As I was driving back from New Orleans, I located NPR and figured I would see what was up in the world. LSU has several stations throughout Louisiana so as soon as one fades out, you just find the next.

It was all gloom and doom about the economy and such, but I found one segment to be REALLY interesting.

They were interviewing Tina Brown on her article about the “Gig Economy“. You can listen to it here.

Basically, with the internet making things easy to find consultants/freelancers and the cost of healthcare being so high, many firms are seeking out part time workers. She says that more and more often, when you ask somebody what they do for a living, it becomes a 10 minute explanation as opposed to just something simple like “Im a banker”. Apparently 1/3 of the US workforce is like this. She sees the workforce as a collection of hustlers drumming up work and struggling to “make the nut“.

It was a bit serendipitous to come across this piece as the whole point of my trip was to clear my head and maybe formalize some strategies on how to make some money. Im beginning to realize that my chances of landing a regular 9-5 job within 20-30 minutes of my house with benefits is getting pretty slim in the short term.

My newer options include a 45-60 minute commute (ack), taking really low bids for contract jobs (Ive seen some ridiculous ads for jobs that even head hunters discouraged me from pursuing) or looking into the telecommuting market.

To be a successful free agent, you need a good list of contacts. I’ve started going back to Geekmeet and joined up with the Dallas Java Users group. Already, that has opened the list of possibilities. The thought of not being a wage slave to 9-5 is actually kinda appealing, but Im still at the edge of a generation that feels that folks need a full time job. The Christian Work Ethic. Ill admit that the biggest thing getting me down is not the lack of a paycheck, but the lack of a job.  I really did take a lot of pride in having a job with Nortel. I liked the collegiality of the workplace and it did play into a large part of my identity.

Additionally, in the interview, they mentioned that more people are finding that they are falling back onto other hobbies and skills for work. I do make a little coin from time to time with the Boys Named Sue. Actually, I spend more time doing taxes for the music than my actual work income. This year was kinda weak though. I had considered giving violin lessons.

I do like circuit bending and have considered making things to sell on eBay.

After the segment, I still had 300 miles left to get home and came up with the following strategies.

1. Although the Certifications for Java have helped, there is no point in me getting another one for EJB or web services. To be honest, this is the point where I think the real work tends to branch out with its own solutions (Spring, Hibernate, struts). Im going to spend my ‘learning time’ making a fully blown, feature rich website. A workout one because I need some help in the gym too. When its ready, I’ll let friends use it. I only ask that it get beta tested if you use it.

2. I need a secondary resume. One with all my oddball skills on it. Circuit bending, silkscreening, guerilla marketing….gardening?

3. Im going to have to stop relying on Job boards for jobs. Headhunters can find me.

4. If I grow out my goatee, maybe I can be a Starbucks barista.

I had a blast in New Orleans, even if it was a short trip. Thats ok because Ill be back before the weather gets too hot. I missed out on the Garden District, as well as the arts district and probably several other things that I will research.

Over the course of my 40 hours in the town, I had 4 different gumbos. The best by far was at a place called the Magazine Po Boy shop.

Magazine is a fun street to drive down from the French quarter to the end of Garden District. It felt like Austin. I was having fun just going into the markets and seeing what people buy. This place just yelled out from blocks away…”eat here”.

I guess what that is on the left is a muffaletta po-boy?? The Gumbo was perfect.

After eating, I got a large Chickory Coffee and headed home so I could get my tooth looked at. Good news is thats its ok. Dunno why it was bugging, but its better now and the dentist felt that there was nothing needed to be done immediately except keep an eye (tooth) on it.

So after all of this not working, I figured I needed another vacation. Actually, I have been working pretty hard getting certifications, applying for jobs and preparing for interviews. Its been kinda frustrating, but the economy is still a little shaky.

I thought a road trip to New Orleans would be nice before it gets all crowded for Mardi Gras. Unfortunatly, as Im writing this, my tooth is kinda acting up and the lymph node under it, in my jaw is visibly swollen. Since the severance benefits stop on Friday, I had to set up an appointment with the dentist and cut this show short. Still, I covered a lot for a day I think. I’m still hoping to see stuff tomorrow before my trip back.

The drive from Dallas is pretty much 8 hours. Lots of cops. The radio station situation is not all that bad if your into Classic Rock. Its Skynyrd Country. Don’t speed.

You don’t really seem to pass a lot of little towns or gas stations. Its not like I-35 from Dallas to Austin. I know just about every rest stop, jerky retailer and roadside oddity like the back of my hand. There are plenty of opportunities to buy cracklins however if your into that kind of thing.

My hotel was just one block north of Bourbon street. Pretty sweet deal at 54 bucks a night, but you have to have to take parking into account. Its not free, and they wanted 25 bucks a night. Its much cheaper outside the quarter, off of Rampart. Deals can be found on CheapTickets.com as well as the visitors center. I got a huge room (well…biggest one on the floor at least).

One of the first things I wanted to do was locate a bottle of Peychaud. Its a locally made bitters that I suppose you can only really buy in New Orleans (or online Im sure). It was easy to find at the stores in the French Quarter. Pretty good stuff. I actually dig bitters and 7 Up. Its supposed to be the key ingredient to Sazerac.

Cari suggested I check out the Acme Oyster Company. The Oyster Po boy was very good.

Mostly spent the rest of the night watching drunks walking up and down Bourbon street.

The last time I was on Bourbon Street, I went with my friends Dan and Alicia. We started at a bar that offered 3 for 1 drinks. That pretty much put an end to the evening quickly. I didn’t want to make that mistake twice. I did try a hurricane…but…eh I cant say it was all that good. I think next time I’ll just stick to the Garden District and visiting the French Quarter during the day. The only thing worse than a street full of drunks are a street full of amateur drunks. The bars were not all that stellar and wanted to spend my calories eating!

The next day I took a guided tour into the St Louis cemetery. I had heard that you don’t want to just wonder around by yourself there. Apparently, the cemetary is next to the housing projects. These are all evacuated however so the locals seemed to indicate that it was not as bad as it used to be. Still, Im glad I got the tour. I learned a lot more about the area and the way folks interacted because of it. I used this Tourgroup. The tour guides name was Lloyd Sensat. Good guide.

Those pics are here

Here is our guide at the crypt of Marie Laveau. Our tour guide also suggested that the best music, bars and food were to be found off of Frenchmens street. I wish I had more time to check that out.

I passed up the usual Cafe Du Monde and had my Biegnets at Cafe Beignet. They tasted just as good to me and I didn’t have the wait in line.

I had an afternoon snack at a place called Coops.
I had a bowl each of “Rabbit and sausage jambalaya” and Gumbo. I think I got the bottom of the pan Jamabalaya becuase it was a little burnt, but still it was very tasty. The Gumbo seemed to have both file and Okra. I thought the two were not mixed. Still, I enjoyed it.

Lots of walking.

Did I capture a Ghost?

Dinner was at the Gumbo Shop. This place was great. It has a nice patio and the food comes out fast!

Played some video poker at Harrah’s. I didn’t win….still gotta look for a job.

Finally I drove down Magazine St through the Garden District at night looking for a place called Zotz. Pretty cool little coffee house. Open 24/7. Free wifi and open computers. My kinda place. Dont listen to the haters.

All in all, a pretty good 24 hours in NOLA.

I’m still looking for a job.  I was extremely lucky to have a severance or funemployment as my friend Kirk called it. I am waiting on the results of a few interviews, but at this point I’m not holding my breath.

Its a strange time. The economy is in the toilet and my job prospects look bleaker and bleaker. At the same time, we are at the cusp of an incredible change. Obama swears in tomorrow. I believe!

So, I play fiddle…and find myself in fairly rednecky parts of Texas from time to time.  In late November I was in the middle of Texas during the peak of deer season at a bar where EVERYBODY was wearing khaki or camo or some kind of combo of the two. While waiting to play my set, I overheard a group talking about our President elect.  It was about 10 minutes of jokes really.  Most were rehashes of jokes that had been floating around forever involving watermelons and food stamps and whatever. The interesting thing was when they ran out of jokes to tell…the redneckiest, whitest (except for his teeth) and hickiest of the lot said “You know…to be honest….I voted for the guy and I think he really can do something about this fucked up shit.”  Several of them all nodded in agreement and acknowledged that they had voted for Obama as well.  Maybe some of them did vote for him, maybe they didn’t. Who knows, but I feel that there was a bit of solidarity and hope for our nation at that point. Pretty amazing considering the proximity to Crawford, Tx! I Believe.

I So I’m pretty positive for the most part. Unfortunately, Nortel has declared bankruptcy so those severance. In my case, its was pretty close to being up anyway.  Not a big deal except for the rather abrupt stopping of medical benefits. I don’t have any medical issues that are a problem…I’m just kinda accident prone. Thank God that’s not a pre-existing condition.

What sucks are the poor folks still at Nortel who will NOT see a severance at all. If your really interested, a pretty good discussion can be found at www.allaboutnortel.com. I know a few people that were just laid off before Christmas and they will not see a severance at all. Considering all that, my timing was optimal. The prospect of a severance was the only thing keeping folks on board.  Now that there is zero incentive to stick around, you can bet the best and brightest of the bunch will be jumping ship. I seriously lucked out.

I feel that I used my time off wisely. I gained two Java certifications.  SCJP and SCWCD.  I had hoped that this would give me an edge in my search. I’ve been happy with my progress so far. It has helped keep me on  my toes and I have tons of info at my fingertips. Im a quick study. I’ve never been modest about that, and I feel like I’m at the top of my game right now in respect to my coding/designer skills.  I got SCWCD in 6 weeks. And all that over the holidays. It is kinda addictive really. Its just a matter of learning stuff…something I’m good at.

I feel like I could write a whole blog on the interviews I’ve had. But…ya know…that’s one of those things that you cant really blog about these days without it coming back to bite you.  Remember kids, the Internet is forever.  That picture of you and the donkey lady CAN and WILL resurface twenty years from now. Emails get forwarded, pictures get reposted and google caching lasts longer than you think.  My only tips are to use Google extensively.  If your going to interview for a job that requires Swing, Google: “Swing interview Questions”.  Don’t be surprised when you hear the exact same questions in an interview. OK, at least ACT surprised.

Concerning the job market, the pool of jobs gets smaller and smaller. Thousands of folks are getting laid off and there are maybe dozens of jobs on the market.  So I’m at a crossroads at figuring what kind of tech I should acquire next and that’s where I’m at.

What next?  The two obvious J2EE paths are Web services and EJB.  I’m leaning towards EJB. I hear the web services is a lot of work and to be honest, the cert is a little out of date. Other areas are Struts, Spring and Hibernate. In order to learn those, my best bet would be to pretty much make my own site from scratch. This is a Wordpress site with a few PHP customizations that I did because I could.  Not enough to base a resume on.

Maybe I should start giving Violin lessons.

I just passed my SCWCD (Sun Certified Web Component Designer) test with an 86%. So thats two certifications under my belt. This certifies that I know JSP, servlets, custom tags, EL and a smattering of OO patterns. It was a pretty brutal test. I spent about 7 weeks preparing for it…and we are talking long study sessions and tons of exercises. There are books to help you out, but for the most part, it is self directed study.

Was it worth it? Well…maybe. I now have a very good idea of how they work and could probably do ok in a job interview. The material REALLY helped in my last interview with SWA. Im still waiting on the results for that.

The big thing is that I can put it on my resume. This is a big deal in the tech world. ALL resumes are searched, scanned, sorted and trashed E-lec-tron-ically with search engines. With the job market like it is, an employer just has to search for all the suitable resumes by keyword.  Since many JAVA jobs need JSP, they just trash the resumes that don’t have those keywords before even looking at them. It doesn’t matter if you have the PERFECT resume…if you don’t have those critical keywords, nary a human eye will gaze upon it.

So, whats to stop me from just putting on those things on paper. Integrity. I feel that my resume needs to reflect who I am. I would never put a skill down that I didn’t feel good about. There are a few that I have not used for a while…like LDAP, or C++, but I know it well enough to get back to the swing of things quickly.

I did find a trick to get by the robots. I do NOT have a problem with the following strategy.

So you are getting kicked out of the pool because you dont have SOA, Soap, JAX, and the like. You know enough to interview, but your resume is not getting the right hands.  This certification process is GOLDEN.  Just put in your resume that you are studying for the next certification that covers those keywords.

In progress: SCDJWS Certification: SOA, SOAP, JAX and whatever.

The robots will let you pass and you have a better chance that human eyes will decide your fate.

So, its time to update the resume.  In fact…if your on Monster and all of those boards, I found that just refreshing the resume helps.  Change your statement, reorder your skills…anything. Fools the robots.

Come on out and see the Ghoultown show at the Doublewide tonight. Friday, Nov 21st! Good times.

I had the chance to play on their latest album. Drink with the living dead!

I love sitting in for a song or two when I have time. Playing something different helps exercise my chops and Ghoultown is different to say the least. Dark, twangy…I always had a hard time describing what they do. Kinda like a cross between a Morricone Spaghetti Western score and the Misfits. Gothabilly?..who knows…its always a good time high energy set. Ill be sitting in for night of the living dead and one more song.

Chris from Zoviet records made the stuff I played sound really sweet.

Basically, with me…..Ill record with anybody for a song or two. If its a considerable contribution to the project, then I might consider asking for a little gas money but playing on a song or two only makes
me a better studio player. I always practice the heck outta whatever I can. Im not particularly the cleanest player, but there is a certain rough twang that I can add. Im consistant too. Generally, my first take will be about the same as my fifth. I will have about two or three ideas of how I think it will sound and if they trash all the efforts..its no skin off of my back. Whatever. I dont have an ego at all about it.

With Ghoultown I felt bad that I was a few minutes late getting to the studio. Still, it took longer to set up the mics than my recording. I was in and out in less than 20 minutes. Chris did some cool splicing and dicing with the fiddle riffs sprinkling some shuffles in parts that never even called for it.  Its on their myspace

So, come on out. The cover is CHEAP. Like 5 bucks. The Skeletons are opening.