Apologies for not posting for a little while.  First The Georgia Straight said they’d pay me to write for them, and I was sort of shocked by the fact that there’s money to be made in this writing thing, so I started doing that [tgs][tgs].  It didn’t help us win best local blog [tgs] but being paid in actual money is even better.

I’d like to thank Tim, Ryan and Castewar for keeping things going during my downtime.  It’s really great to have authors contributing to the site, and though I’ll be doing the typical recruitment campaign shortly it’s nice to know that the blog is in a position where if I get busy it’s not laying fallow.

I had to see for myself what kinds of items were available at the Winters Farmers Market today. I was happy to support our local farmers by picking up some Russian Blue Potatoes, a big bag of carrots, apples, honey and some free trade coffee. I have plans to make some whipped blue potatoes for Easter dinner tomorrow.

The farmers market will be open a few more times at the Wise Hall at Adanac between now and the end of April. There are more details about the dates on this newsletter at the eatlocal website.

Have a good long weekend…

Metrotown Mall – 3, originally uploaded by D’Arcy Norman.

From the CBC [cbc]:

The discovery of a six-inch pipe bomb disrupted commuter traffic around the busy Metrotown Mall in Burnaby, B.C., Thursday night….The discovery prompted the closure of the nearby SkyTrain station, as well as part of the underground parking garage at the mall.The shopping centre is expected to be open for business as usual on Friday morning.    

I’ve never had a job that’s been so affected by terrorism as working at Metrotown. Well not terrorism, but juvenile pranks disguised as terrorism. Back during the Telus strike we’d be evacuating the mall on an almost regular basis due to phoned in bomb threats, and now there’s pipe bombs?  Here all I was worried about yesterday was getting fired and not blown up [jks].  Had I only known the peril I was really in I would have called in sick.

Mario Lemieux vs. Dan Cloutier

Originally uploaded by GKYC.

I got an email from the Canucks human resources department yesterday telling me that I they were not interested in offering me the job that I applied for a month or so ago. This might seem like a little thing, but after a few months on the job hunt it’s actually one of the nicest things I’ve been able to say about a company.

For the most part people just ignore you unless they want to meet you for an interview. Which means that you’re never even sure if anyone read your application, or whether it got lost in an overly complicated submission system on some corporate website. That’s the norm.

The worst of course was when Apple did not contact me, but instead offered the job to two of my references. So I have to say that the Canucks are a bit better than any other company I’ve applied for.

Night Life

Originally uploaded by *Sherry*.

Recently I blogged about being in the job market [mbv], and about how I know so many people who have great jobs in Vancouver but that I myself have yet to find one. I finally found one, working for a company whose products I’ve used since I was six and continue to use regularly. It also seemed custom tailored to me, using all of my skills from my experience with their products producing a newspaper for several years, using their products for other things like writing this blog post and it also worked in my eight years of sales experience.

So I applied, but did not get a call. Which is fair, I understand that it was a pretty good job for a pretty high profile company and they were probably flooded with applications. There are so many people on the job hunt in this city that obviously someone better applied. Or so I thought until I found out that the company had telephoned two of my references that I had included on my resume, not to ask about me but to offer them the exact job that I was applying for, a job they did not apply for.

Which makes me mad, not only because that seems to me to be kind of a douche bag thing to do, not just because I really wanted the job and felt I was qualified for it but because it now colours my interaction with this company’s products which I use daily for hours of the day (I’m using one right now to blog this and another to look to music on my stereo).

So I continue on the job search. As I said before I know there are cool jobs in this city, I just have to find one that actually wants me and not my references.

Bill Gates is pretty sexy

Originally uploaded by j.kastan.

As you know there’s nothing sexier than the owner of a software company, and the sexiest owner just happens to be the biggest… errr… owner. Anyway the CBC is reporting that Microsoft is going to be opening a Vancouver software development centre [cbc]. That’s actually very exciting, because it means jobs and pretty good jobs too.

The reasons, aside from the still favorable exchange rate, is our immigration policies are a bit easier to deal with than the US’s and is going to be used to attract programmers from Asia specifically.

Barring any rebel attacks they hope to have the Deathstar up and running by September. Or I mean the development centre. What am I doing mixing sexy Bill Gates metaphors with evil Imperial Microsoft metaphors? Damn that Bill Gates and his tight, tight pants, he’s got my head all a twirl.

I can’t help it; she said quietly. I love them.

Originally uploaded by txkimmers.

The frustrating thing with living in Vancouver is that there are a lot of people with very interesting jobs. If you are one of those people I would like you to know that I envy you to the borderlands of hating you. It is of course not your fault, nor your problem so don’t worry I don’t know where you live and won’t be coming after you in the dead of the night.

I am however reading a book titled Agile Software Development with Scrum and using InDesign to make my resumé all pretty like. That’s right after eight years it’s time to fire up the job search and get my first new job since twenty.

Ideally I’m looking for a writing or editing job, but Craigslist is rather dry of actual jobs. Since I already earn no money as a blogger for a hobby I’d prefer not to earn no money as a blogger for my job. I also have no interest on writing someone’s life story on the off chance that they a) have an interesting life and b) aren’t crazy. So it’s off to search the “Career Opportunities” section of the websites of multi-national corporations.

There’s interesting jobs in Vancouver. I know it, I’ve seen them. I just need to trick someone into giving me one.

My first Forza car

Originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

I could probably live in Metrotown, much like the characters in Waydowntown [wp] manage to find ways to survive living in Calgary’s Plus 15 [wp]. The mall of course does not have apartments hermetically attached to it, and this is about the only thing preventing me from being able to spend my days in recycled air.

The trouble is that since my new employer has decided to make un-paid lunch breaks mandatory, that means I spend at least half an hour wandering the mall. Which is fine when I need to eat, but if I’ve already eaten or brought my own lunch it means I spend my time in EB Games or Toys ‘R’ Us looking at things to buy. Thankfully I’ve got a built up credit at EB Games, otherwise I’d be in the poor house already. Yesterday I bought Forza 2, which is proving to be awesome [jks].

Also after one trip to the mall’s food court KFC the fried chicken joint is already back to being dead to me.

Metropolis at Metrotown

Originally uploaded by The BH.

I was trying to think of an elaborate Back to the Future parody post to sum up my return to working in Metrotown, but I couldn’t think of anything particularly clever. Instead I’ll just say, “Hey I’m back working at Metrotown.”

Which so far is novel once again. The food court options are exciting (”Oh look it’s hot dogs!”), the shopping options are nice for my break and it’s good working in a place where I don’t have to run to the Hotel Vancouver each time I need to pee. It’s also nice to once again be commuting against the tide, moving away from downtown out to Burnaby while everyone else is going to the office.

Having said that the mall will eventually be the death of me. I know this now, it has been written.

It looks like I may be attending The Massive Technology Show for work on March 28th at the Trade and Convention Centre downtown. It looks a bit on the suit-y side for me, but the trade show and speakers look very interesting. I’m more of a speaker attender than a networking type. However, since many local employers are looking to hire new employees around these parts, it makes it much easier to approach them at these kinds of events than it has been in other, less-hire-able times. My confirmation to attend this event will hopefully be this week. Added bonus – local celebrity, Dave Chalk, is going to be there!