My fever finally settled down, but I still have mild cough and a leftover sore throat. Getting to the bus stops to and from work didn't help matters much. The cold wind has a wicked way of setting off a coughing fit so much so that the only way to stop coughing is to stop breathing and that's not necessarily a good thing.

I did manage however to put in a semi-productive half day at work. I guess I just couldn't stay cooped up in bed for a third day straight. I was getting just a little stir crazy. The coughing part still sucks but at least I'm not knocked out by the sickness anymore. I'll probably have to forego the usual weekend binge smoking though, whatever man.

Aside from the plague being slowly lifted from Derricklandia [TM], I have potential good news coming from two different directions hence the need for the fingers being crossed on both hands. I was awakened by a call to my cell from my uncle who is still working in the place I got laid off in. Since my layoff he has been on the lookout for any open positions from within and finally this morning I got a call from him saying "Do you want to go back to work?".

This position will be slightly different that my former position. Once upon a time the tech support department got split into the Helpdesk, which answered the phones and provided 1st level support and the PC Support department, which provided 2nd level support if the problem could not initially be fixed over the phone or a first visit by the helpdesk. I used to do both before the split before a bunch of restructuring, reorganization, layoffs and politics, (blah x 3) and (yadda x 3) happened and I did PC support exclusively before I eventually got "downsized" myself.

The position that may be opening up however, will be a 1st level helpdesk position which means if I land this position I will go back to answering those phones. Considering I just graduated with a degree and I have already worked my way up to 2nd level support, this may actually be a step-and-a-half down for me. It's all still in the air though and nothing official has taken place other than me sending in my resume via e-mail to my potential boss with whom I have worked with before and hopefully I have made a positive impression. I know the job and I can do the job exceedingly well, the only hitch is that I may be overqualified for that opening. Time will tell I suppose and if given the opportunity I'll do what I need to do and penetrate any opening I can get my hands on. Jeez that sounded lewd...

Speaking of openings, when I opened up my e-mail to get ready to send off my resume of my PC Jedi tech skills, I noticed an e-mail sent by someone in HR in a major auto/home/life insurance company through Monster.com regarding an opening for a Desktop Integration Analyst position, which is basically a fancy name for what I have been doing for the past 4 years before I got laid off. Basically this HR person saw my posted resume on monster and shot an e-mail off to me indicating her possible interest. So I filled out the attached form and sent in my most recent resume along with a brief cover letter via email reply.

The cool part is that I got a phone call back from the HR person in about an hour. I was in the shower getting ready for work and when I came back, BAM! there was a voicemail on my cell. I returned the call and spoke with the HR person regarding my background past salary and all that. She said she will forward all the info to the head of whatever department I am going to wind up in and will contact me within the next week if there are any developments.

There are a several of hitches to this opportunity however, one of them is that the location is out in the burbs, about a 30 minute drive from the city, which can easily translate into 1 hour or more in heavy rush-hour traffic, a pain in the ass for sure. Another hitch is that the employer will require a drug test and the several hits of weed I took to mellow out last weekend will likely linger in my system and show up should I be tested in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to have to ask my weed smoking friends how to clear my system for a possible test. The last minor consideration is salary, the range offered is $30-40K. With my level of expertise I can probably land the higher end of that range. Still, I was making over $42K non-exempt before the layoff, so I might wind up with a hit to the salary, but it might wind up being a good deal anyway considering the opportunity and the fact that I'm making jack in my current position.

So hopefully one or the other of these possibilities will come into fruition. Daddy definitely needs to get his career back on track. I guess we will see what happens, but for the meanwhile I'll need those fingers crossed on both hands...