Tag Archives: work

I Got The Job!

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I had two job interviews earlier this week, and I knew that it was down to just me and another person at the second interview.

Well, having waited all yesterday for official notification, I had a call this morning to let me know that I did get the job.   I am over the moon, since jobs for people with my skills and experience are so scarce these days, especially in the UK.

The money will not be as good as I have been earning in the USA, but aside from salaries in the UK being a bit lower in general than the USA, we are in a recession, and I also have some new skills to learn in this job.   I am pleased to finally have a chance to learn some more up to date computing skills, and this also gives me the incentive to really prove myself, and if I can do that well, then the long term benefits will follow.

At this point in my life (I will turn 55 this weekend), I am not looking for a quick way to earn a bit more and to move on, I am looking for a job that I enjoy, working with a good group of people, and where I can hopefully stay until I am ready to retire.  So really, if I do my bit, with luck this will see me through.

Debbie and I are off to Warwickshire (in the heart of England) this weekend.  My cousin’s daughter is getting married, so a chance to celebrate, for Debbie to meet more of my family, and for us to have a couple of nights away in a 17th century Bed & Breakfast place.    Photos and more stories to follow…

The Job Situation Is Looking Up

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I had a call on Friday afternoon from a recruiter who has been looking after me really well since before I moved from Florida, and he managed to get me an interview for Monday morning with a large local company that is still family owned, and has been in the area for many years.

The interview went really well, and although I don’t have experience in everything that the company uses in their IT department, they seemed to like the way that i would fit in with the company, since almost everyone there has been there for a number of years, and they like to operate as a friendly unit rather than a corporation where your existence there depends on the whim of shareholders and budgets etc.

Well I guess I must have done ok, as I got called back for a second interview yesterday afternoon, and I think I did pretty well. Got to meet the rest of the small IT department, who are really nice people, all around my age, give or take 10 years, and it seems like a great place to work, especially as I am hoping to find somewhere that I can stay until I retire.

It’s now down to either me, or another applicant, who is due for their second interview in right about the time I hit the publish button on this article, so wish me luck, and hopefully sometime tomorrow I will have a job offer…

Five Weeks Back In The UK And No Work

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Well it’s been five weeks ago today since I left the sunshine of hot and sticky South Florida and returned to the UK to be with Debbie.

It’s true that we have had some nice days where the sun has shone, there have been blue skies, and it’s been a pleasant 70 degrees, but there have also been quite a few days where the temperature has barely climbed above 65 degrees all day.   Sunday was grey and gloomy all day, from the time we got up until the time we went to bed.  You can’t really say until the time it got dark, because it never really got light!   Monday started off the same, but it turned out nice in the afternoon, and we were able to have a BBQ and sit outside in the sunshine.   Tuesday was mixed and also breezy.  We went to Calshot, which is across the other side of Southampton water, and had a good walk along the beach (well pebbles).   But today has been another one of those grey gloomy days, most of the afternoon it’s been spitting with rain, and the last two hours it’s been blowing a gale and pouring down.

The schools go back at the end of this week, and Debbie heads back to work tomorrow after six weeks off.  We wonder where summer went to, but although we haven’t had the money to go anywhere and spent anything, we have had some wonderful local walks and done some good exploring of the local countryside.  That’s something we both enjoy a lot, and I have a lot of posting to catch up on, with plenty of photographs to add as well.

As soon as I came back here I signed on at the job centre to claim unemployment benefit, but so far I haven’t received anything.  With so many people out of work over here, the offices are backed up, and with my having just come back from the USA it hasn’t made things easier either.  I hope to hear back with a positive result within a week, as my money is almost gone, what bit I had left over here, and Debbie only earns enough to barely cover the bills and food.

Of course I have registered with all the internet job search sites, but they all pretty much return the same jobs, and nothing has really matched my skill set yet.   I would like to add a commendation for the one recruiter who I found through Linked-In, and who took the time to call me while I was still in Florida, as well as to check up on me at least once a week here, providing tips on potential job openings in companies where he didn’t have a contact, as well as working hard to find a place for me within his clients.    If you are looking for an IT job in the south of England, particularly if you are working with IBM Midrange systems, I highly recommend Adam Langley-Smith of Required-IT to handle your job search.

Meantime, I am trying to decide what to do, trying to figure out how I can earn enough money online to keep us afloat, and there are so many ideas, but the hard part is to know what to do and in which direction to turn.   I thought of looking at ghostwriting (writing articles for other people – they get published without your name on them), but I would really love to be able to write under my own name.   I would love to write a book, but I can’t think where to begin, I need a plot, and the worst thing is that this could take a year or more before I got published, and then the book might never be successful anyhow.

I keep trying to be realistic, since my IT skills are in need of some re-tuning, but still I am hoping that something will come along.

Tomorrow will I hope bring some good ideas, since Debbie goes back to work, and I have more time to myself, time to devote to writing, promoting, and to trying to earn a penny or two.    I would really love to have some good money coming in soon, as we had planned to spend Christmas in Florida so I can see my two daughters, but if I don’t get a job, that isn’t going to happen.   There is always the Lottery of course, or the million to one chance of a benefactor leaving a donation in the Tip jar on the blog, but I don’t realistically expect either of those to happen.  Just have to get lucky and get a good paying job.

So farewell summer, welcome to my new working life, trying to make it by writing and blogging.   Wish me luck…

Adam Langley-Smith

Adapting To A New Routine

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This is the start of my third week back at work, and I am gradually getting used to my new routine.

It was really hard going back to work after three months off, and the timing was not exactly good as there were things I still wanted to work on, but will now have to wait until I have the time.

True to form, this job is in an area of South Florida that I didn’t know, and actually I think that every single job that I have ever had has been in an area that I didn’t know before I started working there.  It’s a bit daunting at first, but it does give you a chance to explore new areas, and you never know what you will find.  Here for example there is a state park opposite where I work, so I can walk through there at lunchtime, look at the turtles in the marine center, and stand at the top of the beach, enjoying the cooling breeze while I talk to Debbie on the phone.

The sad thing is that I started back to work the week before my daughters finished school for the year.  It would have been nice to be able to take them out during the week, especially since they live with their Mom 25 miles from me, but now I am too busy at work to be able to do that.   Also this is a long drive for me, as the work location is 45 miles north of where I live.  The girls of course live 25 miles south of me, so if I was to try and see them in the evening during the week it would be a 70 mile drive in rush hour traffic and in my old car too, so it isn’t going to happen unfortunately.

Admittedly the drive is 45 miles each way, but so far apart from Friday evening when it was raining heavily, the traffic flow has been good, and it takes about 50 minutes.   That’s not so bad, considering that in the early 90′s I used to drive the 10 miles from home to work in London, and it would take at least an hour, and on several occasions 2 1/2 hours!   My last job was really close to home, so that took just over 10 minutes to get to and from the office, but most of us aren’t that lucky.  In the scheme of things 50 minutes isn’t that bad really.

My main worry though is my car.  I drive a 1996 Toyota Avalon, which has almost 142,000 miles behind it.  It’s in good condition, the engine runs great, there is no rust, it even still has the original muffler (exhaust), but the suspension needs looking at.

The Toyota dealership said that it needed new struts and quoted me $1,800 to replace them, which is rather expensive for a car that’s only worth about that if I was to sell it.  Especially after three months off work that’s a big financial OUCH!    Since the car was starting to vibrate a bit at speed, I took it into a tire place, where they put it up onto the ramp, and checked it out.  No mention of any problem with the suspension, but they said that one fo the rims was bent and the wheels needed to be rotated and aligned.  $22 later the car now runs smoothly.

However it’s not all good news, as they said that the tires were cracking and would need replacing.  There is still plenty of tread on them, I have probably only done 10,000 miles if that, so now with driving over 500 miles a week I have to watch out for that too.   I can’t justify paying expensive maintenance bills right now, and I also can’t afford a newer car.  Don’t you love being in these catch-22 situations?

So I just have to drive carefully, not do any sharp manoevering or braking, and keep my fingers crossed that my car will last as long as I need it to without having to spend a lot of money.

My First Day Back At Work

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Today was my first day back at work after three months of being unemployed.

So naturally I was rather nervous, as most of us are when starting a new job, and as is typical for me, every new job I have takes me to somewhere I don’t know.  This one is no different, at Juno Beach, just north of West Palm Beach in South Florida.

It’s a 45 mile drive to work, and as I had to be there by 9:30am to meet my new boss, I thought I had better leave by 7:45am in case the traffic was heavy.   Well as it turns out, pretty much nobody went to work by the look of it, so the roads were fairly empty, and I got there by 8:50am!   I still had to wait until 9:45am for my boss to arrive, as he had to go to the other office first, so by the time introductions had been done in the department and I had got my security card etc, it was time for lunch.

My boss was busy, so I took a walk out, a chance to call Debbie, and also my Son, both in England.   The office is in a small strip mall, and across the road is a park.  The other side of the park is the Ocean Drive, and beyond that the beach!   There was a wooden walkway with steps leading down to the beach, so I stood there to make my phone calls and took advantage of the nice breeze that was blowing, it was great to not feel as sticky as I had just 1/4 mile inland.

The afternoon went well, with me getting into the systems and looking at a few programs, and then the drive home was fairly uneventful, getting home at 6:30pm.

I thought as I had been sticky, it would be a good idea to put the sauna on, and with luck someone had already used it, so it was still pretty warm.  Nice to only need 15 minutes to warm it up instead of almost an hour!   I had a good sauna, did 30 lengths in the pool and then back up my well trodden six flights of stairs to the condo, by which time it was close to 8pm.

I was ravenous by this time, having only had grapefruit juice and a banana before I left this morning, and just water and two cups of green tea all day.  I didn’t care to go out to eat, I preferred to explore a bit and make my phone calls instead.  Starving I was, but I didn’t want to overdo things as it was late, so I just made a cheese and tomato sandwich with some German Black Bread (Pepperidge Farm, really good) and peeled and sliced 3 carrots and had those with some ranch dressing.  Yumm…  Followed by a Raspberry Fat Free Yoghurt.  That hit the spot, and wasn’t too heavy either.   Now if I can do the same tomorrow, I ought to lose a couple of pounds for sure…

Watched a bit of tv, nothing much on though.  Caught up on my email, tried to print a couple of documents, but the ink was low on the printer, need to redo those at work tomorrow.  And now, last thing before bed, to catch up on Tagfoot.

So now I am winding down, and about ready for that trip to the Land Of Nod.   Catch you tomorrow… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…