TheFranciscos.Net

Can lightning strike twice? The company which I was supposed to start working for has been sold by their parent company (click here for details). How will this affect me? Although it’s not as bad as what happened to me previously, it still might alter my proposed work for this company. It could possibly be cancelled altogether. This one was supposed to be a contract (as opposed to a perm position at AP), but it was still the job that was closest to getting me back to the grind. No papers have been signed yet anyway, but we’ve already talked about salary and were also discussing a start date. Anyway, I’ll know more tomorrow when I talk to my recruiter.

The good thing though is that some other opportunities are still open – one for a mortgage company and the other a big financial institution downtown. Also, the one healthcare company that I really wanted to join a few months ago have sent their feelers to me again, and I’m hopeful that this will finally work out.

Wish me luck guys!

I’ve got a new toy to play with tonight (well, it’s not technically mine). Aileen bought a Sony Clie PEG-T615C and of course, being the computer geek in the family, I volunteered to set it up for her and transfer the data from her old Handspring Visor Deluxe. Surprisingly, that task has so far been a snap. I’m currently in the middle of transferring all her old medical programs and it’s been painless. As far as features go, the color display on this thing is really sharp, too bad the screen is kinda small, especially compared to my iPaq. It should be plenty for Aileen’s purposes though (which is to look cool while doing her hospital rounds).

I’d still pick any Pocket PC-based PDA over a Palm-based one anyday, but Aileen had to get the latter because the medical programs that she uses aren’t available on the PPC platform. And out of all the Palm-based PDAs, I told her that for me, the Clies were the best ones on the market, mainly for their built-in multimedia capability and more importantly, they just look so much cooler than any Palm or Handspring model. It’s nice to know that she listens to me every once in a while.

One other advantage – this Clie is soooo much faster than that old Visor. Syncing up used to take forever on the Handspring. The Clie on the other hand synced up all the same data in just about 5 minutes…. awesome!

I’m the proud winner of a contest that Comics2Film ran for its 5th year anniversary. I got a DVD of the Judge Dredd movie starring Sly Stallone and the now-hot Diane Lane. Although a lot of people didn’t like the movie, I thought that it captured the spirit of the 2000 AD series. Who in the movie industry can even come close to having a Judge Dredd chin (without any prosthesis doohickeys) better than Sly? This flick is probably one of the top 5 comic-based movies ever made, and besides I got it for free so I’m not about to complain about that. My motto is – “If it’s free, it’s for me!”

Man, do I miss going out – it seems like it’s been forever since Aileen and I had a proper date. One of the first things we should do when I get a job is go for a night out. There’s so many places here in the Pitt that I’ve been wanting to check out. There’s M (formerly Metropol) where people like David Byrne (of the Talking Heads), Sleater-Kinney, Saves The Day and other bands I want to see usually play. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel good about leaving Zoe alone with a sitter all night. I guess it’s just one of those compromises of having a baby that you have to live with. Still, I think Aileen and I deserve a night out sometime soon. It would be nice to have some time with just Aileen and myself for a change, even if just for a couple of hours.

One of the upsides to being at home all the time is that I get to spend a lot of time with my daughter Zoe. Back when I was still doing the grueling 1 1/2 hour commute to and from Wheeling, I was so tired from the driving that all I wanted to do when I got home was eat dinner then go to sleep. Now I’m able to spend the whole day with her, playing with her, feeding her, giving her a bath and all that stuff. When I start working again, this is definitely one of the things I’ll miss.

She’s so independent now that she’ll usually insist on trying to do something by herself before she lets you do it. The latest thing that she learned is how to use the remote to turn off the TV and the cable box. At the rate she’s going, she’s going to learn how to operate our home theater in no time… something even Aileen has trouble doing. She also has a vocabulary of about 500 words – and she even knows opposites now. One of the things that cracks us up is her observations whether the weather is warm or not. She’d say “It’s hot… not cold” or “It’s cold, not hot. I like it cold.”.

My daughter is growing up before my eyes and I’m just happy I’m here to see it.

Aileen and I had dinner last night with Dr. Ramon Lozano and his wife Pat at Youghiogheny Country Club in Elizabeth. We had a very nice time chatting about Manila, Pittsburgh, and the people in McKeesport. By coincidence, Dr. Lozano is another classmate of my mom’s from UST. It seems like anywhere we go here in the States, we’re bound to meet somebody that my mom knows. He talked with Aileen about a possible opportunity for her once she’s done with residency. It sounds promising and she’ll probably seriously think about it. Of course, that would mean staying here in the Pittsburgh area instead of moving on to Aileen’s ideal warmer states like Texas or Florida. That’s not necessarily bad because Pittsburgh has started to grow on me… the city is nice, the people here are friendly, we live in a nice neighborhood. So maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to call the Steel City our “home” soon.

Things are starting to move on the job-hunting front… I don’t want to say anything specific yet though (so as not to jinx it), but it seems like there’s finally some light at the end of the tunnel. If things go as currently planned, I’ll be working again in the next couple of weeks (maybe even as early as next week).

I finished reading 100 Bullets Vol.4: Foregone Tomorrow last night. Finally, there’s some insight to what the Trust is and how the Minutemen relate to them. Although it’s still not clear to me whose site Agent Graves is on, the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit. The bad side to it is that I have to wait for probably another year to get Vol.5. Still, the wait will be very much worth it for the BEST comic book series currently being published.

So the Lotus Eaters are doing a couple of gigs in Manila. It’s about bloody time! They’re only about 15-20 years too late. Although I think they are one of the best new wave bands of the 80s (for me though, the Pale Fountains are my all-time fave), they are has-beens and now musically irrelevant. I hope there are enough nostalgia fans back home to make the Eaters’ trip worthwhile. Personally, I don’t think the P1,000 ticket price is worth it.

I’m not really in the mood to do any blogging tonight – I’m still recovering from the great weekend we had. I just want to say though that one of the best things about having a house are the great friends that come over to visit.

Check out some pictures from the weekend here.

Another week, still no job… but as they say, good things come to those who wait. Let’s just hope that I don’t have to wait much longer. I finally have at least some form of income coming in though – yep, I finally swallowed my pride and started begging on the street. Okay, okay… I didn’t do that… nobody would believe me anyway if I told them that I was starving. One needs only to take a look at my immense gut to see that. I also didn’t apply for a job at Wal-Mart (not yet anyway). What I actually did was to finally swallow my pride and file for unemployment compensation benefits from the good ol’ state of PA. Yup, 400+ clams a week until I get my act together and land a job. That’ll be enough for a while, at least until these companies I’m interviewing with finally smarten up and realize I’m the best man for any of their positions… Yep, even a few weeks of being out of work hasn’t deflated my ego one bit

We’ve got a few friends from King of Prussia coming over for the weekend so we’re pretty excited. Our first stayover guests in our new home! Nothing like having a few people over to finally get our act together and straighten out the place. Although the place is still about half-empty (no furniture in about half the rooms), at least it’s now clean and neat. Hopefuly, the weather will cooperate so we can have a nice time, see the sights, play some golf and eat some barbecue.

Yay! Our lawn is finally starting to show more grass and less weeds! The turfbuilder we put in is kicking in. Maybe in a few more days, the weeds will finally be gone. Our lawn was in extremely neglected shape when we first moved in. Aileen and I had no clue what to do with it. We wouldn’t have a green thumb even if we dipped our hands in green paint. But things can be learned – through trial and error usually. And after about 2 weeks, we’re finally getting the hang of this.

Yep, I’ve really started to like gardening. I find that it’s very refreshing and therapeutic. Gratifying too, if you get the results you’re looking for. It’s kinda funny actually, because this chore is what I was dreading to do before buying the house. I never really realized that it could be fun. Of course, it’s probably just a new thing for me and maybe the novelty will wear off after a while, but I think I’ll enjoy it for the meantime.

It’s interesting that the gospel at mass today was also about gardening and weeding. The message was that the weeds were the bad traits in people and you need to kill them before they take over your garden.

So what else happened last week? Well, I’m still out of work, but hopefully that won’t be the case for much longer. I had a few promising interviews last week, and I think that one of them will pan out. In this crappy economy though, you can never tell. Also, since Pitt is a small-size city, there just aren’t as many opportunities as I would probably get if I was in a big city like NYC, Chicago, Houston, or even Philly. You just have to make the best of what comes your way. Oh well, there’s always Wal-Mart, right? 🙂

On a book of lists for prayers, offerings, and wishes for the mass last Sunday –

“I’d like to finally get a job so I can get out of this wretched life.”

I just got thinking about how pathetic this guy’s life must be. I guess that’s the great thing about my life – I have Aileen around. We always had the sort of relationship where we give each other the feeling that whatever happens, everything will work itself out. Even though I’m currently unemployed, like that sap that wrote that wish above, I still think that I lead a good life. Even if everything was suddenly taken away from me, I know that I’ve always got Aileen and Zoe and that’s more than enough to keep me happy.

Job-hunting nowadays really sucks. With so many people out of work and not too many IT jobs out there to choose from, the salaries of IT professionals are going down the drain. I saw an ad on a local Pitt website looking for a senior level programmer that’s offering a whopping sum of $36,000/year. Man, that’s really shitty. I’ve got a couple of interviews this week so my job-hunting prospects are still pretty high, but I most likely will have to take a pay cut.

We made good use of our big backyard this weekend. Since it was blistering hot yesterday, Aileen and I bought Zoe a small wading pool in the shape of a dinosaur. It’s real cute with a water fountain coming out of its snout. Zoe loves the darn thing and even wanted to still play in it even after dark. We also bought a badminton/volleyball set. After setting up the net, we played some badminton and we had a blast. We topped off the weekend with a great weekend dinner consisting of barbecued ribs and sausages.

I just received my latest IRA statement in the mail today and the best way to describe it is depressing. Stocks have really taken a plunge in the past few months, and even more so these past few weeks. Although we don’t really have a lot at stake there (at least compared to other people), it’s still a bad feeling to be losing money.

Aileen and I took turns today with mowing the lawn. It’s pretty tiring especially when pushing the damn mower up a slope, but I think the result was very much worth it. At least now we don’t look like we live in the middle of a corn field. The grass looks so much better when it’s short and trim. The weeds are still there though, but we plan to apply some weed killer in the next few days.

Zoe’s accomplishment of the day: Aileen and I were so amazed when we saw that Zoe can now climb the ladder on the swing set in the backyard by herself! Too bad I wasn’t able to take pictures (Aileen and I were too busy playing Scrabble for me to get the camera). I’ll take pics sometime this weekend and upload it soon.