Index of /Content/Unemployment

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	[Parent Directory]	-	Sat May 23 11:18:18 2009
	Unemployment +22 Days	-	Thu Jan 14 02:10:22 2010
	Connecticut unemployment web site hous of operation. Trying to get unemployment in Connecticut sucks. All of the unemployment offices were closed some time ago, so if you want to file for unemployment benefits you have only two choices: phone or web page. The web page seems like the obvious choice, but is so overloaded that it didn’t work for until recently. This wasn’t an IE or Firefox optimized website issue, the back end web server were just completely overloaded by the traffic. To top it off, parts of the web page are only “open” at certain hours, so this forces people to hit the web site during a specific time range instead of spreading the server load across the entire day. Calling is not much better, but at least that I can understand since staffing phones 24 hours a day would get expensive. Call wait times run about two hours before you can talk to someone and the hold music occasionally stops completely making you wonder if the call dropped or not. To make matters worse, there are times that you can’t even get through to the number, so the best time to call is in the early morning just after the phone lines open. Given the two choices you might think that the web page might be the better option, but this is where you get to discover the real fun part of the process - you have to do both. Yep, first you need to file an initial claim on the website, then you need to actually call someone so that they can read back everything you entered on the web page, then OK the claim. Very irritating, but thankfully you only need to do this once. Filed under: Unemployment. No comments.
	Unemployment in One Week	-	Wed Dec 16 23:38:02 2009
	One week left at Big Pharma. All through today keep thinking of that 80’s song “Final Countdown” by Europe and it makes me smile each time. Most of the loose ends are taken care of and all that remains is to finish documenting my job for the the outsource guy that will be replacing me on the team next year (good luck with the project dude). Soon all that will be left to do is wait for the the time I turn in my badge and laptop. Filed under: Unemployment. No comments.
	Unemployment in Two Weeks	-	Wed Dec 09 23:02:20 2009
	Well, it doesn’t look as though I’ll be working at Big Pharma much longer, and my end date is about two weeks away - Xmas eve. What will happen is that I will leave for the Xmas break, just like years past except that I don’t come back in January like I normally do. I could probably be doing more to get a slot at Big Pharma next year, but the truth is that I’m happy to just let events run their course. After over 12 years at Big Pharma I’m looking forward to a change of scenery and a bit of downtime. After a short break (and a bit of skill development), I plan on taking a few short duration assignments involving some trendy technologies and then look for another long term assignment or an FTE slot somewhere. Until then I have have an enormous amount of accumulated crap that I need to start bringing home. Filed under: Unemployment. No comments.