When it rains, it pours.

During one of the Tampa Bay area's coldest cold snaps in many years, the heat portion of our central heat and air unit crapped out. Temps were predicted to fall to the high 20s last night, but only got to 34°. I was able to pick up a little room heater/fan at Target that seems to be helping a bit this morning. Luckily, it hasn't gotten too cold in the house; it's 62° currently. Warm slippers and sweatshirts are helping to stay comfortable. My cousin runs an AC repair company and is coming out to take a look at our unit. Rick's AWESOME! Hopefully it will be something simple and we'll have the normal heat tonight since it's supposed to be colder overnight tonight. Actually, we probably won't run it until the morning since we usually just pile on the blankets at night anyway. Depending how much the inside of the house cools off today, we may run it a bit this evening just to take the chill out and stay ahead of the cold.


Had a job interview yesterday in response to a resume I submitted earlier this week. It went ok, but it emphasized how much my actual technical skills have stagnated while I was supporting primarily in-house applications for the last 5 years. I acknowledged that with them and explained that with a little bit of refreshing, I should be back in the game. I have 7 more years' experience than they're looking for with some supervisory experience thrown in to boot. All in all, I think it went well and hope they're willing to overlook my rustiness.


I tracked down the email address of the guy in charge of the dept (and who led the interview) and sent him a follow up email on the way home thanking him for the interview. I also answered one of the questions that I couldn't in the interview. I told him that having half the answer in the interview was bugging me on the way home and I researched it to come up with not only that a fix was possible, but a couple of methods to do it. I mentioned in that scenario that while I may not always have every answer, my experience provides me the skills to track it down.

Keeping my fingers crossed. If I land the job, I may get less money than I'm seeking, but it will be better than unemployment and we can get medical insurance again.