[Ran last Saturday AM, Sunday PM, and Wednesday PM]
This was my first week post employment.
I had an in-person interview about two hours south of here which I enjoyed. They are kind of wanting an in-office person which would require us to move. I think the job would be interesting and the place would be a good place to work.
Wednesday I had a phone interview with the place in Huntsville, AL which I think went OK. That one would require a move.
I think I applied for one or two new ones in the course of the week.
I got caught up with laundry and dishes. I mowed the yard a couple of times.
All the JD parts and bits have been shipped back and received in Dubuque. My last paycheck from that employment hit my accounts on the 3rd.
My wife has set herself up for some medical work, so I am expecting to go into COBRA in order maintain our current coverage and not confuse the providers. If we don’t pick up new work I may need to do some shopping on the health insurance exchange in a few weeks. I don’t know how the COBRA costs will compare with exchange/marketplace options. I sort of assume COBRA will be more expensive.
I feel like my week was OK, but not very productive. I did have those interviews, and 4 hours of driving on Monday.
I’ve been fooling around with a SoC (System on a Chip) development board from Ezurio which can do bluetooth and wifi. It is designed for IoT (Internet of Things) development… those would be things which you want to attach to the internet in some form but don’t require a lot of processing, like thermostats and appliances. I don’t really have a plan for it. I just saw an introductory advertisement for one awhile back and ordered it. These things will also do a “mesh” radio thing, so local devices can talk to each other separate from wifi. You could put one in each room and have a few sensors attached to tell you what the temperature is, whether the light is on, if there is motion in the room, or turn something on/off remotely… that kind of thing. You probably couldn’t use that mesh to ship audio or video data because of bandwidth/speed limitations. The development board is around $50. The individual devices are more like $5-$10 and there would be other parts to make them work. So whatever you were doing would need to be worth around $30-$50 at each position? something like that.
The job here in Mississippi would be with a device on that scale. Not that device but something similar. So I thought I would get myself into that mindset a bit.
The Huntsville job is much more like what I have been doing for Deere. And I think the Huntsville people are in more of a hurry. Also, in that case I’m talking to a headhunter who seems kind of enthusiastic about me, so I have a bit of a salesman in my corner. Huntsville is 3+ hours away and kind of in the “wrong” direction for our connections here with family etc. The MS thing would put us actually a bit closer to where the son lives, on the far side of him, but a bit closer.
I don’t have any settled plans for next week. I’m thinking if my interim period extends I may try to get up to Des Moines for a quick visit. The medical thing will probably happen in early-mid August and that may bump me out of an Iowa State Fair visit this year. With the job search and the medical thing and possibly moving or whatnot, I really can’t say what will happen.
I think it was this week; I did an online thing to express interest at the local community college for a CDL class. I don’t know if/when they might have one. Maybe they have to gather up a few students before they schedule it, or something.
The other employment option is to do some work for the folks back in Colorado on Ye Olde Billing System. I wanted to set that up a certain way, and the person I need to connect to has not called me back. So the “default” way is that I get started up again with that same consultant provider that they had me with in the Dubuque days. I’m just not very enthusiastic to get back into that. Maybe that is stupid. And it would be just until they get the transition completed, now scheduled about 9 months out. And maybe 20 hours a week. I think a real job would be much better if I can get one.