"You gonna get another job?"...

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
"I don't think I'd *like* another job."
-Office Space.

*sigh* I can just about *see* "retirement" from here. Finished renovating my rental and have someone set to move in on the 19th. Stock market's down a bit but I could just about make the nut on another rental property. Given my cost of living, that would be enough that I wouldn't need a job anymore. I could do little side gigs for walking around money and then once I'd been managing rental properties long enough to qualify for a mortgage without a job I could refinance one of them to get money to buy another property. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Only there are NO houses on the market right now. So nothing to renovate and rent out. There IS the census, though. And they're hiring. That would put some money in my pocket and get me out in neighborhoods where I could keep an eye out for potential deals. The pay is pretty good and it would wrap up just about the time the stock market is back on track and there are some homes for sale. It's a solid plan.

The one flaw in it is that I really don't want another job. I like hanging out with my dog and puttering around the house. I've gotten spoiled. But I guess I need to bite the bullet because otherwise the money will eventually run out... :(
 

jack

The Legendary Troll Kingdom
I was laid off in March. Kickstarted my nutrition business and it's doing better than when I was working.

Not worried about going back to work. Enjoying the Toddler unable to lead properly and slowly consuming himself on the public stage daily.
 

Oerdin

Active Member
Give it another 3-6 months and there will be a lot of properties on the market. The unemployment bonus ends this month and then in about three months the foreclosures will start.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I was laid off in March. Kickstarted my nutrition business and it's doing better than when I was working. ...
Funny you should mention that. My tenants are married pastry chefs who got laid off during the 'rona. Friends started asking them to make them stuff, word of mouth got around and now they have an online bakery and delivery service. They are very grateful I'm taking a chance on them because they couldn't get other property managers to return their calls. It was a no-brainer to me. Their application was impeccable; nothing fishy, everything made sense. And worst case, if their business goes sideways they're both very employable. One can go back to work while the other runs the business or they can fold it and both go back to work. (If mankind stops needing baked goods, I'll have bigger worries than collecting rent.)
Give it another 3-6 months and there will be a lot of properties on the market. The unemployment bonus ends this month and then in about three months the foreclosures will start.
Yeah. There's that. And this is still a fairly competitive time in the market. It's tighter than last year, but things'll open up. I did apply for the Census. If I don't hear anything back, I think I'll give TaskRabbit a shot. I like the idea of picking and choosing work, being my own boss, and getting to help people and solve problems. And I'm OK with giving a company a fairly decent cut for handling the marketing and legal paperwork. And I guess if I gotta wear a mask to assemble someone's IKEA, so be it.
 

Knight Templar

Registered User
I've gotten a temporary job with the census bureau. About two months in duration give or take, supposed to start in August. Wish I was teaching and coaching again but I don't know if that will happen. One of my sisters says that I should write a book. That sounds great but I have doubts about my level of talent.
 

jack

The Legendary Troll Kingdom
Wear a mask and stay away from the front door. School is not happening this fall, no matter what Our Beloved Leader and his trained dogs bark. Ive studied the science of coronavirus. It's quite unsettling.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Well, no word back from the Census Bureau. So I had a look at TaskRabbit. That's a thing like Uber, where you can say you know how to assemble IKEA or help people move or whatever. Like everything else, they've managed to make what was simple and painless nearly impossible. After fighting with the application process for about 15 minutes I gave up. So now I'm looking at jobs from my previous employer and a previous prospective employer and going "yeah, no, none of that sounds like any fun." Luckily I have some dishes to do and it is about lunchtime, so I can ruminate on this stuff for a bit; maybe have a look at how the stock market and the real estate market are doing to see if I can afford to buy that other rental property which would make a job unnecessary.
 

jack

The Legendary Troll Kingdom
Where I live, I could get a job in 2 minutes with the skills I posess. Not interested since covid is ubiquitous.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I like money. Or I like being able to buy the things that keep me alive and comfortable. At present a job is the only way I can think of to get people to simply and reliably give me money.

So yeah. This is boring, but I'm going to say it. You don't have to read it. I'm looking at 4 jobs. I was looking at TaskRabbit, but their process for becoming a tasker has gotten to be enough of a pain in the butt that I gave up. So. 4 jobs. There is a continuum of ease of application and response to applications.

The census job was pretty easy to apply for. Had to register. Then filled out a questionnaire. This quickly got me a notification that I am "eligible for consideration." And that's were we're at after a little over a week. No updates, no news, just in limbo.

Then there is a company I interviewed with a year ago. Their application process is odious. Log in, upload a resume. Go through all the auto-populated fields and unfuck all the errors the HR-bot made when parsing the resume. Because it allowed for a cover letter and my qualifications were unorthodox enough to raise question of why I'd be applying for an entry level part time job, I included a cover letter. Unfortunately, by the time I'd completed the cover letter my session had timed out and I had to redo everything. That said, today they sent me an e-mail to arrange a phone interview.

My old company, on the other hand, is just the opposite. I had to log on (I did have to change my password because it's been a year or so). Then all I had to do was upload a resume and I was done. (I guess I had to answer the race/sex/eligible to work questions on both sites but that is fairly inconsequential--I mean apart from the absurdity of having to tell someone what race and sex I am because if they don't know what race and sex I am, how can they tell if they are discriminating against me based on my race and sex or not?) But I'll probably hear back from them about 3 weeks after I've found a job. Not that I feel bad about that. Once I transferred my 401(K) they started sending me e-mails about managing my 401(K) and a few months back they started sending me weekly notices that they weren't able to deduct my health insurance premium from my paychecks and if I didn't arrange to make payments they might cancel my health insurance. Which you'd think they'd eventually figure out, given that I haven't worked for them for over a year but...
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
91 degrees and sunny out right now. My options are:
-Arrange for this phone interview
-Take my dog for a walk
-Bolt on the replacement part for my van that just arrived
-Some other productive thing
-Take a nap.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I think naps may be better than sex.
 

jack

The Legendary Troll Kingdom
Well not better that being woke up from said nap with head.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Well, they offered me a job. And I like money. So I guess tomorrow I get to go do a drug test and fill out paperwork.
 

jack

The Legendary Troll Kingdom
mmm drug tests.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Well, I just got offered the job. Problem is, I like having money to spend, but this is totally going to screw up my "Battlestar Galactica" viewing. I'll wind up missing 4 episodes a week. I guess I'd better either figure out Kira's online source or buy a DVR and figure out how to set it up.

I'd really like to record on the VCR, but I'm at a loss for how to do it simply because back when they made VCRs, there was no Channel 24-5. You could have a Channel 245, but not 24-5. So it will be impossible to program.

But yeah. Kind of a blessing because I've been starting to get a little bored lately and need more income, but when I got the text of "Congratulations! You got it. Can you start Friday?" I was like "Hell. I don't want to drive somewhere and trade my time for money."
 

Loktar

Pinata Whacker
Well, I just got offered the job. Problem is, I like having money to spend, but this is totally going to screw up my "Battlestar Galactica" viewing. I'll wind up missing 4 episodes a week. I guess I'd better either figure out Kira's online source or buy a DVR and figure out how to set it up.

I'd really like to record on the VCR, but I'm at a loss for how to do it simply because back when they made VCRs, there was no Channel 24-5. You could have a Channel 245, but not 24-5. So it will be impossible to program.

But yeah. Kind of a blessing because I've been starting to get a little bored lately and need more income, but when I got the text of "Congratulations! You got it. Can you start Friday?" I was like "Hell. I don't want to drive somewhere and trade my time for money."
Same problem I have with my VCR/DVD combo. I want to hook it up to watch my VHS tapes but if I do I lose most of my channels because it only goes up to Channel 125. I need to buy a second TV so I can hook it up without the cable box.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I've actually got my first Grown-Up TV up in the attic, a circa 1995 19" Zenith. Can't just throw it out because there's nothing wrong with it. But when I moved to this house, the living room didn't really lend itself to a CRT TV set, so I got the biggest LCD (a 32") that fit in my bookshelf.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Oh, and I hesitate to say it because I barely remember how to do it when I move (this is also part of why I hate the thought of adding a DVR to the complexity) but if you just want to watch tapes on a VCR, you should be able to set that up so you don't use it as the TV tuner. Or maybe I can do that because I use an antenna instead of a cable box. But the VCR stays off unless I want to use it. Then I turn it on, go to channel 3, and watch my tape. If I want to watch the DVD, I switch from "antenna" to "video" on the "source."
 

Chuckles51

Member
I know there is a way to get a vcr to record on the ota channels but it is complicated. That said I thought I saw something on YouTube about using an old pc as a video recorder, whether there is a way around having to buy a card thing is uncertain.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Just waded through all the tedious on-boarding forms and stuff. Slogged through a miserable 20 page "Code of Conduct" booklet and found the last thing I had to sign off on was a 25 page dispute resolution thing. Had another look at what I was signing and realized I didn't have to say I'd read it or agreed to it, only that I received a copy of it, so I was able to literally check that box.

I've been worrying because I've got an orientation from 7:30am to 4:30pm tomorrow and my dog tends to not approve of me being gone for long periods--especially during daylight hours; kind of why I took a 2nd shift job, even though it will interfere with my television viewing. But the day she got the bandage off her foot (she had a tumor/cyst removed a week ago, she managed to rip it wide open about 20 minutes before the vet's office closed. They told me to just wrap it up and bring her in in the morning and that most likely they'd just let the wound close on its own.

Somehow I managed to get to the vet late enough that he was about to start seeing appointments so I had to drop her off. Got a call a few hours later that the wound had really shown no signs of closing so either the antibiotics weren't doing their job or the tumor was cancerous (he hadn't heard back from the lab yet) and it had spread enough to the rest of her foot that it wasn't healing. So he had to stitch it back up again after all. He called a few minutes later to say the tumor had been benign and was caused by an abscess, so we should be able to get it to heal up. She probably got a "foxtail" in her paw. She's an active dog and the places she likes to nose around for rabbits were lousy with them around the time she got it (the city finally mowed this week) But the upshot is she *should* mostly want to sleep tomorrow.
 
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