Technically I’m no longer in New York, but this is more of a wrap-up than anything. So I think I left off with Sunday morning?

Sunday I started a little late, but that’s a little indicative of nightlife in New York: one doesn’t wake up to early. So I went out. I had decided that I wasn’t going to take any public transpo’ anywhere, no cabs, but then realizing that I wanted to go up to the AS UWS that it would be a hike. So I trained it up there, did a great BOH tour and then ventured to 5AV and did a most excellent tour there, led by an Expert. #geekawesomeness!

From there I took Franklin’s advice and headed to ViG 27 which is an awesome lounge bar on the east side. There I had delicious cilantro gimlets and black raspberry cosmos.

Heading back to Chelsea Inn it was time to do some reassessment and from there I decided to watch a little tv and then pass out. Maybe I missed out on some unique NYC stuff but at least I got a full nights sleep out of it.

WMATA, Metro’s official name, has been has been undergoing “scheduled track work” on all five of its train lines for about the last six weeks. This track work involves “one-tracking” which is where they will close one side of the track fir the work and the cars have to share the other side of the track, taking their turn one at a time. As you can probably guess, there are massive delays.

They have scheduled these track work days on the weekend as to not interfere with all the government workings commuting into the DC, as this was the reason the entire Metro transit system was built. Like most elements of life in DC, those who are not lawyers, politicians or suck-up lobbyists, our needs don’t really matter. So having to get to work on time during the weekend while having to rely on Metro is, needless to say, a great big pain in the ass.

So here’s my idea for a mobile app. It would be called “Made U Look!” and would function something like this:

Once the app was installed on your phone, your phone’s GPS would automatically register when you entered a Metro station. Maybe you would have to check-in manual but it would be cool if it did it automatically. It would also automatically check with WMATA’s Trip Planner page. After the inevitable numerous delays, when you exited the system your phone would again mark which station you are exiting from and communicate with WMATA. Then, it would reverse calculate how long that trip should have taken according to the Trip Planner and then compare it to the actual time you sat in the dark tunnel waiting for that goddamned train. As a bonus, you would be able to log into your Made U Look account and see how you rank with others who have wasted time for waiting for trains to see who has wasted the most time that week, month and quarter. Great idea, right?

Yesterday’s in-store interview (#3) was a success! I am now a full-time employee of this company. Have you noticed how I’ve never mentioned the company by name? I thought it best to avoid googling caches (although I’m sure there’s about a billion for the A-word) and tying me to them, especially during the hiring process. I haven’t said anything derogatory but you never know who’s monitoring. But it probably doesn’t matter now that I’m hired unless I started bashing them. Which is unlikely.

Apple. There, I said it.

Unfortunately the position I’m hired for isn’t exactly the DreamJob I’ve been hoping and laboring for. It’s not the location I wanted (Georgetown) or the position I wanted (Creative). It is a Specialist position at the busy Pentagon City store, which I think was my fourth store choice because its busy and hectic nature of being set in a mall. But I’m not going to complain about it, it’s still with Apple and I’m happy with it. The P-City store is the highest-grossing on the East Coast, so it will be nice to cut my teeth there. And the store manager said that moving into a Creative position when one opens up is encouraged and transferring to another store is okay too. So I’m going to give this Specialist position a run for its money and move up from there. It won’t be the nice one-bus commute in the city (and above ground, too) that I had hoped for either. But again, I’m not going to really complain about that either. After all, it was DreamJob.

The pay is not that good though and that’s the one thing that is a little unsettling: it’s about half of what I was making at Grafik. While I was going to try and hang on to my part-time job at Evolve it now seems mandatory. I hope I can get the schedules of both jobs to fit each other.

Now, how would you like your discount?

It may not be the DreamJob but I have phone interview with the COO of a direct mail company tomorrow. The beauty about this job would be that the office is only twelve blocks away, a 20-minute walk according to google maps. Or, a quick trip on the D6.

The DreamJob people had better hurry up and set up that before-the-end-of-April callback interview before I get snatched up by another company!

All this week when the email went bong! I immediately and nervously checked it (not to mention all the constant “check email now” refreshes) to see if I had received THE email from the DreamJob. With a promise of “we’ll get back to everybody this week”, time was running out on a Friday afternoon. Maybe then I thought they said “we’ll get back to everybody in the new few weeks” and it would be another couple of weeks of agony. But today it came:

“I have forwarded your information on to the hiring manager of Georgetown. We did indeed decide to invite you back for an interview but since your preference was for Georgetown, they will be talking to you from here on. They have your info and will be arranging interviews through the end of April.

Good luck!

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Woohoo w00t booyah and all that good stuff! I’m hoping I didn’t shoot myself in the foot by requesting the Gtown store instead of one of the existing ones, but that one’s right on the D6 line which goes right in front of my apt and I could travel to work above ground and it would be nice to reprahzent DC instead of traveling to the H8ST8 or Murland.

Now I have to wait for the interview setup but at least I can relax a little knowing that I’ve secured the callback. April is the best month evra!

In addition to sending out more resumes today I was able to score both a one-time freelance assignment (with previous employer G) and a part-time gig working evenings and weekends at Evolve’s Urban Arts Project (click on the nav bar on the left for info). The freelance gig will be helping them out with one specific project but it should be at least 20 hours of work so that will bring an temporary influx of cash, at least until I have to pay taxes on it next year, but I’ll worry about that then. The part-time job for UAP will be manning their gallery during evening hours Monday, Wednesday and Friday and a small Saturday shift as well. It should total about 15 hours a week so that will help with paying bills, just to get even a little bit of steady income coming in. In case you don’t know or didn’t read below, but unemployment benefits have terminated after a year so every bit of cash right now is crucial.

Today I’m sending a resume to Apple because, you know, why not? There are three retails stores (all on the Metro lines) in the area plus a store scheduled to open in Georgetown at some point. So maybe within one of those four stores they’ll have an opening and think I’m technically savvy enough to work there. This might be part-time or full-time depending on what they need.

Another place I’m applying today is for a Print Production Buyer. There’s not much design or actual production work according to the job posting; they do all direct mail so it would be a pretty dry job. But the beauty is that the office is twelve blocks away and I could walk to it in 20–25 minutes or just ride the bike down there? On inclement weather days I could also take the D6 right down the bus line. How nice would that be?

Thanks for the comments in the previous post, guys. Much appreciated.

That interview last week didn’t go so well. I planned on being there about 1/2 hour early, taking an earlier bus than was scheduled to get me there on time. Of course, the bus was late, there was traffic, and so I didn’t get there until about five minutes before I need to go inside and check in. Therefore I didn’t have time to clear my head and I was still stressed out from the traffic situation. Plus my top shirt button was a little too tight, making me more uncomfortable.

I interviewed with three people and that kind of threw me as well. Not that they were attacking me 3-on-1 but I wasn’t anticipating trying to impress/hold three attention spans. Some of my answers were a little abrupt or uneasy sounding, with odd pauses at the end to say “Ok, next question!”

The interview lasted about an hour. At the end one of the interviewees also referred to me as “David” but then righted himself both times so that doesn’t sound like a good omen. They said they would be interviewing for the rest of the week and then make a decision. They have some projects coming up quickly that they want to get the person filling this position to start working on so it sounds like things on a fast track. I emailed them at the end of the week with the requisite “thank yous” and “is there anything else I can show yous” so I’m waiting to hear back from that.

Today: silence.

Thirty eight years ago today Volkswagen Type 1 (more commonly knows as Beetle) produced it’s 15,007,034th unit. This number bested Henry Ford’s famous Model T, making the Beetle the most produced car in the world.

The 1977 Beetle I owned, affectionately dubbed “Libby”, was the last model year that the curvy VWs were imported into the US. This was also the same period where full-time production stopped in its German assembly plants, while the car continued to be produced in Peru and Brazil for another 25 years or so.

I bought Libby around 1993 or 94, after having my 2nd stint as a carless-person in Houston. She was in pristine shape: great body, tinted windows, air-conditioning (!) and only 85,837 miles. She was a great car to go “motoring in” around Houston’s flat, well-maintained roads.

Of course all of that changed when I moved to DC: potholes, salt & sand on the roads, careless parkers and stringent inspection standards all did their toll. I put Libby “out to pasture” in summer 2003, with a  good conscience. Needing many, many repairs I sold her to the father of a high-school friend of mine, who tinkers and restores old VWs. So I assume that Libby is still out there somewhere, leisurely motoring along a country road.