Category Archives: job

Alive Again

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so after a week of forced horizontalness from icky sickness, i actualy went to pseudo work (Continental Club) today, and then after a large fast food (ick) dinner, and hot shower briefly crashed out while listening to NPR ATC/Marketplace,

got an odd call from a friend, down the street with many others, casualing at Onion Creek, walked down intending to have 2 beers and go home, i was very sensitive to the smoke (still recovering) even outside as we were.  of course chatted up with friends for five hours (so i had 4 beers) and then walked back home, sleep soon,

re: Continental Club – all the windows have been tinted, you cannot see in (mostly) during daylight or at night (‘cept for some bright lights (neon) at night), took all the bars out of the windows (briefly) and replaced them, so we finally got to the window box at the front of the club, it’s been in sad state for three years, we actually put a front on it and painted the front, and sanded and putty’d the surface, soon to be eurythaned

also, the exterior of the building was pressure washed last week, first time since,… it was built likely, the back especially looks good, but the brick front looks nicer, as well.

-b

Charlie’s Place

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weldingTuesday I helped Welder Dave (a.k.a YoYo) level, tack down and start welding together the 4 bar top parts. It’s starting to get super-solid, ready for bartop dancing. Steve W. was in from Austin and got the vinyl “tuck and roll” treatment done to the riser and bar rails Mon & Tue.

Today Pete and I tiled the men’s room (a white and dark gray checkerboard) floor, and leveled the women’s room (after a previous failure in leveling with crappy leveler from Southland Hardware. It’s REALLY sad when the Home Depot has nicer materials!)

Two of the investors are leaning toward naming it Charlie’s Place or some variant thereof.

Tomorrow – more metalwork and tile (but i could be out late).

-b

Washington HS

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I went on Thursday to Washington High School.  They don’t have a math position open, but do have Intro to Computers (this is a mouse, this is the internet, this is MS Word…) The interview went ok, he has other candidates, and will likely let me know Mon or Tue.   After asking a million different people in ACP, and getting a million different answers, I think they can manage to shift what certification track I’m on, if I get offered the job.

The assistant principal was a good interviewer.  Interviews are so odd to me.  You have to be cocky to prove you’re better than other candidates, but that’s entire a person who I’m not, so how do they know who I am and who they’ll be hiring?  It’s a tricky line to walk.

One of my answers actually elicited a verbal “I like that response, by the way.” and he seemed somewhat surprised by it.   It bordered on cocky, but it was what I was feeling at the time.

Q: Why do you think you are a better candidate than the others seeking this job? (Or maybe it was why should we hire you over other candidates, either way…)

I said only

Bill: I think I’m someone the kids will want to learn from.

We’ll see next week.

HISD Job Fair

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So, I still don’t have a teaching job.  I went to the “gosh it’s late and we need to fill our positions” HISD Job Fair yesterday.  On the good side, there weren’t nearly as many people as at the last one (they all got jobs), and there were several schools looking for math.  On the down side, the Tech Market collapse seems to have created a glut of “What do I do now?” math teacher applicants.  There were at least 15 people there and only a few high schools with openings.  They were all lining up for the middle schools as well (I passed on the middle schools).

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20740 Gulf Freeway

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So, we were down in Clear Lake salvaging some sinks, toilets, mirrors, handycap rails, et al to use in the new bar (next to the Continental).  Pete knows the guy that owns this place.  It was the old giant Fiesta that went up at I-45 & NASA 1 a little over a decade ago.   It was subdivided into smaller shops, and we went into a large area that I think was at one time the Burlington Coats place, or perhaps it hasn’t been used at all.  It was an amazing space, but it’s not being used.

As I recall, and it looks worse now, the access to this piece of property is a royal pain in the rear, and the more people that go there, the worse it is.  We drove to the other side of the property from where we were working (which took very long because of road humps) and there were a lot of second-rate stores there, run-down mall type stores.

If you had ever been to the Fiesta when it was open, it was the grandest Fiesta of them all, sporting even its own hydroponic garden (behind glass for you to view).  Also (I didn’t know) there is a quite large room upstairs with LOTS of grow lights in it, likely for starting up things that would get placed into the viewable garden.   There was also an insane amount (300 tons) of cooling capacity to deal with the output of the plants and the lights.  And it’s all still there.  It was pretty cool.

We sweated away, doing our labor, but was what really annoying is the radio saying “we’re under a heat advisory, so… er… be advised that it’s hot.”  We’re in Houston in August, where the hell do they think we are?  It hasn’t even got above 100 this whole summer.  And the “heat index” is a bunch of crap.  Yes it feels hotter.  And, yes your ability to evaporatively cool yourself by sweating is diminished in high humidity.  So TURN ON A FAN.

Next they’ll be reporting that the sky is blue and the grass grows more when it rains.

-b

Lunch with Nelwyn & Marsha

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Today I had lunch with two cousins (my dad’s cousin’s, their mom’s are twins – so they’re kinda like aunts).  We ate at Saltgrass Steakhouse.  I got there a bit early, 11:15, and waited for them, by 11:30 there was a parade of people, most driving oversized cars like wildmen, all (except for one 95 year old looking man) had exceptional guts.  I’m a bit over weight, but these guys had guts (and they weren’t having a special lunch with their aunts).  But, I guess that’s the definition of someone who eats at a steakhouse for lunch (apparently, regularly): overweight.

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