Monday, December 03, 2018

Mich-again

I’m back in Michigan.  Moved back in with the parents.  Last I posted, I had just started and ended my new job back in Santa Clara, California – all on the same day – and was just about to begin the cross-country drive.  Not really sure if I was clear enough about the ‘Route 66’ adventure not happening, however that trip did not happen.  There was – for a couple days – still a possibility of me driving back down to Santa Monica, meeting up with Craig as he flew in from Michigan and actually completing that adventure; however, it didn’t happen.  What ended up happening was me driving straight from Santa Clara (well, Fremont actually…) to Allen Park, Michigan all by myself – a quick, four-day drive down I-80.  Other than picking up a speeding ticket (102 in a 75 zone) in Nebraska, the trip was quite uneventful.  I arrived at my parent’s house on a Sunday, early in the afternoon … been living here since.

I think I actually am losing my sanity now.  Nothing seems to make sense to me lately.  It clearly now appears that I should have stuck with that crappy job I successfully landed in Santa Clara.  It most definitely would have been a nightmare – as far as jobs go – however it sure would have let me avoid many of the current situations that I find myself dealing with. First and foremost, I would have been employed.  I now have the pleasure of attempting to solve my lack of employment issue whilst living in Michigan.  This adds quite a bit of complication to a problem that I’ve been working on solving for well over a year already.

The thing is that backend, digital, ASIC, “place and route” – where my expertise is – is not something that is even done here in the Detroit Metropolitan area.  Everything – EVERYTHING – related to electrical engineering around here is directly tied to the auto industry.  It’s also 100% analog in nature.  There are jobs related to ASICs, however all of them appear to be incorporating ASICs designed elsewhere into PCB circuitry sold to auto manufacturers.  I know, “blah blah blah technical crap most people reading this could care less about” – sorry ‘bout that …  It’s just so frustrating to me.  I was hoping to perhaps find something in engineering that I could do around here, but I can’t.  My 20 years of learning more and more about less and less has made me far too specialized.  I don’t do analog circuitry – I don’t remember what I “learned” in college some 25 years ago.

My next plan at solving my lack of job issue was to just throw away my experience and change fields completely.  Didn’t really have an idea about what I wanted to do nor how I would get into it – still don’t.  I applied for a job with Guitar Center as something called an “Operations Associate” as the job posting made it appear that no experience was needed and that training would be provided.  Sent my resume along with a cover letter that I typed up explaining that I was trying to change careers as I figured they would wonder why someone with my resume was applying.  Never heard anything back from that…

Considered (and am still possibly considering) trying to get some sort of IT job but don’t really know what training I would need.  Seems like it’s all very specialized towards what is needed for the specific job one has.  Since, I have no specific job, this makes me hesitant to spend any money and time taking a class that may never be useful for me.  I don’t know … maybe I’m overthinking things…

I’m currently back to looking for a job in my field – as specialized as it is.  Translation – I am looking for a job somewhere other than here.  I’ve got a couple leads for contract positions in California and Texas although I have been applying to opportunities anywhere in the country – even applied to several positions in Canada though I have heard nothing back on those.  I’m basically back to what I was doing prior to landing the job in Santa Clara.  Now, however, I am doing it from Michigan rather than California.  Getting pretty much the same results though – had a few phone interviews resulting in me waiting to hear more and many applications sent resulting with no reply at all.  Sometimes I get rejection emails, but usually I get nothing.  It’s now well over 200 opportunities that I have applied for since deciding to give up on poker.

This decision to move back in with my parents has also introduced several issues that caught me a bit off guard – all related to my car.  Granted, some of these issues only exist because of my pride.  I do realize that, although I do like my car, it is just a car; however, it is a 2002 Firehawk.  It’s a limited edition (only 1501 were built) model with slightly more than 60k miles.  It’s rarely (very rarely) been driven in rain and never been driven in snow.  Although it was involved in a couple accidents in California, I made sure all repairs were completed by professionals.  I’ve done the best I could to take care of this car.  Now I’m back in Michigan.

Michigan, as many of you may already be aware, is pretty much the worst place for vehicles.  The roads are a freaking mess – more potholes than pavement – and when winter comes around things really become a nightmare.  They spray the roads with salt.  Salt doesn’t do good things to cars.  The whole idea of driving my over-powered, rear-wheel-drive car on the icy, salt-covered roads of southeast Michigan throughout the winter makes me cringe.  So … I’ve decided to put my Firehawk in storage.  Now I have no car (well, I “have” one … in storage).  I’ll be needing to purchase a vehicle if I stay here.  So there’s that now…

I was able to obtain a Michigan driver’s license without much hassle; however, was unable to register my car.  I did change my car insurance from California to Michigan; unfortunately, I could not complete a Michigan registration due to not having a title for my car.  I might “have” a title but, if I do, it would be located in my file cabinet.  My file cabinet just so happens to currently be residing in a storage unit somewhere in Nevada along with the rest of my possessions.  You see, apart from my car and few select things I decided to take with me to Santa Monica, everything I own was packed in a truck by the movers I hired in Henderson and taken to storage.  I’m supposed to get an apartment and give that address to the movers at some point to get my stuff delivered.  That’s a bridge I suppose I’ll be jumping off sometime in the future … assuming I ever get myself an apartment and who the hell knows if that’s ever going to happen…?  But, as usual, I digress … back to what I was talking about…

Now I’m working on obtaining a duplicate title for my vehicle – no easy task here…  My initial guess was to try the California DMV.  I filled out a California “Title Application” and sent it, along with a brief letter of explanation as well as a money order for $21 – the duplicate title fee, to the California DMV in Sacramento.  I “should” have taken the moment required to look at my current, still valid, California registration prior to doing this.  It clearly states that no title was issued for this registration.

Okay, so a bit of an explanation on what I have since discovered is in order here.  Apparently, in some states a vehicle can be registered without a title.  Not sure exactly which states are included in the complete list, however both California and Nevada allow this.  I now know this as I did exactly that in both California (twice, actually) and Nevada.  Michigan, however, does not allow this.  In Michigan the owner of a vehicle must possess a valid title to said vehicle in order to obtain registration and plates.  So that got me to wondering exactly how the hell I was going to get a copy of my title…

After looking into things a bit, I was able to discover that I had paid off my loan for this car back in 2008.  I was still “technically” living in Colorado then; although I was “actually” living in California.  For you see, I owned a house in Colorado where my car was stored.  It was apparently in 2008 that I decided to bring my car with me to California.  The reason I believe this is because I was able to discover from the California DMV that the first year my car was registered in California was 2009.  Interestingly enough, it was registered without a title…  This leads me to believe that I need to be going through the Colorado DMV in an attempt to get a duplicate title.  It does appear that it was registered as a Colorado vehicle when the loan was paid off.

I called the Colorado DMV to see if they’d be able to help me with this and basically discovered that, in Colorado, bureaucracy rules.  They told me that I needed to fill out and send in a “Record Search Request” (form DR2489a) to see if a title for my vehicle is in their system and then, if it is, I should fill out and send in a “Duplicate Title Request” (form DR2539a) to request a duplicate title be sent to me.  I then asked if they might be able to save me some time and let me know if the title was in their records over the phone and was told that they couldn’t do that because there was no way to prove I was who I was claiming to be.  What I ended up doing was sending in the “Search Request” followed by the “Title Request” a few days later.  The way I figure it is, if the “Title Request” comes back to me requesting some kind of missing information, I should have the information by then from the “Search Request” I filed.  If I’m lucky, the information I put in the “Duplicate Title Request” will be sufficient and I’ll get my title…

Oh yeah, and to add to this, I’m also a bit in the dark on whether or not the title – should it be found in the Colorado DMV records – will be in my name.  There is still somewhat of a possibility that the lien from the loan was never removed in Colorado.  That was supposed to have been done when I registered my car after paying off the loan … but I don’t think I registered the car in Colorado again after the loan was paid off.  I suppose the lien may still be on my car’s title.  I was able to get a lien release document from the credit union … just in case.  I’m still waiting for this mess to sort itself out…

The latest twist in this pathetic story that is my life is that Ray, one of my oldest friends, is basically offering me a job whilst I continue to look for work.  Yeah, it’s as strange as it sounds and that’s what’s bothering me the most about it.  He’s offering me a chance to work at his company in pretty much a secretarial role as a way for me to earn some money and possibly move out of my parent’s place.  I really do appreciate the offer however I don’t think I could do that.  If I took the job, I would need to get a vehicle.  I suppose that’s not too big a deal, I’m pretty sure I could pick up something half-way decent for a few grand.  What happens, however, if I then land one of the jobs I am trying to get?  I suppose I could sell the vehicle I purchased, but how much of a pain would that be?  Remember now that the jobs I am trying to land all require me to be moving most likely quite far from Michigan.

As for moving out of my parent’s house, I would love to.  Once again though, what happens if I land a job?  I don’t know … I suppose I could always break the lease of any apartment I got although I would need to once again have my possessions (assuming I ended up getting them delivered from Nevada) moved again to wherever the job I landed was.  Getting an apartment of my own would probably be the smart thing to do though as the office for Ray’s company is actually located down in Toledo, Ohio.  I don’t think driving daily between Allen Park and Toledo makes too much sense – heck, the gas cost alone would make the whole endeavor somewhat pointless…

Besides, I can’t screw over my buddy like that.  I fully realize he’s going out of his way to offer me assistance, but what kind of worker would I be if my main goal was finding work elsewhere?  I need to be able to open my schedule for any interviewing that may be required on my job search and I have absolutely no idea how frequently time off would be needed for that.  Heck, there’s been four days in the last couple weeks that I would have needed to be away from work for interviews.  I’m hoping that my interviewing may soon become even more frequent and who knows if I may be needing to travel somewhere for an interview…?  It just seems to me that this whole looking for a job these days is a job of its own.  If I agree to work with Ray’s company, I would feel obligated to do that job as well as I could.  Right now, I just feel that this job hunt I am currently on would get in the way…

I suppose another option here would be to take the job with Ray as a change in career.  It wouldn’t pay even close to what I expect to be able to get should I land a job in my current (“former,” I suppose, when the whole poker bullshit is taken into account) career however that’s assuming I am ever able to actually land a job.  I don’t know … seems like the last few phone interviews I had went decently but you never know these days – will they end up like all the other interviews I’ve had this last year?  I sure hope not…

Oh well … I’m planning on meeting up with Ray tomorrow down in Toledo.  Maybe talking with him will give me some direction…

bis später,

Coriolis

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