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Layah the Biped
Nov. 27th, 2009
06:51 pm
Planes went fine. Got to Tucson Wednesday evening. I immediately went to bed. Then several hours later I wake up and spend the rest of the night up and down with stomach aches. Then I sleep all day Thursday and miss Thanksgiving. Then I sleep half the day Friday. Now I am finally awake. Too tired to entertain myself, but not quite able to fall back asleep. I have now managed to eat a quarter bowl of cereal (before I realized I was still sick) and one piece of toast. It's been like 10 minutes and the toast hasn't decided to speed it's entire way through my body and out the other end, so maybe things are looking up. Booored! And I missed Thanksgiving *pout* And my u key is being finicky, so I first wrote pot instead of pout.
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sickNov. 25th, 2009
04:02 pm
Chicago are meany heads. My plane is still there. Instead of being in Madison. If it isn't more late than we think it is everything will be okay except a really really short stopover. If they are any later than that, I'm spending the night in Denver. I don't want to spend the night in Denver. Even if there is snow there. So hopefully my plane will not be any later. I hope….
03:19 pm
There's a Ben and Jerry's in the airport. I was thinking yay! I'll get some Ben and Jerry's after I eat. I ate. They closed. Seriously?!? It is 5:15 here. The pizza place next door that I got dinner at is now closed too. Because obviously no one would want to eat after 5pm. What kind of crazy person am I, trying to get ice cream so late…at night….
grrrrr
03:08 pm
My question is, how did they get the kid to keep still long enough to do this? This needs research. Anyone want to lend me a baby?
02:51 pm
Google gave me free wifi for Christmas. I love you google. Okay, google is providing free wifi at the Madison airport during the holidays. Very nice of them. So now I have wifi, which is good because my plane doesn't leave for two hours.
I was just thinking, there's no smoking on the whole Epic campus, which is huge. You basically have to get in your car and drive away to get somewhere where you can smoke. I wonder if that means there aren't any smokers that work there.
They make software for medical everythings. I wish my doctor used the software they make. I could log on from home and see what appointments I have or make appointments online. And your records transfer to anyone else who uses the software too. And all your chart is on teh computer, and it's pretty neat. I wish everyone had it. Apparently Kaiser is one of their biggest clients. So if you have Kaiser your doctor uses the technology made by the place I want to work.
Sadly, no snow. Although I supposed it would be bad to have snow delay the airplane. But they said it would ahve to snow hard to make a problem with the planes.
I heard Epic is like half the business going through this airport. Wow.
My cell phone leaped out of my pocket and into the toilet. No more cell phone. I wonder how many of my numbers were saved on the chip, as opposed to saved on the phone. Probably most of them. I hate traveling without a phone.
01:12 pm
Finished with my day of interviews. Things seemed to go pretty well. I think I did good in the interview for the writing job. Absolutely no one in the entire place knows what percentage of interviewees they hire. 1-2% of applicants, but how many of those are interviewed?
Two weeks at least to wait to hear back! I don't wanna wait two weeks! The buildings here are amazing. They have the coolest decorating! I walked down an Indiana Jones hallway. No snow yet, but I still have hope. I'm waiting for the cab to take me to the airport. So I have about an hour left to hope for snow. Nobody here understand why I would wish for snow. It's supposed to snow tonight.
Sadly, Ryan didn't even get an interview. It's gonna be hard to convince him to move to Wisconsin. I don't know what to do :-(
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positiveNov. 24th, 2009
05:50 pm
I have determined that Epic is just crazy. I went out to dinner with an Epic employee and the 10 other candidates here. They fly in about 10 candidates every day for interviews. They seem to spend a whole lot of money flying in people and then not hiring them. Our very guessy guestimates were that last year they had about 10,000 applicants, they interviewed about 1200 (so I made the big winnowing) and then hired about 200. That is one sixth of the people they fly here. What is it that they want to know that they can only find out from meeting you in person?
Everyone else is recent college grads or still in college. I'm hoping that is an advantage to me. The weather is cold and wet. Cooold and weeeet. No snow yet, but there is always hopes for tomorrow.
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excitedNov. 21st, 2009
11:50 pm
No more article writing for me :-( I'd been timing myself, and a review of my timing looked like I was making around $5/hr. That's fine when I have plenty of time on my hands, but as soon as I started to feel rushed, I realized it wasn't worth doing. Plus it felt a little slimey. Too bad. Hopefully I'll get a real job. Someday.
Nov. 20th, 2009
08:58 pm
So for this article writing I have been doing, and other places as well, I keep seeing things that want an article rewritten 3 times, or with 25 titles, or something like that. It turns out rewriting an article takes me almost as long as it takes to write it in the first place, but I don't get paid double. Actually, at the rate I write I'm not making a good wage, but I'm hoping to get faster. Plus it's a lot more fun than tutoring online. I keep getting to learn about things I never would have bothered learning about before. I have written articles about robotic dinosaur toys, comforter sets, how to grow your hair, sunglasses, plasma televisions, toy pedal fire engines, and other stuff. Oh, I nearly forgot the most interesting one I've done so far, how subliminal messages work. It's pretty random, and I like having random knowledge. One of my problems of writing slowly is I probably do a lot more research than I have to about stuff.
So today I decided to figure out why articles get rewritten three times. It's something that feels scam-like. I have actually gotten paid, there is real money in my bank account, so I know this thing I'm doing is not a scam, but I wanted to make sure they weren't paying me to scam other people. It turns out to be really strange. Apparently people pay them to write different versions of articles that then get distributed to article submission places which post the article, which gives a backlink to the person's website. It's all about website marketing. Now I want to search some of the text of the articles I wrote to see if I can find them. So I guess it's not really a scam except that it claims people wrote stuff that they didn't, but people do that in real life too. But the guys website selling this program really looks like a scam. Have you ever noticed that one big long page full of text, with lots of things highlighted or in caps automatically looks like a scam or like crazy raving? You'd think he could do better than that. It doesn't look businesslike.
The person who I get emails from, who I think is actually the guy in charge, isn't a native English speaker. He makes the cutest mistakes. Up next: How to learn spanish, colon cleansing, and some other stuff I've forgotten already.
EDIT: Hmm, searches don't reveal anything. Probably means it's too soon, I'll have to try again in a few days.
Nov. 19th, 2009
07:11 pm
I'm glad I thought to look at the weather in Wisconsin before I go. There's a possibility of snow on the day I'm there according to the weather report. The lows are above freezing, so I doubt there is snow that will stick, but I guess I'd better wear shoes… I'll do a happy dance if it snows. Or if I get a job. And a twice as happy dance for both.
excitedNov. 18th, 2009
10:53 pm
I got a great freelance job! Okay, it's not great, because the pay sucks. But I have gotten so sick of online tutoring. I'd much rather tutor in person. So it's nice to be able to do something else for as many hours as I choose and get paid for it. I now write short articles for money. And there seems to be basically as many articles to be written as I want. Of course a lot of the topics suck. The pay is the worst part. It's like 3.50 for a 300 word article, or something around there. But getting paid to write is still pretty exciting. If I can write 4 300 word articles in an hour, I'll be making more money than I do tutoring. I don't think I can, and when I try to write as fast as I can I feel stressed. But even without being stressed I'll be making more than minimum wage, right? I think with practice I can speed up. Especially if I can figure out how to lower my quality to increase speed. It should be possible…
It's pretty neat, you get to choose articles from a big list, and you can write whatever you want as long as it uses the keywords they give you. Too bad I can't write fiction about it, that would be more fun…
I think I work more when I'm unemployed than I do when employed.
optimistic07:56 pm
I have plane tickets. I am officially going to Wisconsin! When I get over being excited I'm going to be totally nervous. Can you believe some company wants to meet me so much they paid to fly me out, stay in a hotel, and all my meals? Wowee.
Nov. 17th, 2009
02:04 pm
Yay, my interview is a week from Wednesday! The day before Thanksgiving, what a day to be flying. I understand you don't dress casually for interviews. So what do you do if they tell you right out in an email about your interview that they have a casual dress code so you should dress casually? Aaaaah!
I've never had a job interview before! Aaaaah!
excitedNov. 16th, 2009
02:36 pm
I got an interview in Wisconsin!!!!!
They are going to fly me there, take me on a tour of Madison, buy me dinner, interview, tour of the place, lunch with employee, then fly me home. Wheeee! Even if I don't get a job, I get a free trip to Wisconsin for a day.
Who spends that kind of money to hire someone with no skills and no experience? Although judging from their applications they seem to value academics over experience, which is a plus for me. HS GPA, SATs amazing; college GPA and GREs, pretty dang good.
excited12:33 am
I hate exercising. The only thing I've ever been able to have enough fun to counteract how horrible exercising is is big fencing melees (about 20 people or more) and Scottish Country dancing. The dancing I've found here is not as fun as it was in scotland because it's all old people. Fencing melees only happen at wars.
I got an expensive DDR pad in the hopes that would be fun enough. It's not quite, but it is more fun than anything else. I think I could do it every day. Of course I've been trying with varying amounts of success to do it every day for the past six months or so.
So tonight after 15 minutes I feel like I'm going to puke. I realized that I actually don't believe that exercise will ever make me fit. I have never been fit in my entire life, even when I was a little kid and ran all over the place. When I was in Scotland doing about 5 hours of very strenuous activity a week, after 9 months I went down two pants sizes. I still didn't really look fit. That was just enough that I could find clothing in my size not in the plus size section. I want instant results! Every time I exercise not only do I feel yucky after exercising, but then I get depressed that I'm never going to get any bed. This is not a good recipe for being able to keep with it.
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discouragedNov. 14th, 2009
11:52 pm
I have a fantasy; the place in Wisconsin will hire me as an writer, and then after working there a couple years I will determine it's a job I can do remotely, and they will agree with me, and I will get to come back to California but keep my job. That would be ideal. Unlikely I know, but that's why it's a fantasy, not actually into the realm of hopeful possibility.
I've been feeling really good recently. No significant stupid depression in several weeks I think. If I can keep this up for a year or so, maybe I'll be able to get off the anti-depressants.
I want a baby! I've been threatening to steal other people's. Ryan says we have to go to the hospital and get them at the source. Not needing anti-depressants before having a baby would be nice, because you can't take those when you're pregnant or nursing. And being married. And having money. And income for more money. Stupid biological clock!
optimistic03:19 pm
Back in Tucson! I love love the wonderful soft king size mattress, and the lack of allergens, and the space! And the free rent. Too bad it's in Tucson :-(
Nov. 13th, 2009
02:38 pm
The Wisconsin job place said they'd let me know as soon as they got my test, which was supposed to be today, so I was eagerly awaiting a phone call. Then I got an email saying they got my test and now it is being reviewed which might take 1-2 weeks then I might get an on site interview. What the heck?
So I sent an email, synopsis of which is "what the heck?" Then I got a phone call from someone other than the person who I've been communicating with, and she said she called to let me know that they are considering me for both the programming job, and a job as a tech writer! Which is what I wanted all along, and applied to originally! And she says I probably will need an onsite interview (I double checked that they pay) and I should hear something Mondayish. Yay! I probably get a free trip to Wisconsin! And possibly get to be a tech writer! I swear, not going to stay in Wisconsin more than a couple years. Must come back to California. I like California. But this would be a great opportunity for a couple years.
excitedNov. 10th, 2009
07:28 pm
Okay, I finally got around to starting business number 2 (3?)! Tech support for old people with Macs. Check out the website, let me know if there is anything wrong or you have any suggestions. www.simple-computer-help.com
Nov. 9th, 2009
05:24 pm
Awesome weekend! The party was totally worth coming back for. Now I have to decide if I want to come back for Thanksgiving and Loscon (sci-fi convention), winter solstice and masquerade/housewarming party, and/or Hanukkah party. Can't decide!! I could come for all of them, but that is lots of travel and expensive, but all are fun activities.
Took my test today for the position in Wisconsin. There were three parts, verbal, math, and programming. The verbal and math were pretty easy, verbal was mostly logic problems, and math I got everything except one question, which I want to know if it was a trick question, but I signed something that I wouldn't share information about the test. The programming part wasn't too hard except when they didn't really give me enough information. It was written for people who don't have much experience programming, but some things just didn't make sense. For example, S is used to assign variables, so S A=5 means the variable A is equal to 5, or S A="this sucks" makes A those words. What the heck does it mean if it says S A=G=F>B Is this conditional? Does it mean A=G=F if it is greater than B? Does it mean we are assigning a true/false value, A and G will be true or falsue depending on the relationship of F and B?
Anyway, I still think I did very well. I'm good at tests. It will be really cool if I get this job, because I was kind of thinking of becoming a programmer but I didn't want to have to go back to school for several years and I wasn't really sure that's what I want to do. So maybe they'll hire me and train me and if I like it I get paid for the experience and if I don't like it I can quit and come back soon. So any day now I should find out....
excitedNov. 6th, 2009
12:19 am
I arranged to take the test for my Wisconsin job on Monday. I have absolutely determined they are for real, because they are paying money for a local library to proctor my exam. I told them I was running out of time to make a decision, because I'm trying to decide on housing, and that was when they got me the information for the exam. And they said that as soon as they get the results of the test they will be able to immediately tell me the answer. Which means getting the job must be entirely based on the results from my test. I'm good at tests. Unless they test me on something I know nothing about. I'm even pretty good at guessing. I don't think I wanna go to Wisconsin unless they are paying a lot of money. Like at least $40,000. I get the feeling that's what we're talking about though. I guess I'll find out next week. Or find out that I didn't get it, in which case I won't find out.........This is making me nervous, I want to know now!
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restlessNov. 5th, 2009
09:56 pm
Well, I sent out a survey to several hundred professors at UCSB, and within 10 minutes I had 7 replies, which uniformly across the board say that the services I was trying to provide are not going to be taken up. Time to rethink the services I'm providing....
disappointedOct. 31st, 2009
08:36 pm
Wow, this is the most disappointing party I've had since I was in kindergarten. Although I'm really not that disappointed, it was really Ryan's party. Nobody showed up. There we are in our halloween costumes, all dressed up and no one to see us. The party was supposed to start at 6, and I finally had my costume finished at like 7, and still nobody came. I'm not too upset, I only got 4 hours of sleep last night (my own fault, see previous post), so it'll be good to go to bed early. Like now.
When I was in kindergarten for my birthday I invited every single person in my class, and not one came. It was still a party because all my family came like they always did, but I probably cried about it. My birthday parties were usually all the family plus 1 or 2 friends, and before kindergarten my birthday parties were just all the family, but I guess I was disappointed anyway. Definitely way more disappointed than I am now. If it wasn't for a costume party next weekend I would be disappointed, putting all that time into a costume nobody will see. But this is good, I'll have time to fix it up before next week, so it will be even better.
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tired04:50 am
I had this dream a couple days ago that felt like an old sci-fi book. I was on another planet I think, or maybe on our planet in another time. I'm pretty sure there was time travel involved. I was there with my family. And there were dinosaurs outside, and we weren't allowed outside for very long because it was dangerous or there was radiation or something, so it kind of felt like being in a train or a cruise boat or something where you are trapped inside. And there was a pterodactyl, and I don't know how big those things really were, but it my dream it had like a 20 foot wingspan, and it was swooping down at us during our daily walk. I was too scared to go out after that, and there were weird plants and ginormous bugs, it was kind of scary. Anyway, back at the base, or whatever it was, it felt kind of like a dorm. And there were a lot of the people from the kibbutz I lived on there, and there were some evil Portuguese people. They spoke English just fine, so I don't know how I knew they were Portuguese, but it was a very important fact in the dream. And I was with some of the kibbutz people, and we were wandering around, and we came across this room full of drums, and there was like 3 Portuguese in there playing them, and we thought that looked so fun, so we joined them and had an amazing jam session, but then after we were all having a bunch of fun the Portuguese people suddenly got really mad at us and we had to sneak away from them, and then a different Portuguese guy who was really big and scary found us and threatened that he was going to install locks on the outsides of our rooms. I managed to sneak back to my room, and I told my parents but they weren't interested, they were too busy going out to see the dinosaurs or something. Then I was in the room alone and I kept waiting to listen and see if someone was going to try to put a lock on my door, but when I heard noises I was too scared to check it out, so I got Russell to check but they ran away when he started opening the door and he was too slow to see who it was. Then they came back like 10 minutes later so I ran up to see what was going on and it turned out to be my fellow kibbutz members trying to put a lock on my door, but they ran away before I could figure out why they were doing it.
04:40 am
Aaack, Wheel of Time is ruining my life. My halloween costume isn't done and I need to clean up for the party tomorrow, and what am I doing? Reading a stupid book. Robert Jordan died, and his series got better? Still not worth reading, I dis-recommend them for anyone thinking about picking the series up. But I'm trapped! And I skipped a couple hundred pages because I really wanted to know what was happening in a different plotline and then it got so exciting, and now I really should go back and read the part I skipped but I don't want to, but the books really aren't as good if you read them like this because there is interaction between the separate plotlines, which is happening right now, because a battle that wasn't supposed to happen is happening, and I'm sure it's because of something that happened in the part I skipped.
And....( spoilers, if you care )
Oct. 30th, 2009
04:24 am
Wheel of Time is like a drug, I know it's bad for me, but I can't stop. I started reading them about 15 years ago, and it was the most amazing books I had ever read. And still looking back, I think they were pretty good up to about book 5. I didn't realize they were getting bad until about book 7. Robert Jordan died after he wrote book 10. There was a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of fans suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. Back when the series was good, I swore that if Robert Jordan died before he finished, I would find him and kill him. But by the time he died I really didn't care as much. But they hired Brandon Sanderson, a fantasy author I hadn't heard of before, to finish the books. So now I have what Robert Jordan claimed was going to be the last book no matter what but is actually the first of the last three books (meaning there is still two books to go). I got it the day before yesterday, which I think was the day it came out (ordered a couple months ago on amazon, and I got it for the incredible price of $14 for a nearly thousand page hardback). Now, when I have no time and too many jobs to do and a halloween costume still nowhere near done with halloween just two days away, and I'm stuck reading it again. I'm addicted to bad epic fantasy! Help me! Is there a WOT-annonymous group I can join?
Oct. 29th, 2009
11:42 pm
It's fall in Tucson. All of a sudden. It is freeeeezing outside. Or at least when I go out barefoot with summer clothing on at night. I am amused that we may turn straight from using the air conditioner to using the heater with very little gap. I like cold, but I'm not sure I brought enough socks for it to be shoe weather this early in the year.
08:44 pm
I got a job interview! At a Montessori school in Ventura! It's for a very part time job and the pay sucks, but at least it will be fun! I'd rather get paid crap to do something I like rather than something I don't like, and part time isn't a problem because I have so much other work now I'd have to stop doing some of it if I get a full time job. Oooh, so excited! I'd better learn everything I can about Montessori schools before my interview...
excitedOct. 27th, 2009
08:50 pm
Wohoo! I've got a mentor. I have a virtual assistant mentor who will help me be a virtual assistant. I also got a job editing a tiny e-book.
I tutored for 5 hours today. I have 5 hours most of the days this week I think. I don't like tutoring online, it's a lot harder than in person and you make less money. 5 hours is a really long time, but I just can't justify giving up tutoring hours when I don't have a job. I hope I get a job soon. Or a lot of virtual work. Need to fix my website and learn marketing....
I had a kid I tutored today who wanted me to tell her if she was sweet. I told her I didn't know her, and then she said well just what I think from talking to her. I told her I'm not allowed to answer personal questions. She said it wasn't personal, I said I wouldn't answer the question, she said she wouldn't be mad. All this is interspersed with attempting to work on a math problem too. And a lot of me saying, we need to get back to your math, what do you think the answer is, what step comes next, how do you solve this. Finally I told her that if she asked me again I would have to disconnect her, and she said okay disconnect me but I'll give you a bad review. So I disconnected her. Her review? "I hate her!!!!!!!!" Yeah, that's gonna hold up to a lot of review. Unfortunately she actually does get to impact my rating with impacts my ability to get a raise, fortunately not too much.
Some kids aren't even trying. After trying to elicit the answer thirty different ways I tend to give up and try to give them the answer. But I can't just outright give them the answer. So I give them all the words they need to answer it, if they just put them together, and the kid just says "idk idk idk idk idk"
I got one kid who was trying to get me to answer his reading questions for him and he hadn't done the reading. I might have already posted about that. After I accuse him of not having done the reading, he says "can't you just tell me where the answer is? I'm lazy" The answer was not in the story in some place that it could be pulled out, so I couldn't give him that even if I wanted to. My answer "lazy people don't get their homework done correctly."
Oct. 25th, 2009
05:32 am
My day was backwards. I was sleeping from 9 am to 4 pm. I hate that. Took a train to Tucson. I tried a little to stay awake on the train to fix my schedule. I didn't have to try very hard, I wasn't that sleepy. So I got here at midnight having had about 3 hours of sleep in the previous 32. I was exhausted starting the moment I got out of the train. Went to sleep as soon as I got home. Noon Saturday Ryan brought me breakfast in bed (He is so good to me!). So I got up. I was so tired I was incapable of doing anything, and went back to bed. Slept till 7 pm, then I decided to try to sleep all night because I didn't want to be nocturnal again. That worked until like 4:30 am. Now that's not a bad time to get up, it means I will have all day for doing things, and just go to sleep absurdly early and my schedule will be back to normal tomorrow. Except I can't fall back asleep but I'm really too tired to get up and do anything. It doesn't help that there is no comfy place to sit in this house.
And I have soooo much to do. I haven't done any work for the past 3 or 4 days, so I have lots of work to catch up on. And there's my halloween costume. I have one week to make it. I haven't started yet. I decided to do Queen Amidala (it's not like with only one week left I would pick something easy).
I have bought:
Fabric
jewel for headdress
Stil need to buy:
Fur trim
Posterboard for headdress
paint
table runners?
Fake hair
thread
cording?
wire or hoop
facepaint
plastic eggs for lights
LEDS and wiring for lights
And then of course there is the making - make a pattern, sew the dress, create the headdress
And then since we are the ones throwing the party, need to clean the house, decorate, make and obtain edibles
Busy week and I have no energy to start but I can't fall back asleep.
tiredOct. 22nd, 2009
01:28 am
Had your chance, muffed it. I have been here an entire two weeks, and decided that is far too long I am going home. I know I claimed I would be here longer, but I lied. In good news, my car is not yet repaired and I am taking the train home. This means sometime early November I (and maybe Ryan too!) am going to take a train back here and stay for a few more days. I intend to plan this at exactly the right moment to go to the Time Traveller party. So I will see you there. And I won't be sick! What a waste of a vacation, I come here and get sick. Blah.
Oct. 18th, 2009
07:17 pm
Now I remember why I don't ever watch Temple of Doom. Ewwww. And what does Indiana Jones see in the annoying lady. He's like "oh, it's a girl, must sleep with it." At least the woman in Raiders of the Lost Arc was smart and spunky. This woman is just whiney and annoying.
In brighter news, today is the first day I didn't feel worse than the day before. So hopefully I am on the mend.
So, friends that are back from war now, wanna get together after I feel better? I'm thinking I might only be here for another week or so. Depending on when my car and computer get fixed.
sick02:35 am
I am too sick to do anything but not too sick to be bored. I am apparently just the right amount sick for infinite movie watching. I slept all day today, and all night last night. So I seem to be up all night today.
Movies watched during this illness:
Star Wars: A New Hope
THe Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
Spaceballs
Raiders of the Lost Ark
I'm like halfway through that right now. Guess what's next on the list? Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade. I would have got bored of watching movies long ago if I was healthy. Weird how that works. Maybe I should do a Harrison Ford marathon, since that seems to be my theme so far. Except spaceballs. But the guy in that is pretty cute too. Okay, back to the movie....
sickOct. 15th, 2009
06:19 pm
Had a phone interview today! For a tech support position?? In Wisconsin??? Explain to me how I can't even get an interview for a part time administrative assistant, but I got an interview for tech support? Explain to me why I *applied* for a tech position. No, really not traditional tech support, waaay more cool than that. And the company seems totally awesome wouldn't I just love to work there (Epic?). No dress code green flat-hierarchy control your own project never two days the same kind of place. See the way this worked was that they sent an email to me advertising job openings, and I applied for the job tech writing, and the one they had advertised at me too while I was at it. If "I programmed my graphing calculator a bit in high school, and I like math a lot" gets me a job, then I guess I'm going to Wisconsin for a while. Companies normally look at your resume and only interview you if they think they might hire you for a job, right? They don't just waste their time interviewing everyone who gave them a resume. RIght?
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confusedOct. 13th, 2009
12:27 pm
Is it normal for an employer to request a credit report before they interview you? Is it a scam? Anyone have experience with this?
They claim they want it because the employee will be dealing with company money. I assume they are implying they don't want someone with so bad credit that they are likely to steal money from the company. The reasoning kind of makes sense to me, and I am not inherently against giving them that information, the only thing is if they are actually a scam and going to use it frodulently.
Basically I sent them an email saying if they decide to hire me I will give them a credit report then. It would be worth it to get hired, and you have to give them your SSN anyway, so it's not like you can keep that secret from your employer.
This isn't the first time I've had someone request this though.
Oct. 9th, 2009
05:23 pm
Oh wowow wow! I got another client! Two in two days! Now I have to make a contract. Scaaary. Could this work? Can I really start my own business and not work for anyone ever again? I've been pretending to be so confident to get jobs, it only occurs to me now that maybe I don't actually know how to do everything I'm claiming.... Well, I'll learn fast!
I added a second article to my examiner page, http://www.examiner.com/x-25765-LA-Home
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busy11:26 am
Obama got a Nobel peace prize? For what, not being Bush? Campaign promises? I am an Obama supporter, but he's not that amazing.
Other notable winners of Nobel peace prize:
the UN
Doctors Without Borders
Nelson Mandela
The Dalai Lama
Mother Theresa
Amnesty International
UNICEF
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Huh, why did I think Gandhi did but he's not on the list? Anyway, Obama seems a strange match. It has gone to a few American presidents: Jimmy Carter, Woodrow Wilson, and Teddy Roosevelt. Anyway it just seems strange to me.
Oct. 8th, 2009
04:20 pm
Back in Cali! I'm staying with Rachel for a couple weeks. I want to visit with people! I know, everyone's at GWW this weekend, but later. Except all the people at GWW probably aren't going to even read this post. Anyway, want to hang out!
01:04 pm - I got a client!
I got a client! I got a client! He found a post I had made about Mac's in a virtual assistant forum and he needed a VA with a Mac and now I have a client! Woohoo! It's like I have a real business and everything!
excitedOct. 5th, 2009
05:17 pm
I'm published! Go look! http://www.examiner.com/x-25765-LA-Home
And I found out tutoring pays me more than I expected, so that's pretty good. There will be money going IN to my bank account soon. Yay!
PS: http://www.examiner.com/x-25765-LA-Home
http://www.examiner.com/x-25765-LA-Home
http://www.examiner.com/x-25765-LA-Home
It only takes a second to click on the link, and that gives me MONEY!
excitedOct. 3rd, 2009
05:12 pm
Wow, writing newspaper style is so much easier than writing for school. I was writing, and I stopped at one point and thought to myself 'wait, you can't just write that, you need to cite something" and then I realized no, I really can just write that. I can just write whatever I want. Even if it isn't true. It makes fact checking a lot easier. I am very nearly a published author now! If you can count being published on the internet, but I think it counts because I get paid for it. Only I get paid for how many people look at the article and for how long and how often they come back and who subscribes and stuff like that. So once my page is up you all should go look at it and subscribe and make it look like people are interested so I can make money!
Actually I think this is much more useful as a type of free marketing than any money I make from them, which isn't going to pay the work it takes to write. It's still exciting.
Oct. 2nd, 2009
02:54 pm
I nearly have three jobs now! I am scheduled to tutor online starting Sunday for 10 hours a week, I am in the very last steps of getting hired for the other tutoring job, and I have been accepted to publish articles at examiner.com. None of these three jobs have yet told me how much they pay, but whatever it is it is still infinitely more than what I'm making now (0 times anything is still 0, unless that anything is infinity). And publish articles? I'm going to get paid to write? I'm sure it's a pittance, because it's not based on words or per article, but based on readership or clicks or something like that, but it still means I'll be a real published author, right? Because they pay me. Unfortunately the other site I signed up to be an author at that let me choose interesting subjects rejected me (gotta edit my sample articles and reapply), and examiner wants me to write boring things. I picked "home based business" as my subject with the thought of sneakily promoting my business with it. All the other subjects were equally as boring. My first article is almost written.
I had an interview last Friday with a blind attorney that I didn't get the job for, had an interview Wednesday for a tutoring position that I almost certainly won't get, and I have an interview on Sunday with someone I found through a Craigslist ad who is helping someone who is in prison earn his BA and needs some online work done. I know, sounds fishy. I'm gonna be careful.
I feel like I am in a perpetual state of never quite having a job. Someone called me from Ventura, they found my resume on Monster, but they wanted people to be insurance agents, and I don't want to be an insurance agent. I guarantee any job that works on commission I will both be bad at and hate.
optimisticOct. 1st, 2009
10:08 pm
Finally livejournal is back! I've been wanting to post for hours. I saw the most amazing cake ever! Saw on the internet that is. It's a real Tardis cake that is bigger on the inside than the outside. 
It's a pretty amazing looking cake, but it lights up and looks bigger on the inside because of mirrors.
go to http://www.doitmyself.org/2009/08/tardi
Also a time lapse video of someone making a cake of a threadless shirt design http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DniNlmnM
And looked at too many horrible cakes at http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ I couldn't stop laughing. I spent hours there. I didn't think my attention span for looking at bad cakes was hours long. Must do something...productive....noooo the internet is winning!
Sep. 30th, 2009
06:41 pm
Okay, this time my website is up for real! Go look at it and tell me if there is anything that needs fixing. And I know the words at the top are too low on IE, but I gotta wait for Ryan to fix that. They look fine on firefox and safari. But let me know if you see anything else that could be better. www.virtual-online-assistants.com
Sep. 22nd, 2009
05:57 pm
I got a job interview! The job sounds like fun. It is reading out loud to a blind lawyer, and doing regular office work and research, and driving the lawyer around and accompanying her to to court.
Downside: $9/hr
Upside: Sounds like a fun job, look good on resume, open up new avenue for VA business, learn about lawyeryness, haven't got any other interviews. (except the tutoring job, which I would not have to give up to do this one too)
excitedSep. 21st, 2009
04:55 pm
I'm part of a message board about being a virtual assistant. One thing they keep saying is you need a niche, which basically means a target group of clients. Real estate and attorneys seem to be two groups that are quite a large market. I don't have any background or skills that would particularly improve my desirability for those groups. I've been thinking about what niche I want to focus on, and not coming up with anything special. Then today I was reading a list of "who needs secretarial service" and what kind of work they need, and I hit the perfect prospect. Professors and students. What is the one thing I am super good at? School!
But why were they on the list? Don't profs have grad students to do their grunt work? And students are broke. Are they there because people have actually gotten freelance jobs from them? I always had academic writing on my list of skills, but I couldn't really figure out who I was marketing that to.
Things I can do that are useful:
Ghost writing journal articles (do profs do that? Is it allowed?)
Statistics (can't do it yet, but I could learn fast, and lots of profs and grad students need it and can't)
Editing/proofreading
Bookkeeping? I don't really want to do that, but it seems like one of the most marketable of my skills
Transcription
regular transcription - maybe study results?
Linguistic transcription - there is probably nobody that does that freelance, but it might be too important to give out to a lackey
Things I will not do: Write papers for school assignments/entry essays, etc.
It doesn't sound viable, but it would be so cool if it was! Cool enough that it's worth putting some effort into making it viable. Getting to spend all my time reading and editing academic papers is almost as cool as getting to spend my time reading and editing fiction. Plus I'm good at academic writing. Oooh, excited!
optimistic04:08 pm
I got business cards! They are so pretty. It turns out 100 cards is not very many. Which isn't that bad of a thing because I will want to change them before I get more. I already see all kinds of things wrong that noone else will notice.
In other news I GOT A JOB! Sort of. I got a tutoring job. I'll be tutoring high school and maybe college students in math and maybe SAT and maybe GRE. Pay is $20/hr but it won't come out that high because the tutoring takes place at the students' houses and they don't pay for travel time. But they will give me students relatively close to me. On the plus side I'm not paying rent, so every dollar I make I get to use on other expenses. And I really think I'm going to have some online tutoring work in the next couple weeks, except the internet here won't let me log in to the tutoring places. It is blocking ports I need. So we need to change the modem or change wireless providers, I'm guessing.
Now that I have business cards I'm thinking of going door to door to some local businesses to see if I can get anything. The problem is just giving my card to a clerk is probably a waste, so I have to go to businesses small enough that the owner is the clerk. Or something like that.
Maybe I'll send out mail commercials once my website is done. LIke doesn't have links that don't do anything and messed up looking logos and things are all professional. Any day now (grumble grumble).
excitedSep. 18th, 2009
01:42 am
My website is up! Sort of. It's not quite done yet, so don't bother telling me things like my logo needs to be moved. But it's good enough that I'm not scared to let potential clients see it, and the contact me form actually works. So you can go take a look now. www.virtual-online-assistants.com
And not only did I apply to every temp agency in Tucson with a website, now I have also applied to every tutoring company in Tucson with a website. Will I get a job? ...
Sep. 17th, 2009
09:03 pm
I have now applied to every single temp agency in Tucson that has a website. I'm amazed how many there are. That took the entire day. I feel like when I was a senior in high school and I spent all my time applying for scholarships but I never got any. It's just like that. I wouldn't mind spending the entire day on work and not goofing around if I was actually making money at this. Blah
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