I apologize to everyone in advance for any typo, grammatically incorrect phrases, or any errors I make in my writing. I am always embarrassed when someone notices that I left out a letter or skipped whole words when I think my work is done. My excuse? I am a notoriously weak proofreader of my own work. I’m great at reviewing the work of others but when it comes to reading and recognizing typographical errors in my own work, I’m impossible. There are several reasons this occurs. I’m so familiar with what I’m writing that when I re-read it, my brain fills in or rearranges anything that might be incorrect. I also tend to miss more proofreading errors when I edit on a computer screen. When I work, I tend to print my work out and mark-up my text. Online it’s a bit more difficult to do this and my eyes seem to skip over holes in my writing. I’m very lucky and live with the best proofreader in the world! Norm can find an error in 3 seconds flat and when I want to make sure something is perfect, I’ll hand it to him to review. But sometimes I don’t want to take the time or take him away from what he’s doing, so I fly solo, much to the chagrin of my readers. Mignon pointed out that a lot of her errors come from editing and reediting her work. I have the same problem. When I edit my work, I sometimes add or remove works and neglect to take out a previously written word or phrase. And then there’s the wacky finger problem. I think I’m typing one thing and something else comes out. Or my fingers will skip over a letter that wasn’t typed with enough pressure giving you “of” instead of “off.”

Grammar Girl provided a list of 10 ways to help you (and me) to reduce proofreading errors. Take a look. If you’re anything like me, it will help. And if you have a love of the language you may want to consider listening to Grammar Girls podcast. They’re very informative.

• 10 Tips to Banish Typos (Grammar Girl November 11, 2011)
• Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips For Better Writing

• Never lend money to family. You’ll regret it. This is a very quick way to never see family members again. Even if you have them sign a promissory note to pay you back, they’ll always hate you for asking for the money. Don’t do it.
• Don’t open a joint account with anyone unless you’re married to them. If you open that account with the guy/girl you love-love-love and just moved in with, in 3 months, the account will be empty-empty-empty, and you’ll be stuck with the bills. And Judge Judy will rule against you because you can’t prove that you ever put any money into the account.
• Never cash a check for a friend. The check will bounce and you’ll be out of money. Here’s the scenario: Your friend was smart and responded to those really nice Nigerian bankers that wanted to give them money. Of course your friend doesn’t have their own checking account so they want to use yours. They’ll give you 10% of the check if you do this small favor for them. You do, they take 90% of the money and 3 days later, you find out that the check bounced. You’re out 90% of the cash and your friend can’t figure out why you’re mad at them. It wasn’t their check. Go try and get the money from the guy that wrote the check. Right.
• Always get a receipt. If you sell anything to anybody, or if you buy anything, make sure you have a receipt, a bill of sale, or some evidence that you paid or received what you think you paid or received. You might still be out money or the item, but at least you’ll have Judge Judy’s respect.
• Ex girlfriends will always be mad when you leave them for another woman/man. They will always sue you for whatever they can and be as mean as they possibly can just to annoy you and your new girlfriend/wife.
• Don’t rent your property to anyone who says they’re going to grow pot in your garage. Seems like common sense, right? Apparently it’s not. I’ve seen at least 3 landlords that did this and regretted it. And those are just the ones that end up on the show. The funny thing is, they’re always surprised when the police raid the place and destroy their property, like they didn’t see this coming.
• Old men will always be taken by cute young women. They give, the women takes. That’s the rule but apparently no one told them that they were never going to get anything in return. By the way, the cute young women will never ever pay you back and will always think that what you gave them was a gift.
• If you lend someone money, the person you lend it to will always be mad at you for wanting it back. Always!
  I find this phenomenon fascinating. I’ve seen it in real life, but not as much as I’ve seen it on Judge Judy. Here’s the scenario: A good friend comes to you in dire need of money for rent, bail, child support, car payment, etc. They promise to pay you back the first chance they get. You agree to lend them the money and don’t have them sign anything that says they’ll pay you back because of course they’re your friend. Of course they’ll pay you back, right? Months go by and your friend ignores your hints about repayment of the thousands of dollars you gave them. You call, email, text, try to talk to them in person, to no avail. Finally you warn them that if they don’t pay you back, you’ll take them to small claims. They scoff. You file. They get mad at you for having the audacity to want your money back. After all you were friends, and you got that huge insurance payoff, have all that money in the bank that you’ve saved, or you have that rich husband/wife with a good job, why would you bother them with your petty repayment plans? Friendship ends. You probably never get your money back because the friend you gave it to doesn’t have and never will have a job.
  Solution: Don’t lend them the money and lose your friend… what the heck, you’re going to lose them anyway. Or you can give them the money and not expect to ever get it back, after all, you are rich.

In the old days, we use to fly the friendly skies of United. I’ve always had a special place in my heart for United, probably because I worked there for 7 ½ years. When I worked for the airline, customer service was a priority. Every employee went though customer service training and weekly refresher classes to remind us who was in charge, the customer. If the airline still does this, it’s wasn’t in evidence on Friday. Maybe United is now relying far too much on electronic media. Maybe they can’t afford to hire the personnel they need to take care of their customers the way they use to. I’m not sure where the company went astray, but astray they have gone.

Let me start from the beginning. Friday morning Norm and I got up bright and early to make an 8:50am flight to Denver. Everything went fine. We got though security without incident and, because it was such a short trip, we packed light, with carry-on bags rather than checked luggage. This turned out to be a very smart move given the way the day would eventually turn out. Our plane boarded on time and, although someone took our overhead space before we got to our seats, we settled in without much incident. About 10 minutes into our flight, the pilot, Captain Bob, made an announcement informing us that we would be returning to Los Angeles because of a mechanical problem with the plane. Thankfully we made it back to the airport in one piece. It took about an hour to return and we were back in the airport by 10am. Prior to getting off of the flight, there seemed to be some confusion with the flight attendants as to what we were doing. Do we stay on the plane or leave, taking our bags with us? After several very confusing announcements, a ground manager came on the speaker and told us all to leave the plane, take all of our stuff with us and wait in the lobby of the airport for further instruction. We were also told that it would take about an hour to determine what was going on.

Norm and I of course waited in the lobby. I did notice that the gate from which we departed went blank after announcing that our flight was delayed. Around 11:30, new information about a future flight was posted at that gate. At noon, we heard an announcement for a flight to Denver and hadn’t heard anything from the flight crew or airport personnel about our delayed flight. At this point we were getting a bit nervous, so I headed over to the
“Denver” gate to see if anyone there knew anything. I stood in line for 45 minutes waiting for the staff to sort out all of the “standby” customers (most of who were from our 8:50 flight to Denver). In that time, the flight took off without most of the stranded passengers and we were informed that our names would be rolled over to the next flight to Denver. Rolled over? When did they announce that our names would be placed on standby? When I finally got to the counter, I was informed by the Gate personnel that they didn’t have time to talk to me, that they were late for their next flight and that I would have to work everything out at their “Customer Service” desk. They then walked away without informing me where the Customer Service desk was located. Yes, I was fuming at this point. It was 1pm and we had no idea how we were going to get to Denver, let alone Cheyenne. Luckily, one of the passengers pointed us in the right direction and we headed off to Customer Service to try and figure out what was going on.

Once at the Customer Service desk, we were met by a very cheery man who informed us that he couldn’t really help us but that we could either pick up a phone and talk to their phone agents or stand in a line 20 deep and wait to talk to someone in person. We opted for an in-person conversation, mostly because I wanted to yell at someone in person. Of course, while standing in line, all but two of the Customer Service Agents went to lunch, and one of the “live” agents suggested that we’d get faster service by giving their phone agents a call. Luckily there were two of us there, and since we weren’t doing anything else, I hopped out of line and picked up a phone. After explaining our situation to the phone agent he informed me that I’d have to talk to an agent in person, that he couldn’t help me. So much for the phone being faster.

Eventually, we made it to a live agent, who informed us that we could probably get to Denver that night but wouldn’t be able to make the connecting flight to Cheyenne. Happily, they did offer us a hotel room in Denver and food vouchers for dinner that night. The agent then proceeded to get us on the 6pm flight to Denver and told us to see the Customer Service agent in Denver for our vouchers and hotel. 4 hours later, we were on our way to Denver in Coach Plus seats (which provided a little extra leg room). At 9:50 that night, after once again searching for the Customer Service desk in Denver (the one near our flight was closed, but luckily, there was an open desk in the middle of the airport), we were provided with our hotel and vouchers and pointed in the direction of the hotel shuttle.

Yes, they did give us a hotel and food. Yes they upgraded our seats. Yes, they turned a 2 hour flight into a 36 hour ordeal. I will be forever grateful to Captain Bob and his staff for bringing us home safely. I will never forgive the staff at United Airlines LAX for their lack of communication and customer service.

We did finally make it to Cheyenne and had a wonderful time with Malcolm and Phyllis, Norm’s parents. But a day of our lives that we could have spent with family was taken from us and we’ll never get it back. And this is why United Airlines sucks.

My suggestions for UAL?

• Don’t rely on electronics to update your customers. We don’t all have access to our computers or our cell phones when we’re stuck in the airport. Yes, they did leave a message on my phone telling me that our flight was finally cancelled and that I was should contact customer service for further information, basically leaving us high and dry.
• If you have a cancelled or delayed flight (which I’m sure they have all the time), please, please, please have a human available to inform the passengers on that flight of what is going on and please provide a unified message about what to do. Please have one person available where the flight deplaned to point all of us puzzled passengers in the right direction. Don’t leave us to struggle on our own. For all I know, there are people from our flight still waiting in the airport for the cancelled flight to board.
• Make sure that the replacement reservations you make to correct your errors are correct. We were delayed at the Great Lakes Airline counter for 30 minutes the next day because the United Airlines Customer Service agent didn’t make our connecting flight reservations correctly.
• Return to the customer service that you have obviously abandoned. Your customers will appreciate you more and will be life long customers. As it is, you’ve lost at least two customers because of your callous disregard for service.

On Tuesday, I attended what I thought would be an interesting seminar on how to deal with being a 1099 employee. What I really got was a 2-hour sales session pitch for a financial planner. Live and learn. I also had a very nice conversation with my future boss. Yes, it’s true, it appears that I am no longer unemployed. Who is the lucky employer? Western Digital in Lake Forest/Irvine (apparently the Lake Forest facility is moving into the Irvine Corporate offices in December). Initially I’m a W2 employees working for Kelly Services for one month. The way my new boss explains it, I’ll be there until I die. We’ll see.

Yippee!  So I went into the office Wednesday, completed the paperwork, and was plunged head first into a project that was due yesterday. Yes, I’m very overwhelmed. Not only do I have to learn about hardware, for which I’ve never written, I also have to figure out what the new product is, what everyone is talking about in those status meetings, and what the writing style is for the group. I also have to set up my work space at home and onsite and get the manual done in about 2 weeks. Luckily, the manual is partially written, or so I’m told.  The good thing is that everyone I’ve met so far is very nice.

So I guess this is my last “Unemployment” post for at least a month. After that, who knows.

Mac and Me

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen “Mac and Me” a few times. It’s a wonderfully horrible movie about an alien befriended by a boy in a wheelchair who is being chased by NASA officials. The product placement in this movie is incredible. There’s Coca-Cola which apparently hypes up the aliens enough to save their lives. There’s also the looming presence of McDonalds, complete with Ronald McDonald prancing around while the bad guys are trying to nab the “cute” little alien. I absolutely love this movie for the following reasons (spoilers ahead):

• The little alien turns out to be one of a family of 4 aliens (mom, dad and sis) that are saved by Coca-Cola.
• The father alien brings the wheelchair boy back to life after the NASA guys accidently kill him. Gotta love that.
• At the end, the alien family, who apparently appreciates the advantages of the good old US of A, becomes American citizens in a lovely group ceremony, and drive off happily in their own minivan!

Octaman

Another horribly fun bad movie is Octaman. What do I say about this one? Bad costumes, bad Mexican stereotypes, bad scientist stereotypes, and an Octaman from outerspace running around killing people. And of course there’s a love story. The IMDB synopsis is as follows: A scientific expedition in Mexico discovers several unusual baby octopus specimens. When they capture several of the critters their half-man/half-octopus parent appears to terrorize the hapless scientists. Yup, that’s about right. Hapless scientists in a Winnebago.

Apparently the “creature effects” were created by Rick Baker. I’m assuming that this was either early in his career or that there was no budget for effects. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a really nice rubber suit they’re using for the Octaman, but realistic it’s not

Try and sit though this movie if you dare. Maybe you can count the number of times you see Octaman walking around in his rubber suit strangling innocent Mexicans. Or maybe you can look out for my favorite line in the movie “A women’s place is in the kitchen.”

If you’re a bad movie fan like I am, you’ll enjoy watching these two films.

On the job hunting front, last week was really a rather busy one. I had several phone interviews, two in person interviews and lots of phone calls from recruiters. I also had an interview session with my career coach which went pretty well. One of the question that always pulls me up short is “What are your weaknesses?” Somehow when this question is presented, I draw a blank. I hate to think that I have anything in common with George W. Bush, but, like George, I can’t think of one thing I’m bad at! Unfortunately, this question was presented in one of my interviews, and, although I struggled with an answer, I did answer it. Jim, my career coach, recommended that I throw out a skill that I’d like to improve rather than a personality trait, which is what I used as an answer in my interview. I’ll give that a try next time I’m placed on the spot. Another all time favorite is “Where do you see yourself in 3-5 years?” My real answer is “Employed, hopefully by your company” or the ever popular “I see myself doing your job.” But we can’t really tell the truth can we? I’ve settled on “Growing in my skills as a technical writer which is what I love to do.” Not sure if they buy it, but it sounds nonthreatening enough.

As far as the interviews went, I think I did fairly well, although you can never really tell. There are, of course, other writers vying for the same positions. Hopefully my future employers view me as a great one time only deal and hire me. Lots of skills for a fire sale price, that’s me!

Even with all of my job hunting activity, Norm and I managed to have a very nice dinner with our friends David, Rebecca, and Kara on Thursday, and made it to the Los Angeles County Fair on Friday. Quite a week all around. Here’s hoping that this week I’ll hear back with good news.

Week 9 was fairly uneventful. I sent away the usual number of resumes into the black hole they call the internet. One high spot was the lunch I had with friends. About 10 of us met up for a really nice lunch at Lucille’s and I got the latest update on the happenings at the former workplace. It was fun seeing everyone. I guess the one thing I miss the most about unemployment is not seeing my friends every day. We spend so much time with the people we work with that they really become family. One of my fears is that, when I get a new job, I’ll lose touch with my friends from the last job. I hope it doesn’t happen. The great thing is that now we have Facebook. I may not see them in person, but I’ll know what they’re up to.

I also had a meeting with my career counselor which was kind of fun. Mostly we took a look at my Linked In account. He wants me to add more contacts. I’m adding them as fast as I can, but I just can’t bring myself to troll around for random people. I’m sure I’ll get over that eventually.

Week 10 was spent in Palm Springs shopping and visiting neighborhoods and random open houses. My mom really, really, REALLY wants to retire in Palm Springs, which isn’t a problem for any of us kids. What mom doesn’t seem to realize is that, when she moves, she’s not taking us all with her. I’m trying to convince her to find a nice retirement community, or at least a nice close-knit neighborhood to move into. I also suggested that she rent a place before she buys a house so that she’ll know what it’s really like to live there. She, of course, is stubborn. She has an idea in her head about what she wants and how life will be once she moves. I suspect that life won’t be what she imagines. For one thing, all of her kids live somewhere else. She’ll lose her kid support network. I suspect that, in her head, she thinks that we’re all moving to Palm Springs with her. In reality, we all have our lives to live and can’t uproot ourselves to move (even though it would be fun). We’ll see how it all turns out. I suspect that part of the fun for my mom is house hunting. She may spend the rest of her life looking for the perfect house!

Late last week (Thursday and Friday), my phone lit up with prospects. I talked to 4 or 5 recruiters about possible jobs. Some seem perfect, some not so perfect. I tend to say “let’s talk” to all of them and then put my cards on the table. As a result of these calls, I have 1 recruiter interview, 1 phone interview, and 1 interview with a hiring manager. For resume was sent off to the others. We’ll see how it all turns out. Wish me luck.

This week, I returned to the NHM for the first time in years. They’ve done an amazing job of redoing the museum and are still in the process of building. We took a look at the future plans and if they complete them, the NHM should be a world-class museum. The new Dinosaur Hall was opened in July and it’s beautiful. Along with the dinosaur bones that were on display for years, they’ve added some new ones, specifically Thomas the T. rex. And, even with the older bones, they’ve changed their positioning, based on current research on how the various species walked and hunted. They’ve added interactive displays, video of digs and current dinosaur science, and they’ve updated the explanations presented in front of the exhibits.. Norm and I spent a few hours wandering around the new exhibit and I, for one, was very impressed. The place was packed with adults and children marveling at the giant creatures. I spent some time looking down on them from above, wondering what they’d be like with skin and bones, chasing me through the grasslands. Scary!

The great thing about NHM is that they have free days, which Norm and I took advantage of. To find out what those days are, check their website (http://www.nhm.org/, but, when I last checked, each Tuesday in September is free, saving you the $12.00 adult admission. Even if you do have to pay, it’s well worth the price.

I also spent a lot of last week working on my LinkedIn profile and attended a career session on LinkedIn. Jim (my career counselor), is convinced that LinkedIn is now the place to be and the more connections you have the better it will be in my job search. I agree that connections are the way to get work, so I’m now in the business of building my connections. This is a change for me, since previously, I only linked to those people I know and felt I had a real connection to. Not any more. Wanna join my connections? Just send me a request! I’m now open to knowing and connecting to everyone! Jim also told us how to make our LinkedIn profile more visible so that recruiters can see it. We’ll see how well that works.

Jobwise, it was a pretty slow week. I can only assume that most of America is on vacation or busy getting their kids off to school. Telling by the Jobs report last week, no one is hiring or the number of job hires are balanced out by the number of layoffs. I’m hoping for more job hires, obviously, or at least on job hire. That said, I’m still enjoying my time at home. I’ve been fixing things around the house and cutting weeds in the garden. Next week, I think we’re going to enjoy more museum trips, since there should be fewer people to compete with now that the kids are back in school.

Onward and upward!

Week 6 and 7 of unemployment weren’t bad. Week 6, Norm and I headed off to Reno, Nevada. Why Reno in August? Well, Norm attended the 69th World Science Fiction Convention and I mostly shopped. That’s right, the unemployed girl spent 6 days shopping and sightseeing. Before you get all righteous on me, let me explain. It’s true, we currently have two very unemployed people living in the house, however, if I ever do get a job, I need work clothing. For those of you who know me, my last job was very, very casual. I suspect that if I rolled out of bed in my pj’s and headed into work, no one would notice. Assuming that my next job will not be as lenient on the clothing front, my goal in Reno was to find work clothes.

Reno was mostly fun. I think I found and shopped in every mall, outlet store and stand-alone shop in the city. That said, I picked up some good deals, got great sales and, at the end, have a passably good wardrobe that should last me at least a week or so on the job… assuming I get a job. Hope springs eternal.

I spent week 7 getting back into the swing of things. Putting out resumes on the standard sights and talking to recruiters… lots and lots of recruiters. They all seem to think that they can get me a job. We’ll see. My thoughts are this: At least recruiters seem to get to the head of the line with resumes. That’s my theory anyway. So I think I may be more likely to get an in-person interview with a recruiter than if I just do a cold send on Monster or Dice. I have absolutely no evidence of this; it just makes me feel better about talking to so many recruiters.

I also had a wonderful lunch with Ariel, Ken, and Mike at our favorite place, The Grinder. Nothing like a nice Friday breakfast at noon!