Being unemployed is a lot of work..

I never wanted to use social media.  I still feel that it exposes you to the world, and then you need to watch what you post and what other people post about you.

Previous to being unemployed, I was almost completely missing, even though I've had a huge presence through my coding and technical documents I wrote for my employer.

Since my name was never published with my technical articles or my applications and utilities, I really don't have any proof for new employers of what I've done.

The source code I wrote for those utilities belongs to my last employer, so I cannot even share it or possibly even use it with a new employer.

So, what do I have to show for my work?

"Hey, I have written lots of technical docs, busted out hundreds of thousands of lines of code... but I can't prove it aside from just saying it."

Kinda fucked up when you're working with the intellectual rights between employers.

Going back to all the work, I spent many hours setting up a Facebook account ot use for promoting my books & stories.

It turned more into a shit fest of: "Oh, look there's my brother... oh look there's my little boy... oh look there's...  Oh, that picture is Awesome!  45 people "liked" your photo(s)..."

So WTF?

Why do I need to be notified that someone liked a picture of my bare ass?

I mean seriously?

Who cares?

I updated my profile photo with a picture taken 5 years ago, and everyone is like, "Wow, that's a great photo.".... and all I want to say is... "yeah it is... All of you have copies of it from the same damn family reunion we were all at!"

Then there's my mom... "I need you to call me..."  "That's a great photo of my "little boy""... Holy shit!  WTF would someone post shit like that to a site where most of that shit is public?


I should post something like, "here's the damn bitchy lady who used to yell at me about how poor my fucking grades were"  OR "Thanks for yelling at us kids for not putting the fucking lights on the Christmas trees correctly, when you wouldn't do it or even show us WTF you wanted done!"  OR  "WTF didn't you get an idea that I was depressed and my grades were bad about it.... Why couldn't you try and help me, instead of yelling at me!?"

Now, enough with bitching about Facebook and the idiots who use it.

Getting back to working hard being unemployed.

I setup a LinkedIn account, and spent several days filling in the various parts of the forms, and employers, and work experience, and projects I worked on, and then "connecting" with all the people I worked with over the years.

Now, the people I connected with are those that I trust.  There are shit loads of others from my last employer that I really, REALLY don't want to be associated with.

Hell most of the people aside from those I actually like are complete assholes!

Some of them are idiots and can't pour water from a boot with instructions on its heel.

A lot of them are heavy drinkers and drug users...  Yet, since this employer didn't do any drug screening, nothing was found, even though they were pretty damn fucked up sometimes.

So, getting back to LinkedIn (again), I think that I am now publicly visible through Google searches... Whoopie fucking deal.

Actually, I did several searches on my first & last name, then first name, middle initial, last name.

I found only "public" phone records, and a reference to my Facebook profile.

Otherwise, I am going to be confused with LOTS of other people with the same name, including several sports stars.

In short, it seems like a lot of fucking work for almost nothing...

Except that I had a great phone interview for an IT position, where the interviewer said she wants to meet with me and their other IT people for a formal interview.

w00t!?

I need the job... but I'm not sure how excited I am yet..

At least today I'm not feeling very excited.

I haven't been sleeping good for a variety of things.. one might be the pain in my legs still... (duh)  Another would be heavy caffeine use from not sleeping... (duh, again)  another could be the drop in pain medication.

The pain I have is being controlled almost completely with Acetaminophen these days instead of the opiods I had been taking.

It's a great thing to be off of them, for the most part... but it's also a possible reason why I'm not sleeping good.. it's allowing the pain to hit me harder at night, when the small doses I took through the day have worn off.

Right now, I am taken less than 1/8th of what I was taking three weeks ago.  In fact, I'm taking less than 1/2 of what I was using last week.

Hell, I'm not even using the muscle relaxers on any sort of regular basis.  I took some last night because I hurt my back on Saturday... and to hope they'd help put me to sleep... (HA!)

I did manage to sleep 4 hours last night, and if it continues with caffeine use the rest of the week... can anyone say... "Welcome to the Himalayas?"  I mean... "Welcome to a good old mania time?"

Oh fucking well.

That's one hot ass!

This is not a post about Trump or any of the other garbage going on in my country.  It's all a mess anyway.

I'm actually sitting on a hot pad and my ass is literally hot, because I need something to help ease the pain in my hips.  Okay, mostly my right hip... I don't know why the right one over the left one, but it hurts pretty darn good most of the time.  Perhaps it's the weather changes that are happening already.  Maybe it's the fact that I'm walking more and more than I was since I have better knees that don't hurt like hell anymore.

In any case, my ass is hot.

So the bastard wasn't clogged after all... whew?

Little Miss and I were under the house with a rented auger, working away, trying to get the "clog" cleared out.

When we were done, we put things back together, then brought all the tools outside, into the freezing rain so that we can rinse them off...  AND to also rinse ourselves off in the freezing water from the hose.

I had Ellie return the auger and while she did so we tested out the draining capabilities of things.

The damn thing still wasn't draining.  I sure as hell wasn't going back under the house.

Ellie was flipping out about the whole thing.  She was almost screaming and crying.  I hate when she does that.  I mean HATE when she does that.

So, I'm calling around to friends who are contractors.  One of them recommended a plumber friend.  I called this plumber and he told me that we might need a plumbing "Jetter" to get the lines cleared up.

While I'm calling around, Ellie decided that we "had" a clean out under the kitchen window outside.  I told her we didn't, but she still insisted that we did.


So, I had to go outside and show her where the pipes were all connected outside because she didn't believe me.

Well, she enlisted the help of Big Miss, and they dug around the pipe.  While doing this, they moved the rail road tie that was over the junction we added for the back bathroom.

Turns out the rubber junction collapsed because of all the weight from the earth, rail road tie and concrete poured close by. (Duh!)

At this current moment, there is still an open hole for this pipe.

I'll need to do some measurements, dig the hole out a bit bigger, then put in some brick/stones to support the junction from underneath, then to put in support around and over the top of the junction point.... finally, to also put support under the pipe from the house to the junction point.

That aught to solve the problem and we can fill it in.

I really shouldn't be doing too much work like this because of my knees.

Besides, today, I have a job fair that I'm going to, just for tech companies/jobs.

Before leave I need to try tightening the belt of the car again.  I thought I had it done yesterday, but apparantly I made it worse.  Which doesn't make sense to me...

So I'll do it again...  then get cleaned up to go.

The damn thing is clogged awfully damn bad.

It started out that the bathtub and toilet didn't drain.

Then when we're running water down the kitchen sink it fills up the bathtub, and then the air in the line bubbles out of the toilet.

This is helpful, because I know where the clog is at...

BUT...

Yesterday, I used the strongest drain cleaner sold at the hardware store, which only managed to smell the entire house up.

Now it was only in the mid-60's yesterday, so I got really, really chilled with all the windows and open while fans blew the fumes out of the house.

I consulted with my contractor friend about getting the plugs off the clean-out pipes, because they were rusted shut.

When I told him where the clog was, he said I should just try running the snake through the kitchen drain.

So I sat down on a stool, and shoved, twisted/cranked on the snake, trying to get it down the pipe and get the clog out.

Well, I couldn't knock it loose.

I did manage to make my legs hurt like hell.

See, I had to stand up from that stool, which is only 8" off the floor, which is really hard on me.

Sitting and standing from that stool happened many times, because I got up to check the tub to see if it drained out.

Oh, it drained out once, and the toilet was flushing normally... for a little bit.

So, now I'm going to take the toilet out of the bathroom and run a longer and thicker snake down the toilet drain, which will straight down to the sewer line under the house, then push straight on through to the kitchen sink and hopefully it'll break up the clog or grab it so that I can pull whatever it grabs back up the pipes.

When I was talking my friend at the hardware store, he said he runs some of the drain cleaner down the drain of the washing machine drain whenever he washes dog blankets.

Now, Ellie and the Misses all have long hair.  Mine is very, very short, and the longest hair on my head is my goatee.

After he said dog blanket, I immediately remembered that Little Miss gave the dogs baths, because the little mutant dog rolled in shit or some other nasty stuff.  Both of them got baths, and the larger dog has long woolly fur like a sheep.

So, I know that it's probably a hair clog, along with who knows what else.

Maybe a baby wipe, or ???

When I was done trying to work the snake through the kitchen sink drain, I was in so much pain, I took the maximum dose of my pain pills and then wrapped in blankets and laid in bed, watching "Mister Ed" on my phone, then finally started wrote this entry.

A friend just called me and he'll come over and watch/chat/maybe help me get this done.

Now that I started documenting this adventure, I'll have to finish writing after I'm done.

I don't know what to do, Godfather. My voice is weak, it's weak.

Ok, it's not my voice that's weak.

My legs are weaker than I expected after the surgeries.

Physical therapy is going well, and I can almost straighten my right knee out 100%, and bend it to the same degree as my left one.

My left knee bends and straightens out just like it did before the surgery and the right one is getting pretty darn close to it too.

Things are going well for the range of motion, but the muscles really need to get stronger.

Climbing steps are better, but other things are really, really hard.

I managed to climb a ladder to put a few things into the rafters of the garage.

Going up the ladder was tough, because I was only strong enough for my left leg to pull me up the steps.  Then coming down was harder, because my left knee was starting to buckle with each step.

I'm trying to find a used exercise bike so that I can cycle and watch movies/YouTube or listen to music.

Hard part is that I don't see at my local Goodwill, and I would rather borrow one or get one for maybe $20 or so.  I'd rather not spend much on it.

Maybe I can ride my bike outside.

I'll just have to give it a try.