Sunday 2nd May

I'm off to bed in a minute, as soon as I've done this, I've had a long and somewhat exhausting day. Why? AskSam is why - its a new database system I've downloaded, and getting to grips with it is - well I'm sure you know. Any type of programming, they tell you oh it's so easy, oh it works so well, oh it's supermarvellous.. and I've no doubt that it will be, once I've learnt how to use it.
The basic idea is that I have to have a database in which to store records of miracles, the records of which I can then do marvellous things with that will be the making of my dissertation. After consultation with the tutor of RRSH - who's particularly good at this kind of thing, I'm constructing a trial database, to make sure the bloody thing works properly before I start stacking records into it. Hence the flapping about with AskSam, which I think is actually askSam.com, but never mind that - the thing is askSam is a database system designed to work with text. You can store masses of words in it, and it counts them, it can use boolean operators etc, and I'm sort of hoping that by using this, I can avoid the whole coding issue. Coding is a particular hate of mine, ok, you can turn yes, no and not stated into code relatively easily - either that or have 3 columns, but you try devising a code for stuff like the use of oil in miracles. Death, prior, during or after the miracles has occurred - you'd be amazed how many apparently successful recipients of miracles drop dead six months later. For the earlier database I used Excel, which works, provided you code appropriately or use hundreds of columns, but I'm thinking - no coding, no headache! Still I'm not sure. I know no one else who's used this, and the bloody thing has crashed on me twice in the last 8 hours. It can crash as much as it likes right now, it has one record in it, but if it crashed when I've got it stacked with records - ha. No way. I should point out here that I'm using the trial version, and probably not terribly well at the moment, let's not cast aspersions on what's probably a perfectly good product. Still come on here Tess, I've had it for 24 hours so far, and I've got the database, and an entry form to put the data on to - it's looks a bit tatty at the moment, but I can tidy that up should I decide to go with it. And the other thing about this is that I can also use it to construct a searchable database of quotes, a particularly attractive thing to have when it comes to writing up.

So what else have I been doing this week? Well I can now tell the full and unexpurgated story of the interview for a 'job' I had this week. I found this 'job' on the jobshop website, so phoned them up - it's a simple little sales job for a jewellery shop in fairly central Glasgow. I phoned them up and that seemed to go ok, and had to go along to see them on - lord I've forgotten what day of the week it was now, my heads so full of askSam! Thursday I think. Anyhow this shop wasn't where I thought it was, but in a far more dubious part of town. And can I tell you when I saw it, my first instinct was to turn tail and run, the fascia was all rundown, the window was only what half stocked - and when I got inside! This is not a shop that sells new stock, it sells old stock, it's not a pawnshop, I don't think there's any returning of stuff, but the other rather peculiar thing was there didn't seem to be much to sell. Let's just say my spidey senses were tingling. The place was no bigger than one of the cupboards in my flat ( bar work, waiting, that kind of thing. When I conceived of this whole thing in the first place, back in the dim and distant, securely employed past, I did my usual thing of telling myself that its a big city and tenement flats have very large 'cupboards' that are made out of what were the old Victorian bedspaces - check out the Tenement Flat museum site, they're bound to have pictures!) I mean literally this place could have been installed in my clothes cupboard. Anyhow having gone in here, and met the people who were running it, who I should say seemed perfectly legit as far as I could tell - had an 'interview' of all of about 7 minutes. He then says oh I'll either phone you on Sunday or not bother to phone if you've not got the job. Frankly that was ok by me, because I thought he's not going to offer me any part of this job, so what the hell. And of course he didn't, and I'm extremely relieved. After all, what the - well I was going to say what the hell would I do then, but there's no what the hell about it, I would have politely declined. And I'm sure that he must have known that, because he didn't offer me anything. I'm not in the least upset about it, beyond that I was foolish enough to actually go for this in the first place, but then it's what I'm looking for. A few days or so regular, non-demanding work that'll bring me in a bit of income. One that's not going to distract me too far from my miracle collecting. In fact I'd more than happily sit on a till in a supermarket for 8 hours of the day, if there were any supermarkets looking for staff - alas, Glasgow is deeply entrenched in recession, Scotland itself has only just emerged in this current sector about 3 months behind the rest of the UK. So there are just not that many jobs around, and the one's that are, are more suited to the young, thin and glamorous - ie there'd be plenty of work. Well it's a big city alright, only not so much work. Still, this past week has got me a bit more in the swing of it, and even this little interview has to a certain extent demonstrated that I need to brush up a bit on my interview techniques. Can't say I did that good a job of selling myself as the ideal assistant, but that's probably more down to be somewhat gobsmacked at what I'd walked into! Something will turn up. It always does, and in the meantime, yes... askSam!