Wednesday, February 5, 2014

#118 Lost Time

1/29/2014 unrecoverable lost day
1/30/2014 unrecoverable lost day
1/31/2014 unrecoverable lost day
2/1/2014   unrecoverable lost day
2/2/2014   unrecoverable lost day
2/3/2014   unrecoverable lost day
2/4/2014   unrecoverable lost day

Excuses

  • small business demands
  • ill spouse
  • ill me
  • Helping Putin get ready for the Olympics
  • Propane shortage
  • PR for Governor Christy
  • Never-ending snowfall
  • Twitter compulsion
Networking

Two days ago I had lunch with my former (long-term) boss and company owner at Matt's Bar in South Minneapolis.  They're famous for the Juicy Lucy burger which contains about a pound of hot, melted, oozing and squirting cheese.  Normally a shower and clear clothes are required post-dining.  I don't have a job so wore jeans and a black shirt and left looking no worse than on arrival.

Conversation was about opportunities and challenges in the AEC industry and each of our pastimes (car racing and 'up north' activities).  Interestingly the front page article in the Tribune was about workers over 60 who really have little chance of finding employment.  The unemployment rate for people over 60 is the highest it's been in 25 years.  Jobs require diligence and networking.  Many are simply giving up of taking 'bridge' jobs to get them to Social Security.

Pursuit
I did communicate with the headhunter who has the exclusive listing for one of the two commercial construction firms that I would consider.  Each of the previous CIOs were from outside the industry, one coming from an oil refinery who had some success and some bad timing on major initiatives.  The second worked for a software firm and was responsible for customer support.  His tenure was much shorter at five years.  He was widely known in the IT construction world but marked with fewer successes.

While there was no encouragement to pursue this I do know a number of people at that organization and will probably work around the headhunter a bit.

Professional Skills & Growth

  • wrote an outline of an article on e-discovery in the cloud/converged network world
  • re-built a Windows PC and a Fedora Linux PC...this is not something that I would ever do but one has to understand the challenges of the people that do
  • revisiting open-source options
  • checked out a Warehouse District cloud storage company...might be a good option for a bridge job
  • going to revisit the Google Apps company that ignored me

1 comment:

  1. no encouragement? really? in general or just that headhunter? dump that headhunter and find someone else. but if in general:
    hey buddy! you can do it! really! keep on keepin' on. some day this will all just be a patch in your life and you'll laugh about it.
    your pal,
    OFG
    - had that patch. it was hard. now i laugh about it because i kept on keepin' on.

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