Tuesday, December 30, 2008

As An Actor In A Movie Once Said...

Get busy living... or get busy dying.

I just deleted all my previous blog posts from August & September of 2008... because they were essentially BS. I did manage to get in a lot of walking time. Two months in fact where I was doing it pretty much every day. Then I had to slack off because I started having hip & lower back issues due to the glutes getting so darned tight. I just wasn't able to stretch them adequately.

Then the weather went to hell. October started getting really wet & November was worse. Here we are at the end of December... & the holidays. The good news is that I didn't eat enough during this period to gain back much weight. Krav Maga starts up next week, January 7th. That should be interesting. I think I can just manage it financially.

It's been too cold over the last month to entertain weight training in the basement but things seem to be warming up a bit. I BADLY need to start walking & weight training along with the Krav Maga... though two sessions per week ought to give me a decent cardio kick.

The one real positive thing this fall & winter was paying the car off. I may owe one additional interest payment, but it's only going to be around $40. After that they can kiss my shiny...

I currently have five or six resume`s submitted for new Microsoft test positions by a recruiter. I've never used these guys before... but Excel hasn't contacted me about any new positions. I don't know if they're just not interested, if they're stupid or if they received a bad performance review from my last contract.

As I said (in one of the posts that I deleted) I started out really strong on that last contract. I did great work during the first six months. Then I had the auto accident back in April & my health, performance & attitude went directly into the crapper. Still, I used my two previous managers from that contract for reference contacts & apparently that went okay. So who knows what the deal is with Excel.

I actually wouldn't mind working with someone else for a change. My first Excel rep was great. I received e-mails from her nearly every week asking how tings were going & she regularly checked in with the managers. This last rep wasn't that responsive. She'd send out an e-mail every month or so for some type of latte' get together but that was the only time I heard from her. I usually got these invites during the periods when I was the busiest... so I didn't have a lot of time to set around chatting. Also, try talking about private job issues when you're at a table with a dozen other contractors 1/3 of who work in your group.