Year: 2009

life is crazy.. that much is determined.

I’ve been addicted to the old dc Talk lately… I even like their new song they have on Kevin Max’s CD, the track is called “The Cross” – and yes they still got it. It would be amazing to hear a CD released now…

I have been putting off updating because I really have not been all that productive. I went for an interview with US bank. They want me. They want me a lot. I know, good news right? It first was a sales job. After my interview the manager told me it was good. Remember? They give you a sample of the script before you have your second interview. I looked it over and it was 100% sales. I called them up and told them that I was not interested in the position. But rather I was looking for a customer service job, if for any more questions please call me.

On a surprising turn of events – they called me. They said that there must have been some miscommunication when I interviewed. They had two positions open. Sales and Customer service. I had been interviewed for sales. She told me she had again talked with the interviewing manager and they felt that the customer service would be a better fit. They wanted me to come in interview with them. She told me that she was very interested in getting me on to a Customer service team. Good right?

They also told me that I would receive a copy of the scripting for the customer service position – something that is not normally done, but again – she wanted to stress they were wanting me to be happy. Yes, yes that’s good. I just – I don’t know. It is a step back from what I have been doing.

So I can either take a literal step back and work in Arizona for a few months or so while I wait for something to open up here – or I can take this now. I understand this would be a good job, I would also be making nearly 10K less than I did in Arizona. I have done the math – if I returned I would be ahead (after paying all of my bills up here) by almost 3k.

Now they never sent me the customer service scripting. I called them yesterday afternoon and told them that because I didn’t receive any scripting I couldn’t come for the interview. They replied through email shortly after apologizing that they had not sent it- attached it to the email and asked to reschedule the appointment.

My only thing is – do I really want to do that? Do I want to be taking a step back – taking less pay and a job that is under what I have been doing for the past year to continue to live in Portland? If I were in Arizona I would be saying “yes! no doubt in that matter!” but now that I am up here and the stuff really goes down– I don’t want to. I would like to return to retail before I get stuck in the dead end job of being on the phones.

Pros to this position is that its banking. Something I have never done. It would open doors for other jobs in the future. You can’t really go wrong with having this type of experience and compiled with the identity theft experience I have, I could prove to be a big asset for the company.

Cons to this position – I hate the phones.. I see it as a dead end job. I kind of feel that having been on the phones for a few years in the past (2 and 1/2 at Sears and only a few months at LifeLock) I’ve done my time. I’m past that.

I am thinking that maybe I should go for the second interview and ask the “customer service managers” how quickly – per say – I could get out of this job and something that isn’t totally phone based. And go from that? If they tell me that I’ll be in this position for 6 months or a year before anything else, then.. I guess I’ll see what happens.

I’m torn.

And that is just the job side of things.

JJ has been somewhat withdrawn lately. Mostly because he has been talking to his girl. The one who has spent the night twice so far. Today he didn’t come out of his room until 7pm.. and he doesn’t have any lead for jobs. I kind of feel like I should throw my hands up in the air about it. I don’t “feel” he is looking for jobs- if at all. His family is coming out. He has told me his plans to take them to the coast, see the waterfalls etc.. and I must say that I am kind of hurt by the fact that he has not even thought that maybe I’d like to go as well. Get to know his family more…. *sigh*

I am still very much single, but this is funny. I was on a website that matches you with people, and one of the people it matched me to was Sky. I’ve not mentioned her before – but she is someone from Cascade. At first I was surprised she was on it, then I was thinking if it was true – would we? Really?

Anyway. LifeLock is still very much ready to take me back, I just have to say the word. I wish they didn’t want me, or said they couldn’t help me any more. That would make my whole decision process a whole lot easier.

Despite popular belief, this whole decision isn’t just about my living arrangements and simply not having a good job. I think about it and if I am in Arizona working, I could afford to have dental work done. I could afford things that I won’t be able to afford if I take the job that will most likely be offered to me. It would also be easier if I could just say “hey, hold this job for me- I’ll take it in 6 months.”

Girls! So I am going to blog about this too. I have made this a very long post so far, and I’m not done yet!

Three people I had recently been interested in (within the past 6 months) have dropped out. haha. Not of school or anything, but more like – they just aren’t interested? Yeah. I guess that’s it.

Rebecca the girl that once said to me- and I quote “You make me want to smile and cry and laugh at the same time You are so sweet and I totally don’t even come close to deserving it. You are truly one of the last decent men left. You’re amazing” Yeah about her. I guess I am too good to date her. No no, I’m not kidding. It gets better – after I go through this whole thing of being committed she says she would like to see how things go. The next day she starts dating someone else. Ouch….

Stacie. Ah yes, you said you would be willing to see where things went. I guess that wasn’t totally true – because she decided to stop talking to me once she decided to move to Seattle. I texted her what was up and she said “I think I have made my intentions quite clear”

Ruth – oh Ruth. The best friend of Stacie. She told me she would date me. I guess the story is- she thinks that I am too good for her. I would be disappointed if I started dating her.

One thing is in common with these things. They get confronted – they feel bad and start crying. I comfort them and then everything is fine. It’s like someone who is dying – yet all of their friends and family do nothing but cause more stress. They usually end up comforting the ones who should be doing the comforting.

Right now, it’s whatever. Girls are a head trip – and love to play with emotions. I don’t need that…

Finally.. I come to an updated part. No not about girls, but about my life. The other day JJ and I went to the zoo (every second Tuesday of the month admission is $2) so we figured what better way to get out? We went and it was pretty fun. JJ was complaining about being hungry, but other than that it was good. We walked around the zoo (and a good portion of it was under construction for new areas) but it was still worth $2.00, we even took a trip around Washington Park and the Zoo on the Zooliner. haha It’s a little train they have going around the place.

I think that is all I have. I can’t sleep – when I do I wake up and my back hurts. When I’m awake I feel tired and bored… ah well haha.

I have to remember: Wag more. bark less.

just Pray.

hey

I am watching definitely maybe. I remember liking this movie… thinking it was cute.

For the 4th of July I went to Seaside. It was great. I have posted videos on youtube. go to www.youtube.com/jayshox and see them if you’d like.

I also posted pictures on myspace. so if I’m your friend on there, go ahead and look.

It was pretty much fantastic. The best experience I’ve had for the 4th. Unlike anything else that I’ve had before. I would suggest for everyone to go to the Oregon coast for the 4th of July, at least once! The show was all over. Right in front of you- behind, on the sides.. you were surrounded- engulfed in the show.

I also had a job fair-interview thing today with US Bank. I didn’t want to prepare. I feel defeated by these job interviews and by looking for jobs in general. It is driving me crazy, no joke. So I didn’t prepare- I just dressed up, printed an interview and went. It was fine. I arrived early and then waited a little bit before it was my turn. I talked with the interviewer – answering all of the questions she asked. I do try to do that during an interview. haha.. anyway I got done with the interview and she paused for a moment, leaned forward and said “… you are one of the best interview I’ve had today.. and that I’ve had in months. It is really a breath of fresh air” I thanked her and went to schedule my second interview.

I had a conversation with Emily tonight about how it isn’t my interview skills that are keeping me from getting the job. It has became obvious to us that I don’t get jobs because I don’t have that piece of paper saying I have a degree, or a masters. It is discouraging. It doesn’t matter if I am more qualified than the next applicant- but it does matter if I am holding that sacred paper.

It isn’t the best thing, but it is the way it is. After all – it’s a flooded market.

Anyway, I would be watching this movie more but JJ is talking over the TV to whoever he is talking to on the phone. I guess he has plans to go out tonight so it should quiet down soon.

I guess that’s all I got. I have started reading the John Eldredge book I picked up recently, and it is good. Once I get into it a little more I’ll post quotes.

just Pray

So it has been a week since I have last posted.

Not a ton has happened, but a few things have 🙂

On June 25th, one day after I posted by last blog – it was reported that Michael Jackson was taken to the hospital. I looked up online for more information on this and some websites were reporting that he had died. What a trip. After a few more hours it was confirmed that he died. The guy was only 50 years old. I was just listening to his music the day as I drove back from visiting my brother. There was much anticipation for this concert tour he was going to have. He was titled it “This is it” low and behold it would never come. It is sad.. but it is a strong reminder that is the fate that we all must carry someday.

All of the news stations were so slow to announce that he had died. I guess they were worried this was going to be a publicity stunt. Perez Hilton posted a blog on his website saying that it was just a publicity stunt. Later on in the day he took that blog down. People’s reactions are crazy. Instead of mourning for a guy who was immensely talented people are just knocking the guy. “His heart just couldn’t Beat it” ; “His face probably fell off and he had a heart attack and died” and there are countless other things people are saying. It caused such a stir online that AOL messenger crashed for 30 minutes, myspace had crazy lag, Google thought they were being attacked by a bot that searched random things on Jackson and yahoo and bing both had problems. In Iran, all of the traffic caused the whole internet to go down for a little bit of time while they figured out how to handle the traffic. Even twitter crashed, as everyone was logging online, to myspace and other places to spread the news. I think it really caught everybody by surprise…

The last thing I have to say on this is that I really feel for him. I looked up his religious background, and in November of 2008 in a superstar’s home in LA he converted to Islam. He was abiding by the Koran and his new found faith. That just killed me to hear. His brother got him into Islam and just recently had he converted over to it. MTV/VH1 both played his music – it reminded me of when Tupac had died. All day 24/7 all weekend. And all of his records have sold out across the nation, its crazy..

On to sports…

The Blazers didn’t do anything big on draft day, but they did get rid of Sergio Rodriguez. That was a great move on our part. He didn’t fit with the team and it also gives us more salary cap space to work with to maybe sign a free agent in the off season – if we do sign anybody it will probably be a veteran, someone who can mentor some of the younger guys on our squad, and if not mentor than to just add some additional toughness. We have been heavily pursuing Hedo Turkulu as of 12:01 (when you can officially pursue free agents). Literally – we called him the minute after. Tonight the coach is having dinner with him, then we are flying him to Portland and hopefully we can close a deal with him. He would be a great asset to help us push further into the playoffs.

I have been looking for jobs, but there are none to be had. It is very demoralizing. Very much so…

On the up and up.. 🙂 some positive news, for July 4th me and JJ are planning on going to Seaside, OR to see the fireworks. We have read a lot of people who have went in prior years and they all seemed to enjoy it a lot. So that’s that….

I can’t believe it is July already.

I got some books today written by John Eldredge (one of my favorite authors) so I might be posting some parts of his books, or at least quotes.

just Pray.

So,
I suppose a lot has happened. At least it surely feels like it.

Ah yes, now it is coming to me.

I have 2nine.us up and running… and as of now this is a public blog (but nobody has the link to it yet). I only have to create one more page and it will be done for a while. I am undecided how I am going to make the “blogs” page as of yet.

The week was pretty uneventful, I had an interview with Aflac on the 15th but it turned out to be a fully commissioned job. No thanks. I checked a little bit more into the “bankers” job and it was the same thing, just selling life insurance instead. I had an interview on Thursday, but I called them and told them thanks- but no thanks…

That brings us to the weekend, or at least Friday. I woke up early. 🙂 I know, crazy right? But I was up at 7am – that is the earliest I had been up and moving in a while. I went to the Ted Haggard Leaders gathering they had at Living Hope. They had invited everyone from the church to go as the event didn’t fill just having invited church leaders/pastors. It was good, it was interesting… and a little awkward.

Why? well .. lets lay the scenario. I sat down at this table with this other guy who was sitting by himself. I asked him how he was, where he was from.. if he was part of the church… you know. General stuff. He was polite. After he told me he wasn’t a part of Living Hope- I asked him if he was a part of a church, or if he went to church. He said he didn’t go to any church. I just nodded and started to change the subject- he seemed uneasy. I think that it’s funny that when people start a sentence with: ‘no offense- but….’ they feel that enables them to say anything. But those were the next words out of this man’s mouth. ‘No offense- but…. I’ve forgotten more of the bible than You’ll ever know.’

Um. Okay. I don’t know where he got that from. I wasn’t going to say anything about him not going to church. Heck – in Arizona I wasn’t going to church. I wasn’t going to pursue the issue and press for answers – and overall I thought it was a very rude thing to say. Heck, I didn’t come to do any harm.

Anyway- I learned a lot about circumstances and viewpoints by hearing Ted and Gayle’s point of view on what went down. The grace and truth collided. It was a great atmosphere. After the event was over- I checked my phone. I had gotten a call from Providence.

Ah yes Providence. I had received an email from this company telling me that they were going with other people. I was aggravated as I felt that there was nothing better I could have done on the interview. I wanted answers. I shot off an email asking for feedback of the whole thing. She called in response to the email. So I sat outside the church, parked in my car talking to the woman from Providence. She told me she was pulling up my file, then after a minute she said “ah ha… mmhmm.. okay then, well..” then she began to tell me how I went wrong. How every indicator that they gave me was way off center. “It says here that.. well….” Yes? What was it exactly..? “…well it says that you were quiet. That you seemed nervous.” I sat in silence, waiting for the punch line. Okay, and? “well that was it, they didn’t feel like this would be a good fit because you were nervous.” Really? So you are telling me that I don’t have to work on my answers or presentation… it was just that I was nervous? “Yes, we suggest that next time- for any future employers that you practice in front of a mirror.” Oh boy, that was a big help. It was my first panel interview. I had the HR lady and 3 corporate managers asking me questions.. I didn’t think being nervous would be a bad thing. At least none of my answers were bad. She continued, “but don’t see this as a disappointment (I am thinking, oh no.. I love not getting a job, it makes me feel successful) but rather look at the numbers – because they were being very very selective. So if someone wasn’t nervous they went with that particular person over you.” Yeah, that makes me feel a ton better. I reaffirmed with her that there was nothing else. She told me nothing else. But she did give me some numbers. “There were 487 people who applied for the job. You were up against a big number, then out of those people we only gave 90 interviews face to face. After all of the interviews, no matter how qualified the candidates were – there were only 20 open spots.” Ah ha. Well I thanked her for her time and ended the call. It was frustrating, because I walked out of the interview thinking I had the job in hand. Ugh…

Okay, moving on. On Saturday morning I left at around 1:30 pm to go visit my brother. I got up around the area around 5.. and wasted an hour just looking around at various things until the visitation time at 6. Once we started our visit things went well. We had things to talk about for 3 hours. Just me and him, talking about all sorts of things. It was a good visit.. we really haven’t had a bad visit with him. Anyway – at 9:10 I left the visitation and started to drive home. I didn’t get back until after 1am. I was pretty tired. I went to bed shortly thereafter.

Sunday, ah yes Sunday. I told you I had a lot to talk about. On Sunday I went to Living Hope – again waking up in the morning (but not as early as the two previous days). I went and Sat in back a little farther than normal. Worship started, then nearing the end of worship two people sat down in front of me. They announced it was visiting time.

Ted Haggard turns around and introduces himself (ha, as if I didn’t know). I shook his hand and did some chit chat with him as he introduced his wife. I was very surprised to have met him. I know we didn’t talk about anything important – but still, it was quite the event of the year – for me at least. I wished him a happy fathers day and shortly after he and his wife took the stage and I listened to the message. Afterwards I went home and hung out with JJ the rest of the evening.

On Monday I printed out passes to go pre screen “My Sisters Keeper” with Cameron Diaz. I checked my email late that afternoon and I had received an email telling me that I won passes to pre screen the Transformers – Revenge of the Fallen movie. Very cool. I was able to bring a guest so I brought along JJ. I got a T-shirt of the movie and a poster too. It was a very good movie. Semi-long, but it kept you entertained the whole way through. And Megan Fox looks good as ever.

So! After that, we went home and just watched TV. Yesterday and today I have just been applying to jobs with almost anywhere that is hiring. I got news from Ellen in an email that she is leaving the company. She said “I announced on Monday I was leaving LifeLock. My last day will be next week. I’ve accepted a management position at a company called Early Warning. I will be starting up a new Investigative Department for them working with the major financial institutions. It was a big decision to leave LifeLock but it’s a great opportunity for me. Continue to provide updates to Chris Ronson and copy Mary Aranki.”

Crazy crazy, things are changing a lot.

I think that is all I have. Tonight I watched the last episode of “I’m a celebrity – get me out of here!” and Lou Diamond Phillips won the event. That was fitting as he was the most level headed on the whole show.

The past two days JJ has kind of been really quiet and tonight he is MIA, dunno where he’s at but I’m sure he is enjoying himself.

Anyway, sorry about not updating last week and for the extra long post this week. I am sure in the upcoming days the Blazers will be making some sort of headlines and when they do I’ll be back to talk about it.

just Pray

Hey

Time for my weekly update.

I am thinking that next weekend – on Fathers day I am going to go visit Michael. I haven’t done so by myself since I’ve been up here- so it’s as good as time as any.

This last week was semi-busy. Over the weekend – well it was pretty unproductive. Other than my usual cleaning which I had blogged about I also went grocery shopping. I also had some interviews this week. Two that I had been looking forward to.

First one was First Tech Credit Union – I arrived at 1:20pm (it was a 4 or 5 hour job fair just for First Tech) and JJ came with me, we didn’t finish until 4:20ish. It was almost a good 3 and 1/2 hours of waiting. My interviewer told me my interview would only last five minutes- and she only had some questions she wanted to ask me. JJ was like 5 minutes behind me, but his did last a little longer than mine.

After that, we went home- cooked some burgers and made our way to the Lloyd Center Cinema to see a pre screening of the movie ‘Imagine that’ and I was surprised. It was a family movie but it turned out to be pretty good.

On Wednesday I spent the day preparing for my interview with Providence. I really tried to look up as much as I could and tried to think of ways that I would fit in.. and looking at the companies goals, I think it would be a great fit. I’m not sold on doing a phone job again – but working for a company with a purpose could fill in that area where I don’t want to do it.

Thursday I had my interview with Providence – and it was good. I think I did well.. but in an interview – unless you get the job on the spot who really knows how it went?

I won’t find out if I’m getting a second interview with First Tech until later on this week- and the same with Providence, I won’t find out until I got the job til later this week.

Tomorrow I have an interview with Aflac, then I have another interview on Thursday of next week with a company in Vancouver. So I have enough to keep me busy- but I would like if I could get a job this week.

Thursday night me and JJ went out to eat at Marie Calenders, and after that good dinner we went home and played “Lips” a karaoke type game where you sing songs and earn points on how well you sing it. We were up until 5:30am playing that game.

Friday we slept in and of course – Friday night I was back cleaning the whole place. Saturday I went to church with Stacie again – she informed me she is moving to Seattle. We also watched Wall-E on Stars and that was about it for the night..

Slept in again today, and here we are. Now I’m watching “I’m a celebrity get me out of here” and getting texts from Ruth and Deniece trying to make plans to hang out.

Last bit of information – 2nine.us is now a registered domain which jshox.com will be changing to shortly.

Church was great, talked about judging- and next week Ted Haggard will be at church. Should be good.

just Pray