Finding something to say

I’ve been quiet lately… not much to talk about.  The job market is a mess, and I’m not making any headway.  I’m not surprised by this… the 4th quarter of the year is traditionally a bad time to be job-hunting, and in the midst of the Great Recession, it was going to be far worse. 

So what have I been up to?

Mostly radio and improv shows.

There’s really not a lot of fun stories (or even stories that’d be interesting to non-radio folks) happening on the radio side… certainly nothing I can make fun of myself about…   We’re just doing our thing – which leads me to my occasional reminder that I’m on 107.3 BBT (107.3 FM in Richmond, 100.3 FM in Petersburg) weekends… Saturdays 10am-3pm, Sundays noon-5pm.  

As to the improv, I hit most of the shows mentioned in the Improvised Hallowe’en post… yes, even the 2nd Annual Richmond Improv Festival.  I decided, in the end, it was more important to support the Richmond-based improvisers at the festival than to carry a grudge that was getting both old and heavy.  And you know what… I enjoyed the whole weekend.  I attended 6 of the 7 mainstage shows, including one ComedySportz show (yes, you read that right).  And it was fun to just sit back and watch all of the different show formats, troupes, and styles of improv.  The best part?  Of the 20 or so acts that I saw perform, only one bombed completely – no, I’m not naming them, I suspect they know, too.   Everyone else were on their games… the Richmond troupes all did well, and my pick for best of the weekend was Washington’s Dr. Fantastic.  Might have to drive up to DC sometime to check out a full set.

Congratulations to Zach Ward (from Dirty South Improv in the Triangle) for putting together a terrific lineup, and to all of the folks in front of and behind the scenes who made it run smoothly.

Speaking of improv – there be shows ahead.  Next Thursday (11/19), the Richmond Comedy Coalition is back at Art6… and Thanksgiving weekend (Friday/Saturday, 11/27-28), Random Acts returns to the HATTheatre with the improvised fairy tale Randomly Ever After at 7:30 and the mainstage show at 9.  Not sure I can make all of them – November at Main Line means basketball, and I think we have games all of those nights – but you should.

I guess I’ve officially entered the 21st Century…

I had a credit card number stolen.

Fortunately for me, the card was with a bank that is paying attention to my habits, and saw a number of charges that were totally wrong.  So they called me today.  So while I don’t know that I’d want to work at Capital One (given what I’ve heard about their hiring and firing practices), I’m glad that they’re watching my account.

The charges have all been reversed, fortunately.

Except for the one that didn’t have to be reversed.  The thief tried to set up a Vonage account using my stolen card number.  Vonage opened the account – and then closed it within a few minutes and credited me back the fee, before I even knew the card was compromised.  I called Vonage just to verify the situation, and they confirmed that they caught the charge as fraudulent almost immediately. 

Now I have to check my other cards to make sure I don’t have any other numbers stolen… sheesh. 

Moral of the story: read over your transactions on your credit card(s) every so often.

An Improvised Hallowe’en

Or… how many nights can I watch improv before I overdose?

Here’s the rundown.  I’ll probably attend most of it seeing as I currently don’t have a lot else going on… (of course, I’d probably attend most of it if I *did* have a lot going on)

Thursday 10/22 – Paradox Comedy’s “Motel Hell” at Art6 (8:00).

Wednesday 10/28 – Richmond Comedy Coalition’s “Apocalypse Soon-ish” at Gallery5 (8:00).

Thursday 10/29 – “Motel Hell”, take 2, Art6 (8:00).

Friday 10/30 – Random Acts at HATTheatre: Mainstage (where they will try [and probably fail ] to be family-friendly) at 7:30, “Driller Killer” (as RA does a live MSTing of the “horror” movie – and it WON’T be family-friendly) at 9:00.

Saturday 10/31 – Random Acts at HATTheatre (see 10/30).

Thursday 11/5 – Richmond Improv Festival at Capital Ale House Downtown.  Shows at 8:00 and 10:00, one ticket covers both shows.

Friday 11/6 – Richmond Improv Festival at Rhythm Hall at CenterStage. Shows at 7:00 and 9:00.  Note: there are shows at Carpenter Theatre [Avenue Q] and Gottwald Playhouse [Mahalia!] both nights at CenterStage.  Allow time to find parking.

Saturday 11/7 – Richmond Improv Festival.  Shows at 4:00, 7:00, and 9:00 at Rhythm Hall at CenterStage, and an improv jam at midnight at Capital Ale House Downtown.

Linkage:

• Richmond Comedy Coalition
• Random Acts
• Richmond Improv Festival

And if I’ve missed anything, I suspect someone, somewhere, will advise.

Enjoy!

Richmond baseball gets squirrelly

No, really… the new Double-A Eastern League club in Richmond will be called the Richmond Flying Squirrels.  The announcement came this afternoon.

I’ll say it again – it’s most likely a one-season name.  There are too many advantages to the Nationals moving their double-A farmhands to Richmond for it not to happen in 2011, the first opportunity to do so, at which point we’ll be cheering for the Richmond Nationals.  The Flying Squirrels are the double-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants.

And the other good news – the EL showed signs of intelligence and scheduled the Flying Squirrels for home games on Saturday and Sunday, July 3-4.  Both games are at 6:35pm.  You know what that means, don’t you?  Diamond Fireworks are BACK in 2010.  And earlier in the evening, with the 6:35pm starts (the Braves started their games at 7:05pm).

Opening day at the Diamond is Thursday, April 15 at 7:05pm against Reading, who’ll be in three times for 10 games this season.  Richmond plays Bowie the most, as the Baysox come in for 4 visits (15 games).  The Nationals’ current farm club, the Harrisburg Senators, come in just once (June 1-3).

The Flying Squirrels will be on the road for Memorial Day, but will close with what had become the traditional Labor Day matinee (Sept. 6 at 12:05pm).

Home games will be, generally, at 7:05pm weeknights, 6:35pm Saturdays, 2:05pm Sundays in April and May, 5:05pm Sundays through the summer.  Kid-friendly exceptions include two days that will likely be called Educational Days, on May 6 and 20 at 10:35am (the idea is that schools will send busloads of deserving kids over to the games), and one game which may be billed as a Day Camp Game on July 21 (12:05pm).

Now then, seeing as Allan Harvie told a friend of mine (during a chance encounter at a Norfolk Admirals game) that there “will be” hockey in Richmond in the fall of 2010, Richmond’s sports landscape is coming back together.  Let’s hope our alleged civic leadership doesn’t screw it up.

Back to reality

Well, after a fun week (OK, 9 days) in Orlando – 5 of them spent partially or totally at Disney parks – it’s time to get back to the real world.

As you saw in the last post, my real world involves looking for a job.  This is going to suck.  Current estimates are that there will be 6-7 people out of work for every job posting I find.  I’m in Information Technology, where there’s a very good chance that the estimate is low.  There are probably a dozen or more IT people out of work for every job posting.

I may wind up taking a contract job just to keep busy while I’m looking for a permanent position.  For the record, my last contract job was a data entry job about 20 years ago.  I hated it then, and I hate it now.  Contract jobs aren’t jobs.  They’re placefillers.   But they’re a necessary evil in this tortured job market – where most of the jobs that my experience would qualify me for have been eliminated or shipped offshore – so I will have to suck it up.

There’s an old joke that comes to mind…

Me: “I wish I’d listened to my mother when I was younger.”
You: “What did she say?”
Me: “I don’t know.  I wasn’t listening.”

OK, it’s not really relevant, but it’s a painfully-clumsy transition designed to allow me to mention something that’s going to be critical for my sanity in the next few weeks – improv shows in Richmond…

Oct. 15: Richmond Comedy Coalition’s MANDATORY GOOD TIME at Art6 (8pm).  It’s mandatory, so I have to be there.  Right?

Oct. 30-31: Random Acts at HATTheatre.  They’re doing the mainstage show at 7:30pm both nights (and they are going to TRY to be family-friendly… but it’s Mainstage, and there might be some wagering interest in a pool on when they’ll slip)… and at 9:00pm, it’s a live MSTing of the horror film “Driller Killer”.  What is a MSTing, you say?  MST=”Mystery Science Theatre 3000”, the gold standard in live riffing off a bad movie (see also “Rifftrax”).  Basically, the movie plays and the comedians rip it to shreds.  The movie is rather gory, I’m told, so “Driller Killer” is a “mature audiences only” show.  I wonder if that rules me out…

And I hear that the Funny Bone is getting back into the improv business in November.

See you on the radio…

And so it ends…

The IM from my manager came at 9:42 AM (yes, you remember the oddest things):

Hey, I need your release/waiver today since you won’t be here.

What he was referring to was my severance release form that would have been due on Oct. 9, but for the fact that I’ll be in Florida on Oct. 9.  Today was my last scheduled day, but we were holding out hope for an extension.  So, I asked…

Sure, working on it now.  Any chance you won’t need it?

The reply pretty much ended it…

(paraphrased) No. I’m working on [communications] to the team.

And so 8+ years of service to WellPoint ended quietly this morning.

I asked for, and got, the afternoon off – we had stopped taking calls yesterday, I had finished up my part of the rewrite of our knowledgebase for Dell (whose Global Services division is now WellPoint’s helpdesk) this morning… and really, I had nothing left to do but sit there and be both bored and emotional. 

At least I have the Florida trip as a bit of a buffer from reality… then when I get back, I have to find a job.  No problem, it’s only the worst economy in 70 years, should be a piece of cake, right?

Fortunately, I have severance pay coming until February, which seems like a long time except for the fact that it isn’t.

So if you know anyone who’s looking for an experienced first/second-level helpdesk technician (or maybe other IT-related work)… comment here with an email address and I’ll be in touch – well, maybe not while I’m in Florida, but when I get back…

Awesome moment of sports

The Sports By Brooks blog calls this the “single greatest sports highlight in the history of sports and highlights”.  Not sure I’m going there, but it’s definitely good for a laugh… just call it a case of two penalties on the same play…

Enjoy.

Then get some more laughs with Random Acts on Saturday night at the HATTheatre.

Department of Updates

Fixing omissions from the last few blog posts…

Game shows: Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? arrives on WRLH/35 on September 21.  The show will double-run for an hour at noon weekdays.  So far, none of the other 4 shows mentioned have surfaced.

Improv: How could I forget Second City Touring Company’s 50th Anniversary Tour?  This Friday and Saturday, Sept. 11-12, at the Modlin Center of the University of Richmond.  Details at http://modlin.richmond.edu.

And, as predicted, Facebook is acting like Facebook again.  Big surprise.  I’ll let you know if my email to info@facebook.com is ever replied to.

Facebook’s broken, and you don’t count

So… you probably have noticed that Facebook’s having a bad weekend.

• Some people can’t log in all.
• Most people, when they log in, get a screwed-up news feed with missing posts, randomly sorted posts, or days-old posts.
• About half the time, the highlights bar is missing.

So, if you’re a tech support guy like me, you start looking for contact information.

GOOD LUCK.

The generic contact form has been taken down.

The help page is only helpful if the site is actually working.

There’s no status blog, or status page, or any way to know if Facebook is even aware there’s a problem.

And the logical email address, support@facebook.com, bounces.

They do have one available mailbox, info@facebook.com, but all reports on the Internet are that nobody ever answers that mailbox.

To quote AdAge in an article they posted today, “In the cloud, no one can hear you scream”.

They were referring to Gmail, but they could well have been referring to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or any of the other cloud services that simply have no way of generating income.

It’s nice that all of those services are free.

Of course, because they’re free, they can’t pay a public-facing support staff.

So if something breaks… as an old friend once said, “if my software breaks, you own both pieces”.  Don’t expect help, or even a notification, when free cloud services like these break.  You’re pretty much on your own.  Yes, they’ll get fixed.  But your input isn’t going to be part of it – and you’re not going to be contacted when the fix is in place.

It’s a tradeoff.

AdAge, in their article, noted that you get what you pay for.

You pay nothing… expect nothing.

Welcome to the age of cloud computing… where if something goes wrong, you’re the one stuck in the clouds.

September? Already?

The reason you haven’t seen much from me is that there isn’t much to write about.

We’ve been extended at WellPoint through Oct. 9.  So I can’t blog about WellPoint until sometime after that.

And there really hasn’t been much else – like a lot of people, I didn’t hit the huge MegaMillions jackpot a week ago… so I’m still right where I was before.  *sigh*

So I’ll just mention my other favorite pastime – improv comedy – and the shows coming up in Richmond in the next few weeks…

Thurs. Sept. 10, 8pm at Art6 – Paradox Comedy’s “Town Hall Outrage” (no website that I know of… there’s going to be standup, sketch, and improv… something for everyone), $5

Thurs. Sept. 17, 8pm at Art6 – Richmond Comedy Coalition’s “EVERYBODY PANIC” (it has to be in all caps for the reference to make sense… http://www.rvacomedy.com for details), $5

Fri. Sept. 25 and Sat. Sept. 26, 7:30/9:00 at HATTheatre – Random Acts.  The first show is the Western parody “HI-larious NOON”, and the second show is the always adults-only (And always fun) Mainstage, $7 for one show, $10 for both.  http://www.randomactsimprovcomedy.com for details, including the half-price offer for “HI-larious NOON”.

Oh, one other thing… if you like your sanity, don’t even try to drive around Richmond on Saturday… with NASCAR at RIR, Journey at the Richmond Coliseum, and the grand opening of Centerstage, there’s going to be people everywhere.  I need to figure out if I can phone in my radio show…   EDIT 09.09.09 – There’s a story behind why I thought Tuesday’s Journey concert was on Saturday, but I’ll be damned if I know what it was.

Enjoy your Labor Day.

P.S. Man, Jerry Lewis hasn’t looked this healthy in years.  Watch the MDA Telethon tonight or tomorrow (through 6:30pm) on WRIC/8, or at http://www.mdausa.org.  And throw them a few bucks if you can.