2003-02-21 - 11:41 a.m.

OKay, so, for both of you who have been religiously following the saga of Gorm...

Today is my last day of unemployment...well...I suppose Sunday technically is, but this is the last day I will be sitting on my butt not working while everyone else (or at least a subset of everyone else) is at work making money and/or being a productive member of society.

Starting Monday, I'm a data designer at Capital One, on a contract through a consulting company. The pay is good, but there's no sick time, vacation, or any of those "No work, but still get paid" benefits. On the plus side, I do get medical and dental and that kinda stuff, much much cheaper than it would have cost to COBRA it or get added as a spouse on Rhi's policy.

Spent the better part of an hour today filling out all of the forms to start working...and something struck me as odd...when did filling out an application for a job become the *last* step of the process?

Seriously, this now makes three positions in a row where I was offered the job, negotiated terms, and *then* was presented with a 3 or 4 page long thing asking for my life history. All of which was already included in my resume, or covered in the interview.

What purpose does this serve? Especially when you consider that they never make the squares big enough to write, in, and that combined with my horrid scrawl, makes it an illegible waste of perfectly good paper and ink. But apparently it's necessary...weird.

I know and understand the necessity to fill out W-2's and I-9's and Emergency Contact forms, and sign acceptance letters and confidentiality agreements and non-compete clauses and all of that...but what's so important about the application? Do they need my signature on somehting that says I understand if I was lying about any of this I'm toast? Fine...lemme sign something saying my resume and references aren't fabricated. Why make me handwrite it all out again, so someone can type it into a system (or just leave the paper in a folder somewhere).

Ahh well...it's a small price we pay, I guess.

On other notes, watched the second day of my torturing others for voyeuristic enjoyment shows last night. First was the Survivor Battle of the Sexes...there's gonna be a catfight...and I can't wait...enough said about that.

The one that truly makes me wonder "Why" has got to be "I'm a Celebrity, get me out of here". It's something of a Celebrity (well...B-list celebrities at least) Survivor...except the Celebrities got more and better food, more and better clothing, sleeping bags, and *two* luxury items as opposed to just one.

So, in other words, these folks need to be pampered even when they're "roughing" it...excellent.

But the twist is the "Bush Tucker Challenges"...each day they take one of the celebrities (as determined by Phone voting...) and make them do something absurd and allegedly dangerous for food (keeping in mind there's no real danger of starvation here...they've got rice and beans up the Ying-Yang back in camp...the prize here is fresh vegetables, meats, and stuff like that).

Strangely compelling, yet vaugely stomach turning...not sure how I feel about this.

Okay, it's noon, and I have a list of stuff to get done before 5:00...so it's time for me to be off. Have a good one everybody.

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