoping for the best, but you never know in this town. Just in case, though, i’ve also applied for a couple of menial positions. We shall see how things unfold soon enough.

Categories
uncategorized

What today was like

Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.

  1. Our mice have become entirely intolerable. Sometime during the night last night, one (or more) of them have somehow managed to Indiana Jones its way onto the kitchen counter, and ate a big chunk of our bread. Seriously, wtf? This, likely, because we are now even hiding our dog’s food lately, which i’m sure is not a popular decision with our dear little Speck. I have renewed my war with the rodents with vigor and prejudice. Our landlord must rectify this. Conditions are approaching unlivable. Failure: landlord.

  2. Oops, somehow missed a credit card bill. I’m not perfect, but i don’t know how i forgot that one. Failure: mine.

  3. Vectren, our fuel provider, informed us that our incredible $700+ bill was, in fact, incorrect. Due to – ahem – underestimations, it should actually have been more than twice that. Yes – read that again. We owe $1500+ for gas used over the past year, because of underestimations. I should have been suspicious that our water was, in fact, hotter than the surface temperature on Venus, and yet our bill was never unbelievably high. In fact, they had sent out notices a few times over the past several months, requesting an inside read off of the meter, but i, being an online bill-payer, assumed they were paper bills and simply ignored them. Thankfully, we have a year to pay it off in full. Failure: mine, with a little help from Vectren (hey, they had my voice number & e-mail).

  4. Holly’s friend from work called us “idiots.” Holly, apparently for putting up with me; and me for not going out and getting a gas station job months ago (believe me, i’ve been searching, but maybe i set my sites a little too high for this crummy town). Failure: my own. Though her friend’s callousness was a little over-the-top.

  5. Holly’s student loans have come due six months earlier than expected. Failure: apparently the lender, as she was quite clear that they would be due six months after graduation. It’s of course possible there was some nefarious fine print hidden away somewhere in obscure legalese.

  6. Holly is so very exhausted and just completely strung out from all these awful stresses, which of course now also include her newly-diagnosed diabetic neuropathy (her latest round of medical testing is costing around $1200). Failure: again, mine.

Final tally? Don’t even tell me, i already know.

So you can see how i might be feeling a little crappy about myself, and about life in general lately. Things have hit critical mass, so to speak.

Oh, i didn’t mention a few ongoing issues, like the killer mold that is growing in our bedroom, from water leaking in through the windowsill. Those things weren’t specific to today.

On the positive side, i did have [what i think was] a good phone interview for a corporation i’d actually love to work for. I’m really hoping for the best, but you never know in this town. Just in case, though, i’ve also applied for a couple of menial positions. We shall see how things unfold soon enough.

Categories
life work

Aren’t morons cute?

Sometimes I look at all the wonderful and good things that mere people have done throughout the vast, untold millennia of history, and I feel such an upwelling of pride for my fellow human beings, and the accomplishments of this incredible civilization that we have created, that I believe I just might explode.

And sometimes I just want to stab my fucking eyes out. O, how cruelly naive I can be!

Also at work today, i received an e-mail that gave me an idea for a new micro-podcast (which i’ve christened a nanocast; get it?), and the following, unrelated, e-mail (spacing, spelling, and complete and total obliteration of conventional rules of syntax and grammar intentionally left intact for humiliation):

Two thing return .  29.99  and   14.99   just one return no . Just two  things back to you .  Still owe me  14.99   that is correct and miss one   don’t say 14.99   I bet that you forget put on it .    Thanks  !

[sic]

(Translation: I also returned another item which I noticed you do not have listed on the return confirmation e-mail which I have received but failed to include for your reference. Can you provide further information on this issue? Is it possible that it could have somehow been lost?)

Q: What was the customer’s name?

pick one name from each column:
first name last name
Tonto Nahasapeemapetilon
Tumak Rogers
Sharon , The Ape Man
Ayla Bartokomous
Tuong Souphanousinphone

A: If you guessed “Sharon Rogers,” you’d be sadly correct. Not only that, but she was from Arizona.

Bonus: If you can guess to whom those other names belong, you are not only smarter than “Sharon Rogers,” you are indeed worthy of being enshrined as a Thinking Person.

 

NOTE: names and places have been changed to protect the imbecile’s privacy.

Categories
creative internets memories uncategorized

Job Interview from Heaven

Whoa. I just went to a job interview (cross your fingers for me, or pray to whatever sinful, heathen idols you worship), and was interviewed by Grog from the Oxymorons!! (He also runs Mutant Renegade Records and the excellent zine The Chickenfish Speaks)

Okay, for those of ya outside of Dayton, the Oxymorons were this great post-punk band in the late 80s-early 90s. After they split up, their singer fell off of a balcony and died :( so they are sadly no more. But he’s still really active in music. I still have their tape Bash On Regardless in storage – i have to dig that up and see if it still plays; it was one of my favorites way back in the early 90s!

The interview, i felt, went great, and we spent most of the time talking about music, although i also learned a lot about the company. I am really really hoping i land this one. It’s right up my alley in so many ways!

Categories
creative internets memories web design work

rebuilding legacy sites for a portfolio

I’m working on getting my legacy sites ready for an online portfolio to be presented here on this site.

The unfortunate thing about being a relatively-inexperienced web designer/developer is that most of your clients will be fairly small outfits and that much of your work will be necessarily pro-bono, or close to it. This means that many of them won’t be around for a very long time. In my case, none of them are. I think the Tecumseh Local Music Boosters may still maintain a site somewhere, though probably one with tildes in the URI that i’ll never be bothered to really track down, because it’s probably no longer my work being displayed there.

On to the point: this means that i have to re-build all of those old sites from the archives. Which, in turn, means trying to get code written a pretty long time ago (by www standards) to work. That’s not much of a problem, in most cases, because i at least had the foresight to include some useful future-compatible functions, the most underrated of which is the doctype declaration.

Regrettably, i don’t remember how some of the functions worked, and i don’t have much time to figure it all out.

The worst part, though, is that the one of the coolest sites, for a sadly defunct print magazine, won’t work locally, and i think it’s because i no longer have any idea what kind of a server environment it was written for.

So take this to heart, fellow amateurs: always, always, always include copious comments in your PHP, and archive a copy of the phpinfo() that you generated at the time (when you were literally losing sleep trying to iron out that one nagging bug). Mirror the damn thing live if you have to. This will save you in the long run, when the site goes belly up, and you have to prove to potential employers or clients that it existed outside of the sick, narcissistic fantasy world inside of your head. You won’t look like a blowhard when you can at least produce a working copy. Right now, i’d settle for just some screenshots of that magazine site.

Speaking of which, i can at least produce a static HTML version, using archive.org for the markup and my backup image files for the graphics. So all is not completely, irretrievably lost.

But i’d rather get those bugs ironed out. I just need a lot more time than i can actually come up with lately.

Categories
creative internets work

work rant/new directions ahead

From the desk of the Customer Service Adventures department:

I have to admit, i am of late feeling somewhat slighted at work. I just designed and built an entire intranet for my work, from scratch, all during a few hours here and there when i was “allowed” to do so. It’s comprehensive, it’s modern and standards-compliant, it looks clean and nice, with some tasty flourishes via CSS, and it took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to make it happen – all by myself. I even had to make do with MS Paint to do some little extra graphics, and the entire f-ing thing was hand-coded in Notepad.

Instead of getting recognized, i got a couple of “hey, that’s really nices” and a lot of flack – for, of all things, taking too much time. Mind you, i created something like 100 pages filled with useful technical and product information in Notepad. I was expected to do it with just a few hours here and there. All in all, i’d say i probably only put about 50-60 hours into the entire thing, from start to finish – and it actually looks really nice and functions exactly as it’s supposed to function. There’s probably something like 3 or 4 MB of hand-coded XHTML and CSS, with just a touch of JavaScript (just to correct an Internet Explorer CSS :hover issue).

I even offered to do it on my own time, out of loyalty to my company, and just because i could have gotten it done about 3 months ago if i had. Yes, it’s taken since late November/early December, because i could only work on it when we had less than 1000 e-mails in our queue, which was extremely rare during and after the holiday season (it’s an online retailer) (actually, we never did have less than 1k during that time – i had to wait until late January/early February to dig it all back up). It’s not really even done now – i really want to go back and update all the old information they already had that i fixed and converted to the new format for them.

I’ve also explained numerous times that if i could just do it in PHP, preferably using a database such as MySQL (both of which are free and secure), i could do it in far less time, as i could set up one template that could handle pretty much all functionality and markup, and just dynamically inject content into it via the links the users click to request information. But no. That would be too much hassle for the IT department to set up (nevermind that i could do the damn thing myself).

And now, instead of a note of thanks or a pat on the back, neither of which i’ve even hinted at requesting, natch, they’re sitting me down and patiently explaining that i need to work less on it, because of budget reasons. No, i’m not getting paid a cent extra – it’s just that i’m no longer working for Brand Y, who pays for it, but am taking Brand X’s time. They bully me and make me feel like somehow, all of the hard work and dedication i’ve put into my work notwithstanding, i’m lazy for doing all that i have done. (Naturally, i won’t be getting a copy of my hard work for my portfolio, even though there’s nothing even remotely top-secret on it.)

Bullshit, honestly.

So I am now officially keeping my eye open for other positions in the area. I need more challenge, and to feel like i’m making an honest difference. My girlfriend will be out of school in a year’s time, and then we can do anything we want to do. Most likely, the Dot Com sector will be more stable and robust by then anyway. I admit i lack schooling, but i lack little else, especially determination, perseverance, and dedication.