Cause you're not here

[austin_dern]

You may wonder how my job search is going but be too polite to ask. I appreciate this courtesy. So, my former employers paid for a job-placement service of some kind that's supposed to get me to looking presentable and respectable and off their consciences. After some fair bit of sulking I finally accepted this, since if nothing else I can be a cost on my ex-employers. This has mostly been a couple of phone calls and e-mails. It has offered some insights of value, though, among them: I never actually updated my LinkedIn to say I was open to new jobs. So far this has only gotten me an offer from a job placement service to hire them, but it's still better than I had before. Also they made me realize my ``headline'', the quick slug underneath my name meant to give people a reason to remember who the heck I am, was a computer-generated default one that was useless. My LinkedIn network is feeble, although the job-placement person thinks it should be just large enough to start generating some leads.

So of course the actual exciting lead came from somewhere else entirely. I'd done a little moping about my prospects on SpinDizzy and one of the regulars offered to put my resume in on their internal hiring system. After a little hemming and fussing, bouncing between the job-placement-service person and my brother (who's currently hiring some ridiculous number of people, though not for things fit for me) for advice, I went along with that. And then got set up an introductory 30-minute call so they could better familiarize me with the position and see what fits for Friday, that is, today.

It did not happen today; their recruiter had something come up, so we rescheduled for Monday. I don't mind putting this off a couple days since I'm not good at starting things. It gives me a bit more time anyway, to follow my brother's advice and figure out how to describe my work experience as stories rather than bullet points.

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I got no pictures on the Crossroads Village Ferris wheel because we had a continuous, uninterrupted ride and I only feel comfortable taking pictures in the cabin when it's stopped. Fun ride, though. Instead, though, here's shots from around all that.

From around the carousel building here's a look out towards the poinsettia wreath and the main body of the village beyond.

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And a look into the carousel building, with the windows interrupted by cling gel decorations just like you'd find at our house, rather than warnings about how you should wear a mask people it's not hard and you've had it explained why this is a good thing for you and for others.

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Anyway. The band organ, an Artizan from North Tonawanda, the suburb of Buffalo. We ... did not visit the Artizan factory in 2019 but we were certainly in its vicinity for some while, if we take a loose enough definition of ``vicinity'' because I don't know how close the Herschell-Spillman factory was to it. Plausibly close; the band organs were pretty tight with the carousel makers, like you'd figure.

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Trivia: Venice and the Ottomans signed a peace treaty the 21st of July, 1718. On the 21st of September, lightning struck the powder magazine at the fortress of Corfu, with the resulting explosions destroying the Governor's Palace and killing the Captain-General and several of his staff, more damage than the Turks had been able to do against the city. Source: A History of Venice, John Julius Norwich.

Currently Reading: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals, Jeff Rovin.

PS: From my Third A-to-Z: Zermelo-Fraenkel Axioms, fundamentals of set theory, for everyone who wants to hear me talk more about sets.