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Okay, so I’ve been sending out emails for the last hour or so to everyone with a NaNoWriMo account and Tempe as their home city, inviting them to a writing session tonight. I figure I’ll invite everyone who read my site as well, since some of you may be interested in watching Harry Potter with us tonight after the writing session. For those of you who aren’t already working on novels or have no interest in working on novels, feel free to come to our meeting anyway. So far about 15% of everybody who’s showed up to out writing sessions hasn’t been a writer, and it’s a good reason to get out. The following is what I posted in the NaNoWriMo forum and emailed out to almost 20 people:

“Several of us are getting together tonight, Friday November 15th, at 6PM, at the Coffee Plantation at Mill avenue and 6th St in downtown Tempe. More of us will be showing up late, so if you can’t (or don’t care to) show up that early, don’t worry about it, just show up when you can. We should have a multi-sheet, huge-print color sign that says we’re NaNoWriMo. (Color, because last week when I tried to print it in black and white, my printer ran out of black.)

Writing in a group can be a real motivator, and not just because you don’t want to be the one with the lowest wordcount. Also, we’ve all been giving each other ideas to include in each others novels for when we get stuck, so if you’re stuck we’re sure to be able to help you out!

Also, some of us will be continuing over to the Harkins Centerpoint theatre to see the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I expect it to fill up, so you’ll probably want to buy your tickets early. I’m going to get mine on the way over to the Coffee Plantation.

I look forward to seeing everyone tonight! See you there!”

If you’re still with me, I really do hope to see as many people as possible tonight. I’ve already had two people respond to say they can’t make it. I’m starting to get a good momentum on this thing. I wrote 6k+ words just this morning! Yay words!

Okay, so I’ve been applying online to plenty of jobs. I still haven’t heard back from ASU, but they’re a gov’t agency, so I would understand if they were ridiculously slow. That job would pay almost $4k/yr less than I need to stay above water, but would cover most of my tuition costs, reducing my overall living expenses.

Another job I emailed my resume to try to get garnered an almost immediate response, and I was scheduled this morning to interview. From 8 to 10:30 this morning I was there filling out applications and forms with information that was already on my resume, then taking a series of short tests re: vocabulary, analogies, reading comprehension, arithmetic, and logic, then a brief personality test. The personality test I answered honestly (and they didn’t call the cops, so must not have had the right questions on it), and of the five other tests, I did great on all of them but the arithmetic test. Somehow when asked to answer 5 questions in five minutes without the use of a calculator, I started thinking about the first question and when I realized I started with a wrong value, 3.5 minutes had already passed. I have no idea how that happened. Then I got the first one solved correctly and before I could answer the second the time ran out. It was like they put together the first three questions (I didn’t even see the other two) to address my specific weakness at dealing with percents of percents of fractions of strange numbers in my head. Had I a calculator, I would have had the answers in less time than it took to read the questions. So after I finished the tests, i spent something close to 40 minutes waiting in one place or another to be interviewed. No problem, I’m patient. So first I talk to the HR person, who advises me that I’ve done better on all sections of the test than most people, including math, and have surpisingly high scores, which prevents most people from getting to the interview at all. Okay, fine. A brief interview with some stock questions followed, then she went to find a supervisor (10 minutes), who offered me the job, told me to go take a drug test w/in 48 hours, and then, at the end of my third hour there, despite my minimum required wage being clearly listed in my application, offrered me almost $7k less/year than I need to stay above water. I let him know that that wasn’t enough money, and he said he’d talk to HR about getting me more, if I pass the drug test.

Of course, if I refuse to take the job, I would have to tell Unemployment about it, and then they’d want to not pay me to not have a job. If I do take the job then I’ll just keep looking for other jobs, and may end up switching jobs after only a couple of weeks, which would look awful on a resume. I think I’ll go take the drug test tomorrow morning, then if they don’t offer me enough money, ask to be in the training starting December 2 instead of November 18, so I have another couple of weeks to try to find something that pays enough. What do you think I should do?

I am running behind on my novel. I think I mentioned that I was re-starting Friday morning, but I only got about 5700 words on the new one done this weekend. Saturday night/Sunday morning I was working on another project, Sunday night I actually slept most of, and tonight I was working on homework. Tomorrow morning I’m getting up bright and early and going to a Microsoft thing about their new Tablet PCs, Wednesday morning I’ve got an interview for an in-bound CS position that probably doesn’t pay enough, and somewhere before Thursday night I’ve got to finish that homework assignment I’ve barely started. Right now I’m going to sleep.

I’m so tired. I hope I can sleep.

Oh, and did I mention that I volunteered to be the Municipal Liaison for NaNoWriMo in Tempe? As long as I was arranging meetings and trying to convince everyone I meet to write a novel, I figured I may as well get a title to go along with it.

So I was scrolling through job listings online and I cam across one that starts

“Senior Cryptography Engineer:
Senior level professional needed for hands on encoding/decoding of data for high security customer.Must have 8+ years experience in cryptology and data security. DOD clearance is a plus. EE and/or MA in related degree is also a plus. Experience is specific to the the creation of mathematical algorithms which decode documentation & IS access…”

and I was thinking to myself that I’d like to have whoever gets this job as a friend. Someone who has been a professional in cryptography and data security longer than I’ve been out of High School. Probably with DOD clearance. Who is this person? Why are they living in Scottsdale? Better yet, why are you looking for work? What top-secret government org is downsizing?

I wonder how many applicants they’ll get & interview. Who thinks I should apply, even though I have just about none of the qualifications?

Just a little. A little sore throat from a little sinus drain and a little tired at 7AM from being up since 2 or 3 in the afternoon yesterday. I haven’t quite got the hang of how long I should be awake with this nocturnal thing. When I woke up at 5 or 6 in the morning, I knew that 11 or 12 at night was as late as I could stay awake, but … does that mean I can stay up until 8 or 10AM if I don’t wake up until 2 or 4PM? Or… Well, I should probably be getting more sleep since I don’t really have much in the way of responsibilities that would keep me from sleep…

Tomorrow I’m going to the 6:50 showing of Training Wheels with the intention of meeting the crew afterwards; apparently they made this whole movie right here in downtown Tempe. So, wanting to someday be making independent films of my own, perhaps in Tempe, this is a good opportunity not just to see what can be done, but to talk to the people who did it about how they got everything together.

My new novel is already coming along better than the first one I was doing. I only got to about 4,800 words on the first one, but I’m already at 5,600 words on the one I started yesterday morning around 3AM. I hope to get through another 10-15,000 words this long weekend, though I just got a great idea for the 2D Design project I couldn’t think of anything, and I don’t know how long it will take to do it. I’ll work it out.

I’m going to bed. Maybe I’ll see if I can find some orange juice tomorrow. I hear rumor it’s the worst thing to take for a sore throat.