NOC NOC! Who's There? Not Me, Apparently.

So today was the day of my job interview.
Yesterday, in comparing their relative awkwardness, I mentioned that I have a lot more experience with job interviews than I do with first dates, but on my way in to the interview it occurred to me that, oddly enough, it’s been longer since I’ve had a job interview than it has been since I’ve had a first date.
So technically I’m actually a little more rusty with the interview skills than with the dating, even though my interview skills are stronger.
Overall, I think the interview went well, but I found that it was very hard to get a read on the guy interviewing me. The recruiter, whom I met with after the interview for a sort of “debriefing,” wasn’t quite so cagey, and seemed genuinely impressed by my skills and experience, but I have no idea how much input she has in the decision-making process.
The job itself is one that I think I’m ideally suited for, but again, I can’t really gauge how well I did in getting that idea across.
If I did get the job, I probably wouldn’t start until January, which would mean that I would still get my severance package despite the fact that I’d be back in the employ of the same corporate entity, though that would mean that the severance wouldn’t really be “extra” money in the way it would be if I were to get a job with another company and start immediately.
One advantage, though, would be that I would be sort of “grandfathered in” as far as my benefits go, so I wouldn’t, for example, have to start all over again for things like accrual rate for vacation time. I would have to accrue the time again, but the rate at which I would do so would be the same as if I’d been working there for six years.
Evidently the employee-contribution for insurance is much lower than it is at AOL, which is also a plus.
Anyway, at this point it’s back to the “wait and see” posture.
To be on the safe side, I’ve dialed down the level of hope to 1.5%.
(For the record, when it comes to my – excuse me, I just burst into a fit of painful, choking laughter over the thought of using this term in reference to me – love life, the level of hope is much lower than 1%. It’s not even .1%, or .00001%. How many decimal points has Pi been calculated out to? However many that is, the one would go three decimal points beyond that.)
Yesterday I ended up spending a bit more at the comic shop than I’d planned on. For one thing there was a bigger than usual pile in my subscription box this week, as a lot of book shipped this week. Beyond that, there were a couple of “if you like x, you might be interested in y” books that the shop throws in subscription boxes, much like TiVo automatically records other TV shows using the shows that you actively record as a basis.
I also opted to buy a few bags and boards, and when I was being rung up I noticed that Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier has finally been released, so I decided to grab that, too.
If worse comes to worst, the comic shop is hiring. Sure, it’s unlikely that I would make enough there to even make a mortgage payment, let alone pay my mortgage and my other bills, but at least I’d have ready access to comics, and probably some sort of employee discount.
(Just got a call from one of the recruiting companies letting me know that yet another prospective employer has decided that I’m not a match for one of the positions they have an “urgent” need to fill. Apparently spending five years working in a NOC doesn’t provide sufficient experience for an entry level NOC position. Not really sure how that works, particularly given that, depending on the specific duties, 50-90% of the requirements for a NOC job consist entirely of simply showing up. Oh well.)