Brian's Bag-Letter Bonanza

DUH...

2008-12-01T05:14:00.002-05:00

I just realized that the other day when I offered to do my little bit to help other recently-laid-off workers grab themselves a smidgen of free publicity here, that I never did give out my email address. To frustrate the spammers, I'll write it out longhand-ish: it's "knockatize", and then you type the "at" thing, and then "gmail.com". Once again, that's

MOTIVATIONAL CRAP

2008-12-01T05:02:00.004-05:00

Normally the eyes roll at self-improvement topics, but this one from Reader's Digest wasn't half bad. I'll skip to the money parts:

8. Cuddle with your kids. Few things are more stressful in the morning than waking up an overtired fifth grader or a snoring high schooler. Yet this is one of the few times you can catch your child still vulnerable. Sit on his bed and gently smooth his hair as you softly waken him. Or, if you're dealing with a very young child, lie beside him and gently hug him awake. Such a moment will send a quiet surge of joy through your entire day and will become all too rare in all too short a time.

And then they flail out with their leg and kick you in the mouth.

18. Keep a wicker basket for yourself and each child by the front or back door. Into it go your keys, wallet, purse, and the child's backpack, papers, gloves, hats, etc. This will prevent that frantic last-minute scouring of the house as you look for lost items.

Replace "wicker" with "Kevlar" if your kids are anything like mine.
19. Split up in the morning. That means you use one bathroom and your partner uses another. Even if you are still madly in love, bathroom time should be private time. It makes for a calmer, less stressful start to your day.
You little people with one-bathroom homes can go pound sand.

The rest is just fine by me. Go read.

AS PROMISED, MORE DETAILS

2008-11-28T20:23:00.002-05:00

Starting on December 8th, I'll be the new news director for Pamal Broadcasting in the Hudson Valley, so mainly you'll be hearing me on 100.7 WHUD, Classic Hits 92.9, and on the three AMs that make up the Hudson Valley Radio Network: WGHQ (920 - Kingston), WBNR (1260 - Beacon), and WLNA (1420 - Peekskill). And every so often I may pop up on K104 (104.7 FM) when they're in need of news as well.

It may be true that the "when's the first time he screws up the call letters" and "when's he gonna lock himself out of the building accidentally" pools are being constructed as I write this.

As for my former colleagues now turned competitors, my vengeance shall be swift and terrible, yea, like unto the feeding frenzy of a thousand ravenous sharks of the ocean deep, and Route 9 shall run red with the blood of--

Not so much.

So many people I worked with mutually enriched each other's work and saved each other's bacon countless times over 19+ years, and I am forever in their debt, although I can only buy so many drinks, okay?

If you were a listener of mine before, don't hold a grudge against my former employers. I don't. The combination of events and actions that left me out of a job for one whole month (egads!) doesn't have much of anything to do with anybody here in the Hudson Valley broadcasting business. My focus now is on doing the best job I can of providing news to a combination of listening areas, and to help spur the kind of consistency and innovation that can again prove local radio's vitality the way it was proved in the mid-50's after televison stole away so many radio stars of the day. (TV's not an option for me, at any rate. In my case the camera not only adds 10 pounds, it doubles the size of my bald spot and throws in some acne for good measure.)

And that concludes the job-search portion of this blog as it exists now...but...

I know that many people who read this aren't as lucky as I was and are still pounding the pavement. For whatever it's worth, I'll make this space available to whomever needs a bit of help telling their story. Drop me an email and tell the story. Again, I have no idea whether anybody in a position to hire in any business reads this blog, and I have no idea of my persuasive abilities. This is just me trying to do somebody a solid.

PAYDIRT

2008-11-26T11:26:00.003-05:00

I've got a new job.

I'll tell you more about it once details are finalized.

As for this blog, my initial thoughts were to simply let it go dormant...but I know there are lots of locals who are nowhere as lucky as I've just been, so perhaps we'll use it to tell their stories and maybe get them back in the working world.

MY WORK TODAY?

2008-11-25T20:55:00.003-05:00

Cleaning potty accidents.
Cleaning the litterbox.
Cleaning the rubbish bin.
Cleaning the toilet.
Cleaning up after something my son stepped in.

So now, before bed, it's a refreshing change-of-pace: putting antibiotic goo in Herman's eye. The poor cat looks like a "before" picture of Theoden in The Two Towers. Off we go to the vet for a status report tomorrow.

And so to bed (assuming there's no cat-gack in it).

SUPERSTITION AIN'T THE WAY

2008-11-24T10:38:00.003-05:00

This is completely ridiculous, but I'm afraid that if I slow down on my posting here, the Job Gods will think I've gotten cocky and become displeased. And I missed a day yesterday. Uh-oh.

NO GIG, BUT A GOOD CONVERSATION

2008-11-22T20:57:00.002-05:00

With a former colleague made good, exploring possibilities in the academic world. Oh, stop laughing at the prospect of me going all Paper Chase on the young minds of the Hudson Valley. All I'd need is a masters degree and...and...bloody hell, I'm tired and I forget what else.

For now, there's just the possibility of adjunct faculty work next fall, but that's fine in a way since it gives me time to bone up and a reason to keep my writing and performance chops fresh.

YES, DARLING

2008-11-20T14:31:00.002-05:00

Daddy, I didn't even know you owned a tie!

I love five-year-old girls who don't know they already have a finely honed sarcastic streak.

ACTUAL INTERVIEW COMING THURSDAY

2008-11-19T20:49:00.003-05:00

My first since joining the ranks of the unemployed.

And if it goes really well, my last. It would make this blog obsolete, but that would be absolutely fine by me.

WOOHOO, THE SUIT FITS

2008-11-19T06:01:00.004-05:00

Hooray for the clearance rack at Target. My wife says I will indeed be able to pass for a responsible member of the business/media community, and I for one am happy about losing a bit of weight since being laid off - mainly due to the loss of second breakfast as provided by various co-workers and clients.

And by "second breakfast" I mean brownies, and various tasty items with bacon on, in, or around them.

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH...

2008-11-17T20:44:00.001-05:00

...my list of references is looking pretty nice. Thanks in advance to all of you, especially if it works.

INSIGHT AT THE SALON

2008-11-15T13:14:00.003-05:00

Got a quick haircut this morning and heard from the woman cutting my hair that they were getting a lot of business from people doing what I was going - getting tidied up for upcoming job interviews, the apprehension of which was one reason why I stayed in one place for so long. Job interviews are the grown-up's version of Picture Day at school, and if you've seen my profile photo you know that even after all those years I'm still one of the unfortunates whose suit wears them rather than the correct way around. And always there is something itching in a place that can't be reached, at least not during an interview.

Long as the heat in the interview room isn't cranked, I hope to be able to avoid the imagined cascades of sweat of which thousands of deodorant commercials have been made over the years.

FRAZZLY DAY TODAY

2008-11-14T12:55:00.001-05:00

I think somewhere in the cliched country song that my family's life has become these past couple of weeks, there might have been a callback or a call or something. I'm not really sure. Details are fuzzy, as the eight-ball says.

USEFULNESS, FROM ALBANY

2008-11-13T14:20:00.003-05:00

No, not from the state government; David Paterson's doing some interesting things (that you can read about over at knockatize) but I'm not ready to make that leap just yet.

What I'm on about is a pair of articles from today's Albany Times Union on the mystery-shopper scam:

Another reader received a check from an operation calling itself Shopping Evaluation Inc. of Detroit. Colonie resident Wade Champagne did not take up the offer by depositing the funds; he had his boss contact me to help confirm his suspicions. “I thought it was too good to be true and it was,” said Champagne, a Colonie insurance agent.

I spoke to Pam Davids, who called herself Champagne’s “head assignment coordinator” in her letter to him. But when I got her on the phone to ask why she sent Champagne a check for $4,996, she claimed she was just a worker at a call center in Detroit, who answered calls for many mystery shopper firms. "Apparently we’ve had a problem with a couple of them,” said Davids, when I told her I was investigating a scam. She said she would ask her superiors to call me, but no one has.

And of course Craigslist is crawling with mystery-shopper and other scams, as are many of our local job sites and newspaper classifieds from time to time. The T-U provides some good hints on how to spot a mystery-shopper scam - and what's really useful about that link is there's also a rundown on the mystery-shopping outfits that are legit. The comments are useful too.

Once I looked into it, it didn't seem like something I'd be able to hack what with having Beast around to throw off schedules in his adorable way, but for somebody in the right frame of mind perhaps it'd be doable.

I HOPE THEY GOT THAT

2008-11-11T06:51:00.000-05:00

Not having done this in a while, it is most peculiar not having to submit a cover letter with a résumé when making one's way through an online application process. Complaining I am not, though - my printer's on the fritz and this saves me the headache of agonizing over which paper stock will curry favor, or putting together a whizbang presentation on a house-brand mac-and-cheese budget.

Still, you click that "submit" button and then...well, one never quite knows, does one?

EEK! THEY KNOW WHERE I LIVE

2008-11-10T20:15:00.000-05:00

A pleasant surprise this afternoon, as a distinguished gentleman well-respected in the community sought me out...my village is small enough that we're the only Joneses...and dropped in just to tell me how much he had enjoyed my radio work over the years, how disappointed he was to hear that I was no longer on the air, but also how pleased he was to learn that I was spending my involuntary vacation at home with the kids.

It's one of the most sweet and decent things anybody's ever done for me in my professional life. Straight out of the blue.

And there I was without an extra slice of pizza or anything for him, other than my thanks.

IT'S NOT A GOOD SIGN...

2008-11-10T08:52:00.001-05:00

...when you're perusing a local paper's classifieds and there's one new job listed in Sunday's paper. And it doesn't even give a description of the gig. Meanwhile, it didn't take me long to learn that following Craigslist for job leads is a complete and pointless waste of time.

Better to spend my time networking, such as can be done with a three-year-old in tow.

AW, MAN - I WAS GONNA TRY THIS

2008-11-08T20:54:00.001-05:00

Paying bills? That's for chumps. Send those pesky collectors drawings of spiders instead.

ALREADY AN ANACHRONISM

2008-11-08T19:47:00.001-05:00

Yes, it has been pointed out to me that many businesses no longer bother with the formality of sending bag letters to their non-hired applicants.

Too late here. The blog's name stays as is, true to my kicking-it-old-school ethos.

SLIM PICKINGS TODAY

2008-11-07T06:24:00.000-05:00

I've got both kids at home today, so it's doubtful there'll be much sniffing around for leads unless the little ones both compliantly and immediately go into a simultaneous two-hour nap immediately after lunch, which has happened, let's see, once in three years and change.

At least it's not going to rain...he said, guaranteeing the skies will open up the moment they step out the door today.

PAYDIRT, WITH EMPHASIS ON "DIRT"

2008-11-06T12:50:00.001-05:00

That's right, baby.

You're not reading some mouthy hack on the internet any more, you're reading the finely-crafted work of a Genuine Certifiable Freelance Writer.

With enough skill, luck and hard work, there should be enough rolling in by this time next year to afford the cost of a pizza. Every month. And that's a large pizza, haters.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY

2008-11-05T20:18:00.000-05:00

1) The sheer volume of online job-listing scams out there is astounding - and not just in the obvious places like Craigslist. Allegedly reputable local publications, too. Those secret-shopper and fill-out-surveys blurbs are strictly hoaxville. Hope you already knew that.

2) And then there's the federal government. I got this gem from the Postal Service tonight:

I'm sure we guys all have that number right at our fingertips. No? Then maybe Selective Service itself can help. Oh, wait:

I'll repeat the key bit if you can't see the text. They do system maintenance not at 2 am on a Sunday when any sane organization would expect the least traffic, but on weekdays, and then the kicker - they also do maintenance at 7 pm (Eastern) on a weekday, and then they end at 2 am the next morning.

Only in the federal government do the computer maintenance guys keep bankers' hours.

ANOTHER ONE RIDES THE BUS

2008-11-04T14:29:00.000-05:00

We are up to THREE followers now. Everybody say hi to "Red Chapel", who apparently hails from Marlboro and wishes to hang on my every word.

Lawdy, it's great to have you all here.

Today there's not a lot of job-searching going on. It's my first full day flying solo with the kids, and I want to get that part right before I start in waxing idiotic on how my paradigm-shifting branding initiatives can help my prospective employer cashflow their maximized next-generation corporate 2.0 hommina hommina hommina hommina.

Phew. I can't talk buzzword. It would appear my only hope is to be rescued by a business who won't mind a company newsletter that reads like a low-rent P.J. O'Rourke imitation.

So today it's putting Noodle on the bus to school, a moment to scoot over to Village Hall for the vote, and spending the rest of the day initiating Beast in the manly arts. Already he knows five different words for "vomit", having seen our genius cat Herman repeatedly eat and regurgitate leaves we've tracked into the house.

(And just how many job-search blogs do you think have tags for "vomit"? I maintain that this is the first. We break new ground again!)

One would think that a cat who had an unpleasant digestive encounter caused by leaf-eating would forgo any further leaf-eating, but this is Herman we're dealing with. Once more into the breach, dear feline friend.

ANOTHER ACOLYTE

2008-11-03T05:43:00.000-05:00

Huzzah! The number of people on my followers list has doubled!

To two, but still.

Welcome aboard to "e.f.", and here's hoping you find this and That's A Lovely Booger to be entertaining and enlightening experiences.

We resume our regularly-scheduled half-hearted job search tomorrow, just as soon as I take Beast voting. I think I'll be a socialist for a while, at least while I'm unemployed.

SO MAYBE I COULD BE PRESIDENT

2008-11-02T14:30:00.000-05:00

Or maybe not. I took this personality test to see if I'm temperamentally suitable, and the name "Caligula" came up a lot more than I would have expected.

FINAL DECONTAMINATION COMPLETE

2008-11-01T18:55:00.001-04:00

Stopped by The Place Which Shall Not Be Named this afternoon to finish retrieving the rest of my sixteen years' worth of accumulated stuff. Tried to get Ol' Bessie the computer to dump six years of news archive copy onto a disc, and then remembered that on Tuesday I had planned to give the IT guys a(nother) note about how damn slow the machine was.

Well, it's somebody

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else's

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problem now.

Hopefully the material will be retrieved by somebody who will gallantly bear said disc to Northern Dutchess.

HUSTLING (A LITTLE)

2008-10-31T13:40:00.000-04:00

The thing is, maybe I don't want to go back to work right away. I'll have my son around all day, and my daughter before and after she goes to school. And the last couple of days when they gave me their sloppy wet toddler-smooches before heading out for the day...well, damn, that was good. It gave me far more joy than whatever I might have accomplished at work, especially of late.

My wife and I ran the numbers and again wondered whether rushing back into work would be worth it even if a job did pop into my lap. It would have to be one small-h hell of a job. For whatever pissing and moaning I might do about the radio business, there are benefits to getting up at an insanely early hour - namely, that I'd get out of work at an insanely early hour, and futzing around on the internet counted as show prep because inevitably I'd find something that nobody else had hustled enough to see.

But put my children's morning smooches on the other end of the scale and there's no contest. We'll learn more on Monday when I put her on the bus from home for the first time.

DEAR (APPLICANT), HOW MUCH MORE LAME COULD YOU BE?

2008-10-30T12:28:00.000-04:00

The blog's new - the issue, not so much other than on a personal level.

The background: Two days ago I was laid off from my position as news director for the Hudson Valley's local affiliates of Cumulus Media. Nothing personal, just business. It was decided in a boardroom far away from here that a presidential election is not a sufficiently major news event, just as Ian Faith decreed long ago that Boston is not a big college town.

And now it's the search for a new gig, while at the same time taking care of a three-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter and all the other household duties that fall to a guy whose wife is the sole breadwinner of the moment.

Oh, you were hoping for more howling for suits' heads on pikes? My humblest apologies. It just isn't my style. And besides, today's radio business - like a great many businesses - is long gone from the days where you could simply go all Johnny Paycheck on a boss, delight in the righteous catharsis, get knee-walking stinkola, and expect to stroll into a new gig across the street the next week. Additionally, I live in a small town. Everybody not only knows everybody, they knew my parents from when they taught school back in the day, they know how badly I dressed in high school, so bridge-burning is not an option for any sane person.

Besides, it could've been worse. They could have ~~rightsized~~ ~~surplussed~~ ~~repurposed~~ canned me after I stayed up until 2 in the morning on Election Night reporting on which state was going to bollix the election this time.

The blogroll ought to be fun once I get it set up. Me and a bunch of other jobless strivers, making like sad-sacks straight out of a Tom Waits song.

Welcome.