What a difference a day makes.

If I had been writing this blog on Tuesday instead of Thursday you'd be getting a much different show! Fortunately there has been some more signs of promise today and yesterday so I'm happy as I sit down and write this! The last week has consisted of a lot of sitting in the room for the day, refreshing craigslist and job sites looking for any new postings.


She just refused to sit nice and still for a decent picture.



I did manage to go out on Saturday for a night and had a laugh with the lads from Blue Castle again and then on Sunday we actually went into the office for a while (unfortunately nobody of power was in there so I could not unleash the persuasion/intimidation skills just yet, but as Seamus is saying, if these guys are out come January then that must leave space for me!) to chill out and play some games.


This is the previous Saturday. I'm almost glad that whoever took the picture managed to turn the flash off.

Being in the office surrounded by boxes of unopened toys on everyones desks, the walls, floors, ceilings and pillars all covered in zombie survival paraphernalia really revitalizes the hunger to get into the job you want. The scrum boards on the walls detailing the stages of development, each area of the game, progress, bugs etc... had me practically foaming at the mouth. This is what I want to do.

I spent some more time on Tuesday walking into places in downtown but this did not have as positive a result as previous experiences and most places would just tell me to go and post for any opening from the website, which most times I had already done. Even getting into the places though and seeing the kind of environment that they're working in helps me to keep chasing after it. It's definitely worthwhile just being surrounded by the offices, even if they're not willing to pay me to hang around there just yet.

Until yesterday I had been having very little success but yesterday morning I had a voicemail on my phone. I had bought credit for my phone on Saturday and had yet been able to actually get the damn stuff put onto my phone between distracted employees, network outages and then not having PINs etc that Julie had used. So that voice mail just sat there taunting me with the potential job offers it might hold. (I hate each and every phone company in North America and everything they stand for).

As I wrestled with the phone and customer service to try and find out what the illusive message was trying to tell me I checked my email and there were new items. The first was for a Java Development role that they were trying to fill fast. He wanted to call me on my phone but I told him that that was not quite possible at the moment as I was wrestling with the phone company to try and get it topped up, I said that either way I'll find a way to call them by 3pm.

This is a front driveway of the house.



During this response another email came in; this time from a games company. They had been trying to call me (Grr!) and thankfully had decided to send an email as well just to be double sure. They wanted to know when I would be free to take their technical test and I replied "ASAP". So at about 10am with half of my breakfast eaten it was time to sit down to a 2hour technical exam... fun times! Maybe next time I won't let me eagerness take over so much.

This was a company whom I had emailed 5 days previous so it was good to get at least some human response from the faceless applications I had been sending out.

The exam went OK, of 20 questions I answered 18 and of those I would say 15-16 were between good and perfect answers so overall I was quite happy with it but it's hard to tell exactly what they're looking for. Thankfully some of the questions asked I had immediate answers for because of the books I had been reading when I was just sitting around the house, other questions I had to do some research on. So when that was finished and my time was up I sent off my sheet and have my fingers crossed since then.

There is one slight catch. The job is in Nova Scotia. That's about as close to Ireland you can get while still being in Canada (but thankfully it means you break straight through french-canada). It's not a problem at all and if I was offered a job I would get on the first flight over there but it's certainly something that I was not expecting; but that's OK!



After that I managed to get the information I needed from Julie and was finally able to top up my phone. I checked the voice mail; and I had absolutely no idea what the person was trying to tell me. They had a name, they worked for a company, they read a resume, call back. I tried, and I failed. So that was a bit of a dead end.

Once that was taken care of I got talking about the other job on Skype to a really nice guy. That job is technical and pays great, only it's financial software and while technical it's not something that's likely to progress my skill set much. It's a 6-month contract which is nice but I think even if I was offered it I would have a hard time taking it, but we'll see how it goes, I'd like to get into the place and have a look anyway.

So I was pretty happy yesterday after all of this so I went to the gym and on the way home bought some groceries and a meal deal for 2 from KFC (6 chkn, 2 chips, 2 sides). That replaced the breakfast I had forgotten to eat once the technical exam had started (and it's now about 4-5pm). The rest of the day was spent sending out a few more applications and contemplating a move to Nova Scotia.

This morning I woke up at about half 9 for ice-skating and "brring brring", another phone call. I my most groggy of morning voices I pushed out "Hellurehgh?". I'm still not sure if this was the same person as had left the voice mail yesterday as at the start of the conversation I missed both the name and company yet again but the rest of the conversation was perfectly fluid; it may have just been the groggyness. Anyway, my morning mood was shaken off once the lady on the phone said "Well yes, it's for a video game company".

The view from my bedroom this morning.

The view out the back of the house.

While true, it's not a development role. It's some factory where they repair and package consoles and games. The pay is better than my previous factory work so I'd be happy to do it, although it's a little far away from where I am at the moment. Still, it would be work and certainly something that would be much easier to drop should something better come up whereas with the Java role I'd be somewhat uncomfortable dropping it.

Some geese.

Some trees.

Besides all of this, I have figured out a potential way to make my own money but we'll see if that progresses.

Anyway I'll be going into that factory tomorrow at some stage to hear more about it and probably hearing back for the Java role soon enough. Who knows when I'll hear back from the studio in NS but I'll email them next week if I don't hear anything before then.



My bed.

So things are not looking hopeless! I'm without work for now but there are jobs out there and even some relevant ones. I'm still not touring the city or seeing any sights but with some luck we'll get there eventually. Hopefully you can bare my ramblings for the time being!