Update

Not much to report on the job search front. At last count, I've put out 20 or 21 job applications and received 5 formal rejections. In addition, I am working with several recruiters and a couple of people in my extended business associate network. The brightest possibilities are a recruiter with an AVP position in Dallas and a business associate with a yet to be defined possibility in Fort Worth. The AVP position is with a company where I still know several people including one of the VPs. It's a good company, and I can see myself being happy in the role. I am reportedly one of three candidates currently under consideration, but it is a nationwide search and there is no indication of when they will be moving to interview stage.

The other deal, despite being somewhat nebulous and undefined at the moment, has some advantages as well. Hopefully, one or more dominoes will start falling soon.

In other news, The Queen and I were forced to file third degree felony theft charges against someone yesterday for the first time in our lives. I can't go into details yet, but the short of it is that we were the victims of a con artist. There are aspects of the situation that would make your blood boil were I to share. "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord"....but, let's just say I'd be happy to arrange a meeting.

Lots of lessons learned and relearned out of this experience. In this digital age, the information is out there. You just have to know where to look, how to look and take the time to be thorough. Don't do business with anyone you haven't thoroughly vetted. Big deals (if you can't afford to lose, it's a big deal) should include a background check especially if things don't pass the smell test.

As I told The Queen last night, it's easy to spot evil when it's walking down the street shooting people left and right. It's real hard to spot it when it sits down, siddles up next to you and smiles.

Abraham Lincoln said it even better: "You can fool all of the people some of the time...." This was our time.

We are resigned to the fact that we will likely never see our property again or the money that was promised (if we do, that's a bonus). Our goal is to simply insure that the thief can't do this again to anyone else. There are two other felony theft cases pending against him which we really wish we had found before we entered into an agreement with him (we would have found it if we had searched for Stephen instead of Steve). He's currently under a deferred adjudication order in another county for theft charges there. He's also being sued in civil court by someone else for circumstances nearly identical to ours (I'm in contact with that attorney trying to convince them to file criminal charges as well).

If you are in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and want to know who to avoid, send me an email. I'll be happy to share the name, court case references, etc.

"Thingie" and Google Fu

Way back around post number two, I wrote about my gift with the female language, “Thingie”. It was that post that won me my first blogger writing award and secured the following and friendship of some of my long time blogger friends such as GunDiva. Well, my lovely wife (All hail The Queen! Long live The Queen!), over the course of our almost 10 years of marriage has taken “Thingie” to a whole new level. Please allow me to present the evidence.

First, The Queen has a horrible memory for movies and actors. Here is a fairly typical example:

The Setting - Imagine a husband busy at some task of daily living minding his own business when, from out of left field, this curve ball makes a u-turn and falls in his lap…

The Queen: Do you remember who that person was who was in the one a while back?

Me: Which person in one what when?

The Queen: I don’t remember.

Me: I need a hint here. Male/female? Animal, vegetable, mineral? Movie, TV, commercial? Anything? Bueller?

The Queen: She’s the one who plays a stupid woman all the time…

And so it goes until finally, I say “Aha! You mean Dustin Hoffman in ‘Tootsie’”

Nine times out of ten, I can guess the right answer in under twenty questions and five minutes. It is a stimulating exercise if you’ve never tried it.

But, my Queen is not content with that. She has now stepped up her game from Expert Thingie speaker to Grand Master Thingie Speaker. To wit, I submit the following example:

The Setting – settling into bed at midnight after a long day and needing to get up early the next day to get on the road.

The Queen: I need your help finding a song I heard on the radio a couple of weeks ago.

Me: Okay. Who’s it by?

The Queen: I don’t know.

Me: How does it go?

The Queen: I don’t remember. It was slow, with a lot of bass. I think it was sung by a black guy.”

Me: Lenny Kravitz?

The Queen: No.

Me: Can you give me anything else to work with?

The Queen: I took a picture.

[The Queen shows me a very blurry photo of our car stereo display which shows the radio station ID and, ironically, Puddle of Mudd – Blurry. Also, there is a word at the top that is either “ination” or “iration” or something like that.]

I pull up Puddle of Mudd – Blurry on iTunes for a sample.

The Queen: That’s not it.

Me: Are you sure? That’s what the radio is showing.

The Queen: I’m sure that’s not it.

Me: Okay. Let me see what else I can do.

At this point, I am forced to unleash my Google Fu. The first thing I come up with is the radio station’s play list. They only keep the list for the current day and the previous day up on their website, but I give it a look any way.

A song jumps off the list as being in heavy rotation, and I pull it up on iTunes for another sample.

The Queen: That’s it. What’s the name?

Me: Sail by Awolnation.

The Queen: How did you find that?

As near as I can tell, The Queen took her photo just as the station was moving to the next song. The radio moves the last song to a ticker tape at the top under the station ID, and she caught it just as Awolnation was marching across the screen. What I mistook for “ination” was “lnation” and that was what caught my eye on the play list. Sail is on heavy rotation (five to six times a day), and is the only band with “nation” in its name.

Score major bonus points for Daddy Hawk and his Google Fu.