That gives them language skills equal to apes, dolphins and most U.S. Senators.

I had some suggestions for a new career direction. Many of you know that I am a serious barbecue chef, that I make great tropical drinks and that I know how to use these skills to throw a serious party. I know how to scale the recipes to make them work. I understand how to pace an experience to have it be fun.

There were actually two suggestions. One is to become a barbecue maniac. Do barbecue catering. Open a barbecue hobby store. Follow my affection for slow cooked meat into the current fad for outdoor cooking.

The other suggestion is that I become a feature bartender for small and medium size parties. For a fee, I'd attend the party, make and serve some fancy drinks and be amusing. I'm a reasonably fun person and decent conversationalist. The friend thinks that I could be sort of like the magician at a birthday party but doing drinks and entertaining chat instead.

Once I finish this freelance project, I might look into working out a side-job based on those ideas (have to keep the cash flow fllowing) but those conversations caused me to re-focus on what I am trying to accomplish here.

In addition to finding a job, of course, I am also trying to figure out how I am going to spend the next segment of my career. I'd really enjoy doing those things that have formed a big part of my entertainment life but thinking about barbecue and tropical drinks reminded me of what I really like doing and why I have chosen the path that I have.

I really like technology, problem solving and working with smart people.

My model job is that I would like to work as a sales support rep for a web development company that focuses on marketing-oriented websites. In that job, I would work with the sales person and the customer to understand and document the goals of the project. Based on that, I'd help propose, persuade and implement. In some ways I would act for marketing. Other times, sales. Others, as a project manager. All the time I would be integrating the needs, abilities and practical requirements of the various constituencies into a practical effort to fulfill customer goals. I would write, plan, meet, interact, persuade and help people create cool websites.

Many of the jobs that I have applied for resemble this model. They are cross-disciplinary roles that allow me to act as a helper (another aspect that stimulates; I am good at organizing my work life in the context of helping) in the accomplishment of valuable goals.

I like barbecue and could imagine a life focused on entertaining people with food. But I really like technology, problem solving and working with smart people.

Sincerely,

tqii

Got a call from Type A Learning Agency. They are one of the earliest companies I applied to and one of my favorite opportunities. They have a nice, creative feel to their website and focus on the importance of their people. They make a big point of being interested in them. I'm supposed to have a phone interview in the next couple of weeks.

The Orbitz guy contacted me. I've worked with him to get me submitted into their internal process. We'll see how that helps.

CDW posted a great looking job for 'Senior E-Commerce Program Specialist: Web Site Optimizations'. It looks like it's basically a project manager working with various constituencies to plan the improvement of their website. I'd rock at that job. I'm good at looking at systems and seeing how to improve them. I also like working in between business groups. it's a Monster app so it will take forever to know what happened. I have high hopes though.