Please Excuse the Following Rant.

(I've been out of work for an absolutely ridiculous amount of time. So I'll have to ask you to excuse the following, which is written out of sheer mindless frustration. I'm having a really bad month.)

I've read that archaeologists recently dug up a mysterious stone tablet in the Middle East. No one really knows for sure where it came from. Faintly visible on it is an inscription that roughly translates to, "Number eleven: Thou shalt not let Brian have money."

Seriously, these days, it seems that everyone wants money from me, but no one's willing to do anything that might run the risk of having to pay me. Not only can I not persuade an employer to hire me, but pretty much everything else I've tried to do for money has failed. Those Google ads? Those Shareapic galleries? Hardly producing a dime. Work-at-home gigs? Scams, one and all.

This, of course, does not stop a seemingly endless lineup of companies from demanding ridiculous amounts of money from me, without any indication of where in God's name I'm going to get all of that money from. I'm sick of being squeezed like this.

As a job seeker, I've heard the advice before that I should not give the impression of being desperate. The sad truth, though, is that I am desperate. My resources, to say nothing of my patience, are wearing extremely thin. I need someone to hire me. Sooner rather than later.

Notice that I said, "hire me:"

• Not, "Advertise positions that don't really exist, collect my resume and get my hopes up."
• Not, "Take my resume and then never bother to get back to me."
• Not, "Get my hopes up, tell me you'll be in touch, and then drop off the face of the Earth."
• Not, "String me along for three months, while telling me each week to call back the following week." (I had one prospective employer do this for a part-time position. I got in touch with him in March, and in June he was still stringing me along. I finally figured out that he wasn't going to hire. The fact that he posted a typo-ridden Craigslist ad in which he emphasized the importance of accuracy should have been a tip-off.)
• Not, "Try to sign me up with another MLM." I don't do MLMs. I don't consider it a legitimate business model if the participants make their money mainly from signing up new participants.
  
• Not, "Try to sell me something." I don't care what it is. I'm not buying.
• Not, "Try to scam me."

And for you IT recruiters who might read this? I'm a damn good programmer. Once I get up to speed, I can pseudocode in my head, code on the fly, and build a test prototype for you while you're arguing over who's going to run the program every day.
I can design and set up databases. I can write software manuals. I can train your end users. Hells, I can even do data entry if that's what you need.

All I need is a fighting chance.
Why is that so unreasonable?

Back with Books and Stuff

I hate for this blog to start turning into a beg-fest, especially considering how long it's been since I posted anything. But I'm at one of those places where money is getting very tight right now. Certainly I'm not going to ask for something for nothing, so let me draw your attention to a few things.

First, I've got a stack of antique books, which I've had advertised on Craigslist since they were new! (Okay, that's a slight exaggeration.)
The ad includes the following books:

Hill's Practical Reference Library (4 vols., 1904)
Rudyard Kipling's Verse Inclusive Edition 1885-1918 (1919 edition) (cover is taped)
History of the Hebrew Commonwealth by Albert Bailey, A.M. and Charles Kent, Ph.D,, Litt.D. (1920)
America for Me by Mary Margaret McBride (1941)
Dragon seed by Pearl S. Buck (1942)
"Wildcats" over Casablanca by Lt. M. T. Wordell, U.S.N. & Lt. E.N. Seiler, U.S.N.R (1943)
An American Bible, edited by Alice Hubbard (1946) (Note: This is a book about various historically prominent Americans, originally written in 1912.)
A History of Civilization, vol. 1 by Brinton, Christopher and Wolff (1958)

I asked $4 per volume. (For multi-volume sets, such as Hill's Reference Library, I'd have to ask more.) I thought that was reasonable, but unfortunately I'm getting no takers in the Cleveland area.
So I'm casting the net a little further. I'm willing to consider shipping these within the U.S., if anyone outside of the Cleveland area is interested in them.

(The Craigslist ad includes a 19-volume World Book Encyclopedia set from 1955, but I'm not going to try to ship that!)

Secondly, does anyone out there like science fiction? I've got a big stack of Analog magazines from the early 90s up into early 2003, with a few gaps here and there. (I let my subscription lapse, re-subscribed a few years later, then had to let it lapse again. This wasn't due to the quality of the magazine, which was always excellent. It simply became a luxury that I couldn't responsibly afford.)

Finally, there's another simple way to throw me a little help without having to spend any of your own money. Down below, you'll see a series of links labeled, "My Shareapic galleries." I've mentioned Shareapic before. This Website lets you set up free photo galleries, through which you get paid when people click on your pictures. Be warned that it's a tiny amount of money per click, which means that I need as many of you as possible to go there and click on those images! (And if you should decide that you'd like to join, and set up your own image galleries, here's a link for you to use.)