A quick update
Thank goodness for free Internet at Scholotzky's! Almost makes me feel better about the huge amount of fat in those sandwiches! (They're good though!) Anyway I'll make it brief because I only have about 20 minutes left on my laptop battery.

Just some random thoughts:
- Is it just me or does everyone eat worse when they're visiting other people? Since I've been in Austin I've really wanted to try that new hamburger at Dairy Queen with the chili, cheese and fritos in it! NIIIIICE!
- Colorado's going down tomorrow afternoon. I'm predicting Texas by about 20. Should be fun - look for me on television - I'll be the one 15 rows from the top of the stadium wearing orange.
- I got my new car yesterday. It's a little bit of a reality check to remind yourself that unlike the past vehicles you've received as sales cars, this one's being paid out of my pocket - so leather seats, mp3 players, rear spoilers, air conditioned seats, etc, are no longer essential items. (This non-Ford life is gonna be harder than I expected!)
- Anyone not in Austin right now needs to get down here now. It's clear, sunny, about 75 degrees and absolutely the best weather in the world. I tell everyone that for about six weeks out of the year, we have the best climate known to man.
Alright, that's enough. I'll be back next week, and hopefully I'll have some new ideas for the site so that the three of you who check it (:D) will have a reason to keep coming back!

Monster.com Lesson No. 1: The Pyramid Scheme
Well, it's only a week or so since I've had my resume up on Monster.com and I'm already catching on to an interesting and rather innovative use of the site. Under the traditional pyramid scheme format, a person would have to go out and enlist their family and friends into the program to either buy life insurance or health and wellness products or whatever or (more importantly) become salespeople themselves and further increase that person's income. But with the advent of online job sites, there's an easier, much less personal way to go about finding people - you just recruit people from there to come in in volume.

Fun stuff - nothing illegal, or for that matter unethical. It just brought a few too many "Glengary Glenrose" flashbacks - for those who haven't seen it, it definitely gives you a new appreciation for all those contests you have allegedly won through the mail, all those wonderful condo offers you receive, all those too-good-to-be-true phone offers. The catch phrase "ABC: Always Be Closing" kept coming to mind. (OK, the stuff in that movie was unethical.)

Anyway, clearly I'm off and running! No job yet, but I feel smarter already - in fact, interestingly enough, I took an IQ test online a few days after I left Ford, and I scored a full five points higher on it than I scored when I first took it two years ago. So apparently, leaving Ford Motor Company has made me smarter!

Glass = half full.

The journey continues... well, I guess it's kind of at a rest stop
OK, no job yet, but I DO have my website up and running, such as it is. I'm kind of playing with it as I go and already see a lot that needs to be changed, but I kind of felt like I wanted to get it up there tonight, just so I could say I accomplished something this weekend.

In case you came here first, you can find me at https://paulhammons.tripod.com/. If you do go, please leave feedback! Validate me! (Just kidding). Actually I do want to make it an interactive site. In case you don't know, you can respond to my blog entries, and I'm thinking of also adding a discussion page on the website that we can use for anything from scriptural discussions to entertainment stuff to basically whatever we want to post. But we'll see how that goes.

I need to figure out if I can use more than one blog - if that's the case, I may do a separate one because I'd like to leave a daily or semidaily (OK, weekly maybe?) log of some of my Bible studies - just thoughts or topics I come across from time to time. I'm thinking of studying the Book of Job, if nothing else, just to remind myself that I'm a long way from sackcloth and ashes and boils and family members being killed by collapsing buildings. (Lord willing I'll stay that way.) Anyway, I'd like to make these something that would be of use to people to read, rather than just me rattling on about junk that no one cares about. That will just be an added bonus for you!

Anyway, who knows, I may have all this changed around by this time tomorrow. After all, I don't have to get up in the morning!

The Momentous First Step
OK, so this isn't really the first step - the first step was being shown the door by my former employers. The second step was to contemplate driving my car through the front door and into the lobby. The third step was to realize that my offices are on the 10th floor, and it really wouldn't be fair to the folks on the ground level. The fourth step was to regroup, and the fifth was to find a hobby.

So I figure, find a way to keep everyone informed (whether they care or not) on my job search, my inability to eat or pay electric bills (I'm kidding Mom - I'm fine!) and my general ability to get out of bed and go look for another job. And what better way to do that than to find a time-wasting hobby like my own website? Yeah, that's right - it was the only sane decision.

So here I am on the web. I'm sure I'll throw in a lot of other stuff that occupies my time/thoughts, as well as photos, links, basically anything to help other people waste time as well. Hey, I had a revelation after being downsized that I wasn't doing enough to help humanity. So I figured I could help humanity by offering an alternative to productivity. Thus is born my website.

OK, so right now it's just a blog (that's weblog for those of you who don't speak Internet geek). I plan to increase its scope as I have time, and frankly, as I get bored. I can't job-search 24-7, you know! And as Marge Simpson said of Homer "Usually his hairbrained schemes fizzle out once he see something good on TV. But this season... (shakes head in disgust)."

Anyway, enjoy, or don't. Either way is good.