Saturday, April 30, 2005

Unemployment Update

As of today, I have been unemployed for one month. I am not sure how I feel about this as I still am enjoying my time at home. Unfortunately I do feel as though a bit of despair is creeping in as I still don't have any more prospects than I did two weeks ago. Wightman still hasn't decided what to do about a possible position for me, and Bruce Power still hasn't gotten organized enough to have interviews yet.
There was a career fair in Walkerton last week where I did talk to a local furniture company that may be looking for someone sometime in the future but didn't know more than that. That's really the only new job thing.
There has been absolutely nothing in the local papers or the government job sites either.

I still feel pretty good about things overall I guess. I don't miss working at the hospital at all. I haven't worried about it or really thought about what's going on there for more than a few seconds here and there, which surprises me and makes me realized how dissatisfied I was there.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Sping Activity

For Anne's birthday on April 9th we went for a hike on the Bruce Trail, we went on a portion that goes through the Beaver Vally. These are the pics, enjoy.

On a side note, Picasa 2 from Google is great, I don't know why anyone would pay for an album program with that one availble. You can make any changes to pictures that you need, and it even created the above album nicely, and you can post pics on your blog through it. Gotta love Google!

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Unemployment - Week 2

If I learn one thing from this experience, its that things are really out of my control and in God's hands.
The Senior Computer Hardware Technician position I am waiting for an interview for at Bruce Power is still in limbo over there. They don't think they will even start scheduling interviews for a couple of weeks. I still think this is the position that I am meant for and I am curious to see how it works out. Pray about this one.
However, one interesting development this week is that when I sent my resume to a few local companies I received an excited reply from a manager at Wightman Telecom. This was someone I had dealt with in the past and he had always been kind of impressed with me, so when he realized I was looking for a job he was quite keen to find me something there. The job he has in mind really wasn't within my experience, abilities or interest, so he passed me on to another manager with high recommendations. This is where it is interesting, Wightman as some very cool stuff coming up in the future that I think would be awesome to be involved in. However, they seem much more interested in getting me in to a supervisory role and I want more hands on. Ideally, I want a good mix of both (because you get paid more this way). I will probably meet with them this week and see if they can fit me into what they have planned. We will see what the Lord works out for me.
Unfortunately, there has been nothing available in the way of jobs listed either online or in local papers.
In the mean time, I really enjoying being at home, doing things with Maya and being with Anne more. Its going to be hard to go back to work when it does happen.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Unemployment - Day Seven

It's really day three of a concentrated job search, and of that I have only had today as a full day to do it because of computer work I am doing for a friends business. He can only afford me on a very limited basis though.
So far the job search has not been successful at all. When looking in the paper and sites in the past I have noticed that IT jobs seem to come and go in clumps. One week there will be like three or four computer jobs listed and than none for a couple of months and it sure seems like its a dry spell right now. There has been nothing listing on the local sites, local papers, monster.ca or anything else. But it hasn't even been a week yet.
The one thing that I do keep hearing is that Bruce Nuclear is highering and as far as I know I am still expecting an interview for a computer technician job I applied for there in December. So far that is the only lead to anything.
The one thing that is hard is the fight down the rising panic. Questions like, "What if I can't find anything, what if I have to take some crappy low paying job just to make ends meet?".
Overall I think the Lord has really put me at peace with the whole thing, and I know He has something good in store for me as long as I follow the path.

Friday, April 01, 2005

Luke WINS!

A couple of weeks ago I entered a contest at one of my rally news websites, Rally Planet.
Well I won a 1 year subscription to WRC+ which is worth about $92 Canadian.
Very cool, this is currently the best way to keep track the WRC rallys during the weekend before its on TV, or in my case on the internet to download.
It has live stats, interesting articles, and tons of video and pictures. All of it exclusive.
I haven't gotten the log in info yet, but I was asured I would get it soon. As long as its before Rally New Zeland next weekend.

Also, I found out that the time share my parents have in Mexico is a meer 2 hours from Rally Mexico which happens in march. I am definaly going to have to squeeze a vacation in over then and make the trip.

Looking forward to that Pennsylvania Rally in june. I hope this unemployment thing doesn't mess it up :(

Unemployment - Day Two

Today was pretty busy. Slept in to about 9am and then got ready to go to work for 10 to ask what my options were regarding pension contributions as well as get my personal belongings.
Also there was Lea, the person from the Grey Bruce Health Services who will be looking after the local stuff there. He is a pretty nice guy but not the best technically. He let me clean up my personal stuff off of the computer there and server before anyone else could get at it. Also got password and other server stuff cleared up.
Then I went around and said goodbye to all the departments, most of which I spent a lot of time in over the 3 and a half years I was there. Most people were pretty shocked and more then a few tears were shed. I found the whole thing quite amusing from my perspective (I don't know why, I believe the Lord has given me a lot of peace regarding this whole thing) and laughed a lot and didn't feel sad at all. I was surprised at the amount of anger from others though, a lot of people couldn't believe that the hospital had decided to get rid of me, and a few also suspected they were on the chopping block soon to. We will see.
It's pretty a much a given that a few hospitals will be closed up here in the next few years. There just isn't enough patients in the system here to make it viable for the number of hospitals in the area. A lot of nurses are leave in the next few years so maybe they will work with that. I may be really fortunate to be let go when I have been.
I worked the afternoon for my friend Nathan who runs a consulting business, but he can't really afford me. This prevented me from doing any job hunt stuff. There were no computer jobs in the paper.
On Monday, things really going as far as the job hunt. I will get a few things done over the internet in the mean time while Anne is working nights this weekend.